Just say no: 11 things to know for March 15

Labor had to be convinced to decline early elections; Abbas is reportedly repeating famous ‘nos’ from the past and Olmert is a Negative Nancy to everyone but his prison chums

By Joshua Davidovich

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15 March 2018, 9:27 am

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Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor

1. It took until 2:30 a.m., but the Knesset finally passed the 2019 budget Thursday morning, allowing lawmakers to take off for Passover break secure in the knowledge that the government will live on. Even the opposition.

Haaretz reports that things could have gone very differently had Labor Party chief Avi Gabbay not been convinced by colleagues in the opposition that going to elections now is a bad idea, since it would allow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to run before he is possibly indicted, creating a wacky situation in which the opposition actually helped save the government.
“In closed-door conversations, Zionist Union members don’t regret the party decision that paved the way to Netanyahu’s continued rule until 2019. Senior party figures believe that preventing early elections and waiting for the attorney general’s decision on whether to indict Netanyahu was the right thing to do,” the paper reports.
The paper also indicates that Gabbay made a rookie mistake in not listening to advice that he only support elections in the fall, and insisting they be held as early as possible at first (allowing Netanyahu to make fun of the opposition for flip-flopping over whether to support dissolving the Knesset). “This was intuitively right, but a political mistake,” a source close to Gabbay is quoted telling the paper.
Israel Hayom’s autopsy of the early elections that almost were concludes that “Everyone was left happy (almost),” with Gabbay and the rest of the opposition ending up looking a fool.
“Even if he was strategically correct, the move came across as dithering and cowardice. The prime minister identified and took advantage of it to mock them, which did not help Gabbay, who is already sinking in the polls,” the paper writes.
In al-Monitor, Mazal Muallem notes that Netanyahu may have come out seemingly unscathed, but his “natural partners became much less committed to him after he clearly didn’t consider them at all in a move intended only to improve his personal situation.”

2. If Netanyahu is in fact indicted and jailed, he’d be the second prime minister in a row, after Ehud Olmert. Yedioth previews Olmert’s tell-all, in which he speaks up about his time in the clink and lets loose at everyone and everything.

Some highlights include his “Goodfellas”-esque account of his time behind bars with former cronies: “Before we go to bed Dani Dankner gives everyone a piece of chocolate … We take turns cleaning. Dani is the boss … when it’s my turn to mop the hallway, I mop. When we need to cut vegetables for a salad, I do the best I can.”

Olmert also fires wildly at former aide Shula Zaken, who put him behind bars, saying he thinks she took money she hasn’t owned up to; at Netanyahu, whose hair he makes fun of; and at Netanyahu’s wife, Sara: “It’s good for the children of Jerusalem that Ms. Netanyahu barely ever shows up to her job [as an educational psychologist].”

3. The budget that was allowed to pass as part of the coalition deal is being touted as the largest ever, at over NIS 400 billion.

While the coalition is crowing about how great it is for everybody, Yedioth notes that a state comptroller report found NIS 20 billion being put into “reserves,” while elderly Israelis unable to make ends are being told there’s almost nothing in the coffers to help them out.
The paper notes that “reserves” doesn’t necessarily mean a rainy day fund but actually money that is being dispersed with little transparency as a form of petty cash. “The auditor finds a treasure of NIS 20 billion that the government hid in the budget, and to the elderly they say there is nothing and give a measly NIS 6 extra,” MK Itzik Shmuli is quoted as saying.

4. In Bloomberg, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, who pushed through the budget, is described as the “Arabic speaker who might one day lead Israel.”

The moniker might seem strange, given the fact that most polls show Kahlon barely staying in the Knesset the next time elections roll around, and even the wire service admits that he’s forfeited much in his bid to drive down prices, seeing little success, especially in the housing sector. “His election slogan was ‘I will reduce housing prices,’ and he is completely failing,” Prof. Omer Moav is quoted as saying.

5. One mostly overlooked part of the coalition deal is the agreement to push ahead the nation-state law, which comes under fire Thursday as a way of legislating Arabs as second-class citizens.

“Despite the concessions and omissions made in the bill’s last draft, the new approved version also confirms that it is a bad, unnecessary proposal,” Haaretz’s lead editorial reads.
“The version of the bill approved this week doesn’t mention terms such as ‘equality,’ ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ and does not cite the declaration of independence,” Yossi Dahan writes in Yedioth, calling the bill “one of the worst things to come out of” the coalition deal.

6. Israel Hayom harks back 51 years to the Khartoum Resolution against negotiating with Israel, reporting that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has updated the three famous “nos”: no to resetting ties with the US, no to Trump’s “deal of the century,” and no to “preventing a diplomatic intifada against Israel by joining international organizations” (which is really a yes, but who’s counting).

The paper says Abbas’s stance stems from US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem.
But columnist Oded Granot questions that assumption: “One might think for a moment that had Trump not recognized Jerusalem the Palestinians would be rushing to the negotiating table and sitting seriously to solve the conflict once and for all, willing to make a deal and make concessions. But the sorry truth is that Abbas avoids any negotiations that might entail flexibility along the way.”

7. Border tensions seemed to take a far back seat while the coalition crisis was running rampant, but now that it’s shelved, it seems security is once again a concern, after bombs were set off along the Gaza border, targeting IDF patrols.

Nobody was injured, but the army quickly retaliated with tank fire. There is no confirmation, but some on Twitter report two Gazans killed from the shelling.

8. Hours earlier, the White House released its official statement on its save Gaza confab, which was boycotted by the Palestinians.

“The nations and entities represented at the conference have the ability to work together and make a difference. The dialogue will continue, in the coming days, in close coordination with other stakeholders, as all parties take tangible steps toward making meaningful improvements in the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza,” part of the statement reads.

9. The Sunday Morning Herald reports that Rabbi Yitzhak Dovid Grossman decided to pull his support for an accused Australian child molester in Israeli court not after he realized it might be a bad thing to do, but after he realized his institution might lose money.

“Rabbi Grossman’s group claims to endorse child protection, and sources have told Fairfax Media many key funders, particularly in the United States, demanded that Grossman retract his support for [the suspect],” the paper reports.

10. While the woman facing extradition (who can’t be named in Israeli media) awaits her fate, many others in Israel — African asylum seekers — are also waiting to see if they will be booted from the country.

A response to a court petition on Wednesday saw the state admitting that its plan could not withstand a legal challenge, thus freezing the deportations until a new plan is formulated.
In the meantime, some thousand families in Israel are offering to give the migrants refuge and hide them from authorities, with some 30 people placed with “sanctuary” families so far, The Times of Israel’s Melanie Lidman reports.
“The main concern of Miklat Israel is trying to buy time for asylum seekers,” one organizer says. “We believe there will be a change in policy because of the great response of Israeli society and because [deportations] are such a non-Jewish thing to do.”

11. For Israelis who are looking to get away on purpose, Air India has revealed its ad campaign for direct flights between Delhi and Tel Aviv, flying over Saudi Arabia. The poster mentions the shorter seven-hour flight time, but without pointing out the groundbreaking route.