Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
The Times of Israel liveblogged Thursday’s events as they unfolded.
After reports Thursday indicating the Zionist Union may join Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, top politicians from the Knesset faction put the kibosh on the idea.
Party no. 2 Tzipi Livni tells Israel Radio that she told faction head Isaac Herzog she was against joining Netanyahu.
“The Zionist Union will help the government from the opposition to fight the Iran nuclear deal.”
Labor MK Shelly Yachimovich during a TV interview following the announcement of the Labor primary results, January 14, 2015. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
Earlier, former Labor party leader MK Shelly Yachimovich took to Facebook to call for her faction to not only not join the coalition, but also to keep fighting Netanyahu as well, criticizing Herzog and Livni’s stances.
“We can’t work for Netanyahu when he has made such a bad mistake,” she writes, referring to his handling of the nuclear negotiations and tattered ties with the US. “It could be that this is very acceptable to the public right now, but we have an obligation to do the right thing.”
A farmer beaten to death by Palestinians in central Israel last month was the victim of a botched robbery, not a terror attack, the police and Shin Bet say.
David Bar-Kapara, 70, a resident of Rehovot, was discovered June 24 in his vineyard with serious injuries, which he later died of.
Two suspects were arrested a day after the attack by the Shin Bet security agency and police. The two, Mujahad Dar Asi and A’ala Dar Asi, are cousins from the West Bank village of Beit Lakiya and were in Israel illegally at the time of the attack. The suspects, who had been involved in attacks on Israelis in the past according to officials, were in custody since the killing, and are expected to attend an arraignment hearing on Thursday.
An Egyptian navy vessel is on fire off the coast of Sinai after an exchange of gunfire with militants from the shore, the Egyptian military says.
There were no fatalities among the vessel’s crew in the exchange with “terrorists,” according to a statement by the military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Samir, on his Facebook page.
Security officials say an unspecified number of crew members suffered injuries from the fire.
Firefighters have been trying to put out the blaze for more than three hours, the officials say.
This is said to be a picture of the smoking ship off the #Rafah coast pic.twitter.com/d0S0irlaU0
— Joel Gulhane – چويل (@jgulhane) July 16, 2015
The ship is apparently a troop transporter used to avoid an overland route through Sinai, where Islamist militants frequently target Egyptian military posts and patrols.
Authorities are also looking into the possibility that the vessel was first hit by a rocket from the shore or that suspected militants swam out to it and placed explosives, which were later detonated by remote control.
— AP
Turkey’s top administrative court has removed its block on a controversial redevelopment of an Istanbul park that in 2013 sparked the most serious anti-government protests in years, a pressure group says.
Istanbul authorities had planned to rebuild an Ottoman-era barracks on the site of Gezi Park, one of the few green spaces in the city centre, on the fringes of Taksim Square.
But the construction was blocked by court order after mass protests in May-June 2013 that snowballed into a wave of public anger against the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then premier, and left eight people dead.
The Taksim Solidarity pressure group, which monitors the issue, says Turkey’s top administrative court, the Council of State, had reversed its previous decision to block the construction.
The court decision was actually taken on March 31, after a rare appeal by the municipality of Istanbul, but not reported until today.
News of the ruling has angered secular opponents of the Islamic-rooted Erdogan and the Twitter hashtag #SanaGeziyiYiktirmayacagiz (We will not let you destroy Gezi) has become a worldwide trending topic.
#SanaGeziyiYıktırmayacağız SANA TOPÇU KIŞLASI yaptırmayacağız @JeansBiri @Yazar212 @Halitisci @ATelgeren @mkaayse pic.twitter.com/BQiyVmMRRO
— #CHP Raziye (@Raz_iye) July 15, 2015
Topcu Kislani sarayinin dibine yap.Elbet o sarayin sonu da bu olucak #sanageziyiyiktirmayacagiz pic.twitter.com/hDBqPYAqgd
— Haktanrencber (@Haktanrencber) July 16, 2015
The decision by the Council of the State paves the way for the creation of an expert panel that could then give the green light for the redevelopment.
Before the protests, the municipality had aimed to rebuild the 19th century barracks for luxury commercial and residential use.
— AFP
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is indicating his country may soon be able to buy badly needed new planes for its aging fleet after the nuclear deal, the official IRNA news agency reports.
Hassan Rouhani says Iranian negotiators came away from the talks in Vienna with “achievements beyond the nuclear” agreement and succeeded in having “aviation sanctions removed.”
International and specifically US sanctions have prohibited the sale of Western planes and some spare parts to Iran, making it impossible for Iran to buy new planes and difficult to keep the aging Boeings and Airbuses it does use safely flying.
The last time Iran bought new aircraft directly from a Western company was in the early 1990s from the Dutch manufacturer Fokker, which later went bankrupt.
Beyond referring to the removal of “aviation sanctions,” Rouhani does not elaborate but Iran’s Transportation Minister Abbas Akhoundi has said there have been talks with Boeing and Airbus and that initial agreements will likely come in a few months’ time.
Last month at the Paris Air Show, Akhoundi said Iran was prepared to spend about $20 billion to purchase about 400 new planes over the next decade.
Retired archbishop Desmond Tutu is receiving an concentrated course of antibiotics to treat a “stubborn infection,” his South African foundation says.
Tutu, 83, was admitted to a Cape Town hospital on Tuesday, where he is receiving an “intensive course” of antibiotics to fight an infection, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation says in a statement.
Tutu’s daughter Mpho is to give an update on her father’s health in a press briefing. When Tutu was admitted, Mpho Tutu said their family hoped the Nobel Peace Prize laureate would be able to return home in a “day or two.”
The religious leader is a frequent critic of Israel and its policies toward Palestinians, which he has termed “apartheid.”
— AP
Despite the fact that the killing of David Bar-Kapara was determined by authorities to be a botched robbery and not nationalistically motivated, his family has taken to the media to insist that the police and Shin Bet are wrong.
The family says they were told by police the two suspects, both West Bank Palestinians, were involved in “grassroots terror activity” such as rock-throwing, and that Bar-Kapara would not make a likely robbery victim.
“They are claiming it was a botched robbery, but that is relying on the statements made by the terrorists themselves, who had plenty of time to coordinate their versions and consult on how to get away easier, and it testifies to a very problematic investigation,” the family says in a statement to the press. “Our father was a simple farmer, who owned a vineyward and worked for his living. He didn’t have disputes, debts or a lot of possessions on him.”
A video released by the IDF shows the arrest of the two men a few days after the attack.
Australian media reports a man believed to be strapped with explosives is holding another man hostage in the city of Bunbury, in Western Australia.
Police have responded to the scene, ABC news reports.
Bunbury is the third-largest city in Western Australia, about 180 kilometers south of Perth.
Australia, which is part of the coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has dealt with a number of terror incidents over the past year, including a Sydney cafe siege that left two people and a gunman dead.
A Tnuva dairy plant in northern Israel has been evacuated after a dangerous chemical leaked, Ynet news reports.
There were no injuries reported in the incident, in which a pipe leaked nitric acid into the Alon Tavor plant in the Jezreel Valley.
Firefighters are currently trying to get the leak under control.
In April, the same plant was evacuated after an ammonia leak.
Islamic State militants have reportedly claimed the attack on an Egyptian military boat off the Sinai coast.
A series of pictures released by the group appear to show a missile hitting the boat before it goes up in flames.
#ISIS claimed has sunk an egyptian cruiser pic.twitter.com/HOowPJY7Id
— ERSHAD ALIJANI (@ErshadAlijani) July 16, 2015
An AFP photographer and a witness in the Gaza Strip said the boat was struck at least three kilometers from shore.
“We were sitting on the beach and suddenly there was an explosion,” said Ahmed Nofal.
Other navy boats came to rescue the crew as their vessel spewed a plume of smoke.
A military spokesman says there were no casualties in the attack. Security officials said an unspecified number of crew members suffered injuries from the fire.
The Islamic State Sinai Province, a local Islamist group formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has claimed scores of attacks in the Sinai in the past, including a coordinated raid on several police outposts in northern Sinai earlier this month that left dozens dead.
— With AFP and AP
Top Palestinian official Saeb Erekat releases a statement denying a report from a day earlier that Ramallah and Israel have begun taking steps to ease tensions, which may lead to new peace talks.
The statement says that Erekat “denies reports in the Israeli press that describe a supposed agreement and the Palestinian resistance regarding stopping international [diplomatic] measures in return for a [settlement] building freeze.”
On Wednesday, The Times of Israel reported that in a series of secret meetings, Jerusalem had agreed to slow down settlement construction and the Palestinian Authority had put applications to join United Nations and other bodies on hold.
A senior official said that the steps, aimed at easing tensions, could lead to new peace talks and that a senior Israeli minister was set to meet a top Palestinian official abroad next week.
Erekat denied the secret meetings had taken place.
The Prime Minister’s Office has not commented on the report.
— Avi Issacharoff
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, in a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, calls on Israel to work with the six world powers who signed a deal with Iran Tuesday to help keep Tehran honest.
Hammond says that Britain’s actions against terror prove his country’s commitment to defend Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking before Hammond, calls the deal between the powers and Iran a “failure of diplomacy” which threatens Israel and the world.
“The deal agreed to in Vienna, I regret to say, paves this terrorist regime’s path to the bomb. The alternative to this deal is not war. The alternative is a better deal that would roll back Iran’s military nuclear program and tie the easing of restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program to changes in Iran’s behavior,” he says.
“That’s the kind of deal that would be welcomed in Tel Aviv and here in Israel’s capital Jerusalem. Israel would embrace a good deal that would compel Iran to choose between a path to a bomb and sanctions relief. Unfortunately the current deal allows Iran to avoid making that choice. It lifts the sanctions today and paves the path to a bomb tomorrow.”
The statement comes a day after Hammond told Parliament in London that there is no deal that would have been accepted by Israel.
Netanyahu tells Hammond the Vienna deal gives the Iranians “two paths to a bomb”: if they cheat, and if they keep their side of the deal and wait out 10 years until they can ramp activity back up.
Netanyahu denies Israelis are gunning for a war, but says they do fear a regime that calls for their annihilation.
“Israelis know better than anyone else the cost of permanent conflict with Iran and it is wrong to suggest that Israel wants such an outcome. we seek a genuine and effective diplomatic solution,” he says. “But Israelis also know exactly what would happen if we ever let our guard down. The result of that would be truly permanent.”
A Jordanian government official and the state news agency Petra say Iraq has closed the only border crossing between the two countries.
Much of the area between the Trebil crossing and the Iraqi capital of Baghdad is controlled by Islamic State militants, and travel there is dangerous.
A prolonged border closure would mean a further blow to the Jordanian economy because it cuts off another export route. In the spring, Jordan closed its trade crossing with Syria after Islamic militants seized it.
Petra says Jordanian drivers are being urged not to head to the Iraqi border.
Iraqi officials were not available for comment Thursday.
— AP
US Secretary of State John Kerry is slated to speak with Prime Minister Netanyahu today to discuss the Iranian nuclear deal, US Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who managed much of the Iranian nuclear talks, tells Israeli reporters.
She says that Israel has so far rejected any significant discussions about an increase in American defense assistance in wake of the agreement.
“The prime minister was not ready to have that discussion yet,” she says.
According to an earlier report in Israeli daily Haaretz, Netanyahu in April rejected an offer by US President Barack Obama to upgrade assistance, but Netanyahu did not want to make it look like Israel was okay with the nuclear agreement.
According to the report, Obama also brought up the discussion in a phone call with Netanyahu Tuesday.
— Raphael Ahren
Wendy Sherman also tells Israeli reporters that Jerusalem was in constant contact with the world powers’ negotiating team, and its input was “essential.”
“We have had extraordinarily close consultation with Israel,” she says. “Experts from Israel have been essential in the development of this deal. In fact, one of your lead experts wrote an email to us after the deal looking for further consultations to see where our joint efforts produced a result. So it was everything from the redesign of the Arak reactor, which your Israeli colleagues helped to critique and to help us refine to looking at issues of weaponization that ended up being in this deal.”
Frankfurt prosecutors say a 92-year-old former Auschwitz death camp guard charged as an accessory to murder is fit for trial, but it’s not yet clear when proceedings might begin.
Prosecutor Friderike Busch tells reporters that the man, whose name wasn’t released in line with privacy laws, is accused of being an accessory to the deaths of 1,075 people from Berlin, France and the Netherlands killed in Auschwitz while he was a guard there from 1942 to 1943.
The Hungarian-born ethnic German volunteered for the SS in 1942 and rose to the rank of Sturmmann, roughly equivalent to a specialist.
He’s accused because as a guard he helped the camp function. That same reasoning won a conviction and four-year jail sentence Wednesday of a former SS sergeant who also served at Auschwitz.
— AP
The International Criminal Court has requested that prosecutor Fatou Bensouda reopen a probe into the 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla incident, in which 10 Turkish activists died in clashes with Israeli forces on a ship attempting to break the Gaza blockade.
Bensouda said in November there would be no investigation leading to a prosecution, despite a “reasonable basis” to believe that war crimes were committed.
Bensouda said any potential cases arising from an investigation into the incident would not be of “sufficient gravity” to justify further ICC action.
But In January, Comoros, which filed the request to probe Israel, asked the chamber to reconsider.
In a statement issued by the ICC, a panel of three judges stated that the prosecutor “committed material errors in her determination of the gravity of the potential case.
“In particular, the Chamber identified material errors in the Prosecutor’s assessment of the possibility to prosecute those persons who may bear the greatest responsibility for the identified crimes committed during the seizure of the Mavi Marmara, as well as of the scale, nature, manner of commission and impact of the potential crimes,” the statement reads.
One judge, Péter Kovács, dissented on the request.
A series of shootings have rocked Chattanooga, Tennessee, leaving parts of the city on lockdown as police hunt the shooter.
One police officer has been shot at an army recruitment center in the city and another shooting was reported elsewhere in the city, with a man shot in the leg.
A mall in the city has also been placed on lockdown, as well as a local university.
British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon has announced that the UK will send a new spy plane to support efforts against the Islamic State, calling the fight a “new Battle of Britain.”
Fallon says Britain will take delivery of a new Airseeker plane next month, which would “shortly after” be deployed to carry out reconnaissance of suspected Islamic State group targets.
“Today, with more warnings of threats to our citizens in Tunisia following the horrific events of two weeks ago, we’re fighting a new Battle of Britain,” he said during a speech in central London.
“Once again, against a fascist enemy, an enemy prepared to kill its enemies and civilians alike, it is the RAF spearheading our counter attack,” he says.
The Battle of Britain took place during World War II in 1940, pitching Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) against its German counterpart, the Luftwaffe.
— with AFP
As Congress gears up for what promises to be a fierce battle of the Iran nuclear deal, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says the nuclear deal negotiated by the United States, Iran and Western powers “will have my strong support.”
“I’m very optimistic about our ability to support the president” on the agreement, Pelosi tells reporters at her weekly news conference.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (R) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (L) listen to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak about Iran during a joint meeting of the United States Congress in the House chamber at the US Capitol March 3, 2015 (Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP)
The Obama administration has launched a full-court press to win over skeptical Democrats in Congress, and Pelosi’s support is a key gain. The historic agreement would curb Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
— AP
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, speaking to Israel’s Channel 2, says Benjamin Netanyahu would not have embraced any deal with Iran over their nuclear program.
“I think he’s taking some risks and he will make his own decision on how much political capital to expend in the US on fighting this deal,” he says.
Hammond rejects the idea that the world should expect regime change from Iran’s revolutionary rule by Ayatollah Ali Khamenie and says he’s “not betting overnight Iran’s behavior will change.”
However, he says over time, other countries that have opened up to financial opportunities have moderated.
Hammond tells Channel 2 that the images of Iranian leaders burning flags and calling for death to America and death to Israel amounted to little more than rhetoric, which was easy to ignore when negotiating a nuclear deal.
“I prefer to look at the substance rather than the rhetoric,” he says. “All politicians everywhere are engaged in rhetoric, which is not the same as the actions they are doing.”
Hammond says the sides “never pretended that this solves all our problems with Iran,” and they all have to keep cooperating to “deal with Iran’s disruptive behavior in the region.”
Defending the deal, he says sanctions weren’t working to keep Iran from a nuclear weapon, but the deal does.
“If we didn’t do this we ran the ultimate risk of going to war,” he says.
He adds that Iran won’t be able to hide nuclear activity given eyes in the sky that will watch the country’s nuclear program.
“Hiding things is not so easy in the days of 24-hour satellite surveillance,” he says.
Hammond adds that the arms embargo was only put in place to bring Iran to the table, which it did, and thus can be lifted so long as Iran complies with the nuclear deal.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely responds to the decision by the ICC to call for a reopening of the probe into the Mavi Marmara case, indicating it’s part of a campaign of “Palestinian incitement.”
Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on her way to visit the Temple Mount, November 4, 2014 (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
“It’s very puzzling to me why the International Criminal Court would decide to open a probe into soldiers who defended themselves against brutal attacks by terrorists aboard the Marmara,” she says, according to Ynet.
“There are Palestinian actors who are trying all the time to incite international bodies against Israel. I hope those same bodies will be able to identify the incitement and not help it along.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry will head to the Gulf in August seeking to allay fears over the Iran nuclear deal, AFP reports.
Kerry met Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir Thursday, the beginning of a charm offensive designed to win over the many doubters in the United States and abroad.
“I will be meeting with the entire GCC and giving them a full briefing, download, answering any questions they have on August 3,” Kerry says.
The Saudi minister says the meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council would take place in Doha.
“All of us in the region want to see a peaceful resolution to Iran’s nuclear program,” Jubeir says after their talks.
He welcomes a deal with a “robust and continuous inspections regime to make sure Iran does not violate the terms of the agreement,” adding it should also have an effective and quick “snapback” mechanism that allows for sanctions to be quickly reimposed if Tehran violates Tuesday’s accord.
“We hope that the Iranians will use this deal in order to improve the economic situation in Iran and to improve the lot of the Iranian people, and not use it for adventures in the region,” Jubeir says.
But he warns “if Iran should try to cause mischief in the region we’re committed to confront it resolutely.”
Majority Sunni Gulf countries have remained wary of the US overtures to arch-foe Iran, believing the nuclear deal will only embolden Tehran’s Shiite leaders.
Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan at his palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2008 (photo credit: AP/Hassan Ammar)
Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former ambassador to Washington, published a column Thursday calling the Iran deal worse than the US’s disastrous nuclear accord with North Korea in the 1990s.
The diplomat, who is considered an influential figure in Riyadh, writes on the Elaph website that President Bill Clinton was misled by faulty intelligence but had good intentions vis-a-vis North Korea.
Not so this time, he says.
“President Obama made his decision to go ahead with the Iran nuclear deal fully aware that the strategic foreign policy analysis, the national intelligence information, and America’s allies in the region’s intelligence all predict not only the same outcome of the North Korean nuclear deal but worse – with the billions of dollars that Iran will have access to,” he writes, according to an al-Arabiya translation.
— with AFP
In an official response, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon condemns the decision of the ICC to request a war crimes probe into 2010 Mavi Marmara incident be reopened.
“This was an incident during which Israel acted in self defense and within international law,” Nachshon says, adding that Israel and the UN have already investigated the incident.
“It’s not clear why the ICC is insistent on directing its resources toward unnecessary work on complaints stemming from cynical politics, instead of dealing with the work it was founded for — investigating mass atrocities,” he says, adding that Israel expects the prosecutor to deny the request to reopen the probe.
Police in Tennessee say on Twitter that there is no longer a shooter on the loose in Chattanooga, after a police officer was shot.
Local NBC affiliate WRCB reports that four members of the military were shot in the incident that erupted in the late morning, but that report has not yet been confirmed by authorities.
“We have an officer down,” Chattanooga mayor Andy Berke tells reporters, without specifying if the victim was dead. “The suspect is also down.”
CBS News reports that the shooter is dead and that the police officer was shot in the leg.
— AFP
In a series of tweets, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani says British Prime Minister David Cameron has expressed an interest in reopening his country’s embassy in Tehran during a telephone conversation between the two leaders Thursday.
In phone call just now, #British PM @David_Cameron welcomed #IranDeal & Iran's constructive role in the negotiations.
— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) July 16, 2015
expressed interest in reopening embassies & expansion of ties in the framework of mutual interest & respect + combating #terrorism in region
— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) July 16, 2015
Plans to reopen Britain’s embassy in Tehran, which was stormed by protesters in 2011, were announced last year but progress has been slow.
The British government says the pair discussed how the “deal would pave the way for stronger relations, and about what that would mean in terms of bilateral relations and our aim to reopen the embassy.”
A spokesman said that during their 20-minute phone call, the British premier “welcomed the historic deal and underlined their respective commitments to delivering on it.”
— AFP
Unconfirmed news reports in Tennessee say four Marines have been killed in a shooting at a Navy recruiting center in Chattanooga.
The shooter is also reportedly killed.
A police officer who was shot is in stable condition, according to local reports.
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