Let’s not make a deal: 8 things to know for July 30

1. Is the vaunted but not-yet-announced Trump administration Israeli-Palestinian peace plan already dead in the water? Saudi support for the US push had been all but assumed, but reports late Sunday cast serious doubts on Riyadh’s commitment to US President Donald Trump’s deal.

• Reuters reports that the Saudi king has reassured allies that he will not endorse any proposal that doesn’t address Jerusalem or Palestinian refugees’ right of return to Israel.
• While Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, largely seen to be pulling the strings in Riyadh, had apparently expressed support to Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner, King Salman has apparently reined him in and made him stop backing the plan because of Trump’s decision to “give” Jerusalem to Israel off the bat.
• “The US mistake was they thought one country could pressure the rest to give in, but it’s not about pressure. No Arab leader can concede on Jerusalem or Palestine,” says an Arab diplomat in Riyadh extensively quoted in the piece.
• The diplomat also says that Kushner’s efforts have amounted to little, with the neophyte diplomat seemingly out of his league.
• “Nothing Kushner presented is acceptable to any of the Arab countries. He thinks he is ‘I Dream of Genie’ with a magic wand to make a new solution to the problem.”
• Haaretz reports that a diplomatic source says the Saudis told Washington that taking Jerusalem off the table killed the whole deal. “What we could do for you before Jerusalem, we won’t be able to do now,” the Saudis told the administration, according to the source.
• The reports dovetail nicely with this New Yorker story from a month ago that said essentially the same thing: “Before the Jerusalem decision, Arab leaders had told Kushner that they were prepared to pressure Abbas to accept whatever Trump offered the Palestinians, a senior Arab official said. After the decision, they told Kushner that they would no longer be able to pressure Abbas to accept the American plan, because of popular opposition.”

2. On Twitter, former negotiator Aaron David Miller says the Saudis are clueless on Jerusalem anyway, so their seeming about-face or lack of coordination between Salman and MBS is little surprise.

Saudis don’t know up from down on Jerusalem. In July 2000 when Clinton called King Abdullah to brief him on US ideas he was clueless on the difference between an inner and outer neighborhood. Guarantee you MBS knows less. No wonder Saudis are pulling back from US plan

— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) July 29, 2018

• Pollster James Zogby notes that the Saudi king’s position on not being able to be seen giving up Jerusalem is reflected in public opinion.

Reuters: “Saudi Arabia has reassured Arab allies it will not endorse any Middle East peace plan that fails to address Jerusalem’s status or refugees’ right of return". It’s not just the King’. Our polls show near unanimous Saudi support for Palestinians. https://t.co/BNC1d0C57j

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— James J. Zogby (@jjz1600) July 30, 2018

• The AFP’s Joe Dyke says recent Palestinian optimism regarding the plan’s failure seems to have been predicated on what the Saudis were telling the Palestinians and others.

Last week Husam Zomlot, Palestinian representative to the US, told us impact of Trump administration was "not as bad" as he feared. Seems this is what he was talking about https://t.co/eoXfZjDv4O

— Joe (@joedyke) July 30, 2018

• Some, meanwhile, say the report is little surprise because no one thought the administration could really pull off something like this.

Can't believe anyone still believes, or can even pretend, that Trump's Israel-Palestine peace plan is a real thing that will happen. https://t.co/uZRkE15pFr

— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) July 30, 2018

3. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the nation-state bill on Sunday and the press takes note of his use of it as a springboard to slam the left.

• “Netanyahu blames the left,” reads a headline, buried well inside of Yedioth Ahronoth.
• “On Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu was at his worst,” writes Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev. “Intentionally and maliciously, he transformed the debate over the new nation-state law into a test of loyalty.”
• But Ynet political commentator Attila Sofmavili writes on Twitter of his dismay that the left has not responded to Netanyahu’s “hate speech.”
• “The left deserves to be trampled by Netanyahu’s terrible lies. It’s nearly 12 hours since his hate speech and the flaccid opposition still has not managed to stand up to the parade of distortions of a prime minister who hates and is hated by parts of the nation,” he writes.

4. On Sunday, opposition leader Tzipi Livni repeated her claim that she offered opposition support for the bill if only the words “equality for all its citizens” were inserted, but Netanyahu did not want opposition support because he wanted to use the law to attack the left.

• The IDI’s Yohanan Plesner said the same, that the law is meant to divide people into “patriots and non-patriots.”
• “In its final, very deliberate wording, the law smacks of narrow political interest outweighing the national good. Rush-writing the nascent state’s core principles 70 years ago, amid pandemonium and with war imminent, Israel’s founders, patriots all, did a far better job,” ToI’s David Horovitz writes in an op-ed.

5. Netanyahu mouthpiece Israel Hayom presents those who are against the law as not just unpatriotic leftists but in league with Palestinian icon Ahed Tamimi, who was released from prison Sunday and mentioned what she termed the “apartheid law” in a press conference she gave.

• “Critics of the nation-state law have a presenter: Ahed Tamimi,” the paper’s front page headline reads, beside a picture of Tamimi being embraced by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
• “Suddenly it’s clear who is so bothered by the law,” writes Amnon Lord in the free daily, comparing Tamimi to Soviet “martyr” Pavlik Morozov.
• Lord aims his opprobrium everywhere, from A.B. Yehoshua to Tzipi Livni, to what he sees as a deep state conspiracy led by the Supreme Court, to even the Druze, whom he accuses of “pointing a gun at the head of the Israeli government” by opposing the bill.
• The paper also runs a column by Atta Farhat, the head of something called the Druze Zionist Council for the Land of Israel (which appears to just be Farhat and some astroturf) alleging that the Druze are being used by the left to oppose the law.
• “In the land of Israel only Jews have a right to a nation. The nation-state law does not define civilian inequality, but just the character of the state,” he writes.

6. This graphic showing the amount of time Netanyahu has spent out of the country is making the rounds after Netanyahu announced Sunday he would be going back to Colombia for the inauguration of new president Ivan Duque.

• According to the numbers compiled by TMI (which could stand for too much information), Netanyahu has been prime minister for 3,470 days (in this latest run), 285 of which he has spent abroad. That’s 84 flights to 33 different countries, including 4 secret trips.

https://twitter.com/TMIcenter/status/1023827597610897414

• His favorite country to visit is the US (19 times), followed by Russia (13) and France (11).

https://twitter.com/TMIcenter/status/1023831349663342597

• Why Colombia? ToI’s Raphael Ahren notes that during his campaign, Duque indicated he might be open to moving the Colombian embassy to Jerusalem.

7. He might be smart for getting out of Dodge. Reports are metastasizing on the latest health scare: a measles outbreak, apparently thanks to people not vaccinating their kids.

• Some 80 kids at Petah Tikvah’s Schnieder Children’s Hospital may have been exposed thanks to one unvaccinated child from the West Bank outpost of Esh Kodesh, Haaretz reports.
• According to Yedioth, there are actually 198 cases of measles in the country, with the main centers in Petah Tikvah, Safed, Acre, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
• As for the anti-vaxxers, the head of the hospitals infectious diseases unit Itzik Levi tells Hadashot that they are screwing things up for everybody: “This is a very worrisome trend with far-ranging consequences. Aside from parents choosing not to vaccinate their kids and endangering their lives, they are also endangering the lives of others,” he says.

8. Friday’s blood moon came and went without any apocalypse (unless it’s the measles), but it did leave one very stunning picture apparently taken in Israel.

• Israeli photographer Omar Raid writes that he spent 3 hours driving, one hour climbing, seven hours shooting and five hours editing to capture the longest lunar eclipse of the century.