Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
President Rivlin formally charged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the task of forming the next government, and urged him to work to “heal the wounds” caused during a “hard election campaign.”
Earlier, a leading pollster said Netanyahu’s Election Day appeal to supporters to vote to offer the “droves of Arabs” casting ballots may have played a decisive role in his victory.
Israel reportedly canceled key discussions on an East Jerusalem housing project for undisclosed reasons. Sources claimed that the meetings were held up because of a desire to not exacerbate tensions with the Obama administration. Meanwhile, the US Senate said it will bring an Iran sanctions bill to a vote if no framework agreement is reached by March 31.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels drove Yemen’s president from his Aden palace, further consolidating their hold on the country.
The Times of Israel liveblogged events as they unfolded.
Amid significant tensions with the Obama administration, Israel freezes a 1,500-unit housing project in the East Jerusalem Har Homa neighborhood, the Ynet news site reports.
The Housing Ministry and the Jerusalem Municipality say that two discussions critical to the project’s advancement, scheduled for the coming week, were canceled for reasons that have not been explained to them.
Sources involved with the project tell Ynet that Netanyahu’s office held up the talks so as not to exacerbate tensions with the US president.
The Prime Minister’s Office, on the other hand, says the project was never presented to them, denying the claims made by Jerusalem and the Housing Ministry.
Construction in the neighborhood of Har Homa in East Jerusalem (photo credit: Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
The new commander of the IDF Central Command, Gen. Roni Noma, assumes his post, replacing Gen. Nitzan Alon during a ceremony in Jerusalem.
Noma, the former head of the IDF’s Depth Corps, says, “Our responsibility to the security of settlements is not in doubt. We must fight terror while ensuring the quality of life of both Israelis and Palestinians.”
Alon says that Israel and the PA “are at the height of a strategic struggle: Politically, diplomatically, and legally.”
Noma comes into the position as warnings abound about a possible eruption of violence in the West Bank, which is under the authority of the Central Command.
A General Staff changing of the guard on March 24, 2015, from right: Chief of the IDF General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot; incoming head of the Home Front Command, Maj. Gen. Yoel Strik; outgoing Home Front Command head Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg; Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon; outgoing OC Central Command, Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon; incoming OC Central Command, Maj. Gen. Roni Numa (photo credit: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
Netanyahu finally meets with representatives of ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism as he works to create a coalition.
Netanyahu tells UTJ chief Yaakov Litzman and MK Moshe Gafni that he appreciates their efforts as deputy health minister and chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee during the 18th Knesset, and that he would like to see them assume these posts again, the Ynet news site reports.
However, the PM does not officially offer them the positions, as Kulanu chief Moshe Kahlon is angling for control of the Finance Committee post.
UTJ lawmakers on principle refuse to assume full ministerial posts.
President Rivlin is expected to officially task Netanyahu with forming a coalition today.
Moshe Gafni (center) and Yaakov Litzman (right) of the United Torah Judaism party in Tel Aviv, January 2013. (photo credit: Yaakov Naumi/Flash 90)
Budget airline Germanwings says there were at least 72 Germans on its plane that crashed in the French Alps, killing all 150 people aboard.
Company executive Thomas Winkelmann estimates there had been 35 Spanish victims, a figure far lower than the 49 cited by the Spanish government.
Winkelmann says that Germanwings was still working on establishing the nationalities of all the victims, a task complicated by the fact that some passengers had dual nationality.
As of 1000 GMT Wednesday, the airline had counted two victims each from Australia, Argentina, Iran, Venezuela and the United States.
Helicopters of the French Air Force (back) and civil security services are seen in Seyne, south-eastern France, on March 24, 2015, near the site where a Germanwings Airbus A320 crashed in the French Alps. (photo credit: AFP PHOTO / ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT
Britain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Denmark, Belgium and Israel each lost at least one of their nationals, Winkelmann said.
The airline says it had established contact with the families of 123 victims and offered grief counseling to them, and was working with the German foreign ministry to reach the last 27.
“Taking care of the victims’ loved ones is our top priority,” Winkelmann tells reporters.
– AFP
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah visits the Gaza Strip for the second time. He is expected to discuss the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip with Hamas officials.
Hamas’s former Gaza prime minister and leader, Ismail Haniyeh (right), shakes hands with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah at Haniyeh’s house in Gaza City, October 9, 2014. (photo credit: AFP/Said Khatib)
French investigators crack open the mangled black box of a German jetliner and seal off the rugged Alpine crash site where 150 people died when their plane slammed into a mountain.
The dented, twisted and scarred cockpit voice recorder is being mined by investigators for clues into what sent the Germanwings Airbus 320 into a mid-flight dive Tuesday after pilots lost radio contact over the southern French Alps during a routine flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf. Germany’s top security official says Wednesday there was no evidence of foul play.
Helicopters surveying the scattered debris lifted off at daybreak to eye the craggy ravine. Emergency crews, meanwhile, traveled slowly over the steep, rocky terrain to the remote high-altitude crash site through fresh snow and rain. Bereaved families and the French, German and Spanish leaders were expected later Wednesday.
Students mourn in front of the Joseph-Koenig Gymnasium in Haltern, western Germany, Wednesday, March 25, 2015, one day after 16 school children and two teachers were among the 150 victims that died in the Germanwings plane crash in the French alps on the way from Barcelona to Duesseldorf. (photo credit: AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
“The black box is damaged and must be reconstituted in the coming hours in order to be useable,” French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve tells RTL radio.
Key to the investigation is what happened in the two minutes of 10:30 a.m. and 10:31 a.m., said Segolene Royal, a top government minister whose portfolio includes transport. From then on, air traffic controllers were unable to make contact with the plane.
The voice recorder takes audio feeds from four microphones within the cockpit and records all the conversations between the pilots, air traffic controllers as well as any noises in the cockpit. France’s air accident investigation agency released images of the orange casing, mangled and scarred from the impact.
The flight data recorder, which Cazeneuve says has not been retrieved yet, captures 25 hours’ worth of information on the position and condition of almost every major part in a plane.
France’s air force says it scrambled a Mirage fighter jet to the area when the flight lost radar contact, but arrived too late to help.
— AP
Yemen’s embattled president flees his palace in the southern port city of Aden for an undisclosed location on Wednesday as Shiite rebels offer a bounty for his capture and arrest his defense minister. Hours later, the rebels launch airstrikes targeting presidential forces guarding the palace.
President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi leaves just hours after the rebels’ own television station said they seized an air base where US troops and Europeans advised the country in its fight against al-Qaeda militants. That air base is only 60 kilometers (35 miles) away from Aden, where Hadi had established a temporary capital.
Members of a militia group loyal to Yemen’s President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, known as the Popular Committees, chew qat as they sit next to their tank, guarding a major intersection in Aden, Yemen, March 21, 2015 (AP Photo/Hamza Hendawi, File)
The advance of the Shiite rebels, empowered by the backing of the ousted Yemeni autocrat Ali Abdullah Saleh and his loyalists, threatens to plunge the Arab world’s poorest country into a civil war that could draw in its Gulf neighbors. Already, Hadi has asked the United Nations to authorize a foreign military intervention in the country.
The takeover of Aden, the country’s economic hub, would mark the collapse of what is left of Hadi’s grip on power. It would also open a new chapter in the Houthi-Saleh alliance and possibly pave the way for more infighting.
— AP
The Simon Wiesenthal Center pans the Chicago Tribune for a cartoon that claims Netanyahu ordered the IDF to “repeatedly bomb Palestinian hospitals, mosques, and schools.”
“Seriously?” asks the PM in the cartoon by Joe Fournier. “People were surprised when I said that there would be no two-state solution in order to secure my re-election? Come on, this is Bibi we’re talking about!”
“The same Bibi who had the Israeli military repeatedly bomb Palestinian hospitals, mosques and schools.”
“Bibi Netanyahu, his statements, and policies are legitimate targets of criticism from other leaders, the media and the public, and the Chicago Tribune has every right to serve as a platform for the full spectrum of views,” says SWC. “Along with that right, however, is the obligation not to publish falsehoods. Today the Chicago Tribune failed to live up to its responsibilities as guardians of truth by allowing the mainstreaming of incendiary lies about the leader of the Jewish state.”
March 2015 Chicago Tribune cartoon alleging that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered to intentional bombing of Palestinian civilians. (photo credit: Chicago Tribune)
MK Erel Margalit from the Zionist Union party writes a letter to Netanyahu saying that firing Ambassador Ron Dermer from his post in Washington is the necessary first step to repairing ties with the US.
Margalit holds Dermer responsible for the Iran speech Netanyahu delivered to Congress on March 3, and says that since the address, the White House and State Department have treated Netanyahu coldly.
Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer presents his credentials to President Barack Obama at the White House, December 4, 2013. (photo credit: Twitter/Amb. Ron Dermer)
Iran’s foreign ministry says two Iranian journalists died in the Germanwings plane crash, according to Iran’s official IRNA news agency.
They are identified as Milad Hojatoleslami, who worked for the semi-official Tasnim news agency, and Hossein Javadi, a journalist at the Vatan-e-Emrouz daily.
— AP
Four members of Israel’s Joint Arab List elected to the Knesset meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
Ayman Odeh, the Arab-Israeli party’s leader, headed the delegation that visited the Muqata, the PA’s headquarters in Ramallah, on Tuesday evening, the Palestinian Maan news agency reports. The others were Masoud Ghanayim, Jamal Zahalka and Usama al-Saadi.
With its 13 seats garnered in last week’s election, the Joint Arab List will be the third-largest party in Knesset. The party did not recommend any political leader to President Reuven Rivlin to serve as prime minister.
Four Arab parties — United Arab List, Ta’al, Balad and Hadash — combined to create the Joint Arab List in order to reach the electoral threshold of four seats. More than 90 percent of Arab-Israeli voters supported the coalition in the elections, the party said, citing its own polling results.
During the meeting, Abbas reportedly praised the party.
Party members said they had not been invited to the meeting of Arab and other minority leaders with Netanyahu on Tuesday, where the prime minister apologized for anti-Arab fear mongering in the waning hours of Election Day.
— JTA
Iran-backed Houthis’ takeover of Yemen “should greatly worry Israel,” says Israel’s leading Arab affairs analyst, Ehud Ya’ari.
“We’re days, maybe hours away from Yemen becoming another Iranian proxy state,” he warns.
“For Iran this means control of the entry to the Red Sea.”
Yemenis at a rally against the occupation of the capital by Shiite Houthi rebels on February 14, 2015, in the capital Sanaa. (photo credit: AFP/Mohammed Huwais)
PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party posts a picture on its Facebook page Tuesday showing masked men stepping on an Israeli flag and holding a Palestinian flag over it, the NGO Palestinian Media Watch reports.
A poem printed over the photo calls for martyrdom for Palestine –
In Palestine is Jerusalem!
In Jerusalem – a demonstration!
In the demonstration – a young man!
In the young man – a heart!
In the heart – a bullet!
In the bullet – death!
In death – Martyrdom (Istish’had)
In Martyrdom – Paradise!
In Paradise – pleasures!
And Allah willing, we will return [to Palestine]!
Historians at the Auschwitz memorial and high school officials in central Poland are trying to determine how a list of 15 Polish and Jewish inmates of the Nazi death camp made it into a school library book.
A typewritten page, with edges burnt and the word Auschwitz on it, was found inside a book last month during a library stock-taking at the 2nd Lyceum in Lodz.
Rows of barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 28, 2014. (Amanda Borschel-Dan/The Times of Israel)
Auschwitz museum officials say they have no doubt it is authentic. Dated May 21, 1941, it bears the names of inmates brought to Auschwitz that day. The same names are on a longer list in the museum’s archives.
According to historians, eight of the inmates on the list died in Auschwitz, two survived and the fate of five, including two Jews, remains unknown.
— AP
American officials say Washington has been in discussions with the Iraqi government on the possibility of US airstrikes to support the Iraqi ground offensive against a dug-in Islamic State group in Tikrit.
The talks raise the highly sensitive issue of US air support for an offensive spearheaded by Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias. The Pentagon on Tuesday said the Iraqi offensive had “stalled.”
Iraqi pro-government fighters celebrate as they advance into Tikrit, 160 kms north of Baghdad, during a military operation to regain the city from jihadists from the Islamic state (IS) group, on March 11, 2015. (photo credit: AFP PHOTO / AHMAD AL-RUBAYE)
The US has said it is not coordinating any military actions with the Iranians.
Two US officials confirm the talks about possible US airstrikes. They are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly on the record and so were granted anonymity.
— AP
.
Central Elections Committee chairman Salim Joubran presents President Rivlin with the official results of the elections.
Rivlin takes the opportunity to lambaste Netanyahu for his comments on Arabs voting in “droves” on Election Day.
“Woe to us if we see the fulfillment of the democratic responsibility of voting as a curse,” Rivlin says. “Whoever it afraid of votes in the election booth will in the end receive stones in the streets.”
Channel 2 reports that Kulanu’s Moshe Kahlon will become Finance Minister in the next government. Yisrael Beytenu’s Sofia Landver will stay on as Immigration Minister and UTJ’s Yaakov Litzman will be Deputy Health Minister.
In addition, Shas leader Aryeh Deri will become Interior Minister and UTJ’s Moshe Gafni will be head of the Knesset Finance Committee.
Yemeni security and port officials say that President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has left the country by boat from the port of Aden, as Shiite rebels and their allies advance on this southern city.
The officials tell The Associated Press that Hadi left with his aides after 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, departing on two boats under heavy security. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
Ousted Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi (photo credit: AP Photo/Yemen’s Defense Ministry, File)
They will not disclose Hadi’s destination. Yemen’s embattled president is scheduled to attend an Arab Summit in Egypt on the weekend.
Hadi’s escape from Yemen comes as the rebels known as the Houthis are closing in on Aden and the city’s fall appears imminent.
— AP
The director of France’s aviation investigative agency says audio has been recovered from the cockpit recorder salvaged from the crash of the Germanwings plane in the Alps on Tuesday.
Remi Jouty says the material includes sound and voices, and was extracted Wednesday afternoon from the mangled black box recovered from a mountainside.
Jouty says it was too early to draw conclusions from the recording. The case of the second black box, the flight data recorder, has been found, but not its contents, the French president said minutes earlier.
Jouty says he couldn’t confirm that the case of the second black box had been recovered.
— AFP
The director of France’s aviation investigative agency says there currently is not the “slightest explanation” for what caused the Germanwings plane to lose altitude and crash in the Alps.
Remi Jouty says the investigation could take weeks or even months.
Jouty says the plane was flying “until the end” — slamming into the mountain, not breaking up in the air.
He says the final communication from the plane was a routine message about permission to continue on its route.
— AP
Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino pays an emotional visit Tuesday night to Darin Assad, the widow of slain Border Police officer Jedan Assad, in the northern Druze village of Beit Jann.
Danino and other senior police commanders arrived to congratulate Assad on the recent birth of her son, named after his father.
Jedan Assad was killed in November when a Palestinian attacker drove his car into a crowd of people near a light rail stop in East Jerusalem. A dozen other people were injured.
“Jedan of blessed memory made the ultimate sacrifice for Israel,” says Danino, according to the Druzeisrael.com “May his figure be an example for Jedan junior, as it was for us.”
US State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki begins her final press conference in Washington, DC.
She will become the next White House Communications Director.
Channel 2 reports that Netanyahu will keep the Defense, Public Security, Justice and Communications ministries for his Likud party, as coalition talks continue.
President Rivlin will soon ask Netanyahu to officially form the next government.
President Reuven Rivlin signs the appointment letter officially asking Benjamin Netanyahu to form the next government coalition.
During a ceremony at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, President Reuven Rivlin formally tasks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with forming the next government.
He urges the Likud leader to form a coalition that is stable and “as wide as possible.”
Rivlin says that the next government has three major responsibilities — protecting relations with the US, stabilizing the Israeli political system, and healing the social discord that arose during the elections.
In a barely disguised criticism of Netanyahu’s statements during the election, Rivlin says that “things were said that didn’t need to be said.”
All sides said things that should not have been said in either a Jewish state or a democratic state, the president says.
“Today is the time to start healing the wounds.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin at the President’s Residence on March 25, 2015, as Rivlin formally charges Netanyahu with forming the next government. (Channel 2 screenshot)
The chilly relations between the leaders are evident from their body language during the event.
Netanyahu, set to become prime minister for the fourth time, says he accepts the “deep responsibility” placed on his shoulders, and that he is “moved like it is the first time.”
“I see myself as the prime minister of each and every one of you, those who voted for me, and those did not,” says Netanyahu.
He says he will work to lower housing and prices, and to break up monopolies.
The PM also speaks of Israel’s desire for peace, saying “Our hand is stretched out for peace with our Palestinian neighbors.”
Nonetheless, he stresses, Israel’s very existence depends on its strength.
He emphasizes that he values the vital Israeli alliance with the US. But, nonetheless, he says, will keep fighting against the emerging nuclear deal with Iran, which he says would endanger Israel, the region and the world.
Highlighting continuing security cooperation, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest says the Obama administration’s moves are in the best interest of Israel.
“The truth is now, Prime Minister Netanyahu is in the midst of trying to form a government … throughout that process we’re going to continue to cooperate with them on security matters, keep an open line of communication with them and if the need arises with us to be clear based on changing criteria on the ground then we’ll do that.”
“There is one critical aspect of our relationship that is rock solid, that is the commitment of Obama in close and critical security cooperation with Israel,” says Earnest.
“There are differences that are related to our approach to those issues. But part of our approach is informed by our view that our approach is clearly in the best interest of the Israeli people.”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest speaks during his daily news briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on December 8, 2014. (photo credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
Writing in the conservative National Review Online, prospective GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush blasts Obama’s foreign policy, saying that his administration has shown a “pattern of diplomatic scolding of Israel.”
“The rest of the world must wonder what it takes to enrage the White House. Apparently, all you have to do is reelect a leader whom the president doesn’t like. Israel’s elections should be something to celebrate. If only the rest of the region were able to hold peaceful and vibrant multi-party elections…Yet instead of recognizing Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reelection and the achievement of Israel’s multi-party, multi-ethnic democracy, the White House issued half-hearted congratulations.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015, in Chicago. (photo credit: AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
“Then Obama threatened to downgrade the US-Israel relationship and permit a series of anti-Israel resolutions to pass the United Nations Security Council without firm American opposition.
He also calls Obama’s approach to Iran “foolish.”
Obama “always believes Iran’s excuses, but never its threats.”
A US official says the Army sergeant who abandoned his post in Afghanistan and was held by the Taliban for five years will be court martialed on charges of desertion and avoiding military service.
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will also be charged with misbehavior before the enemy, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the announcement publicly on the record and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The US military plans an announcement later.
President Barack Obama speaks with Jani Bergdahl, left, and Bob Bergdahl, right, the parents of US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Saturday, May 31, 2014, after the announcement that Bowe Bergdahl has been released from captivity. (photo credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster)
Bergdahl walked away from his post in Afghanistan and was captured, then released from Taliban capture in a prisoner exchange.
Gen. Mark Milley, head of US Army Forces Command, has been reviewing the massive case files and had a broad range of legal options, including various degrees of desertion charges.
A major consideration was whether military officials would be able to prove that Bergdahl had no intention of returning to his unit — a key element in the more serious desertion charges.
— AP
France-based utility giant Suez Environnement says it has decided not to take part in a cable car project linking west Jerusalem to the eastern sector because of political sensitivities.
The project, run by Jerusalem city council, has stoked controversy over the Israeli cable car’s planned route which passes from the Cinematheque theater through parts of mostly Arab east Jerusalem.
A view of the Cinematheque, nestled between the Begin Center (on the right) and the Mount Zion Hotel (photo credit: Nati Shochat/Flash 90)
“To avoid any political interpretation, Suez Environnement has decided not to take part in this project,” it says.
Suez says its involvement in the project was limited to a feasibility study carried out by the consultancy firm SAFEGE, one of its subsidiaries.
“SAFEGE fulfilled a contract for the Jerusalem municipality between June and November 2013, carrying out a feasibility study, from a technical perspective, on a public cable car system in Jerusalem,” it says.
The Palestinians oppose any Israeli construction in the eastern sector, that they want as the capital of a future state of their own.
— AFP
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