Poll: Most Arab Israelis say Joint List doesn’t properly represent them

Abbas reportedly turned down Biden peace initiative

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas turned down an initiative presented by US Vice President Joe Biden during their meeting yesterday in Ramallah, the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds reports.

According to the paper, the initiative included clauses calling for designating East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, halting settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, declaring Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, and relinquishing the Palestinian “right of return.”

France’s special envoy to visit next week

France’s special envoy for its initiative to renew Israeli-Palestinian peace talks will visit Israel next week in an effort to advance plans for a regional peace conference to take place in the summer, the French Embassy in Israel announces.

Pierre Vimont, the French Foreign Ministry envoy “for the preparation of the international conference to renew the Middle East peace process,” will arrive in Israel on Sunday for two days of meetings with officials in Ramallah and Tel Aviv.

The summit is scheduled to take place in June or July, despite Israeli complaints that peace negotiations should take the form of direct talks.

Biden meets with Jordan’s King Abdullah

Vice President Joe Biden holds talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, a key US military ally in the region, including in the battle against Islamic State extremists.

Washington has scaled up military aid to Jordan in recent months in line with the kingdom’s central role in the fight against IS, which controls large areas of neighboring Syria and Iraq.

Later Thursday, the vice president and the Jordanian monarch are to attend a military drill for Jordanian and US forces at a security compound near the capital of Amman.

As part of the deepening military cooperation, the US last week gave Jordan eight Blackhawk helicopters to help boost border protection. An additional eight Blackhawks are in the pipeline.

Jordan is Biden’s last stop on a Mideast swing that also included the United Arab Emirates, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

— AP

Iran denies that Kerry told off Zarif for testing missiles

Iran denies that US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed concern over the Islamic Republic’s testing of long-range missiles during talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday, according to Army Radio.

State Department spokesman John Kirby had said following the meeting that “[t]he secretary did raise his concerns today with Foreign Minister [Mohammad Javad] Zarif.”

Iran fired two long-range ballistic missiles on Wednesday, one of which was reportedly stamped with threats in Hebrew and Persian to annihilate Israel, as it continued military tests in defiance of US sanctions and fresh warnings from Washington.

Iran state TV trumpeted Wednesday’s test as officials boasted that it demonstrated the country’s might against longtime nemesis Israel, with at least one missile emblazoned with the words “Israel must be wiped off the face of the Earth,” according to the Fars news agency.

Dore Gold in South Africa for talks on water, agriculture, trade

South Africa’s director general of The Department of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa, Jerry Matjile, meets with Dore Gold, Israel’s director general of the Foreign Ministry, in Pretoria.

The discussion focuses on the relations between the two countries and the sides agree to improve cooperation on such issues as water, agriculture, trade, and science and technology. The sides also discuss the situation in the Middle East.

The sides also emphasize the importance of trade delegations in both directions.

— Raphael Ahren

Obama describes charged meeting with Netanyahu

US President Barack Obama describes a charged, undated meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine.

In the interview, Obama says he felt Netanyahu was condescending.

“Bibi, you have to understand something,” Obama quotes himself as saying. “I’m the African American son of a single mother, and I live here, in this house. I live in the White House. I managed to get elected president of the United States. You think I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but I do.”

Germany says it obtained files on Islamic State members

Germany’s federal criminal police say they are in possession of files containing personal data on members of the extremist Islamic State group and believe them to be authentic.

The announcement came after Britain’s Sky News reported it had obtained 22,000 Islamic State files on the border with Turkey and Syria, files that detail IS fighters’ real names, where they were from, telephone numbers, and even names of those who sponsored and recruited the militants.

Though the significance of these files is yet to be gauged, they could be the largest-yet treasure trove of documents found on IS and the most significant leak on its past and present fighters and operations across the Mideast.

They could also shape the campaign against the extremist group. The cache, exposing its members and their families, could undermine its future ability to recruit and inspire would-be members.

— AP

Culture budget for Arab Israeli community to be doubled

Culture Minister Miri Regev announces that the budget for culture in the Arab sector will be doubled in the coming year.

The ministry will allocate NIS 20 million for the cause, Regev says during a meeting with the chairman of the Union of Local Authorities, Haim Bibas, and dozens of heads of Arab local authorities.

Gaza man arrested after crossing border fence

A Palestinian who crossed the border fence from the Gaza Strip is arrested by IDF soldiers.

The man, who is unarmed, is taken in for interrogation.

Hamas delegation to head to Cairo amid tensions

A Hamas delegation from the Gaza Strip is set to arrive in Cairo for talks with Egyptian intelligence officials, after the organization was accused of involvement in the assassination of Egypt’s prosecutor general.

This week, several suspects in the murder of Hisham Barakat, who was killed in a car bomb explosion in June 2015, confessed that they had trained for six weeks in Hamas camps in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier today, six Gaza Palestinians were trapped and one was missing after a tunnel caved in, the sixth to collapse since January, a local civil defense official said.

The cave-in was caused by Egyptian flooding of the border zone in its campaign to stop smuggling, the official told AFP.

Israeli officials have said there are dozens of tunnels linking Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula and used to smuggle goods — including weapons — and people in and out of the Gaza Strip.

Security firm G4S: Israel pullout for ‘commercial’ reasons

Security company G4S says it is selling its business in Israel for “commercial reasons” and not because of a boycott movement against Israel.

G4S says it was selling its business interests in Israel as part of a portfolio review that will see the sale of some 60 other businesses as well.

The company has been the target of a years-long campaign by activists calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. G4S provides security equipment and has contracts with Israel’s prison system. It employs 8,000 people in Israel.

The BDS campaign says G4S’s pullout was a result of its pressure on the company.

G4S spokesman Nigel Fairbrass says the decision to sell its business in Israel was “entirely” for commercial reasons.

Sanders outdid Clinton 2-1 among Michigan Arab Americans

Arab Americans in the Dearborn, Michiga,n area voted two to one for Bernie Sanders, according to a Dearborn-based Arab-American newspaper.

“Arab Americans voted 2 to 1 for Sanders in almost every east Dearborn precinct,” The Arab American News reports on the day after Sanders won the primary in Michigan in a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton, his rival in the race for the Democratic presidential nod who had been leading in the state.

Sanders had campaigned among Arab Americans, broadcasting campaign ads in the Dearborn area in Arabic, according to The Intercept, a news website. At an event Monday, on the eve of the primary, he said he would be evenhanded in brokering peace between Arab and Israelis.

The Arab-American News had endorsed Sanders, citing what it said was his “unequivocal” condemnation of Islamophobia, and said his foreign policy would not be subject to pressure from “special interest groups.”

“His foreign policy will not be dictated by a military industrial complex that promotes war for profit or Christian Zionist groups that lobby Washington to support Israel for theological reasons,” the newspaper said, although it said his posture on Israel was deficient, in part because he defends Israel’s right to self defense and has blamed Palestinians in part for hostilities.

— JTA

Turkey arrests 10 suspected IS members

Turkish police arrest 10 suspected members of the Islamic State group in a raid on the predominantly Kurdish city of Bingol State, a security source says.

According to the Walla news site, the suspects are accused of recruiting fighters and preparing a terrorist attack.

Security cabinet to convene at 6 p.m.

The security cabinet will convene tonight at 6 p.m. to discuss the spate of terrorist attacks that occurred over the week.

The cabinet will also discuss proposals to deport the families of terrorists.

Germany deports 806 Albanian asylum-seekers

The German Embassy in Tirana says that 806 Albanians were repatriated from Germany last week after their asylum requests were rejected.

An embassy statement says that the number of Albanian deportations from Germany this year is about 3,400, part of a total of 55,000 who asked for asylum in 2015.

Last year, Albanians were the fourth-biggest group of asylum-seekers in Germany after Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, in search of better living standards and jobs.

Other people from western Balkan nations like Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia also have sought asylum in Germany, but Berlin considers them to be safe countries where individuals are unlikely to face the kind of persecution that would warrant asylum.

— AP

Russia: Syria ceasefire violated 8 times in past day

Russia’s Defense Ministry says the ceasefire in Syria had been violated eight times in the past day, according to Russian news agency RIA.

Israel transfers sickly lion out of Gaza

Israel says it transferred an ailing lion from the impoverished and blockaded Gaza Strip to a Palestinian zoo in the West Bank.

The lion was taken from a zoo in Rafah to the Erez crossing into Israel, says COGAT, a Defense Ministry body which coordinates Israeli activity in the Palestinian territories.

The lion was then driven to a zoo near Tulkarem in the West Bank, it says in a statement.

A COGAT spokeswoman says a Gaza agriculture ministry official had asked an Israeli counterpart for the transfer, at least on a temporary basis.

— AFP

IS leader in Libya says rivalry is holding jihadists back

The leader of Islamic State group in Libya says the North African country has become a “destination” for jihadists, with the numbers of fighters having doubled in recent months, but adds that his group has struggled to spread across Libya because of rivalries between militants.

His comments were published by Al-Nabaa, an IS-affiliated website. It identified the new leader as a Saudi national named Abdel-Qader al-Najdi, who took the title of “Emir deputized to manage the Libyan provinces” after his predecessor, Abu Nabil, was killed in an US airstrike in November.

Al-Najdi insists his group is getting stronger. US airstrikes recently destroyed the IS’s compound in the western Libyan city of Sabratha.

IS fighters have exploited the chaos of Libya’s civil war to gain territory.

— AP

Activists urge Airbnb to remove Israeli settlement properties

An international coalition of NGOs calls on Airbnb to remove rental properties in Jewish settlements in the West Bank from its website.

A demonstration is held in Paris, and others were planned at Airbnb’s offices in London, and in the US cities of San Francisco and Portland.

In the French capital, a small group of activists from the French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP) and the BDS France campaign delivered a petition of 140,000 signatures, largely from Britain, France and the United States.

“These are the signatures of 140,000 people who are asking Airbnb to stop making profit from the expropriation of the Palestinian people,” says Imen Habib of BDS France, which calls for economic pressure to be applied on Israel.

“Today is part of an international campaign which will continue until we succeed in getting these rental properties withdrawn,” she adds.

She says Airbnb had told the activists that its role was limited to managing transactions between users and property owners and that it was up to clients to choose where they stayed.

“But Airbnb is responsible for its site, so it’s up to the company to stop advertising these properties for rent,” Habib says.

Other groups taking part in the demonstrations are Jewish Voice for Peace and SumOfUs.

In January Palestinian officials pledged to take action against Airbnb over rooms for rent in settlements in the occupied West Bank being listed on the website as located within Israel.

At the time US-based Airbnb declined an interview, providing only a short statement. “We follow laws and regulations on where we can do business and investigate concerns raised about specific listings,” it said.

Much of the international community, including the US and the EU, opposes all Israeli settlements built in the occupied Palestinian territory and considers them among the largest obstacles to peace.

— AFP

UN rights monitor denounces executions of minors in Iran

A UN rapporteur on human rights in Iran denounces executions of minors there and says tough anti-drugs laws could be behind a “surge” in overall executions in recent years.

Ahmed Shaheed, in a 21-page report, cites Iran Human Rights Documentation Center figures showing 966 people were executed last year, up from 697 in 2013 and 91 in 2005. His report says more than 500 last year were related to drug law violations.

Shaheed says executions of juvenile offenders were “strictly and unequivocally prohibited” under international law. He says at least 73 had been executed in Iran between 2005 and 2015, the highest number of any country in that span.

Shaheed has not been allowed to visit Iran as part of his mandate, now in its fifth year.

— AP

Majority of Arab Israelis say Joint List doesn’t properly represent them

A new Channel 2 poll found that a majority of Arab Israelis say the Joint List MKs do not properly represent them.

According to the poll, conduct by Machon Midgam among 350 Arab Israelis, 35% of respondents said the Joint List MKs only slightly represent them, while another 21% said the Joint List MKs do not represent them at all.

Thirty percent said they feel represented by the majority-Arab party, and an additional 10% said they feel very represented.

Fifty six percent of respondents said they disagreed with the two Arab Israeli political factions — Hadash and Balad — who condemned Gulf Arab states for designating the Lebanese group Hezbollah a terror organization, while only 19% said they approved of the move.

However, 65% agreed with a decision by Balad MKs to meet with family members of terrorists whose bodies were held by Israeli authorities, and 17% said the move was a mistake.

Olmert refused furlough for grandson’s bar mitzvah

A month into his incarceration for corruption, former prime minister Ehud Olmert is refused a request for furlough to attend the bar mitzvah of his grandson.

According to Channel 2, the Prison Service shot down the request because of “failure to meet the required criteria” for vacation.