AxisMundi Jerusalem

On the rocks

A new primetime drama series called “Ayrılık” (meaning ‘separation’ or ‘farewell’ in Turkish) recently made its début in Turkey on the state-run TRT 1 television channel. Israel’s Channel Two aired a scene from the fictional show, showing a Palestinian father holding a baby above his head and an Israeli soldier in full combat gear taking aim and shooting the infant. Since the broadcast, Israel-Turkey relations have been put under more strain. The heated debate about the show has further influenced previously close ties between the Jewish state and Muslim Turkey that have deteriorated somewhat since Israel’s December-January Gaza offensive. At the same time, Turkey has strengthened its relations with neighbouring Syria. (Read more here.)

Leading Israeli daily newspapers Yedioth Ahronoth, Maariv and Haaretz have reported extensively on the show, wondering whether it pointed to growing anti-Semitism in Turkey. Tourism agencies said Israeli vacation bookings in Turkey have fallen steeply since the show was aired. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his disappointment in “the incitement on Turkish TV”. Netanyahu aides said Turkey, which has mediated indirect Israeli-Syrian talks, could not be an honest broker in any future peace negotiations. Commenters on Israeli web portal sites have called on Turkey to look in the mirror and take responsibility for what they termed its genocide against the Armenians.

Professor Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, believes Turkey is “not clean of anti-Semitism”.

“Anti-Semitism is not only in Arab countries, we can see now growing anti-Semitism even in Europe and unfortunately Turkey is not clean of anti-Semitism,” he told Reuters. “Basically we see a long term development in Turkish foreign policy, which is distancing itself from the West. We’ve seen the Turks deviate from European behaviour, for example accepting (Iranian) President Ahmadinejad in Istanbul, even inviting President Bashir of Sudan, who was indicted for war crimes. Just recently, the Turks announced they would not join sanctions against Iran as their American allies desire. So we see basically Turkey giving in to the Islamic impulses of the AKP Party (Turkish Prime Minister’s Tayyip Erdogan Justice and Development Party).”

Click below to watch a selection from “Ayrılık”:

The Mysterious Mr. Mitchell’s MacGuffin

It’s a bit like a Hitchock thriller. Nobody knows where he is — not even the U.S. State Department — and nobody knows when he will show up in Israel. All we know is, suspense is building and it’s time to watch out for surprises.

President Barack Obama’s Middle East peace envoy Senator George Mitchell is somewhere in transit — probably – and expected in Israel and the Palestinian Territories next week –  sometime.

A State Dept. spokesman at Wednesday’s regular briefing could not say much at all about Mitchell’s movements beyond he has left Washington.  Could he be in London meeting the Syrian foreign minister? Don’t know.  Is he going to Turkey as well? We will try to find that out. When is he going to be in Israel? Can’t say exactly.

Mitchell is famous for playing his cards very close to his vest and his vest very close to his skin. He gives out very little information when he is engaged in high-stakes mediation.

There is an unmistakable aura of mystery about what is going on at this delicate stage of talks with Israel and the Palestinians to get stalled peace negotiations started again, by resolving what looks like a standoff between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and Washington’s demand that it cease.

Unlikely visitor

The setting seemed surreal, watching Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an ardent ultranationalist, being warmly welcomed to an Arab town.

Only weeks ago Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party had introduced bills proposing to restrict the rights of Arab citizens deemed as disloyal to the Jewish state, and many had responded by denouncing him as a racist.

Yet here he was on weekend evening, being feted with oven- baked fish and skewered lamb, stuffing his mouth with freshly picked cherries after cuddling a local toddler on a porch in Shefaram, one of Israel’s largest Arab towns.

It was the same town where Jewish-Arab tensions had been running high last month as Israel put seven Shefaram men on trial for allegedly killing an armed soldier four years ago at the scene of a deadly shooting attack aboard a public bus in which four Arabs were killed. The suspects insist they acted in self defence and that Israel was following a double standard by trying them, a step Israel seldom takes against Jewish citizens accused of killing Arab assailants.

That issue seemed pretty remote from the gaiety that prevailed at the reception fellow parliamentarian Hamed Amer threw for Lieberman in Shefaram, a town Amer calls home as a member of its tiny Druze minority.

“Our entire community embraces you and loves you,” Amer said, surrounded by several dozen Druze religious leaders wearing customary red and white hats, and some local politicians.

Mr. Nyet?

Israel’s new foreign minister, ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman, sounded a resounding “no” in his inaugural speech to restarting talks with the Palestinians on core issues, such as borders and the future of Jerusalem, leading to peace and the creation of a Palestinian state. Spelling out that position, Lieberman, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, said Israel was no longer bound by understandings reached at a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland in 2007.

Instead, Lieberman said only a U.S.-backed peace “road map“, drawn up under the Bush administration in 2003, was binding on Israel.

That document makes so-called final-status talks contingent on Palestinians meeting their road map commitments, including a crackdown on militants, and Israel carrying out its promises to freeze all settlement activity and uproot outposts in the occupied West Bank built without Israeli government approval.

Take a look at Adam Entous’ analysis, which explains all.

As Adam points out, by embracing the road map — which envisages a “permanent two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — Lieberman took a step towards meeting the international call for the creation of a Palestinian state.

The new Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has angered Palestinians by shying away from saying he backed their quest for a state, could point to his government’s acceptance of the road map to try to avoid any conflict with U.S. President Barack Obama, who last week reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to a two-state solution.

Trouble with flags

Trouble always looked inevitable when courts gave the go-ahead to Jewish right-wingers to parade with flags through the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel. 

As the dramatic video captured by Reuters journalists in the town shows below, the doomsayers were not disappointed.

The parade came at a sensitive time for Israel’s million or so Arab citizens, who identify themselves as Palestinians living inside the borders created in the war of 1948. After last month’s Israeli election, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu looks set to give a senior cabinet role to Avigdor Lieberman, a right-winger who has suggested redrawing those borders to put Umm al-Fahm and other Arab towns outside Israel and inside a Palestinian state. Lieberman also wants a loyalty test for citizenship. Local residents in Umm al-Fahm turned out in force to oppose the march in their town, with somewhat predictable results in terms of violent confronation. This American blogger was outspoken in his criticism of the marchers and Israel.

For the Israeli authorities, however, this was a case of ensuring basic political freedoms – for the marchers to fly their flags and demonstrate where they chose.  It brought to mind arguments that used to trouble Northern Ireland, where the parading of flags by members of one warring community through streets populated by the other was long a bitter bone of contention. In the face of arguments about civil liberties and free access, repeated violence between Protestant Orangemen, particularly fond of flag-waving parades, and Catholics eventually led to the establishment of full-blown special public body, the Parades Commission, in 1998. Its supporters credit it with contributing to the easing of sectarian tensions in the province.

Marriage feud threatens new Israeli government

As if Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t have enough to deal with in forming a new government in Israel, a feud over getting married threatens to further complicate his bid to secure a ruling coaltion.

 The Likud party leader was chosen to form a government after a right-wing majority was elected in a Feb. 10 parliamentary election. Netanyahu has been shuttling between factions, trying to cobble together as broad a coalition as possible that will have a better chance of long-term survival.

Major stumbling blocks so far have been over the future of Palestinian statehood talks and strategies to heal a contracting economy.

But recently, two potentially important coalition partners have been butting heads over the legalisation of civil marriage. Secular nuptials are not recognised by the Jewish state’s religious authority, the ultra-Orthodox Rabbinical Court. And clerics have a monopoly on marrying people in Israel.

Avigdor Lieberman, whose Yisrael Beiteinu party is the third largest, wants  a new law, while the ultra-Orthodox Shas has said it would not join a government that promotes any such change. Both Lieberman and Shas leader Eli Yishai have been key Netanyahu supporters in his post-election bid for the premiership.

Lieberman’s popularity has steadily increased, mostly thanks to his nationalist proposals that have made headlines worldwide. But his party roots are among the million Israelis who immigrated from the former Soviet Union since the 1980s, many of whom are not considered Jewish under Orthodox law and are therefore designated as “ineligible to wed” in Israel.

A new law on civil unions was one of five issues that Lieberman has conditioned to his joining Netanyahu. Meanwhile, Shas officials have said outright that they “would not compromise on the Halacha”, referring to Jewish law.

Foreign Affairs

Israeli newspapers are abuzz this morning as they mull over the possibility that ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman could be appointed foreign minister in the government that Benjamin Netanyahu is working to stitch together.

The strong showing by Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel our Home) party in last month’s election – where it won the third most Knesset seats ahead of the Labour Party - has put the Moldovan-born former nightclub bouncer turned bureaucrat in a strong position in the lobbying for top ministerial posts in the new government.

With Israel’s coalition building process such a tortuous and drawn-out affair, speculation, much of it wild, about who will get what job is inevitably rife in the local media.

As we reported yesterday – Netanyahu has ruled Lieberman out as a future defence minister, one of the top jobs in an Israeli government.

Lieberman is also understood to be interested in other key jobs for himself and his people including Justice, Interior and Internal security.

His aides, though, play down talk of all this horse-trading and deal-making.

“He has said he wants the defence portfolio, but he has also said cabinet positions are not a deal-breaker. What’s really important is that we agree on basic policy lines,” Yisrael Beiteinu spokeswoman Irena Etinger said.

Team of rivals for Israel?

Coalition-building in the aftermath of Israel’s inconclusive Feb. 10 election kicks into high gear on Wednesday, when the final results become official and President Shimon Peres begins sounding out party leaders on whom he should appoint to try to form the next administration.

To recap: neither the centrist Kadima party led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni nor Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud won enough seats for a majority in the 120-member parliament. Kadima took 28 seats to Likud’s 27, but Netanyahu could stand a better chance of getting the nod from Peres because he is likely to have the support of a majority right-wing bloc of 65 legislators.

Army disappoints Bibi, the battle goes on

“When the soldiers’ votes come in, we will be way ahead.” So forecast a senior aide to Israeli right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu just after shock exit poll findings on Tuesday showing his Likud party trailing the centrist Kadima of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni by one seat. But that result, which overturned months of opinion polls in Netanyahu’s favour, turned out to be bang on the money. Throughout Thursday, Likud supporters were banking on votes from army barracks. These were being counted a day after those of civilians and Likud had hoped that a traditional right-wing bias in the military would be enough to turn the election around and give Netanyahu the advantage – a crucial one in terms of persuading President Shimon Peres that Netanyahu, not Livni, should be invited to form a government coalition.

It wasn’t to be. As the elections committee in parliament finally faced the media, over an hour late, and then flustered through their notes on live television to declare the result, it turned out the initial result still stood. Kadima on 28 votes, Likud on 27 in the 120-seat Knesset. So, it’s all over? Not by a long way. The result isn’t absolutely final until it’s published in the official gazette next Wednesday. And from that point Peres has a week to designate someone to form a government. Livni tried and failed in November, triggering this election. Netanyahu, popularly known by his nickname ’Bibi’, says there has been a general rightward shift in the election. That has included a surge for the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu (Our Home is Israel) of Avigdor Lieberman, which elbowed past Labour into third place on 15 seats. That, Netanyahu says, gives him a better chance of forming a stable administration. Perhaps. But in 60 years, Israel’s largely ceremonial president has never passed over the leader of the party that has topped the polls. Cue more intensive negotiation. Watch this space.

Israel votes, Palestinians groan

Posted by Wafa Amr.

With each Israeli election since the 1993 historic Palestinian-Israeli interim peace deals, the Palestinians feel their situation has gone from bad to worse. This time, their sense of desperation deepened as they woke up to an Israeli political map strongly dominated by the right wing. People say the chances for peace and ending occupation seem more remote than ever. The editor-in-chief of the Palestinian official al-Hayat daily newspaper, Hafez al-Barghouthi, called the growing strength of the right-wingers in Israel the “Right-wing Tsunami”. Israel’s shift to the right has added to the Palestinians’ sense of hopelessness. “The victory of the Israeli right means an open invitation for the Palestinian factions to turn fanatic to confront the advocates of settlements and land theft,” Barghouthi wrote on election day.

Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima party led in Tuesday’s election with 28 seats, one seat over Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud in the 120-member parliament. The centre-left Labour party, which made peace with the Palestinians 16 years ago, suffered a heavy blow. The rise of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party who has vowed to keep settlements and advocates tougher measures with the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, has added to the Palestinians’ despair.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said this election showed the Israelis were not focused on issues of peace, and any coalition that will be formed wil be unable to deliver on the requirements of peace by freezing Jewish settlements and ceding occupied land for a future Palestinian state.

In past Israeli elections, and there were four prime ministers since Oslo, the choice was often seen as between a hawkish camp and a peace camp. This time, many Palestinians saw Israelis choosing between the far-right, the right wing and the centre-right. The election campaign was overshadowed by Israel’s January’s 22-day offensive against Palestinian militants in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. Voters were seeking a leader who can best assure their security. Palestinians fear this translates into more daily hardships, more violence, a continued land grab for Jewish settlements and the loss of hope for a peaceful settlement to end 42 years of occupation.

While the “peace camp” has lost support in Israel, lack of progress on peace has weakened the Palestinian peace negotiators significantly. A power struggle between the Islamist Hamas, which won a parliamentary vote in 2006 and seized control of Gaza Strip in 2007 from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his secular Fatah group, has seriously undermined peace efforts. Popular anger at Israel during the January war in Gaza and resentment of rival policies of Hamas and Abbas have hardened the Palestinians. Abbas’ aides fear the rise of the right-wing in Israel could boost hardliners and Hamas.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Um Mahmoud, 65, sat in her living room in the city of Ramallah watching Livni speak to a crowd in Tel Aviv on TV. The Palestinian woman said Palestinians’ living conditions would not improve under any Israeli leader. “They rule the world and they put us in a cage confined to borders running between one checkpoint to the other in Ramallah. In the good old days, before Oslo, we used to drive to Gaza Strip to eat fish and swim in the sea and come back the same day,” she said.