ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 533
Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s events as they unfolded.
President Reuven Rivlin meets with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis in Jerusalem, telling them Israel continues to worry about Iran over its threats to Israel.
“Iran represents a significant danger to the well-being of Israel, directly and indirectly. Just a week ago, one of Iran’s leaders voiced his forceful rejection of the State of Israel’s very right to exist,” he says according to a statement from his office. “Such threats serve to deepen the concern throughout the Middle East, and continue to position Iran as an insidious threat to regional stability.”
Iohannis responds that Romania “understands that the safeguarding of Israel’s security is essential, significant, and not up for compromise.”
The meeting is part of an effort to boost bilateral trade and development between the counties.
Tunisia has ordered a nighttime curfew in Ben Guerdane near the border with Libya from Monday, after jihadists launched coordinated attacks on police and army posts in the town.
“We have decided to impose a curfew in Ben Guerdane on both vehicles and pedestrians… starting from today (Monday) between 7 p.m. and 5 a.m.,” an interior ministry statement said.
Authorities say 21 attackers, one Tunisian soldier and four civilians were killed in clashes between unnamed gunmen and Tunisian soldiers near the Libyan border on Monday, amid increasing concern that violent extremism in Libya could destabilize the region.
A 12-year-old girl was among the civilians who were killed.
The gunmen targeted a police station and military facilities at dawn in the border town of Ben Guerdane in eastern Tunisia, Interior Ministry spokesman Yasser Mosbah says.
— Agencies
At a Knesset meeting of the Land of Israel Caucus on ending a building freeze in the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid blames the lack of building on a lack of peace talks, and says he would cut a deal with the US to make sure Israel could build there.
“We don’t build since building today, without a diplomatic process, will create a diplomatic crisis that will hurt our national security. If Ma’ale Adumim is staying part of Israel no matter what, why will that create a diplomatic crisis? Since we talk with the world in terms of all or nothing. Either build everywhere or nowhere at all. That’s not really the situation,” he says. ”
The Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumin, in the West Bank, February 25, 2016 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
“If I were prime minister, in three weeks I could make a deal that says we can freeze building outside the blocs in exchange for building in the blocs: Etzion Bloc, Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel.”
His statement comes a day before US Vice President Joe Biden is due to visit Israel. Biden’s 2010 visit was marred by an announcement of building starts in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, an area Israel effectively annexed.
The Communist Hadash party, part of the Joint List Knesset faction, has issued a statement condemning the decision of several Gulf States to label Hezbollah a terror organization.
The faction — which includes MK Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Joint (Arab) List — posted on its official Arabic website a fierce condemnation of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States for their decision to outlaw Hezbollah “in the service of occupation and the continued occupation of Arab land.”
The pan-Arabist Balad party, also part of the Joint List, has also condemned the move, according to Israel Radio, using the same wording in its statement.
However, Balad refuses to confirm if it made the statement.
On Wednesday the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council declared Hezbollah — which has lawmakers in the Lebanese parliament — a terror group in the latest step against the organization as ties between its main backer Iran and regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia deteriorate.
Gulf monarchies had already sanctioned Hezbollah in 2013 in reprisal for its armed intervention in Syria.
— Marissa Newman
At the meeting in support of building in Ma’ale Adumim, Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman says he’ll join the government if it okays building 2,000 more homes in the settlement.
Liberman, whose faction would bolster the coalition by six seats, says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was elected partially on a promise to double the number of settlers in Ma’ale Adumim, which he hasn’t done.
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid (right) and Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman in the Knesset on February 29, 2016. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)
“I’ve said in the past I would join if they built 1,000 units. It’s been a year so the price has gone up — if he builds 2,000 units we’ll join the government,” he says. “But he hasn’t built 2,000, hasn’t built 1,000, or even 500. He’s great on talking, great on TV, but he’s a nothing in taking action.”
A day before visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories, Biden starts his Mideast trip in the United Arab Emirates with a vow that the United States and its allies would “squeeze the heart” and destroy the Islamic State group.
Biden speaks before several hundred US airmen as drones rolled the down the runway at the Al-Dhafra Air Base, a major desert outpost near the United Arab Emirates capital, Abu Dhabi.
US Vice President Joe Biden visits the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Monday, March 7, 2016. (AP/Kamran Jebreili)
“We have to squeeze the heart of Daesh in Iraq and Syria so they can’t continue to pump their poison in the region and around the world,” Biden says, using an Arabic acronym for IS, a militant group he dismisses as “criminals and cowards.”
The Emirates is the first stop on a regional tour that will also take in Israel, the West Bank and Jordan. His wife, Jill, is accompanying him.
The trip will include talks on US economic and energy interests, as well as security concerns about Iran and Syria, the White House said.
Earlier in the day, Biden visited Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, pausing outside to remove his black dress shoes in keeping with Islamic custom.
He examined a wall in the ornate mosque bearing the 99 names of God written in Arabic before stepping outside to wave at visiting tourists kept a short distance away.
Biden is not expected to offer any new initiative on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he travels to Israel and the West Bank. The White House has said it does not believe either side has the political will for reviving the peace process.
— AP
The head of the UN nuclear agency suggests that Iran’s initial compliance with an atomic deal is only a first step, saying Tehran must continue to honor its commitments in the years ahead.
The IAEA is monitoring Iran’s compliance with a nuclear deal with six world powers implemented in December. In its first report last month, it noted that Iran was in — or quickly got into — line with its obligations.
But with the agreement extending to more than a decade, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano says at the opening of the organization’s 35-nation board meeting that Iran “has to implement its commitments … for many years to come.”
Iran agreed to crimp its nuclear programs in return for sanctions relief under the deal.
Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, Reza Najafi, waits for the start of the IAEA board of governors meeting at the International Center in Vienna, Austria, Monday, March 7, 2016. (AP/Ronald Zak)
— AP
A tourist has been taken to Jerusalem hospital with light injuries after being hurt in a rock-throwing attack near the Old City’s Lion’s Gate, paramedics from the Magen David Adom rescue service say.
Israeli security forces seen patrolling near the Lions’ Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City on October 07, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The woman, 60, suffers injuries to her upper body.
The Lion’s Gate, on the eastern side of the Old City, was the site of several stabbing attacks last year.
At least 28 jihadists, 10 members of the security forces and seven civilians were killed Monday in fighting in Tunisia near the Libyan border, the government says, significantly boosting the death toll.
The jihadists, six members of the National Guard, two policemen, a customs official and a soldier died after the militants attacked security posts in the border town of Ben Guerdane at dawn, the interior and defense ministries says in a joint statement.
Seven civilians were also killed in the clashes, the statement says, adding that the death toll was preliminary.
— AFP
Balad has posted its condemnation of the Gulf Cooperation Council for blacklisting Hezbollah on its website, after earlier failing to confirm reports it had joined Hadash in coming out against the move.
Avigdor Liberman wags a finger at Arab lawmakers condemning a decision to blacklist Hezbollah, calling their statement “beyond absurd” and saying they are showing they stand with extremists around the world.
“This just proves that every day that passes that this group of terrorists sits in the Knesset is a disgrace for Israelן democracy,” he says.
Earlier, minister Yisrael Katz accused the MKs of being traitors.
“These Knesset members are sabotaging Israel’s interests,” he says, comparing them to Azmi Bishara, an MK who fled the country after passing secrets to Hezbollah.
Police say they have opened an investigation after complaints that artist Ariel Bronz shoved an Israeli flag up his rear end during a performance at a Haaretz cultural conference in Tel Aviv Sunday.
According to reports, at least one complaint was filed by Culture Minister Miri Regev, who had given a speech at the confab minutes before Bronz put on his show.
The police say during the conference “unbecoming things were done with a symbol of the state.”
Artist Ariel Bronz getting personal with a flag at a Haaretz conference in Tel Aviv on March 6, 2016. (Screen capture: YouTube/Haaretz)
It is illegal to deface a flag or other symbol of the state. Police are currently investigating another artist for videos in which she defecates on an Israeli flag.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation is calling for a ban on products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and pledging full support for the “inalienable rights” of the Palestinians.
The OIC resolution urges “member states and the wider international community to ban products produced in or by illegal Israeli settlements from their markets.”
However, the move is not binding on member states.
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo, left, welcomes Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to the Islamic Cooperation summit on March 7, 2016 in Jakarta. (AFP / POOL / DARREN WHITESIDE)
At the end of Monday’s summit, the OIC also pledges “full support to the political, diplomatic and legal efforts” to ensure the Palestinians achieved their “inalienable rights.”
The Jakarta meeting was attended by leaders including Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
— AFP
Lebanese security forces on Monday say they have detained an Islamic State group jihadist who confessed to beheading a kidnapped soldier in 2014.
IS had abducted the soldier along with other members of the security forces during fierce clashes in August 2014 between Lebanese troops and jihadists in the flashpoint Arsal region on the Syrian border.
Of the 30 troops and policemen kidnapped by IS and Al-Qaeda affiliate the Al-Nusra Front, five were executed.
After long and arduous negotiations, Al-Nusra released 16 of them in December 2015, leaving nine in the hands of IS.
“The General Security Directorate … has detained S.J., a Syrian national, for membership of a terrorist organization,” the security body says.
“After interrogation, he confessed to being a member of the terrorist group Daesh … and to beheading the martyred soldier Abbas Medlej,” it adds, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
— AFP
Yair Lapid, who styles himself as a shadow foreign minister, makes an impassioned plea for Netanyahu to appoint a full-time foreign minister, saying he will support whoever the prime minister appoints.
“It’s impossible that because of small political considerations the State of Israel doesn’t have a foreign minister. I promise here that even though I am in the opposition I will support whoever will be nominated. There are enough fitting people in your government; pick whoever is best and nominate that person. All of our alliances have taken big hits in the last few years,” he says.
A week ago, Lapid and Liberman mounted a joint attack against Netanyahu, who serves as foreign minister, for mismanaging the country’s foreign policies.
A Fatah official has threatened to “punish” Israel over what he says are Jewish marriages occurring on the Temple Mount.
Ra’afat Aliyan, a spokesman for Fatah in East Jerusalem, says the marriages are an “unprecedented Jewish violation” which will act as “motivation for all the Palestinian Islamic and nationalistic groups and parties to escalate violence and attacks against the Israeli occupation forces,” according to the Gulf News outlet.
The allegation of Jewish marriages on the holy site, which is apparently unfounded, was sparked by a video shared by right-wing Jewish extremist Bentzi Gopstein of his son touring the Temple Mount on the morning of his wedding day, a common practice in some religious Jewish circles.
Jewish prayer and rites, including weddings, are forbidden by Israel atop the holy site.
“Allowing Jewish marriage ceremonies inside Al Haram Al Sharif shows that Israel is still thirsty for blood and seeks to shed more blood of the Palestinians who will never keep their mouths shut about this large-scale violation against the holy site,” Aliyan says.
“Such provocative moves will not pass unpunished,” he adds.
Scotland Yard’s counter-terror chief is warning that the Islamic State group harbors ambitions of “enormous and spectacular attacks,” as jihadis broaden their plots to target Western lifestyles.
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley tells reporters that while IS once primarily attacked military and police targets, its aims are now more assertive.
Rowley says “you see a terrorist group which has big ambitions for enormous and spectacular attacks, not just the types that we’ve seen foiled to date.”
He describes a group that is shifting. While it had once largely been using propaganda to radicalize people to act in their name, it is now “trying to build bigger attacks.”
He says the group is trying to bring jihadis trained in Syria into northern Europe to launch attacks.
— AP
Prosecutors are reportedly moving toward serving indictments against people involved in a wedding dance during which they stabbed a picture of a Palestinian baby slain in a firebombing attack.
Video of the “wedding of hate,” as it came to be known, sparked soul-searching and hand-wringing among the Israeli public when it was released last fall.
In the video, a group of people, many of whom are associated with Jewish extremist movements, are filmed holding weapons, knives and firebombs and stabbing a picture of Ali Dawabsha, an 18-month-old killed along with his parents in a July attack by Jewish terrorists.
According to Walla news, the groom and several minors are expected to be charged with incitement and unlawful handling of weapons.
The Arab League says Egypt has presented Ahmed Abul Gheit, ex-president Hosni Mubarak’s last foreign minister, as its candidate to head the pan-Arab body after its present chief declined a second term.
Abul Gheit, 74, participated in the Camp David negotiations that saw the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in 1979. He is known for being tough on Iran.
In February, the secretary general of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi, 80, announced that he would not seek a second term after his current one ends in July.
Only Egypt has so far presented its candidate to head the Arab diplomatic body.
Arab League foreign ministers will hold a meeting on Thursday to discuss the candidacy of Abul Gheit, 74.
— AFP
Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset says the Middle East has Israel to thank for not being one giant Islamic caliphate.
“Many countries fear Islamic extremism that threatens them and the whole world. Were it not for Israel the whole Middle East would collapse under the gun of Islamic extremism,” he says.
Netanyahu says Israel international standing is hunky dory, dismissing criticism that the country has mismanaged its foreign ties and is becoming isolated.
“We have ties with 161 countries. The one who is isolated is not Israel, but those countries who don’t have ties with Israel, and that number is getting smaller all the time,” he says at a special Knesset session called by opposition party Yesh Atid to discuss foreign policy failures.
Netanyahu also accuses the opposition of ignoring the growing list of countries interested in forging ties with Israel.
A woman has been taken to Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center with stab wounds all over her body.
The woman, 30, is said to be in critical condition after being stabbed on a central street in the southern city.
It is not immediately clear if the stabbing is terror-related.
Police confirm the Beersheba incident was not a terror attack. They also say the woman was shot and not stabbed.
“After reports of shots fired on Yerushalayim Avenue in Beersheba, large forces were dispatched to the scene, where they found a woman shot in the street,” police say.
The attacker apparently got away.
Joining other MKs in condemning Arab MKs’ condemnation of Gulf states for condemning Hezbollah, Benjamin Netanyahu openly asks if lawmakers from the Hadash and Balad parties are insane.
“Countries from the Arab world decided to recognize Hezbollah as a terror group. This is an important development. Even amazing. But what’s no less amazing is that two parties here in the Knesset condemned the decision,” he says during a plenum discussion. “Will you continue to condemn them when Hezbollah shoots missiles at your villages? Have you gone mad?
“Sorry for the expression,” he adds.
Earlier, Balad and Hadash condemned the Gulf Cooperation Council for blacklisting Hezbollah, saying the move serves Israeli interests.
Three soldiers have reportedly accidentally entered a Palestinian village near Jerusalem, but were able to leave the area without harm.
According to initial media reports, the three members of the army’s internal investigations unit entered the town of Anata, north of Jerusalem, while trying to make their way to a base at the adjacent settlement of Anatot.
The three, on duty but in civilian clothes, made it to the entrance of the Shuafat refugee camp, where they were handed over by the Palestinian security to Israel.
Anata is under full Palestinian Authority control.
The town of Anata, with the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev in the foreground (Mohamar Awad/Flash90)
The incident occurred less than a week after two soldiers accidentally drove into a refugee camp and were attacked, necessitating a rescue operation to extract them and sparking deadly clashes.
The soldiers had apparently been following the Waze navigation application, though Waze said they did not have it set to avoid PA areas.
It’s not clear if Waze was a factor in this incident as well. It’s also not known if the soldiers were armed.
Artist Ariel Bronz, under investigation for suspicions he planted an Israeli flag in his posterior, has been questioned and released, police say.
A police statement does not detail if they will continue the probe into the incident, which it terms “extraordinary.”
Defacing or disrespecting a national symbol, such as a flag, is illegal. It’s not clear if the flag Bronz used during a performance at the Haaretz culture conference was an Israeli flag.
A woman killed in Beersheba was shot in her car in front of her three children, who were with her.
According to Channel 2, the woman was related to a state’s witness testifying against a large underworld crime organization.
Police originally feared the incident could have been a terror attack, but now attention may shift to fears this could have a chilling effect on people willing to come forward to testify against criminal organizations.
An anti-government protest in the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib has ended abruptly after members of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the war-torn country threatened to shoot at demonstrators, an activist says.
Protestors gathered in Idlib city in the afternoon, using the relative lull in fighting to resume demonstrations against President Bashar Assad, according to activist Ibrahim al-Idlibi, who is from the city.
But when demonstrators began marching from the gathering point to Idlib’s main square, members of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra Front, tried to stop them.
“The al-Nusra fighters came out and began to fight the protesters, to threaten them with their guns saying, ‘If you don’t leave the streets, we’ll start to fire,'” Idlibi says.
Al-Nusra proceeded to seize about 10 people and wave al-Qaeda’s black flag, according to Idlibi.
— AFP
Netanyahu will not be heading to the US later this month, as he had been planning, Channel 10 News reports.
According to the report, the prime minister could not manage to schedule a meeting with US President Barack Obama between the time Netanyahu is due to land for the AIPAC conference and Obama is scheduled to leave for Cuba.
The Prime Minister’s Office tells The Times of Israel it cannot confirm the report.
Netanyahu had been thought to be heading to the US for the AIPAC conference on March 20 and for a meeting with Obama, when it was rumored he might sign a new 10-year defense aid deal worth billions of dollars.
Obama is scheduled to leave for Cuba on March 21.
The prime minister will still likely address the AIPAC conference via video, as he has done in the past.
— with Raphael Ahren
Several dozen Palestinian inmates have called off a five-day-old hunger strike after Israeli authorities agreed to supply them with clothes, blankets, cleaning materials and other things they had been demanding, Ma’an reports.
The 46 prisoners had complained of filthy and unlivable conditions in the Etzion detention center, which had also been flooded recently, destroying inmates’ clothing and bedding.
Munqith Abu Atwan, from the Palestinian Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs, told the news outlet the prison was “hell, unfit for human life.”
Pro-Palestinian terrorist Carlos the Jackal has confirmed to a Swiss paper that he enjoyed immunity in the 1970s via a non-aggression pact between Switzerland and the Palestine Liberation Organization, Reuters reports.
The terrorist, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez and who has been in prison in France since 1994, tells the Neue Zuercher Zeitung that Switzerland agreed to not prosecute Palestinian terrorists in exchange for the PLO agreeing not to carry out attacks on its soil.
Carlos the Jackal in the 1970s (YouTube: screenshot)
He says he was able to pass freely through a passport check after flying into Zurich, despite a “Wanted” poster for him hanging up next to the guard booth.
The existence of the pact between Bern and the PLO was first reported by the Neue Zuercher Zeitung earlier this year.
A senior Israeli official confirms that Netanyahu is likely not traveling to the US later this month, citing tomorrow’s visit by US Vice President Joe Biden, and fears the prime minister could inadvertently become tangled in US president campaigning.
“At the moment it looks like we’re not going to Washington,” the official tells The Times of Israel. “The thinking is that we’re seeing Biden this week and the assumption is that in the discussion with Biden all the issues will come up. Also, at AIPAC, many of the presidential candidates are giving speeches and might ask for meetings with the PM. We don’t want to get involved in the US election process.”
The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
— with Raphael Ahren
Making unlikely bedfellows with right-wing lawmakers, including Netanyahu, Meretz leader Zahava Galon attacks the Hadash and Balad parties for condemning a decision by Gulf states to label Hezbollah a terror group, calling it an “ethical lapse.”
“I have no sympathy for the Saudis who advanced the decision of Hezbollah, nor for blood-stained Syrian martyrs, but that does not explain the stubbornness of these Israeli parties to come out and defend an organization that sanctifies death and vows its purpose is wiping out the state of Israel and massacring Israeli civilians,” the leftist MK writes on Facebook. “An embarrassment.”
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has compared the language of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump to that of dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in an interview published Monday, and said it has hurt US-Mexico relations.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the crowd at a campaign rally March 7, 2016 in Concord, North Carolina. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images/AFP)
Asked about Trump, Pena Nieto complains to the Excelsior newspaper about “these strident expressions that seek to propose very simple solutions” and said that sort of language has led to “very fateful scenes in the history of humanity.”
“That’s the way Mussolini arrived and the way Hitler arrived,” Pena Nieto says.
–– AP
The head of the IDF’s Southern Command Gen. Eyal Zamir dismisses the commander of the Desert Reconnaissance Unit from his position, amid a developing scandal involving a subordinate officer.
Earlier on Monday, Zamir reviewed the information about the alleged affair between Lt.-Col. Shai Sharf and a captain.
Following the review session, Zamir “decided to dismiss the officer for unreliable statements he had given to his commanders,” the IDF says in a statement.
Reports of the scandal first came to light last month, but Sharf’s name and position were not revealed.
The Military Police investigation into Sharf’s alleged illicit relationship continues.
