From WND , 25 Jan 2013, by Reza Khalili*: An explosion deep within Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility has [reportedly] destroyed much of the installation and trapped about 240 personnel deep underground, according to a former intelligence officer of the Islamic regime.
The previously secret nuclear site has become a center for Iran’s nuclear activity because of the 2,700 centrifuges enriching uranium to the 20-percent level. A further enrichment to weapons grade would take only weeks, experts say.
The level of enrichment has been a major concern to Israeli officials, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly has warned about the 20-percent enriched stockpile.
The explosion occurred Monday, the day before Israeli elections. . .
Iran, to avoid alarm, had converted part of the stockpile to fuel plates for use in the Tehran Research Reactor. However, days after the recent failed talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iranian officials announced the enrichment process will not stop even “for a moment.”
The regime’s uranium enrichment process takes place at two known sites: the Natanz facility with more than 10,000 centrifuges and Fordow with more than 2,700. The regime currently has enough low-grade (3.5 percent) uranium stockpiled for six nuclear bombs if further enriched.
However, more time is needed for conversion of the low-grade uranium than what would be needed for a stockpile at 20 percent. It takes 225 kilograms of enriched uranium at the 20-percent level to further enrich to the 90-percent level for one nuclear bomb.
According to a source in the security forces protecting Fordow, an explosion on Monday at 11:30 a.m. Tehran time rocked the site, which is buried deep under a mountain and immune not only to airstrikes but to most bunker-buster bombs. The report of the blast came via Hamidreza Zakeri, formerly with the Islamic regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security,
The blast shook facilities within a radius of three miles. Security forces have enforced a no-traffic radius of 15 miles, and the Tehran-Qom highway was shut down for several hours after the blast, the source said. As of Wednesday afternoon, rescue workers had failed to reach the trapped personnel.
The site, about 300 feet under a mountain, had two elevators which now are out of commission. One elevator descended about 240 feet and was used to reach centrifuge chambers. The other went to the bottom to carry heavy equipment and transfer uranium hexafluoride. One emergency staircase reaches the bottom of the site and another one was not complete. The source said the emergency exit southwest of the site is unreachable.
The regime believes the blast was sabotage and the explosives could have reached the area disguised as equipment or in the uranium hexafluoride stock transferred to the site, the source said. The explosion occurred at the third centrifuge chambers, with the high-grade enriched uranium reserves below them.
The information was passed on to U.S. officials but has not been verified or denied by the regime or other sources within the regime.
. . .the news of the explosion has not been independently verified... Israel, the U.S. and other allies already have concluded the Islamic regime has crossed its red line in its quest for nuclear weapons, other sources have said.
,,,As reported, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an urgent meeting Tuesday with the intelligence minister, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization and other officials to discuss the threat, and now it’s clear the meeting included [discussion of] the sabotage at Fordow.
Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years. Last year, saboteurs struck the power supply to the Fordow facility, temporarily disrupting production. And a computer worm called Stuxnet, believed to have originated in the U.S., set Iran’s plans for nuclear weapons back substantially. . .
*Reza Kahlili, author of the award-winning book "A Time to Betray", served in CIA Directorate of Operations, as a spy in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, counterterrorism expert; currently serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, an advisory board authorized by Congress and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI). He regularly appears in national and international media as an expert on Iran and counterterrorism in the Middle East.
The election results indicate the Israeli electorate has become dangerously detached from real challenges the nation needs to address.
Netanyahu surveys Syrian border, Jan 13, 2011 Photo: Koby Gideon/GPO
If Yair Lapid, Tzipi Livni and Shelly Yacimovich join Netanyahu’s coalition without Bayit Yehudi and the ultra-Orthodox parties, Netanyahu will have no option but to follow the path of Begin, Rabin and Sharon and reach a painful agreement – Eitan Haber, Yediot Aharonot, January 23, 2013 It is still too early to fully assess the ramifications of this week’s election results, or to accurately identify what caused them. . . . Bread & butter vs life & death Clearly, the major story of the elections is the extraordinary and unexpected success of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party which managed to win 19 (just over 15 percent) of the total 120 seats in Israel’s parliament, thus for all intents and purposes becoming a crucial power broker in the formation of any coalition. In his campaign, Lapid focused almost exclusively on alleviating the alleged plight of Israel’s middle class, studiously eschewing any reference to security and foreign policy issues, other than an occasional oblique allusion to Israel’s growing isolation in the international community and the need to address it. Shelly Yacimovich’s Labor Party, which won 15 seats, also assiduously avoided broaching matters of external policy, and confined its campaign attention to assailing Binyamin Netanyahu’s domestic record – albeit with far more “social-democratic” welfare-oriented emphasis than Lapid. We are compelled to the conclusion that in casting its ballots, a decisive portion of the Israeli electorate has given priority to issues of “bread and butter” over those of “life and death.”
Retreat into denial? It was as if the Israeli voter opted for denial, ignoring the massive challenges facing the nation, such as: - contending with the repercussions of the “Arab Spring” and the ascent of radicalism in the region; - addressing the deteriorating situation in Sinai and a possible breach of the peace treaty with Egypt by its Islamist regime; - coping with menacing developments in Syria and the specter of a radicalized al-Qaida-affiliated post-Assad regime; - confronting the increasingly evident intransigence of the Palestinians and the fading prospects of a two-state- settlement; - and preparing for possibleregime change in Jordan, and the ascent of Muslim extremists to power. And, oh yes, we almost forgot, there is the small matter of the Iranian nuclear program.
These are all issues which neither Lapid nor Yacimovich have any competence to deal with – or lay claim to any such competence. Indeed, neither gave them any centrality during their campaigns. Yet they enticed almost a third of the electorate to vote for them. . . . For given the immediacy and the intensity of the threats facing Israel, it seems almost inconceivable that the issue of who was best suited to deal with them played such a negligible role in the election. . . . Clearly, there is much to address on the domestic, socioeconomic front. Eminently plausible claims can be made for the need to restructure the tax system, make markets more competitive, streamline bureaucracy, raise salaries for specific professions and so on. But Netanyahu’s government was in many respects responsibly addressing these matters. Arguably more than any of its predecessors, it has been willing to challenge the monopolists/cartels and confront the “tycoons.” It oversaw the dramatic reduction in the cost of mobile-phones service and even went so far as to adopt the ethically suspect measure of retroactively raising royalties on the profits from the newly discovered marine gas fields – incurring (somewhat understandably) the wrath of the plutocrats. Protesting popular plenty? Poll after poll, both foreign and local, shows extremely high levels of satisfaction with life in Israel, well above that in most industrial countries. Important socioeconomic indicators are better in Israel than the average in the OECD countries. According to the OECD Better Life Index site: “Israel performs favorably in several measures of well-being, and ranks close to the average or higher in several topics in the Better Life Index... Money, while it cannot buy happiness, is an important means to achieving higher living standards. In Israel, the average person financial wealth is 47,750 USD per year, more than the OECD average of 36,238 USD.” Moreover, life expectancy – usually taken as an indicator of the level of a country’s healthcare – is almost 82 years in Israel, two years above the OECD average. Israel also scores higher on the prevalence of high-school education with 80% of adults aged 25- 64 having the equivalent of a high-school degree, above the OECD average of 74%. A cursory stroll through urban Israel will reveal that restaurants are full, cafes crowded, pubs jam-packed; the recreation industry appears booming, with beaches teeming in summer, the ski slope crammed in winter, rural byways swarming with off-road cyclists over the weekends, decked out with the latest equipment and accessories.... Nor are overseas trips the exclusive privilege of a wafer-thin layer of the “crème-de-la- crème.” Out of a total population of 7.8 million, millions of Israelis travel abroad regularly, spending billions of dollars on overseas trips. Against this backdrop of “popular plenty,” the eruption of “middle class” discontent, as reflected in support for Lapid’s principal electoral theme, seems oddly misplaced. After all, surely not all these diners, latte drinkers, late-night revelers, surfers, skiers, bikers, vacationers can be parasitic ultra-Orthodox, privileged settlers or plutocratic tycoons? Success as reason for failure Paradoxically, it was precisely the Netanyahu government’s success that sowed the seeds of failure at the polls. On the security front – excluding the week-long Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza – Israel is enjoying the longest period of calm for decades. This has relegated security concerns to the back of the public’s mind and allowed more mundane issues to dominate its agenda – unlike the situation under Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon when Palestinian terror wrought carnage on the streets of the nation’s cities and towns. Nor have the Netanyahu government’s achievements been confined to security. Indeed, it has stewarded the economy remarkably well through the dire global crisis that affected much of the industrial world far more seriously. Thus, hitherto largely untouched by the world economic crisis and accustomed to increasing consumption levels, Israelis are refusing to tailor their expectations to their means. But as talent (and luck) are not evenly distributed, it is unreasonable to expect an egalitarian reality in which the fortunes of all are similar. Greater prosperity has – inevitably – yielded greater inequality. Accordingly, keeping up with the Joneses is becoming increasingly onerous, with social pressures pushing many to live beyond their means. It is this growing resentment, coming not so much from the “have nots” but from the “want mores,” that generated much of the anti- Netanyahu sentiment. A cursory glance at the election results seems to indicate that Lapid fared better than the Likud mainly in well-to-do areas, but not in those that allegedly suffered from Netanyahu’s economic policies, where the Likud outperformed Lapid. To a large degree, FrontPage Magazine blogger David Hornik got it right when he wrote:
“The Israeli public has not done justice to Binyamin Netanyahu, whose overall record these past four years on the security, diplomatic and economic fronts is solid and commendable; while falling for the somewhat facile appeal of the untested Yair Lapid.”
Bibi’s blunders But Netanyahu is not blameless. This is the second atrocious campaign he has run, displaying a remarkable knack for almost snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In 2009, the glaring lack of clarity and focus, of direction and resolve, in the Likud’s message left – almost inconceivably – Kadima, a party riddled with unprecedented charges of corruption and a disastrously failed record of performance, with the most seats in the Knesset. It was only the good graces of fortune – and the gross incompetence of his rivals – that prevented Tzipi Livni being given the task of forming the government. Precisely the same error was evident in this campaign, in which until very recently, Netanyahu’s – and the national camp’s – undisputed victory was a forgone conclusion. Indeed, the fact that the Likud – almost incredibly – decided to campaign without presenting the public with a platform, could not but have left many wondering what they were being asked to vote for! His strategic errors began this summer, when instead of holding elections – as he had already announced – he incomprehensibly entered into an ill-considered and inevitably short-lived alliance with Shaul Mofaz. Had Netanyahu held the vote then, before Lapid had fully organized himself, with Livni still undecided whether to run, and probably unable to, with Obama still gearing for elections in the US, with distinctly favorable public approval ratings, he almost certainly would have fared far better. His merger with Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu . . . [created] a united list that, inevitably, could be expected to yield fewer seats than if they had run separately. . . .
Cause for concern Admittedly, Lapid has conducted himself commendably since the election results were announced. He has come out with some surprisingly assertive Zionistic pronouncements. However, I would urge caution. . . . he [has previously] exploited his widely read Friday Yediot Aharonot column to propagate positions he himself later conceded to be merely mendacious manipulations. Thus, on the eve of the disengagment (June 24, 2005), he published a caustic castigation of the opponents of unilateral withdrawal. He warned darkly of the dire consequences and the unbridgeable rift that would result if they succeeded in persuading the public that the expulsion of Jews from Gaza should be aborted. Menacingly, Lapid declared that Israelis were tired of sacrificing their lives for the sake of the religious settlers, and that for the majority in the country, disengagement “appeared the last chance for us to live a normal life.” However, barely a year later (October 13, 2006), when the catastrophic failure of the disengagement was undeniably apparent for all to see, Lapid published a breathtakingly brazen follow-up, titled “Things we couldn’t say during disengagement.” In it he admitted it had all been a giant ploy: “It was never about the Palestinians, demography, and endeavor for peace, the burden on the IDF.” No, confessed Lapid, the real reason for imposing the deportation of Jewish citizens and destruction of Jewish towns and villages was...
to put the settlers in their place, to teach them “the limits of their power” and show them who really calls the shots in the country.
I don’t not know if Eitan Haber (see introductory excerpt) is a Lapid supporter. But the sentiments that he expresses are certainly characteristic of the prevailing sentiment in much of Lapid’s core constituency. It would be more than naïve to expect that the current political super-star will not face growing pressure from his base, to whom he owes political allegiance, “to follow in the path” of those who brought the extremist warlords to the fringes of Eilat, the reign of terror to the streets, cafes and buses of Israel, and the rain of rockets to the towns and rural communities of the South (and beyond).
. . . perhaps the best we can hope for is early elections.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his office in Jerusalem on Jan. 23. Photo by Darren Whiteside/Reuters
Regardless of what kind of coalition ...Netanyahu shapes in the new government, the prospects for peace will depend less on his government’s actions and more on the sentiments of Israel’s neighborhood.
To get a sense of those sentiments, consider the words of newly elected President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, a country that is technically “at peace” with Israel and is critical to its security.
As reported in The New York Times, three years ago Morsi was caught on video at a rally urging his followers to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews,” whom later that year he described as “bloodsuckers,” “warmongers” and “descendants of apes and pigs.”
Morsi is far from the exception in his Jew-hatred. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School, wrote in The Times:
“All over the Middle East, hatred for Jews and Zionists can be found in textbooks for children as young as three, complete with illustrations of Jews with monster-like qualities. Mainstream educational television programs are consistently anti-Semitic. In songs, books, newspaper articles and blogs, Jews are variously compared to pigs, donkeys, rats and cockroaches, and also to vampires and a host of other imaginary creatures.”
The vile depiction of Jews and Zionists is especially prevalent in Palestinian society, something that has been exposed in detail by the group Palestinian Media Watch.
It is this vicious Jew-hatred, above all, that has killed every hope for peace.
As Ali writes: “So many explanations have been offered for the failure of successive U.S. administrations to achieve that peace, but the answer is in Morsi’s words. Why would one make peace with bloodsuckers and descendants of apes and monkeys?”
Israelis are not stupid. They read all this stuff. They haven’t given up on peace, but they’ve given up on peace illusions. The conventional wisdom before Election Day was that Israel is “moving right.” As I see it, it is reality that has moved right, and Israel has had no choice but to adapt.
Ever since the heady days of Oslo 20 years ago, Israelis have gotten burned whenever they stuck their collective necks out for peace.
They saw how all the years and hopes they invested in Yasser Arafat were wasted on a duplicitous conniver who launched a terror war that murdered a thousand Israelis; they saw how terror rockets were launched on Israeli civilians after they evacuated Lebanon and Gaza; and now they see their so-called “peace partner” Mahmoud Abbas trying to make peace with Hamas, a terror entity sworn to Israel’s destruction.
Israelis see an Arab Spring that has generated even more Jew-hatred and even worse conditions for peace.
When they look east, they see an Iranian madman building a nuclear arsenal to wipe Israel off the map. And when they look north, they count their blessings that they never gave up the Golan Heights to a murderous despot now fighting a horrendous civil war.
Simply put, Israelis have come to understand that no amount of concessions or settlement freezes or red-carpet summits will thaw the icy Jew-hatred that lies at the core of the conflict.
They’ve come to understand the perverted and ruthless logic of the Middle East: The more you want peace and show weakness, the more you get war.
The more desperate you appear for a solution, the further you get from it.
Many American Jews are perplexed and exasperated that Israel has not been more “practical” or done “whatever it takes” to get their enemies to come to the peace table.
They assume that the more you push for something, the better your chances of getting it. They can’t see how “dig in and tough it out” can even be an option.
What they’ve missed is that, in recent years, Israel has taken on a very Middle Eastern attribute: patience. Essentially, Israel has been telling the Arab and Muslim world: We’ve waited 2,000 years to come home, and we’re ready to wait another 2,000 years to make peace. Whenever you’re ready to accept us, we’ll be here, ready to talk peace.
In the Middle East, patience is leverage.
Patience itself is a very centrist idea. It avoids the extremes of both sides.
Bibi is fortunate that a centrist party, Yesh Atid, has done remarkably well. This will help him shape a more reality-based coalition.
This reality cuts both ways. On the one hand, it means recognizing that Israel must eventually make peace with its neighbors, and never lose hope.
On the other, it means recognizing that if the conditions are not ripe for peace, pushing too hard actually can backfire.
Let’s hope that Bibi’s new coalition will be able to pull off that balancing act: to show the world that Israel is absolutely ready to make peace, while exercising the hard-nosed realism that the neighborhood demands. Israelis have learned the hard way that pushing for peace with those who hate you can bring you further from peace, and that showing weakness with those who compare you to pigs and apes can be an invitation to another war.
Ferocious Palestinian anti-Semites have been sanitized by the Western public opinion which calls them “militants,” as The New York Times did last week.
Hamas Headquarters bombed. Photo: REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
Benighted humanists in Israel and in the West believe that Hamas’s terrorists are brainwashed, poor or illiterate, when in fact the best minds of Palestinian society are at the top of Islamic terrorism. Is it inconceivable that people who have the holy mission of returning to Jaffa and Ashkelon on a carpet of Jewish bodies are also well-educated surgeons, academics and writers? Ask Hamas about the paradox of Josef Mengele, a doctor of philosophy, a medical doctor, a refined man who enjoyed music and poetry, but didn’t hesitate to experiment on an order the death of a million of Jews. The Palestinian hatred has not been deciphered by our writers and intellectuals. It’s because we have been told that “they hate us” is the language of xenophobes, the illiberal, the intolerant; that genocidal anti-Semitism was buried in the ashes of Auschwitz; that we have to be polite and self-critical. A seductive combination of post-colonial white guilt mixed with liberal condescension has dulled our moral senses and made us blind to an Islamism that conveys unleashed hatred, contempt, physical aggression, the desire to expel, to destroy and to eliminate the Jews.Nizar Rayan was not only a Hamas terrorist leader. He was a fine historian, academic and intellectual. Author of more than 10 books on Islam, Rayan was killed in Jabalya along with his wife and three children. They remained in the house even after the Israelis had warned them of the raid. Rayan had sent a son on a suicide mission against a Jewish town in northern Gaza and had taken part in an attack on the Israeli port of Ashdod, which killed 10 “sons of pigs and monkeys,” as Rayan call the Jews. Rayan was a gem of the Islamic University of Gaza, he had studied at the prestigious faculty of Um Dorman and had written an essay on the life of the Prophet, titled “Medina becomes Dark,” a best-seller in Saudi Arabia. His library, destroyed in the Israeli raid, contained 10,000 books. Palestinian terrorism is led by academics, surgeons, scientists, scholars, intellectuals, people with an enviable curriculum vitae. Their biographies are the Palestinian version of al-Qaida.
They are like Ayman al-Zawahiri, al- Qaida mastermind and a surgeon; Omar Sheikh, the mastermind in the execution of Daniel Pearl, who had studied at the London School of Economics; and the planner of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, who attended US universities. The head of the July 7 suicide bombers, Muhammad Siddique Khan, taught in Leeds, while the English doctor Bilal Abdullah, who participated in the failed attacks in London and Glasgow in June 2007, was born into one of the richest families in Baghdad. THE HAMAS leadership is the most educated in the Arab world, with 500 high-level degrees between them. Its leader, Khaled Mashaal, is a professor of physics and was an academic in Kuwait. Gaza’s prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, was dean of a university and his strongman for religious affairs, Muhammad Tartouri, is a dean of the College of Shari’a in Hevron, epicenter of jihad against the Jews. Even among the Palestinian Arab “secular” terrorists you find many PhDs. Ahmed Sadat, who ordered the killing of Israeli minister Rehavam Ze’evi, is a professor, while terror mastermind George Habash was a doctor. That is because there is no difference between the Hamas Covenant and the Covenant of the PLO. They both want Israel’s territorial truncation and eventual annihilation. Fathi Shaqaqi, the late founder of Islamic Jihad, was a physician. The last of the Hamas’s founders still alive, Mahmoud Zahar, is an excellent doctor, a well-known specialist in the thyroid who founded the Palestinian Medical Society, his wife is a teacher, one of their children had a degree in finance and a daughter is a professor of English. These two doctors are responsible for scores of children, women and elderly being incinerated on Egged buses in Israel; cafes and pizzerias destroyed; malls turned into slaughterhouses; mothers and daughters killed in front of ice cream shops; families exterminated in their own beds; infants executed with a blow to the base of the skull; fruit markets blown to pieces; nightclubs eviscerated along with hundreds of students; rabbinic seminarians murdered during their studies; husbands and wives killed in front of their children; children murdered in their mothers’ arms. A well-known pediatrician was the Hamas leader Abdul Aziz Rantisi, a senior manager of the Arab Medical Society known for his tireless campaign to “kill as many Jews as possible.” Doctor Rantisi ordered that pieces of metal should be added to the explosives in the terrorist’s vest or backpack, with blasts often severing limbs completely. Israeli children have had their faces burned or their hands rendered useless; some have had their sight ruined forever. A talented mathematician is Siyaam Saeed, Minister of the Interior. A former education minister, Nasser Eddin to Sha’er, studied in Manchester and New York. Ibrahim Hamed, the planner of brutal attacks such as the Moment Café, Ben-Yehuda Street and Hebrew University murders has a BA magna cum laude. Baseem Naeem became a surgeon in Germany, Atif Adwan owes its formation to the most brilliant scientific universities in the United Kingdom, while Aziz Dweik learned perfect English at the University of Pennsylvania. Mousa Marzook, accused by Israel of involvement in the murder of Israeli civilians between 1990 and 1994, studied at Louisiana Tech and Columbia University. Of the Palestinian suicide bombers, 47 percent had a college degree, 29% a high school diploma, 24% attended primary school. People like Dia Tawil, who came from a “bourgeois” family with no financial problems, “only” dreamed of killing Israelis. Tawil’s last words were: “Their bones will know the taste of death.” Israel is confronting Islamic revolutionaries ready to drench the holy land with blood and Palestinian Arab pediatricians who send their angels of death to kill Israeli children. But we also live in a time when death – of Jews – is celebrated and romanticized in the “civilized” democracies. These ferocious Palestinian anti-Semites have been sanitized by the Western public opinion which calls them “militants,” as The New York Times did last week....
Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, the secretary general of the Italian Muslim Assembly and the Khalifa for Europe’s Qadiri Sufi Order, is a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist, as well as Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem, based on his interpretation of Islam.
He frequently speaks out for Israel despite the fact that it is highly unpopular within the Muslim world to do so. Sheikh Palazzi does so based on his religious convictions. He asserted, “Viewing the Jewish return to Israel as a Western invasion and Zionists as recent colonizers is new. It has no basis in the authentic Islamic faith.” As co-founder and co-chairman of the Islam-Israel Fellowship, Sheikh Palazzi argues that Muslim religious opposition to the existence of Israel was created by the Grand Mufti Haj Amin Al Husseini and is not grounded within classical Muslim religious texts, which surprisingly actually do support Israel’s right to exist.
According to Sheikh Palazzi, “Both the Qur’an and the Torah indicate quite clearly that the link between the Children of Israel and the Land of Canaan does not depend on any kind of colonization project but directly on the will of G-d Almighty. We learn from Jewish and Islamic Scriptures that G-d, through His chosen servant Moses, decided to free the offspring of Israel from slavery in Egypt and to make them inheritors of the Promised Land. Whoever claims that Jewish sovereignty over Palestine is something recent and dependent on political machinations is in fact denying the history of revelation and prophecy, as well as the clear teachings of the holy books.”
Evidently, Jewish religious texts are not the only ones that speak about the Jewish people returning to their ancestral homeland, for such sentiments are also expressed in Islam. As Sheikh Palazzi argued, “The Qur’an foretells that before the Day of resurrection the Children of Israel will come back to the Land of Israel from which they were exiled twice.” While he claims that the Muslim religious sources do not mention Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people, they do nevertheless mention that “Jerusalem was the center of the kingdom of David and Solomon, and the seat of the Temple which Solomon built with the help of human beings and invisible beings.” Sheikh Palazzi views this to be very close to the idea of accepting Jerusalem as a capital city for the Jewish people.
For example, Quranic Commentator Imam Abu Abdullah al-Qurtubi, who lived from 1214 to 1273, cited the following Hadith in his Encyclopedia of Quranic Rules, “Verily Solomon son of David raised Bayt al-Maqdis [i.e., Beth ha-Mikdash, the First Temple] with gold and silver, with rubies and emeralds, and Allah caused human beings and spirits to work under his command, until the raising of the House was completed. Afterwards a Babylonian King destroyed Bayt al-Maqdis and brought its treasures to the land of Babylonia, until a King of Persia defeated him and ransomed the Children of Israel. They rebuilt Bayt al-Maqdis for the second time [the Second Temple], until it was destroyed for the second time by an army led by a Roman Emperor.”
Another Quranic Exegete and Jurist, Imam Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari, who lived from 838 to 923, wrote in his History of Prophets and Kings, “When Jacob awoke he felt blissful from what he had seen in his trustful dream and vowed, for G-d’s sake that, if he returned to his family safely, he would build there a Temple for the Almighty. He also vowed to perpetual charity one tenth of his property for the sake of G-d. He poured oil on the Stone so as to recognize it and called the place Bayt El, which means ‘the House of God.’ It became the location of Jerusalem later. In Jerusalem on a huge Rock, Solomon son of David built a beautiful Temple to expand the worship of G-d. Today on the base of that Temple stands the Dome of the Rock.”
Sheikh Palazzi has asserted that contrary to what Wahhabi Muslims and Islamic extremist groups like Hamas claim, Muslim religious sources recognize Jerusalem as the direction of prayer for the Jewish people and some Muslim exegetes even go as far as quoting from the Book of Daniel to prove this. Thus, Sheikh Palazzi concluded that “from an Islamic point of view there is no sound theological reason to deny Jews […] rights over Jerusalem. […] We necessarily conclude that Israelis as a nation and Jews as a religion must have their own political and religious capital, under their sole administration.”
As expected, Israel has once again made Benjamin Netanyahu its prime minister. The results were not as positive for him as they might have been but are good enough to reelect him.
While some might find this paradoxical, the results show that Israelis have a basic consensus and yet have very different ways of expressing their political positions. This isn’t surprising given the fact that 32 parties were on the ballot.
First, though, a myth that has at times become a propaganda campaign should be exposed. There were numerous reports in the Western media that the Israeli electorate was going far to the right, didn’t want peace, and that Israeli democracy was in jeopardy. None of this had any real basis in fact and the election results show these claims to be false.
The main story of the election was supposed to be the rise of the far right Ha-Bayit ha-Yahudi Party. In fact, though, it received only about 10 percent of the vote which is usual for that sector. In comparison, about one-third went to liberal or moderate left parties, and about one-quarter to centrist parties.
According to reports which are not final but are close to the ultimate result, Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitaynu list received 33 of 120 seats. The Labor Party made some comeback with 16 but came in third. Labor’s hope that its showing would make Israel a mainly two-party system clearly failed.
The big winner was Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid with 19 that became the second largest party, while Tsipi Livni’s party, Hatnua, obtained 7. The appeal of Lapid and Livni are precisely that nobody really knows what they stand for but it is certainly nothing to either extreme. Kadima received 2 and former army chief of staff Shaul Mufaz will be highly motivated to go into a coalition.
In other words, 26 seats went to vaguely reformist somewhat centrist or mildly liberal parties that don’t have any clear or strong stands except to promise better government.
On the far right, Ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi, led by Naftali Bennett, got 11.
On the far left, Meretz obtained 6, better than it expected, while the Communists got 3, the Islamists 3, and the Arab nationalists 3. The last three parties depend mostly on Arab votes and it was a poor showing for that deeply divided sector.
Finally, in the Jewish religious sector, Shas, representing Mizrahi (Middle East-origin and especially Moroccan-origin) Jews received 12 and the Askenazic (European-origin Jews) Yahadut ha-Torah party received 8. While socially conservative, these parties do not have strong stances on issues other than gaining government support for their communities.
The bottom line is, then, that those mainstream forces that aren’t supporting Netanyahu hold 43 seats, more than he does. But their inability to unite and different orientations prevent these four parties from emerging as a bloc, that and the fact that they are competing over the same voter base.
Israeli politics cannot be understood by analogy with those of other countries. Neither class and economic nor even peace process issues are fundamental in Israeli politics. At present, the critical issue is who will or won’t form a coalition with Netanyahu’s party. Many voted for Lapid with the idea that he would go into a government with Netanyahu and be a moderate influence pushing for more attention to improving domestic infrastructure.
The idea of Netanyahu as a rightist is outdated. It is precisely because he moved Likud to the center--albeit with a significant right-wing faction remaining--is the secret of his success in gaining two consecutive election victories. The failure of the peace process, the second intifada, the rise of Islamism, and the Palestinian abandonment of negotiations with Israel all have made his broad analysis of the situation acceptable to most Israelis. His opponents focus mainly on stressing dovish credentials rather than offering specific alternatives.
Attention now turns to the question of how Netanyahu can put together a coalition that will hold 61 seats, a majority needed to form a government. Netanyahu was disappointed at early reports that his party received only 31 seats but the count has now moved up to 33. .
There are several possibilities. Netanyahu never wanted a right-wing government with Bennett. Even if he did, a combination with that party would only get him up to 43 and he would be hard-put to find partners who would join such a combination. In theory, pulling in the two religious parties would let him reach 61 but he knows that this is a situation that would both cause big international problems and create a situation in which he could be daily blackmailed by threats of his partners to walk out of the coalition.
A coalition with Lapid would be far more attractive and bring him quickly to 50 seats. The problem is that Lapid doesn’t mix with the religious parties, especially Shas. While his party is less explicitly anti-Haredi (what is usually, but wrongly, called Ultra-Orthodox”) than his late father's similar party he still wouldn’t be eager for such a combination.
Since the far left is clearly not a coalition partner and both Labor and Livni have said they would not go into a coalition with him, unless they change that decision, Netanyahu has a problem. The irony is that if Netanyahu would ever be forced to go with Bennett it was because Labor and Livni left him no alternative.
The easiest way out would be to persuade Lapid—who is an unknown quantity—to sit with the religious parties or with Bennett. In that case, Bennett's party would be the smallest of the three partners and thus have far less leverage. Moreover, as a Dati party, Bennett's party might be willing to cooperate on such things as fewer subsidies for the Haredim and more military service.(This might in turn scare Shas and Yahadut ha-Torah to give lots of concessions to go into the coalition.
With the latest numbers, however, there is a far easier new possibility for Netanyahu. Likud, Lapid, Kadima, and Yahadut ha-Torah would have 61. This would avoid the need to have either Shas or Bennett.
At any rate, tough weeks of negotiations lie ahead to create a coalition after President Shimon Peres designates Netanyahu as having the first option to form a government. He will then have three weeks to do so. One of Netanyahu's main arguments would be: Join me or I'll have to depend on the far right and you don't want that to happen.
... some details.
A. Netanyahu's decision to combine with Avigdor Lieberman's party was probably a mistake, driving moderate liberal voters to Lapid. With Lieberman being indicted, his party would have gone into crisis and many or most of its voters would have gone over to Netanyahu without him having to give anything in return.
B. On the right of Netanyahu's party, he lost probably to Bennett among those who wanted to express their harder-line views or believed that Bennett would pull Netanyahu to the right in a coalition. That might have amounted to 3-5 seats Netanyahu might otherwise have obtained. Still, the much-exaggerated rise of the right-wing failed to materialize, especially when one adds that Bennett's party is the only one that might be said to directly represent the Dati (Modern Orthodox) sector. In the 2000 elections, the two small far-right parties got 9 seats, comparable to Bennett's 11.
C. In the center-left, voters had to calculate whether to vote for Livni, Lapid, or Lapid's old party Kadima (which didn't win any seats). The fact that Lapid is an attractive candidate, seems like a nice guy, and has no record to turn people against him helped his cause. In contrast, Livni is not personally popular and has failed on several occasions.
D. On the left, people had to decide whether they wanted to cast anti-Bibi votes with Labor or Meretz. A Meretz slogan, sniping at Labor, described the party as "your real voice against Bibi." Wanting to show a tougher opposition stance, a number of people voted for Meretz thus hurting Labor. (One might calculate that as involving two to four seats.)
If Labor became the opposition leader, as seems likely, it cannot depend on the close, consistent cooperation of any other party. Shelly Yachimovich, the party's leader, has already said she would try to block Netanyahu from forming a coalition. (Incidentally, if she succeeded it would lead to new elections in which Netanyahu would probably do better as people voted to ensure a strong government be formed.
E. Short-lived centrist parties like Lapid's and Livni's have been a feature of Israeli politics since 1977. Every such party has ultimately failed after a promising start, with the latest example being Kadima itself which went from a government party to oblivion in less than a decade. Lapid's own father also headed such a party which fell apart without ever accomplishing anything.
F. Arab voting was down and while this may express some dissatisfaction with Israel's existence, it also means that Arabs have little leeway to affect policies. This is a key reason why Arabs are about 20 percent of the population but only won about 7 percent of the seats, though another is that a lot vote for Zionist parties for various reasons. Arab disunity has also prevented them from becoming more of a political factor. In 2000, with a smaller proportion of the population, the Arab parties elected 12 parliamentarians as opposed to only 9 today.
Netanyahu delivers victory speech, saying "tomorrow we start anew," promising broadest coalition possible with a strong government to tackle the Iranian nuclear threat and focus on domestic, economic issues.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivers victory speech, January 22, 2013.
Photo: Marc Israel Sellem
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that he sees many partners to share his goals with him, as he delivered a speech following the release of exit polls on Tuesday night. Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid spoke simultaneously, causing Israeli news channels to broadcast both speeches through a split screen.
Speaking on stage at a small Likud rally in Tel Aviv, the prime minister delivered his victory speech, announcing: "Together we will succeed."
"I see many partners for my goals," the prime minister said. "We must form the broadest coalition possible. I started working on this tonight," he promised.
During the speech, Netanyahu emphasized his five priorities.
Topping the list was tackling the Iranian nuclear threat, but the prime minister promised to also focus on domestic and economic issues.
Responsible economic policies came second on his list, and
seeking a "responsible peace" followed in third.
Netanyahu said his fourth priority was to equalize army and national service for Israeli citizens.
Fifth, the prime minister said, was to lower the cost of living and ease the financial burden on middle classes.
The prime minister thanked his supporters, saying he is "proud to be your prime minister."
"I thank you that giving me another chance, for the third time, to lead the State of Israel. It's a great privilege and a great responsibility," he said.
He added that the voting process showcased "exemplary democracy."
Netanyahu thanked his former foreign minister and Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman, who took to the stage briefly to thank his supporters.
"I'm happy that our two main missions were achieved. We have ensured a continuity in the rule of the national camp and the continued leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu,"Liberman said
.
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid on Wednesday night also responded to the announcement of the exit polls, saying that a "heavy responsibility has been placed upon our shoulders."
Speaking at a Yesh Atid supporters rally that was broadcast at the same time as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech, Lapid said:
"No matter where you go, don't be like those who, the moment they are elected, forget. I have just been elected, and I will not forget."
Echoing Netanyahu, the Yesh Atid leader called on parties to put divisions of the campaign behind them and work for a wide government.
After US Jews scrapped a Jewish-Christian roundtable over an anti-Israel letter to Congress, visiting Protestant minister bemoans ‘Goliath’ of religious anti-Semitism
Protestant clergymen painted a largely pessimistic view of the church’s relationship with Israel and the Jewish community during a visit to the Holy Land, suggesting that anti-Semitism is a deep-seated problem based in Christian theology that will be difficult to uproot.
Jewish-Protestant relations are currently undergoing a severe crisis after senior leaders of Mainline Protestant churches in the US last month accused Israel of “widespread” human rights violations and urged Congress to reconsider military aid to Jerusalem.
“I am completely pessimistic in terms of believing that I, we, are going to overturn 2,000 years of erroneous theology that has manifested itself in all kinds of diatribes and anti-Semitic factions,” said the Rev. Paul Wilkinson, the associate minister at Hazel Grove Full Gospel Church, a small pro-Israel congregation in Stockport, England. “I believe we’d be fooling ourselves if we believed that we can overturn and change what I perceive to be a Goliath of theology in the church. The Goliath we face is the Goliath of replacement theology, the Goliath of Christian Palestinianism that taunts Israel, that goads Israel, that accuses Israel, that condemns Israel and those Christians who stand with Israel.”
Replacement theology, also called supercessionism, is the belief that Christendom has taken the Jewish people’s place as the recipients of promises God made in the Old Testament.
‘The problem isn’t political, the problem isn’t sociological, the problem isn’t about lack of education or lack of dialogue. The problem is a spiritual one’
“That Goliath cannot be felled with a stone and a sling as in the days of King David, because the problem isn’t political, the problem isn’t sociological, the problem isn’t about lack of education or lack of dialogue,” Wilkinson said. “The problem is a spiritual one. The problem is that there is an adversary of God, of Israel, of Christians.”
Wilkinson was speaking on Monday at the opening session of a consultation organized by the B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem and the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity in Israel (ETRFI). Founded in 1966 by Jerusalem-based clergymen and theologians, ETFRI seeks to promote Jewish-Christian relations.
Some 20 pro-Israel Christian pastors, laymen and activists from across the globe gathered this week in a hotel outside Jerusalem to discuss anti-Israel attitudes that have typified Mainline Protestant Churches over the past decades. According to B’nai B’rith World Center, the three-day consultation aimed to build bridges between Israel and the Protestant denominations, and “to help change the biased positions they have adopted regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict.”
Yet some participants painted a dark picture of Protestant-Jewish relations vis-à-vis support for Israel, saying the church overwhelmingly sided with the Palestinians.
“The humanitarian concern is the veil that covers, or is the rationalization for ultimately what I believe to be anti-Semitic ideas and anti-Semitic policies,” said Rev. Andrew Love, a minister in United Church of Canada, the country’s largest Protestant denomination.
In 2003, his church tried to critically reassess its relationship with the Jewish community, and “made a fairly significant step forward,” he recalled. However, that positive spirit has since been broken, he said. Earlier this year, the church “pretty overwhelmingly” decided to sanction products made in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. “But what really emerged from this story was just how deep-seated the hatred is,” Love said. “It’s much more subtle now. But the cancer is no less ingrained.”
Love blames himself and other friends of Israel for failing to speak up. “Those of us with concerns just didn’t respond to the growing activism that was happening at local churches,” he told The Times of Israel in an interview. “In our denominational realities it’s fairly easy to work your way up the ladder to the highest court of our church with a fairly radical agenda. The senior leadership is the one that moved the latest action.”
But there is still hope, Love believes. “There is a huge gap between the views of the senior leadership and some activists, and the views of the vast majority of the people who sit in the pews on Sunday morning,” he said. “We need to equip those people sitting in the pews with another narrative about this whole question, not that narrative that they’re getting now, which is one-sided and unbalanced.”
Palestinian Christian women wearing traditional clothes walk past the Israeli security barrier in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, as Christmas approaches, on December 23, 2010. (photo credit: Najeh Hashlamoun/Flash90)
Wilkinson, the reverend from England, on the other hand, was adamant that Mainline Protestant churches are a lost cause when it comes to their views of Jews. Speaking at the consultation on Monday night, he recalled attending an international conference organized by the pro-Palestinian Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center a few years ago, which he said proved to him how deeply ingrained anti-Semitic notions are within some Christian denominations.
“That conference was my first exposure to the absolute hatred toward Israel that exists in the heart — in the heart — of the Protestant Church.”
During the conference, Wilkinson witnessed how organizers and participants denounced Israel as an apartheid state guilty of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people, and were told that there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. One speaker called the God of the Christian Zionists “the great ethnic cleanser, the genocidist,” and described the biblical Joshua as the “patron saint of ethnic cleansing,” Wilkinson said. Not one Protestant clergymen protested, he added.
In 2010, a Scottish Baptist minister gave a devotional address to members of the Scottish parliament, Wilkinson continued. “He spoke about the hope of Christmas being found in the birth of another Palestinian child, born a refugee, living under military occupation,” he recalled.
“I don’t recognize Jesus in the Protestant church today,” added Wilkinson, who wrote his dissertation about Christian Zionism and studied for some time at the International School of Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. “What we’re finding now is a propaganda campaign being waged by the Palestinian Authority, the Islamic world and by the Protestant church, including the Evangelical church.”
Speaking about Islam, Wilkinson struck a particularly bitter note: “I understand the desire to engage in interfaith dialogue with the Islamic community. Of course there will be Muslims who are friends of Israel, friends of the Jewish people. But a leopard cannot change its spots,” he said. “The world is afraid to speak out and denounce what is so blatantly obvious — that this is a religion of hate, a religion of death, a religion of subjection and oppression. And there is no hope for that religion, even though there is hope for many Muslims.”
US-born Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, of Efrat, struck a more upbeat and conciliatory tone.
“What unites us is far more important than what divides us, especially against fundamentalist Islam whose god is a god of power, not love, and who preaches jihad and war. Islam does not have to be like that, and in the far past it was not,” he said at the consultation.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, right, welcomes students arriving from Uganda who will spend time at his Efrat yeshiva, January 3, 2012. Photo by Gershon Elinson/Flash90)
“Wahhabi Islam that has taken over the Middle East is not monotheism but mono-Satanism,” added Riskin, who founded the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation. “We have to have a united voice that talks about a God of love; then perhaps, with Jewish and Christians united in this mission, we can teach it to the world and give strength to the moderate Muslims to join us.”
Jewish-Protestant relations have been troubled for decades, but the crisis worsened drastically last month after leaders of major Protestant groups sent a joint letter to Congress, calling on US lawmakers to reconsider military aid to Israel.
The letter speaks of “widespread Israeli human rights violations committed against Palestinians, including killing of civilians, home demolitions and forced displacement, and restrictions on Palestinian movement, among others.” The 15 signatories further stated that they saw “a troubling and consistent pattern of disregard by the government of Israel for U.S. policies that support a just and lasting peace.”
While the letter asserts that the Israeli government has “a right and a duty to protect both the state and its citizens,” the signatories nonetheless urge Congress “to undertake careful scrutiny to ensure that [US military] aid is not supporting actions by the government of Israel that undermine prospects for peace.”
“As Christian leaders in the United States,” the letter states, “it is our moral responsibility to question the continuation of unconditional U.S. financial assistance to the government of Israel,” which “will only serve to sustain the status quo and Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories.”
Immediately after the letter’s publication, seven major Jewish organizations withdrew their participation from an interfaith meeting scheduled for later that month.
The so-called Christian-Jewish Roundtable was planed to take place on October 22-23, but the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith International, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups canceled their participation in protest over the controversial missive.
“In addition to being completely baseless, this letter demonstrates that all of our work, all of our dialogue, all of our goodwill and all of our Protestant partners’ pledges of commitment to coexistence amount to very little if such a letter can be sent to Congress without even the courtesy of a heads-up,” stated Rabbi Steven Wernick, the head of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.
“There have always been ups and downs in the relations between Mainline Protestants and American Jews, but they have now hit a 45-year low,” Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, wrote in an op-ed two weeks ago. “And this time, they may not recover.”
However, Christians United for Israel, a group that calls itself “one of the leading Christian grassroots movements in the world,” claimed the letter did not speak for mainstream Christianity, at least in the US.
“The vast majority of American Christians realize that when Israel confronts Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it is confronting shared enemies on our behalf,” the group’s director, David Brog, said. “And the vast majority of American Christians know that while Israel — like the US — is not perfect, both of our nations are committed to fighting terrorism while adhering to the highest moral standards.”
From JCPA, 8 Jan 2013, by Alan Baker:
1. Upon Israel’s taking control of the area in 1967, the 1907 Hague Rules on Land Warfare and the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) were not considered applicable to the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) territory, as the Kingdom of Jordan, prior to 1967, was never the prior legal sovereign, and in any event has since renounced any claim to sovereign rights via a vis the territory.
2. Israel, as administering power pending a negotiated final determination as to the fate of the territory, nevertheless chose to implement the humanitarian provisions of the Geneva convention and other norms of international humanitarian law in order to ensure the basic day-to-day rights of the local population as well as Israel’s own rights to protect its forces and to utilize those parts of land that were not under local private ownership.
3. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibiting the mass transfer of population into occupied territory as practiced by Germany during the second world war, was neither relevant nor was ever intended to apply to Israelis choosing to reside in Judea and Samaria.
4. Accordingly, claims by the UN, European capitals, organizations and individuals that Israeli settlement activity is in violation of international law therefore have no legal basis whatsoever.
5. Similarly, the oft-used term “occupied Palestinian territories” is totally inaccurate and false. The territories are neither occupied nor Palestinian. No legal instrument has ever determined that the Palestinians have sovereignty or that the territories belong to them
6. The territories of Judea and Samaria remain in dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, subject only to the outcome of permanent status negotiations between them.
7. The legality of the presence of Israel’s communities in the area stems from the historic, indigenous and legal rights of the Jewish people to settle in the area, granted pursuant to valid and binding international legal instruments recognized and accepted by the international community. These rights cannot be denied or placed in question.
8. The Palestinian leadership, in the still valid 1995 Interim Agreement (Oslo 2), agreed to, and accepted Israel’s continued presence in Judea and Samaria pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations, without any restriction on either side regarding planning, zoning or construction of homes and communities. Hence, claims that Israel’s presence in the area is illegal have no basis.
9. The Palestinian leadership undertook in the Oslo Accords, to settle all outstanding issues, including borders, settlements, security, Jerusalem and refugees, by negotiation only and not through unilateral measures. The Palestinian call for a freeze on settlement activity as a precondition for returning to negotiation is a violation of the agreements.
10. Any attempt, through the UN or otherwise, to unilaterally change the status of the territory would violate Palestinian commitments set out in the Oslo Accords and prejudice the integrity and continued validity of the various agreements with Israel, thereby opening up the situation to possible reciprocal unilateral action by Israel.
From TIP, 18 Jan 2013: Israel is the only Middle Eastern country to rate as "free", according to the latest annual report by Freedom House, a top U.S.-based pro-democracy NGO.
Israel is an anomaly in its region, with many of its neighbors receiving negative ratings, and Syria – until recently advocated by many foreign policy analysts as a potential peace partner for Jerusalem – one of nine countries described as the “worst of the worst.”
The evaluations will reinforce increasingly trenchant fears to the effect that political changes driven by the Arab Spring are replacing relatively secular autocracies not with liberal democracies but with theocratic autocracies.
Freedom House cited the Israeli government’s commitment to fundamental rights, including the freedom of expression, and the protection provided to a wide range of civil society organizations. Ranking as “free” under Freedom House’s criteria requires an environment of “open political competition, a climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civic life, and independent media.”
While moving Egypt from “not free” to “partly free” in the wake of the country’s democratic transition, Freedom House noted “jarring setbacks” related to a series of institutional power grabs committed by the country’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked President Mohamed Morsi. In late 2012, Morsi issued a decree granting himself wide powers and insulating his office from judicial review. In an effort to defuse the ensuing crisis in political legitimacy, the country’s Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly passed a constitutional draft, subsequently passed by national referendum, which was heavily criticized for emphasizing strict Islamic law and for inadequately protecting the rights of women and minorities.
Israel’s neighbors Lebanon and Jordan remain partly free and not free, respectively, and Freedom House noted downward trends in both countries. Lebanon, where the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah politically controls the country and militarily dominates its south, was described as being in a downward trend due to “deterioration in the security environment and increasing attacks and restrictions on journalists, activists, and refugees.” Jordan is approaching a January 23 election that is increasingly becoming a political showdown between Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood officials and supporters of King Abdullah II. Freedom House noted that political reforms necessary to achieve a free society are unlikely to emerge.
Freedom House reserved some of its lowest rankings for governments that foreign policy analysts and diplomats have often emphasized as potential peace partners for Israel. Scholars have – over the course of decades – identified the political illegitimacy and radicalism of some of Israel’s potential negotiating partners as a key factor in preventing peace talks from moving forward.
Freedom House’s notes on Syria describe the country as “a dictatorship in the midst of a bloody civil war.” More than 60,000 people have died in the three-way proxy war between the Iran-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad, Sunni opposition forces backed by Arab states and Turkey, and Kurdish groups.
Both the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas, and the West Bank, controlled by the Palestinian Fatah faction, were listed as “not free.” Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is in the eighth year of his four-year term. Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in a bloody 2007 coup that saw Fatah forces expelled, and has ruled the territory ever since. The United Nations General Assembly recently declared that both territories, listed as “not free” by Freedom House and under divided governments, were part of a single non-member state of Palestine. The political illegitimacy of both governments was highlighted by critics as one of several reasons – in addition to economic instability and a lack of control over non-government militias – for insisting that the United Nations declaration was at best premature.
