Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s events as they unfolded.
Livni’s departure from the political arena is met with a flood of statements from opposition lawmakers who unanimously agree it was a loss and that she would be missed.
“Livni made a courageous step and Israeli politics is losing a worthy and significant person,” commented opposition chief Shelly Yachimovich of the Labor party. “I saw her as a partner in striving for peace and safeguarding democracy. I’m sure Livni will continue serving the country outside the Knesset as well and wish her luck.”
Meretz party leader Tamar Zandberg called Livni “a bright spot in a dark and racist Knesset,” saying she was particularly impressed with “her path from the deep right-wing to one of the most prominent pro-peace, pro-democracy and anti-incitement voices even while others remained silent.”
“She will no doubt be missed in the next Knesset,” she said, but added she was confident Livni wasn’t gone for good.
“I sat with Tzipi Livni in the cabinet, I sat with her in the opposition,” says Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid. “We did not agree on everything, but I appreciate honesty and reason. I appreciate the fact that she has a clear moral compass and the fact that she always stayed true to her identity, even when it was difficult. Israeli politics is losing a clear and important voice today. I wish her much success.”
MK Orly Levy-Abekasis is in advanced negotiations to unite her Gesher party with Israel Resilience for a joint slate in the coming Knesset elections, Hebrew media reports.
Gesher sources say that unless something “dramatic” happens the alliance will go ahead, the Ynet website reports..
Last week Levy-Abekasis emphatically denied she was in negotiations with Gantz. Days earlier she had slammed Gantz’s party platform saying it was so badly written that her son could have done better when he was 12.
The progress towards unity came after Gantz committed Israel Resilience to implementing Gesher’s social issues plan and agreeing that the party would be a full partner to negotiations to form a future coalition, and would receive cabinet ministries responsible for social affairs, Ynet says.
Following the reports, the Likud party released a statement saying that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was working to ensure a unity deal between various right-wing parties, but not necessarily his own Likud, to prevent “wasted votes” on the right.
Police have arrested five Palestinians who clashed with Israeli forces on the Temple Mount.
According to police, officers arrived at the compound to prevent entry into the Gate of Mercy area.
The activists forcibly broke through the locked gate and proceeded to pray there.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declines to say if he had nominated US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, though he also emphasized he did not deny doing so.
Trump’s assertion Friday that Abe had nominated him for the honor and sent him a copy of the letter has raised criticism in Japan.
Questioned in parliament about Trump’s claim that he had done so, Abe says, “In light of the Nobel committee’s policy of not disclosing recommenders and nominees for 50 years, I decline to comment.”
Neither the prime minister nor his spokesman denied Trump’s comment.
— AP
The Israeli military tests its automated system for calling up reservists, in what it says is a planned exercise aimed at improving preparedness.
Beginning early this morning, reservist soldiers were contacted by the Israel Defense Forces’ automated phone system, the army says.
The reservists were not required to report for duty. The test was to ensure the phone system functioned properly, according to the IDF.
The military said the exercise was part of its 2019 training calendar “and is meant to preserve the fitness of our forces and their readiness.”
In recent months, the IDF has faced increasing criticism and scrutiny amid allegations by former military ombudsman Maj. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Brick that the army, especially its ground troops, were not prepared for a large-scale war.
— Judah Ari Gross
Labor chairman Avi Gabbay, who abruptly ended his Zionist Union partnership with Tzipi Livni in front of live cameras last month, lauds the Hatnua leader in a statement released following the latter’s retirement from politics.
“Tzipi Livni is a central partner in a camp that believes in the rule of law, a political solution (to the conflict), and the preservation of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” says Gabbay.
“Despite the disagreements between us, on this day I would like to thank her and appreciate her contribution to the state. We will continue to wave the flags of peace and democracy.”
A Jerusalem District Court judge rejects an appeal from the defense team of Malka Leifer that their client be released to house arrest for the remainder of extradition proceedings against her.
Yehuda Fried and Tal Gabbai, the two attorneys on behalf of the woman facing 74 charges of sexual abuse in Australia, assert in court that her detention over the past year has caused her mental state to deteriorate to the point where it is “life threatening.”
Judge Ram Vinograd says he could not release her on medical grounds unless he received an updated psychiatric opinion regarding her condition. He recommended placing Leifer in a psychiatric institution where she could be evaluated prior to a follow-up hearing two weeks later where he’d make his decision.
Both sides reject the proposal saying the process has dragged on long enough and that several district psychiatric reports have already been submitted on the matter — the most recent of which deemed that Leifer was mentally fit to remain behind bars and continue facing extradition hearings.
Labor chairman Avi Gabbay offered former Haim Jelin the number ten spot on his party’s list, but the Yesh Atid MK declined the offer, Channel 12 reports.
Jelin quit the Yesh Atid party last week after chairman Yair Lapid reshuffled the slate to make room for incoming candidates in a manner that placed Jelin at a spot unlikely to make it into the next Knesset.
The IDF soldier moderately injured in clashes along the northern Gaza border on Sunday night, has been identified as Yoadd Zaguri, who enlisted as a lone soldier from Los Angeles.
Zaguri is currently sedated and hooked up to a respirator after shrapnel from an explosive device hurled at soldiers struck him in the neck.
His girlfriend tells Channel 12 that Zaguri fought to enlist despite objections from his parents and bureaucratic obstacles he faced upon arrival.
A double bomb attack killed 13 people, including 10 civilians, in Syria’s jihadist-held city of Idlib, a war monitor says.
The first blast was caused by a bomb planted under a car in the main city of the Idlib region, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.
After ambulances arrived at the site, a motorcycle bomb then detonated, the Britain-based monitoring group says.
There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which the Observatory said also wounded at least 25.
Idlib, the last major part of Syria still outside the control of the regime of President Bashar Assad, is held by an alliance led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took administrative control of the whole of the region last month, after overpowering smaller Turkey-backed factions.
The Islamic State group also has sleeper cells in the area.
— AFP
Despite historic meetings Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has held in recent months with Omani leader Sultan Qaboos bin Said and most recently with Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi, the latter asserts that Oman will not normalize its relations with Israel until a sovereign Palestinian state has been established.
Asked to describe the status of the warming relations, bin Alawi says “there is no normalization of relations with Israel, but rather an ongoing diplomatic process aimed at finding a peaceful solution to the Palestinian problem.”
“The establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state is a condition for any normalization with the Israelis.”
The mayor of the southern city of Beersheba says he turned down Labor chief Avi Gabbay’s offer of a guaranteed place on the opposition party’s slate of candidates for April’s Knesset elections.
According to the Ynet news site, Gabbay offered Ruvik Danilovich the number two spot on Labor’s electoral list, which is reserved for a candidate of the party leader’s choosing. The 10th and 16th spots are also reserved for Gabbay’s discretion.
Poland has pulled out of a summit in Jerusalem, triggering the collapse of the entire meeting, after the acting Israeli foreign minister said that Poles “collaborated with the Nazis” and “suckled anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”
The developments mark a new low in a bitter conflict between Poland and Israel over how to remember and characterize Polish actions toward Jews during the German occupation of Poland in World War II.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been due to meet with the leaders of four Central European nations known as the Visegrad group. With the Hungarian and Slovak prime ministers already in Israel and the Czech leader still planning to go, bilateral meetings were to go ahead instead.
— AP
Arab and Ethiopian women in Israel earn less than half of the average salary and are the most disadvantaged groups in the country’s job market, according to a survey of minorities in the labor market released today.
Overall, women’s salaries are fifty-nine percent of men’s salaries in Israel.
The annual Employment Diversity Index, put out by the Ministry of Labor, Tel Aviv University and the Equal Opportunities Commission at the Prime Minister’s Office, offers a bleak picture of employment opportunities for minorities in Israel, especially minority women.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stresses the importance of bipartisan support for Israel in the US.
Speaking to American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, he acknowledges “growing opposition in some parts.”
At the same time, he stresses that support for Israel is at an all-time high.
“What’s important is that this support, which is stronger than ever, remains bipartisan,” he tells delegates of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization’s annual Israel mission.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has invited Jewish Home leaders Rafi Peretz and Bezalel Smotrich to a meeting in Jerusalem to discuss the possibility of them merging with additional far right-wing parties, such as Otzma Yehudit or Yachad.
Netanyahu has been placing immense pressure on the Jewish Home leaders, who themselves agreed to unite their factions last week, to further expand their party. The leaders have reportedly been hesitant of scaring away more moderate voters with such a merger and have pressed Netanyahu as to why he isn’t interested in taking in Otzma Yehudit or Yachad himself into the Likud party.
Bezalel Smotrich tells the Kan public broadcaster that he has declined an invitation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a meet at his Jerusalem office with fellow Jewish home leader Rafi Peretz to discuss the possibility of them merging with additional far right-wing parties, such as Otzma Yehudit or Yachad.
The leaders of Poland’s Jewish community express anger, saying they were offended by the words of newly appointed acting foreign minister Israel Katz, who quoted late prime minister Yitzhak Shamir who once said Poles “suckle anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”
Michael Schudrich, Poland’s chief rabbi, and Monika Krawczyk, chair of the board of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, write in an open letter that Katz’s words harmed them as Jews living in Poland.
“It is a fact that some Poles participated either actively or passively in murderous acts by Nazis against the Jews, but we remember also that the Polish government did not collaborate officially with the Third Reich,” Schudrich and Krawczyk write.
MK Robert Ilatov announces that he will not run on the Yisrael Beytenu list in the upcoming elections.
Party chairman Avigdor Liberman is slated to announce his slate tomorrow.
Ilatov has served in the Knesset since 2006.
Yesh Atid announces its list for the upcoming Knesset elections.
Meir Cohen, who was placed at four in the last elections has moved up two spots. Faction head Ofer Shelach has moved up from six to three. New members in the top 20 include Orna Barbivai, Ram Ben Barak, Idan Roll and Tehila Friedman-Nachalon.
1. Yair Lapid
2. Meir Cohen
3. Ofer Shelah
4. Orna Barbivai
5. Yael German
6. Karine Elharrar
7. Yoel Razvozov
8. Mickey Levy
9. Elazar Stern
10. Pnina Tamano Shata
11. Ram Ben Barak
12. Yoav Segalovitz
13. Boaz Toporovsky
14. Idan Roll
15. Yorai Lahav Hertzanu
16. Aliza Lavie
17. Tehila Friedman-Nachalon
18. Moshe (Kinley) Tur Paz
19. Zehorit Sorek
20. Anat Knafo
The Central Elections Committee has ruled that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party are barred from publishing social media photos of the premier alongside IDF soldiers.
The decision is made five days after the committee issued a temporary injunction preventing the measure as it considered a petition by the Labor party. Then, Netanyahu mocked the interim decision as “amusing” in a video to his social media followers, ahead of his visit to a Navy base in Haifa — after which his office did release photos of Netanyahu with the troops.
The parliament in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region has elected its first-ever woman speaker as a temporary stop-gap, while deep political rifts persist more than four months after legislative elections.
During the body’s first session since the September polls, deputies chose Vala Farid from former regional leader Massud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
The head of the KDP bloc Haimim Hawrami says Farid was appointed “temporarily” until a deal can be reached with the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party on a permanent appointment.
Lawmakers from the PUK, the party of former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, have boycotted today’s session.
— AFP
A Dutch court has fined a company and sentenced three men to community service for illegally exporting to Iran gas turbine parts that could be used in the manufacture of weapons.
The court in the southern province of Limburg, has convicted Euroturbine BV of setting up shell construction companies aimed at circumventing Dutch export license requirements that were tightened in 2009. The Dutch company was fined 500,000 euros ($565,383) and a Bahrain-based subsidiary 350,000 euros ($395,800).
The court says the shell companies were set up “so that gas turbine parts could still be sold to clients in Iran.” It did not publicly identify the clients.
For their roles in the export scam, the company’s director, an indirect shareholder, and an employee have been sentenced to perform unpaid community service.
— AP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering adding the chairman of the far-right Yachad party, Eli Yishai to his Likud list, Channel 13 reports.
Yishai’s slate did not receive enough votes in the last election to pass the electoral threshold. He is known for ardently homophobic views, which also risk scaring away more liberal Likud voters, such as those who support openly gay MK Amir Ohana.
The trial of a Frenchman accused of shooting dead four people at the Jewish museum of Belgium has been briefly interrupted as police were summoned to question a juror.
“We cannot start the closing arguments under these conditions,” Judge Laurence Massart says, after recusing the juror for having communicated with outside parties.
“The sixth juror contacted police officials on Friday afternoon to say he met with parties not heard in this trial with whom he discussed the case file,” she adds.
The juror related to the court that he was approached by a colleague at work who said she was a witness to the assault and shared an elaborate conspiracy theory involving the Belgian foreign minister.
“This is probably a person in search of attention,” says Sebastien Courtoy, the lawyer for the accused Mehdi Nemmouche, referring to the juror’s work colleague.
French national Nemmouche, 33, the accused jihadist gunman, faces life in prison if convicted of the “terrorist murder” of four people during the anti-Semitic attack on May 24, 2014.
The trial, which began on January 10, was scheduled to hear closing arguments Monday after witness testimonies ended on Friday. A verdict is expected in early March.
— AFP
Police have made progress in the investigation of a mysterious murder of an elderly couple in Jerusalem, and have interrogated several suspects in recent days.
Investigators questioned acquaintances of the victims, Yehuda Kaduri, 71, and his wife Tamar, 68, suggesting the killing had a criminal background, according to Hebrew media reports.
Police are expected to make arrests in the case in the coming days, the Haaretz daily reports.
The bodies of the Kaduris were found January 13 in their apartment in the southern Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of Jerusalem with signs of violence, including stab wounds, in an apparent double homicide.
Despite an ongoing police investigation into whether Deputy Health Chairman Yaakov Litzman illicitly sought to prevent the extradition of Malka Leifer, the United Torah Judaism leader will remain the head of the ultra-Orthodox party.
UTJ has finalized its list for the upcoming elections and Litzman still remains at the top.
Menachem Mendel Shafran, the rabbi who appeared at Malka Leifer’s bail hearing today on the alleged sexual predator’s behalf, wrote a letter to Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked last year urging her not to sign off on the 51-year-old’s extradition, the Kan public broadcaster reports.
Shafran wrote that transporting the mother of eight to Australia, where she currently faces 74 charges of sexual abuse, would place her in danger.
The rabbi claimed that the “culture” in Australian women’s prisons is very different from those in Israel and the likelihood that Leifer would be targeted is much greater. He said that the Australian authorities might even try and scapegoat the alleged sex abuser upon her arrival and not give her a fair trial.
At Leifer’s bail hearing today, her attorney put forth a proposal that Leifer be released to house arrest in the home of one of two female Hasidic high school principals in Bnei Brak, who would keep an eye on her. Shafran, had given his blessing to the idea and the three were present at the courtroom.
However, the judge rejected the request to release Leifer on bail and she will continue to remain behind bars for the remainder of the extradition hearings against her.
Islamic State group jihadists defending their last remaining territory in Syria have no choice but to surrender, a Kurdish-led force says, ahead of a victory declaration expected within days.
The warning by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) comes as European nations reacted coolly to a US call to repatriate European nationals in Syria, which Germany said would be “extremely difficult.”
Diehard IS fighters are now trapped in their last patch of territory of less than half a square kilometer in the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border.
— AFP
A mortar is fired at southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, landing in an open field and causing no injuries or damage, the local government says.
According to the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council, the projectile did not trigger sirens, likely as it was not headed for a populated area.
— Judah Ari Gross
Denying claims from local government, the military says there was not a mortar shell fired at southern Israel from the Gaza Strip earlier this evening.
“Despite the reports, no projectile was launched from the [Gaza] Strip at Israeli territory,” the army says.
The Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council, which claimed a mortar shell had hit an open field in its territory, retracts its statement and acknowledged that no projectile had been fired.
A spokesperson for the region does not immediately provide an explanation for the confusion.
— Judah Ari Gross
