Obama: Peace prospects ‘dim,’ creating ‘dangerous’ situation

Initial reports say no survivors in crash

A German-owned Airbus A320 plane that crashed in the French Alps had 148 people on board, including six crew members, a civil aviation official says.

The official says there had been “a loss of radar of Germanwings flight GWI18G,” which is thought to have been carrying 142 passengers, two pilots and four stewards.

French President Francois Hollande says that the circumstances leading to the accident were still being examined but “it is likely there were no survivors in the crash.”

Hollande says most victims are apparently German citizens. “We are mourning since this tragedy happened on our territory. I do not know if any local residents were hurt in the accident,” Hollande says.

AFP contributed to this report.

We’re Israelis, not Zionists, says Meretz MK

Meretz MK Issawi Frej, No. 3 on the Meretz list, says his party is “not a Zionist but an Israeli party. Each person can define themselves as they want.”

Frej is interviewed on Galei Yisrael Radio following Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apology Monday for his comments on Election Day, when he called on Likud voters to go to the ballots because “Arabs are coming in droves to vote.”

Kalman Liebskind, the right wing journalist who interviewed Frej, noted that the Joint [Arab] List had refused to sign a vote-sharing agreement with Meretz because Meretz is a Zionist party.

“They were wrong,” Frej answers, “we are not Zionists but Israelis. Meretz is an Israeli party; each person can define themselves as they want. All these layers of definition are because you want to complicate matters.”

Ya’alon says ‘someone trying to stir fight’ with WSJ report

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon says that Israel has not received an official complaint from the US administration regarding Israeli espionage on the proceedings of American talks with Iran. According to Ya’alon, “someone is trying to stir a fight here.”

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (photo credit: Alex Kolomoisky/POOL/FLASH90)

Ya’alon is responding to a report in the Wall Street Journal published Tuesday morning in which Israel was alleged to have spied on US negotiations with Iran.

In a meeting with Likud activists, Ya’alon says, “There is no way and there was no way that Israel spied after the Americans. This has been strictly forbidden by every Israeli government. There is no damage to the security-intelligence relationship with the US; someone is trying to stir a fight here. It’s regretful that daylight is entering the secret channels in which we conduct this relationship.”

Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office earlier also characterized the allegations as “baseless, and meant to destabilize the strong ties and cooperation on security.”

Likely no Israelis on plane

A Lufthansa representative in Israel assesses that there were no Israelis aboard the plane that crashed in the French Alps.

“Passengers from Dusseldorf have no continuing flight to Tel Aviv and for this reason this line is ineffective for Israelis,” the representative is quoted by Walla as saying. “However, we still do not have the list of passengers.”

Lufthansa is the owner of Germanwings, the carrier whose plane crashed.

Mostly Germans, Spaniards, dead in crash

French President Francois Hollande says the 150 people killed in Tuesday’s plane crash in the French Alps included Germans, Spaniards and “probably” Turks.

He says that he cannot say with “total certainty” that no French nationals were aboard the Germanwings flight that crashed in a remote, snowbound area while en route from Barcelona, Spain, to Duesseldorf, Germany.

— AFP

Funeral of Yehuda Avner at 4:30 p.m.

The funeral of Yehuda Avner will be held at 4:30 p.m. at Jerusalem’s Har Hamenuhot cemetery.

Avner, a diplomat and political icon, passed away at age 86.

Rivlin to announce next PM tomorrow

President Reuven Rivlin will receive the official results of the election for the 20th Knesset in his residence tomorrow afternoon. Rivlin will be handed the official results by Central Election Committee head Justice Salim Joubran.

Rivlin will appoint the MK upon whom he will bestow the task of forming Israel’s 34th government by 7:30 p.m., and will hold a short press conference with him or her jointly at 8 p.m.

Hamas man gets 15.5 years in prison

A Hamas terrorist was given a verdict of 15.5 years at the Beersheba District Court.

The man was caught during fighting by IDF forces near a kindergarten in the Gaza Strip. He tried to set of a bomb against the soldiers and then to kidnap one of them.

Muhammad Abu-Draz, 24, confessed in a plea bargain and was convicted for membership in an unlawful organization, possession and use of weapons, illegal military training, conspiracy to commit a crime, attempted murder, and other allegations.

Jewish Home announces coalition demands

Jewish Home announces its demands in the coalition talks – the Defense, Education and Religious Affairs ministries, Haaretz reports.

Coalition talks will only begin in earnest after the president announces his choice for prime minister.

Likud wants to keep Moshe Ya’alon as defense minister, a role he currently holds.

French police confirms, no survivors in crash

French police say there were no survivors among the passengers of a Germanwings flight that crashed earlier today. A helicopter that landed in the area confirmed that none of the 144 passengers and six crew members made it alive.

“It will days to extract the remains of the victims, and then the debris of the plane,” a police official was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Police officers at the Joseph-Koenig secondary school in Haltern am See, western Germany on March 24, 2015. A group of 16 school children and 2 teachers from this school are believed to have been on board the crashed Germanwings airplane. (photo credit: Marcel Kusch/AFP/DPA)

Safed mayor steps down from Yisrael Beytenu

Safed Mayor Ilan Schochat, who is No. 4 on the Yisrael Beytenu list, decided to step down from his position as MK.

Schochat expressed doubt in recent days regarding the role, saying he preferred an executive role over a legislative one. He also said he received calls from Safed residents who said he should remain in his position as mayor of the northern city.

Robert Ilatov, No. 7 on Yisrael Beytenu’s list, will enter the Knesset instead of Schochat.

Canada to extend airstrikes against IS, may go into Syria

Canadian airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Iraq will be extended one year to March 2016 and may see sorties into Syria, the government said Tuesday.

But no ground combat troops would be deployed under the plan, which is to be debated in parliament Thursday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper read a motion in the House outlining the mission add-on. With his Conservative majority, the motion is assured of passage.

The original military mission started in November with Canadian war planes joining US-led airstrikes on Islamic State jihadists.

— AFP

Obama ‘phoning senators to convince them to support Iran deal’

US President Barack Obama has been “phoning Democratic senators one by one to ensure that they will vote for the draft of the White House’s agreement with Iran,” says Yaki Dayan, a former diplomatic adviser for the Israeli embassy in Washington and consul to Los Angeles.

US President Barack Obama, March 19, 2015 (photo credit: AFP/Chris Jackson/Getty Images North America)

PM Netanyahu, Dayan adds, has also been manning the phones, in an effort to convince senators the deal is a bad agreement. Netanyahu hopes to ensure a special majority that can overrule a presidential veto.

Dayan says Obama has “intentions to leave in his legacy a deal with Iran and a Palestinian state,” and that as part of this strategy he would be on a collision course with Netanyahu regardless of the prime minister comments on any issue.

Dayan speaks of the Wall Street Journal report that claimed Israel spied on US negotiations with Iran and then used the intelligence to try to dissuade lawmakers from supporting the deal.

IDF to dismiss 2,000 career soldiers this year

The IDF will dismiss approximately 2,000 career soldiers in the coming year, in a second round of cutting down on the number of officers in the military.

The first round of dismissals began two years ago, Ynet reports.

An IDF official says that “for every thousand career officers not in service, the military saves c. NIS 200 million per year, including pensions. All the money we have saved so far was invested in training and equipment,” a military official says.

“The goal is to reach our target personnel size by 2017,” the official adds.

Black box of Germanwings plane found

The black box of Germanwings flight 9525 was found late Tuesday, less than 10 hours after the plane crashed.

There were 150 people aboard the flight, 144 passengers and six crew members.

None survived the crash.

Joint List leader talks of ‘understanding Shoah’

Joint (Arab) List chairman Ayman Odeh says on a Channel 2 profile show that in his younger years he understood, “finally, to what degree the Holocaust is the Jewish people’s watershed event.”

Odeh, the soft-spoken leader of a list of MKs comprised of atheist communists Hadash (to which he belongs and where his colleague is veteran Jewish MK Dov Khanin) as well as nationalistic parties United Arab List and Balad, says “I visited all the museums, I met with Holocaust survivors, and wonder how it is that of all people the Jewish accept a reality of persecuting a minority living in their midst.”

Joint (Arab) List leader Ayman Odeh (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

He also recounts many incidences of being questioned by the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) in his youth. “This brought me to a very difficult psychological state, to a state of paranoia,” he recalls, teary-eyed. “I remember I used to get off a bus and if there was someone sitting in the station I remember thinking maybe they were from Shin Bet and came for me.”

The leader of what has become a formidable political force (third largest in the new Knesset after Likud and Zionist Union), Odeh defined Yisrael Beytenu Avigdor Liberman as “a Mark of Cain on the forehead of Israeli society.” The usual calm man admits that some of his exchanges with Liberman “made me very angry, almost full of rage.”

He says that it took him a long time to realize that despite all their military victories, Jewish Israelis still feared the Arab minority in their midst. “My goal is that Jews feel safe in their country,” he says.

Asked whether his vision of an equal state threatens its Jewish majority, Odeh answers “have people fallen on their heads here? You are 80% [of the population], you are strong, internalize it already.”

Fear that Israeli citizen was aboard crashed plane

The Foreign Ministry receives a call from the family of an Israeli man who was supposed to be on the flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf which crashed this morning.

The ministry was not sure whether there were any Israelis on the plane. All passengers on Germanwings flight 9525 perished, according to French police officials on the scene of the accident.

The French Interior Ministry said earlier that the black box of the plane was found among the debris. The US, meanwhile, announces that as far as it knows the crash was an accident and not a terror attack. The German government also published a similar statement. There were many German citizens among the 150 people on board, including six crew members and many of the 144 passengers.

Iran’s nuke official prefers IAEA to ‘keep out’

An Iranian official on Tuesday rebukes the chief of the UN atomic agency for demanding snap inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites, saying the request hinders efforts to reach an agreement with world powers, state TV reports.

The United States and five other world powers face an end-of-the-month deadline to reach a framework agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. Western nations suspect Tehran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability alongside the civilian program. Iran denies such allegations, insisting its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful.

Earlier this month Yukiya Amano, the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tehran should agree to snap inspections to reassure the international community.

Iran’s nuclear spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi says Amano’s comments harm the delicate negotiations. “It would be much better if Amano only talked about the IAEA’s seasonal and monthly reports,” he says, according to state TV.

— AP

‘Kahlon will be Israel’s next finance minister’

Moshe Kahlon will be Israel’s next finance minister. The appointment was sealed in a meeting late Monday between PM Netanyahu and Kahlon, Channel 2 reports.

Facebook shuts down Hamas page

Facebook shot down a page opened by Hamas in an effort “to conduct dialogue with the world,” Ynet reports.

The page was launched in tandem with Twitter and Instagram accounts, as well as a website opened by the terror group last month.

PA prime minister to visit Gaza tomorrow

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah will visit the Gaza Strip tomorrow (Wednesday), heading a delegation of Palestinian ministers and other senior officials, Haaretz reports.

This would mark Hamdallah’s second to the Strip, and according to a statement issued by his office comes as part of the effort to rebuild the territory after Operation Protective Edge and as a call for the international community to stand by its commitment to fund the rebuilding  of the Hamas-ruled territory.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah waves to citizens during his visit to Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, October 9, 2014. (photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

A Hamas response dismisses the visit, saying it will not help residents of the Strip unless it offers some practical solutions for recovery. The PA and Hamas are trading blame for the delays in rebuilding Gaza.

The PA claims Hamas is not letting the unity government rule, while Hamas is accusing the PA of trying to use the unity agreement to retake Gaza while ignoring Hamas officials who are a part of the Palestinian people.

US to keep briefing Israel on Iran talks amid spying row

The US administration will continue to brief Israel on its secret nuclear negotiations with Iran, US officials say, despite allegations the Jewish state has been spying on the talks.

“We’ve spoken in the past to our concern … about leaks of certain sensitive information. And obviously, we’ve taken steps to ensure that the negotiations remain private,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki says.

But she refuses to either confirm or deny a Wall Street Journal report citing anonymous US officials accusing Israel of spying on the nuclear negotiations with Iran aimed at reaching a deal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vociferously opposes.

“We still have ongoing conversations that are continuing with Israel,” Psaki says, adding the Obama administration will continue to brief Israeli officials in private.

Current and former US officials quoted in the Journal said they believed Israel had passed on the information to US lawmakers aiming to undermine support for the emerging deal, which has been championed by the White House.

But Psaki says it was an “absurd notion that Congress would have to rely on any foreign government to gain insight into the nuclear negotiations with Iran.”

— AFP

Lufthansa says Germanwings crash was accident

Lufthansa is working on the assumption that Tuesday’s crash of an Airbus operated by its budget carrier Germanwings was an accident, a senior airline official said.

“For the time being, we say it’s an accident, anything else would be speculation,” Lufthansa vice president for sales and services in Europe, Heike Birlenbach, tells reporters at Barcelona airport from where the plane took off.

The airliner, carrying 144 passengers — including two babies — and six crew, was traveling to the western German city of Duesseldorf when it came down in the French Alps, killing everyone on board.

The airline was unable to immediately confirm the nationalities of those on board, Birlenbach said.

— AFP

Obama won’t ‘pretend’ Netanyahu making it possible for two-states

US President Obama says that even if one accepts Netanyahu’s reaffirming of the two-state solution, it is hard to see the Palestinians succeeding in fulfilling his demands.

The US cannot pretend there is a possibility for the prime minister to agree to a two-state solution, the president adds. “We can’t continue to base our public diplomacy on something everyone knows is not going to happen,” he says during a press conference with the Afghan president.

Obama: Relationship with Netanyahu fine, but beside the issue

Obama says his relationship with Netanyahu is “businesslike” and confirms the two leaders speak often.

However, he chides the press for focusing on their relationship and not the more important issues at hand.

“He is representing his country’s interests the way he thinks he needs to and I’m doing the same. The issue is not the relationship between leaders,” he says of reports of a frosty relationship between the two. “We believe two states is best path forward for Israeli security, for Palestinian aspirations and regional stability. Netanyahu has a different approach and so this cant be reduced to a matter of somehow lets all hold hands and sing Kumbaya.”

Obama says peace hopes ‘dim,’ creating ‘dangerous’ situation

Obama rebuffs Netanyahu’s claims that his issue was with the conditions not being there for a Palestinian state, saying that the creation of a two-state solution is a process that will address Israel’s concerns.

“The issue has never been ‘do you create a Palestinian state overnight.’ The issue is ‘do you create a process and a framework that gives the Palestinians hope, the possibility that down the road they have a secure state of their own standing side by side with a secure and fully recognized Jewish state of Israel,” he says.

“It’s not just my estimation, but it’s hard to envision how that happens based on the prime minister’s statements,” he adds.

“Up until this year the premise has been … as difficult as it was, as challenging as it was, the possibility of two states living side by side in peace and security could marginalize more extreme elements, bring together folks at the center with some common sense, and we could resolve what has been a vexing issue and one that is ultimately a threat to Israel as well,” he says.

“And that possibility seems very dim, and that may trigger then reactions by the Palestinians that in turn elicits counter reactions by the Israelis and that could end up leading to a downward spiral for relations that will be dangerous for everybody and bad for everybody.”

Obama goes on to say that the US is still committed to Israel’s security and keeping Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region.

He also says no decision will made about shifting Washington’s policy of shielding Israel at the United Nations until the government is formed.