Leave Abbas, take the glassagna: 7 things to know for June 24

1. Sunday will see Trump princeling Jared Kushner leave, and actual Prince William arrive in the region.

• Whereas William is trying to avoid politics, Kushner spent the weekend discussing his father-in-law’s “deal of the century” with Netanyahu, only taking a break for Shabbat.
• Kushner also found time to give an interview to East Jerusalem news outlet al-Quds, which is seen as his attempt to reach out to Palestinians without meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The interview is being published Sunday in Arabic, but his press people were sure to send out a transcript in English to journalists, hoping the word gets around.
• Among other things, Kushner tells al-Quds that he’s ready to work with Abbas, if the Palestinian leader is willing, but that the Americans are not going to “chase him.”
• He also accuses the Palestinian leadership of avoiding him because they are “scared we will release our peace plan and the Palestinian people will actually like it because it will lead to new opportunities for them to have a much better life.”
• Much of the interview, though, is dedicated to encouraging Palestinians to reject their leaders’ rejection of the peace plan.
• “Without the people pushing the politicians to focus on their needs and giving them the courage to take a chance, this will never be solved,” he says.
• “Show your leadership that you support efforts to achieve peace. Let them know your priorities and give them the courage to keep an open mind towards achieving them. Don’t let your leadership reject a plan they haven’t even seen.”

2. But even those who have the seen the plan are apparently rejecting parts of it. Haaretz’s Zvi Bar’el reports that Kushner’s attempt to drum up support in Egypt and Jordan raised some hackles, specifically with Saudi ideas.

• “Egypt doesn’t support the Saudi idea of Abu Dis as the Palestinian capital, and … any economic plan for Gaza won’t be a substitute for a diplomatic plan accepted by the Palestinians,” he writes.
• “King Abdullah of Jordan … is worried mainly about the Saudi intent to remove Jordan’s patronage at the holy places in Jerusalem, which it was promised in the Israel-Jordan peace agreement. Jordan is also worried about Israeli control over the Jordan Valley as part of a peace agreement.”

3. Israelis are taking a keen interest in elections in Turkey — unsurprising given the country’s place as Israel’s worst enemy who is also an ally, trading partner and top-notch vacation destination. Most papers are playing up the election as one that will determine not only the president, but the whole country’s fate.

• Israel Hayom columnist Eldad Beck writes that comparisons between strongman leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Adolf Hitler are apt: “Erdogan has done away with or subordinated to his will the leadership of the army, the judicial system, education and the media and has become a megalomaniac despot and anti-Semitic inciter … He’s turned Turkey into a country where radical nationalism combined with religious fanaticism brought about an internal collapse and increased tension between the various population groups in Turkish society.”
• Haaretz notes that the Turkish strongman is looking the most vulnerable he has in years, thanks to “a liberal, poetry-writing, 54-year-old former physics teacher with a sense of humor” aka Muharrem Ince.
• Yedioth Ahronoth’s correspondent in Ankara reports that Erdogan is expected to lose his majority in parliament, which will tie his hands somewhat, but columnist Smadar Peri says despite Israel’s wishes, he’ll probably remain in power: “Assuming there are no surprises, Israel will have to keep quiet until Erdogan decides the time has come to improve ties again.”

4. In The Guardian, Simon Tisdale writes that “past attempts to improve relations with Israel have been abandoned in favour of resumed, politically expedient enmity, justified most recently by Erdoğan’s claim to care about dead Palestinians in Gaza.”

• It was recognition of Erdogan wanting Israel as an enemy to boost him in the polls that led Israel to abandon an attempt to recognize the Armenian genocide earlier this month.
• Once Erdogan wins, it will be interesting to see if Israel — which has always been wary of losing a potential ally, even one as stridently anti-Israel as Turkey — will once again push ahead with the recognition. Should he lose, it’s likely Israel will shelve the bill indefinitely in the hopes of forging positive ties with the new leader.

5. To the surprise of nobody, the battle over an indictment against Sara Netanyahu and Netanyahu family consigliere Ezra Saidoff has turned as nasty as a piece of glass in a plate of lasagna.

• Netanyahu, wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attempted to defend herself in the media over the weekend, releasing a letter from a worker apologizing for accidentally allowing shards of glass to somehow get in food served to the family.
• The glass had apparently come from a jar that fell to the ground, after the worker poured the sauce thinking all the glass had been caught and cleaned: “There was a lot of work pressure,” reads the letter, released to Hadashot news. “I have no idea how the pieces of glass got into the sauce. The jar [containing the sauce] was in a bag [and apparently fell], and when I picked it up, I saw it was a little broken… but I only used the clean part for the sauce.”
• The letter is apparently meant to back the claim that the food needed to be ordered out, as Sara Netanyahu is accused of doing while illegally charging it to the state, though it does not explain why they opted to keep the house cook around and order food, as having both seems to be the root of the problem.
• Yedioth Ahronoth’s Itamar Eichner, who notes on Twitter Saturday night that he wrote about the story in 2013 when it happened, writes that despite the letter, Sara Netanyahu fired the worker — a single mom of four who had worked there for 10 years — on the spot. Saidoff, feeling bad for her, quickly found her work as a cleaner elsewhere in the PM’s office.
• “I could have gone to the media, but I chose not to, to not make trouble for them,” he quotes the woman saying.
• Eichner also reports on Twitter that at nearby Sushi Rechavia, the Netanyahus would sometimes order 3-4 times a day — son Yair would order, he would finish or throw away the rest, and then dad Benjamin would get hungry and order some more — all on the state’s dime.

6. Other sordid details to emerge over the weekend were the ticky tack things Netanyahu would allegedly ask to be reimbursed for, including money so her son could get the 24/7 Big Brother channel in his bedroom at the Netanyahus’ private home, according to Hadashot news.

• Meanwhile, Channel 10 news is reporting that Saidoff accused Netanyahu of lying about a cleaner sent to take care of her ailing father, that she had Saidoff have the state pay for. “I understand that she deceived me,” he’s quoted as telling investigators.”

7. A car-ramming Saturday night seemed to be a return to the bad old days of near-daily terror attacks in the West Bank.

• Israel Hayom calls it a terror attack, without even the requisite “suspected,” but a few hours after the incident, questions began to be raised over whether the ramming was intentional.
• While the IDF said they were searching for the driver, and told ToI at midnight that they had not heard of anybody turning himself in, it seems that the driver had in fact turned himself in shortly after the crash, according to Hadashot news, which publishes a video of the man giving himself up.
• A message from residents of the Hussan, where the crash happened, published on Facebook by Likud MK Yehudah Glick, also raises doubts over whether the crash was terror.
• “Immediately following the accident, local Palestinian residents rendered assistance to the soldiers and called for a Palestinian ambulance. The driver gave himself up to the police and stated that it was an accident and he was afraid that if he stayed, he would have been shot by the soldiers (which would probably have happened),” the message reads. “We have warned the army commanders of the dangers for the soldiers walking in middle of the local streets. The streets are dark with lots of blind bends and the drivers don’t exactly stay in their lanes, so an accident like this was waiting to happen. We actually reported the problem about soldiers we saw and just missed hitting in the light of day. At night, the situation is so much worse.”
• Indeed, in a very graphic video posted online (really, it’s graphic), one can hear a Palestinian woman calling for an ambulance as others appear to try and help the soldiers.

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