How will the Israel election outcome affect its Arab neighbors and Palestinians?

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Updated 23 March 2021
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How will the Israel election outcome affect its Arab neighbors and Palestinians?

  • Tuesday’s general election does not guarantee a more decisive result than the three before it
  • The intrinsic instability of Israel’s political system creates nervous anticipation across the Arab region

LONDON: It is not only Israelis who are becoming accustomed to their endless rounds of elections — this week’s being the fourth in two years. The whole region is being forced to consider the impact on Israel’s policies toward its neighbors, especially toward the Palestinians.

The intrinsic instability of the Israeli political system means that whenever an election takes place, it creates anxious anticipation across the Middle East and North Africa, a nervousness arising from the vacillations in Israel’s policies that in turn derive from both the need to lure voters and the constraints of the constant, excruciating and never-ending formations and dissolutions of coalitions.

Tuesday’s general election does not guarantee a more decisive result than the three before it.

In the meantime, the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is conducting both his domestic and international policies not necessarily to serve the interests of the country and its people, but first and foremost to prolong his time in office, and at this stage mainly to escape justice in his corruption trial on three cases of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

For both the Israeli electorate and for the international community, in the more than four years since the investigation into Netanyahu’s corrupt and hedonist behavior began, it has become almost impossible to discern which of the Israeli government’s policies stem from a genuine strategic outlook and which are merely to serve Netanyahu’s attempt to derail his trial and avert conviction.

Yet, scanning the various possible post-election scenarios, as far as Israel’s policies in the region are concerned, one cannot foresee dramatic changes, whether Netanyahu stays or quits.

KEY CONTENDERS IN ISRAELI ELECTION

* Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud 

* Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid 

* Naftali Bennett, Yamina 

* Gideon Saar, New Hope 

* Ayman Odeh, Joint List 

* Avigdor Lieberman, Yisrael Beytenu 

The great danger is that if Netanyahu remains in office, the trend of decisions taken to divert the course of justice will continue, and this might lead to adventurism and pandering to his right-wing base.

If his time in politics comes to an end after Tuesday’s election, Israel is likely to end up with some species of right-wing government, one which might include more centrist elements, but not necessarily.

Of the three other likely candidates for the prime ministerial role, Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, Naftali Bennet of Yamina and Gideon Saar of New Hope, it is only Lapid who might offer a less hawkish foreign policy and one more accommodating towards the Palestinians.

However, considering the other members of what would inevitably be a coalition government, his room to maneuver would be very limited, and even more so if a post-Netanyahu Likud were to be part of that coalition.

Hence, any changes if they take place might be more nuanced in all regards.




Protesters gather during an anti-government demonstration near the Israeli prime minister's residence in Jerusalem on March 20, 2021, ahead of the election taking place on March 23. (AFP)

An external observer of Israeli politics might expect the Palestinian issue to be high on the public agenda, if not top of it at election time; however, this is not the case.

The issue has been marginalized in inverse correlation to its importance to Israeli society and is confined to small parties either on the left or those of the Joint Arab List. None of the major parties are prepared to offer an alternative discourse, or to call out the dire conditions under which the Palestinians are forced to live in the West Bank and Gaza.

No party is ready to confront the practical, let alone the moral, implications of the continuous occupation of the West Bank and the blockade on Gaza, which is also a form of occupation.

The conventional wisdom, or rather the collective denial, is that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side, and as things stand there is no sense of urgency to enter into genuine peace negotiations, based on a two-state solution and a fair and just resolution of all outstanding issues, including the status of Palestinian refugees and the future of Jerusalem.

Judging by the polls and consequently the different scenarios of a future coalition government, it is possible that those who call for the annexation of large swaths of land in the West Bank — a threat that was halted last summer by the Abraham Accords — might be extremely influential in the next government.

Such elements might push to expand the Jewish settlements, legalize dozens of outposts in the West Bank that even in the eyes of the Israeli government are illegal, confiscate more Palestinian land and generally make the lives of Palestinians as uncomfortable as possible.




An Israeli soldier casts his early vote for the country's upcoming legislative elections, at the Golani military base in Kafr Qara near Haifa, on March 17, 2021. (AFP/File Photo)

Depending on the composition of the Knesset, there could emerge a more pragmatic government, but one that still would be under pressure to at least maintain the sorry status quo.

A major issue that will be high on the next government’s agenda is Iran, and closely related to it, relations with Syria and Lebanon. For Israel, especially under Netanyahu, the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Tehran was from its outset like a red rag to a bull. It opposed it, never believed that Tehran would adhere to its terms, and saw it at best as delaying rather than preventing Iran’s development of nuclear military capability.

There is a wide consensus in Israel that Iran is posing, if not an existential threat to Israel, then at least a very severe one. The corollary of that is a proactive Israeli approach, whether diplomatically or through covert and overt operations in Iran, Syria and other parts of the world where Tehran operates against Israeli targets.

There might be a more nuanced approach in a government not led by Netanyahu, one that would avoid confrontation with the Biden administration if it is determined to re-join the JCPOA, as long as it offers a more stringent inspections regime and constraints on Iran’s development of long-range missiles.

In this context, any incoming Israeli government will be concerned with the consolidation of Iran’s military presence in Syria and air raids on Iranian targets there will continue, along with attacks on arms convoys bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon.




A picture taken on March 21, 2021, shows the installation "Speak Out!", consisting of 90 sculpted heads by artist Sophie Halbreich aimed to encourage people to vote, at Habima Square in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv. (AFP)

The military build-up of the latter on Israel’s northern border, which includes an enormous arsenal of precision-guided missiles, is a threat that Israel’s strategists take very seriously.

As with Iran’s nuclear program, deterrence, quiet diplomacy and limited operations will remain Israel’s policy of choice. However, should Hezbollah cross a certain threshold, open hostilities remain a real possibility.

Lastly, one of Netanyahu’s rare achievements in recent years has been the normalization agreements with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, adding to the existing informal cooperation with Saudi Arabia, and the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan.

Maintaining this state of affairs and building on it will be the task of the next government. However, as long as the Palestinian conflict lingers on with no sign of a satisfactory solution, it could always become a spoiler in these regional relations, as we have seen recently with the growing tension between Israel and Jordan.

It is safe to say that in the wake of this week’s Israeli election, we will see more continuity than change as far as the region is concerned, but the composition of the next coalition and the main forces in it may still usher in some changes — for better or worse.

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 * Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. Twitter: @YMekelberg


Israel says hit Hezbollah command center in deadly weekend strike

Updated 3 sec ago
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Israel says hit Hezbollah command center in deadly weekend strike

  • The strike hit a residential building in the heart of Beirut before dawn Saturday
  • Since September 23, Israel has intensified its Lebanon air campaign
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army on Monday said it had struck a Hezbollah command center in the downtown Beirut neighborhood of Basta in a deadly air strike at the weekend.
“The IDF (Israeli military) struck a Hezbollah command center,” the army said regarding the strike that the Lebanese health ministry said killed 29 people and wounded 67 on Saturday.
The strike hit a residential building in the heart of Beirut before dawn Saturday, leaving a large crater, AFP journalists at the scene reported.
A senior Lebanese security source said that “a high-ranking Hezbollah officer was targeted” in the strike, without confirming whether or not the official had been killed.
Hezbollah official Amin Cherri said no leader of the Lebanese movement was targeted in Basta.
Since September 23, Israel has intensified its Lebanon air campaign, later sending in ground troops against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The war followed nearly a year of limited exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas after the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.
The conflict has killed at least 3,754 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September this year.
On the Israeli side, authorities say at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians have been killed.

HRW says Israel strike that killed 3 Lebanon journalists ‘apparent war crime’

Updated 21 min 15 sec ago
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HRW says Israel strike that killed 3 Lebanon journalists ‘apparent war crime’

BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch said on Monday an Israeli air strike that killed three journalists in Lebanon last month was an “apparent war crime” and used a bomb equipped with a US-made guidance kit.
The October 25 strike hit a tourism complex in the Druze-majority south Lebanon town of Hasbaya where more than a dozen journalists working for Lebanese and Arab media outlets were sleeping.
The Israeli army has said it targeted Hezbollah militants and that the strike was “under review.”
HRW said the strike, relatively far from the Israel-Hezbollah war’s main flashpoints, “was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime.”
“Information Human Rights Watch reviewed indicates that the Israeli military knew or should have known that journalists were staying in the area and in the targeted building,” the watchdog said in a statement.
HRW “found no evidence of fighting, military forces, or military activity in the immediate area at the time of the attack,” it added.
The strike killed cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Mohammad Reda from pro-Iran, Beirut-based broadcaster Al-Mayadeen and video journalist Wissam Qassem from Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television.
The watchdog said it verified images of Najjar’s casket wrapped in a Hezbollah flag and buried in a cemetery alongside fighters from the militant group.
But a spokesperson for the militant group said he “had no involvement whatsoever in any military activities.”
HRW said the bomb dropped by Israeli forces was equipped with a United States-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit.
The JDAM is “affixed to air-dropped bombs and allows them to be guided to a target by using satellite coordinates,” the statement said.
It said remnants from the site were consistent with a JDAM kit “assembled and sold by the US company Boeing.”
One remnant “bore a numerical code identifying it as having been manufactured by Woodard, a US company that makes components for guidance systems on munitions,” it added.
The watchdog said it contacted Boeing and Woodard but received no response.
In October last year, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed by Israeli shellfire while he was covering southern Lebanon, and six other journalists were wounded, including AFP’s Dylan Collins and Christina Assi, who had to have her right leg amputated.
In November last year, Israeli bombardment killed Al-Mayadeen correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari, the channel said.
Lebanese rights groups have said five more journalists and photographers working for local media have been killed in Israeli strikes on the country’s south and Beirut’s southern suburbs.


Boat carrying 31 tourists sinks near Egypt’s Marsa Alam: reports

Updated 32 min 24 sec ago
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Boat carrying 31 tourists sinks near Egypt’s Marsa Alam: reports

CAIRO: A boat carrying 31 tourists sank near Egypt's Marsa Alam, located on the western shore of the Red Sea, local media reported Monday. 

Red Sea Governor Major General Amr Hanafy said that an aircraft and naval units were able to transport several tourists to receive the necessary medical care.

Hanfy pointed out that the search operations are underway to save others. 

 

 


Iraq’s population reaches 45.4 million in first census in over 30 years

Updated 25 November 2024
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Iraq’s population reaches 45.4 million in first census in over 30 years

  • Prior to the census, the planning ministry estimated the population at 43 million
  • The last census, conducted in 1997, did not include the Iraqi Kurdistan region

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s population has risen to 45.4 million, according to preliminary results from a national census, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said on Monday.
The census, conducted on Nov. 20, was Iraq’s first nationwide survey in more than three decades, marking a crucial step for future planning and development.
Prior to the census, the planning ministry estimated the population at 43 million.
The last census, conducted in 1997, did not include the Iraqi Kurdistan region, which has been under Kurdish administration since the 1991 Gulf War.
It counted 19 million Iraqis and officials estimated there were another 3 million in the Kurdish north, according to official statistics.


Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims pay high price in war between Israel and Hezbollah

Updated 25 November 2024
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Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims pay high price in war between Israel and Hezbollah

  • Many Shiite Muslims believe they are being unfairly punished because they share a religious identity with Hezbollah and often live in the same areas

BEIRUT: The Lebanese civilians most devastated by the Israel- Hezbollah war are Shiite Muslims, and many of them believe they are being unfairly punished because they share a religious identity with Hezbollah militants and often live in the same areas.
“This is clear,” said Wael Murtada, a young Shiite man who anxiously watched paramedics search rubble after a recent Israeli airstrike destroyed his uncle’s two-story home and killed 10 people. “Who else is being attacked?”
Israel has concentrated its attacks on villages in southern and northeastern Lebanon and neighborhoods south of Beirut. This is where many Hezbollah militants operate from, and their families live side by side with large numbers of Shiites who aren’t members of the group.
Israel insists its war is with Hezbollah and not the Lebanese people – or the Shiite faith. It says it only targets members of the Iran-backed militant group to try to end their yearlong campaign of firing rockets over the border. But Israel’s stated objectives mean little to people like Murtada as growing numbers of Shiite civilians also die in a war that escalated sharply in recent months.
Shiites don’t just measure the suffering of their community in deaths and injuries. Entire blocks of the coastal city of Tyre have been flattened. Large parts of the historic market in the city of Nabatiyeh, which dates to the Ottoman era, have been destroyed. And in Baalbek, an airstrike damaged the city’s famed Hotel Palmyra, which opened in the late 19th century, and a home that dates to the Ottoman era.
“Lebanese Shias are being collectively punished. Their urban areas are being destroyed, and their cultural monuments and building are being destroyed,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
As Shiites flee their war-torn villages and neighborhoods, the conflict is increasingly following them to other parts of Lebanon, and this is fueling tensions.
Scores of people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes on Christian, Sunni and Druze areas where displaced Shiites had taken refuge. Many residents in these areas now think twice before providing shelter to displaced people out of fear they may have links to Hezbollah.
“The Israelis are targeting all of Lebanon,” said Wassef Harakeh, a lawyer from Beirut’s southern suburbs who in 2022 ran against Hezbollah in the country’s parliamentary elections and whose office was recently demolished by an Israeli airstrike. He believes part of Israel’s goal is to exacerbate frictions within the small Mediterranean country, which has a long history of sectarian fighting even though diverse groups live together peacefully these days.
Some Shiites say statements from the Israeli military over the years have only reinforced suspicions that their wider community is being targeted as a means to put pressure on Hezbollah.
One commonly cited example is the so-called Dahiyeh doctrine, which was first espoused by Israeli generals during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. It is a reference to the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah is headquartered and where entire residential blocks, bridges and shopping compounds were destroyed in both wars. Israel says Hezbollah hides weapons and fighters in such areas, turning them into legitimate military targets.
A video released by the Israeli military last month has been interpreted by Shiites as further proof that little distinction is being made between Hezbollah fighters and Shiite civilians.
Speaking from a southern Lebanese village he did not name, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari called it “a terror base. This is a Lebanese village, a Shiite village built by Hezbollah.” As he toured a house and showed stocks of hand grenades, rifles, night-vision goggles and other military equipment, Hagari said: “Every house is a terror base.”
Another army spokesperson disputed the notion that Israel tries to blur the line between combatants and civilians. “Our war is with the terror group Hezbollah and not with the Lebanese population, whatever its origin,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani. He denied that Israel was intentionally trying to disrupt the social fabric of Lebanon, and pointed to Israel’s evacuation warnings to civilians ahead of airstrikes as a step it takes to mitigate harm.
Many Lebanese, including some Shiites, blame Hezbollah for their suffering, while also decrying Israel’s bombardments. Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel last year the day after Hamas attacked Israel and started the war in Gaza; this went against the group’s promises to use its weapons only to defend Lebanon.
Since last October, more than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry. More than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes. Shiites, who make up a third of Lebanon’s 5 million people, have borne the brunt of this suffering. Israel says it has killed well over 2,000 Hezbollah members in the past year.
The death and destruction in Lebanon ramped up significantly in mid-September, when Israeli airstrikes began targeting Hezbollah’s leaders, and once again in early October, when Israeli ground troops invaded.
Early in the war, Israeli airstrikes killed about 500 Hezbollah members but caused very little collateral damage. But since late September, airstrikes have destroyed entire buildings and homes, and in some cases killed dozens of civilians when the intended target was one Hezbollah member or official.
On one particularly bloody day, Sept. 23, Israeli airstrikes killed almost 500 people and prompted hundreds of thousands of people – again, mostly Shiites — to flee their homes in panic.
Murtada’s relatives fled from Beirut’s southern suburbs in late September after entire blocks had been wiped out by airstrikes. They moved 22 kilometers (about 14 miles) east of the city, to the predominantly Druze mountain village of Baalchmay to stay in the home of Murtada’s uncle.
Then, on Nov. 12, the home where they sought refuge was destroyed without warning. The airstrike killed nine relatives — three men, three women and three children — and a domestic worker, Murtada said.
The Israeli army said the home was being used by Hezbollah. Murtada, who lost a grandmother and an aunt in the strike, said nobody in the home was connected to the militant group.
Hezbollah has long boasted about its ability to deter Israel, but the latest war has proven otherwise and taken a severe toll on its leadership.
Some Shiites fear the weakening of Hezbollah will lead to the entire community being sidelined politically once the war is over. But others believe it could offer a political opening for more diverse Shiite voices.
Ceasefire negotiations to end the Israel-Hezbollah appear to have gained momentum over the past week. Some critics of Hezbollah say the group could have accepted months ago the conditions currently under consideration.
This would have spared Lebanon “destruction, martyrs and losses worth billions (of dollars),” Lebanese legislator Waddah Sadek, who is Sunni Muslim, wrote on X.