Boring into Lebanon: 10 things to know for December 19

1. New intelligence on Hezbollah? The UN Security Council will meet later Wednesday to discuss the situation in the Middle East, including the tunnels Israel has discovered under the Lebanese border, which it says were dug by the Hezbollah terror group.

• Previewing the meeting, Israel Hayom reports that Israel will point an accusatory finger at Lebanon for what allegedly cooperating with Hezbollah on the tunnel project.
• The paper reports Israeli envoy Danny Danon will present what he calls “conclusive proof” of the link between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah, “and will claims that the cooperation between the two is what allows the terror group to try and harm the anti-tunnel operation.”
• It also says Danon will present unpublicized intelligence showing other Hezbollah breaches of UN Resolution 1701.

2. PR push: Haaretz notes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli diplomats this week that “the goal of exposing the tunnels was also to lead a diplomatic initiative against Hezbollah.”

• Just ahead of the meeting Netanyahu tells journalists that Israel holds Lebanon accountable, even though he admits that Beirut likely did not know about the tunnel building.
• “The fact that the Lebanese army is doing nothing means that they are either unable, or unwilling, or both,” he says.
• The press conference is given in English, i.e., for an international audience, and thus part of the same PR drive that the tunnel operation has been wrapped up in.
• It’s also likely no coincidence that many journalists are being given their first peek at the tunnels Wednesday afternoon.

3. The Russian connection: Netanyahu also says he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin “the other day” to discuss the upcoming UN Security Council meeting on the cross-border attack tunnels.

• “And I asked that Russia take the right stance, which is to condemn Hezbollah, and not be either supportive of them or neutral on this,” he says.
• Yedioth Ahronoth reports that a high-level Russian delegation will also be arriving in Israel and will tour the tunnels, in a move that the paper describes as representing a thaw in tense ties between Jerusalem and Moscow.
• “Officials in Jerusalem say in the last few days there has been a marked attempt by Russia to put ties with Israel back on track,” the paper reports, pointing to Moscow demanding that Lebanon uphold UN Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War and is intended to keep the border quiet.

4. ‘Deep concerns’: The meeting comes at the request of Israel and the US, but it’s not clear if cherished US Ambassador Nikki Haley will actually be there, as she told a more general discussion on the Mideast at the Security Council a day earlier that it would be her last appearance.

• Nonetheless, the US is backing Israel in opposing Hezbollah, with an official telling Reuters that “we continue to have deep concerns regarding Hezbollah’s growing political power inside Lebanon.”

5. US recognizing Israeli settlements? At the Tuesday meeting, Haley previewed the as-yet unreleased Trump peace plan and took what Emirates-based The National calls “a parting shot” at the body for its “biased obsession” with Israel.

• Haley also said that the program “recognizes that realities on the ground in the Middle East have changed in powerful and important ways.”
• Israel Hayom interprets that to mean that “Haley hinted that the plan will make peace with the existence of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.”

6. But will that stance play in Peoria? The New York Times editorial board is taking aim at federal legislation that would make it illegal to support a boycott of Israel, offering support not only for free speech but for the movement’s overall goals.

• The legislation is “testing America’s bedrock principles of freedom of speech and political dissent,” the paper writes, blaming Netanyahu’s “hard-line policies “ for “fueling the boycott movement.”
• “It’s not just Israel’s adversaries who find the movement appealing. Many devoted supporters of Israel, including many American Jews, oppose the occupation of the West Bank and refuse to buy products of the settlements in occupied territories. Their right to protest in this way must be vigorously defended,” the editorial reads.
• While that conflates boycotts of the settlements with boycotts of Israel, it’s not clear whether that is covered by the legislation, though Israel itself has sought to conflate the two, such as when it accuses Airbnb of giving in to BDS by delisting settlement homes even though it says it is vigorously opposed to boycotts of Israel as a whole.
• The boycott law is also facing major legal challenges at the state level, with the ACLU filing suit against the state on behalf of four people who were fired for refusing to sign a statement that they don’t boycott Israel.
• That’s a day after another woman near Austin filed a lawsuit against the state and her local school district for the same reason.
• Haaretz notes,“Over the past year, federal courts have frozen the implementation of two similar laws in Arizona and Kansas, because of constitutional concerns. In Kansas, the law was amended in order to ensure that it will affect only companies, not individual citizens.”

7. No justice, no peace: The Wall Street Journal reports that the Jamal Khashoggi killing may have set back efforts for Israel and Riyadh to forge more open ties.

• According to the report, two top Saudi officials removed from office following international backlash to Khashoggi’s killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul were key figures in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s efforts for warmer ties with the Jewish state.
• One of those people, Saud al-Qahtani, was recently named by The Washington Post as a key figure in attempting to buy Israeli technology in order to track dissidents and other perceived enemies of the kingdom.

8. No sympathy for settlers: Haaretz’s Gideon Levy is facing some backlash for a recent column in which he said he could not sympathize when West Bank settlers were killed in terror attacks.

• In Haaretz, James Adler repeats several times that he has no sympathy for the settler movement, but still objects to the lack of humanity seemingly shown by Levy.
• “I have zero sympathy for the political settlement movement – in fact, I bear vehement political hostility to it. But on the human level, my sympathy for innocent civilian victims and their families and loved ones is, well, infinite. Just as my human sympathy for the – many – Palestinian victims in this conflict is, well, also infinite,” writes Adler.
• In the Times of Israel’s blogs section, Sherri Mandel, who is a settler and also a bereaved mother who lost her young child in a terror attack over a decade ago, takes aim at Levy’s claim of settlers’ “appetite for revenge,” after attacks (which indeed was on display in some places in the last week.)
• “Don’t tell my family about a lust for revenge. In 2002, we began Camp Koby, a sleepaway camp for children whose loved ones died in terror attacks. We offer them art and drama therapy, yoga, swimming, singing — healing and community. We’ve been running these camps for 18 years. We’ve helped thousands of children,” she writes.

9. Right conclusion, wrong survey: At a conference put on by the Globes financial daily, Netanyahu claimed that a survey by media industry news site The 7th Eye found that Walla coverage during a time when he has been accused of pulling the strings illegal for positive coverage was actual negative overall.

• Responding to the claim, the 7th Eye shoots back that the survey cited by Netanyahu was from the lead-up to the 2015 elections, i.e., before he did all the stuff he is accused of.
• “By no coincidence, Netanyahu’s distortions from the truth, the gaps between what he says and reality, serve to justify his claims against Case 4000,” the site’s Tomer Persico writes.

10. Spiraling heights: For urban planning and architecture nerds like myself, the design for Tel Aviv’s 4th Azrieli tower has been revealed, a 91-story behemoth.

• Though it follows the other three towers in the project, which are a circle, a square and a triangle, the fourth will not be a rhombus, but rather what designers call “a spiral.”
• “We asked how to do something that will stand in harmony with its surroundings but with its own character,” Dana Azrieli of the Azrieli family says in a quote carried by financial daily Calcalist.
• To me, though, it looks like a roll of Saran Wrap that has gotten bunched up.

• More towers means more traffic means more parking nightmares, but a pair of researchers at Tel Aviv University think they have a solution, ToI’s Shoshanna Solomon writes: a premium pricing algorithm.
• “The algorithm the researchers have developed may guarantee more uniform parking occupancy, filling spots in less lucrative areas and relieving the pressure on high-demand neighborhoods, they said in a statement, adding that a smartphone app that uses the algorithm can offer a ‘practical solution to the problem of bottleneck parking in low supply areas and empty lots outside the immediate sphere of demand,’” she reports.