Truth or consequences: 9 things to know for November 22

1. Truth serum: Israel is one of the few places in the Western world where lie detector results are considered highly reliable, and are highly relied upon. So with police chief nominee Moshe Edri now being asked to undergo a polygraph before a vetting committee will give him the okay, the collective sigh let out is not over the fact that the panel wants to use questionable science to clear the air, but the fact that the nomination process is longer and more complicated than it should be.

• “The never-ending nomination,” reads a headline in Yedioth Ahronoth.
• The paper, which earlier reported that outgoing chief Roni Alsheich tried to torpedo Edri’s nomination by making unspecified claims against him, cites sources in the vetting panel who say the polygraph is needed to clear Edri of the suspicions, despite the fact that the claims were already probed by the Justice Ministry, which found no reason to bring them to the panel.
• Officially, the vetting commission says the polygraph is needed because the two other candidates also took polygraphs, and thus it’s only fair.
• “If he becomes police chief, it will look like he has something to hide,” the paper quotes from the decision. “It’s not proper for there to be a cloud like this hanging over the police chief.”
• While, by law, employers are not allowed to force polygraph tests upon employees, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said Edri refusing a test would have meant he was withdrawing his nomination, Haaretz reports.
• Israel Hayom notes that Alsheich himself didn’t take a polygraph, since it says there was no law at the time requiring top police officials to do so. Since then, the Knesset has decided that potential police chiefs need to undergo a “security polygraph,” which differs from a “corporate polygraph,” in that it just checks if the candidate is a truth teller, but does not probe specific incidents.

2. Flack-flicked: Are vetting committees all they are cracked up to be? David Keyes passed through one, and was still appointed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign language spokesman, a position he is set to resign, after sexual assault accusations came to light, ToI’s Raphael Ahren reports.

• An informal probe of the accusations against Keyes is also set to close, as will an investigation into Israel’s ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, who received information from journalist Bret Stephens about Keyes’s alleged behavior, but did not convey the warning to the Prime Minister’s Office, according to Hadashot news.
• However, a spokesman for the commission is denying that the probe of Dermer has been dropped. “We haven’t taken a decision on the matter yet,” the spokesperson says. “The issue is still being looked at by us and the Foreign Ministry.”

3. Do or die vote: Early elections are off the table, after a proposal to dissolve the Knesset by the opposition narrowly failed.

• How narrow? So narrow that Likud MK Sharen Haskel was dragged out of the hospital with an IV still in her arm to come to the Knesset to vote, after the opposition refused to offset the absence, as is often done as a courtesy.
• “Once I understood that we needed to coalition majority, there was no shadow of a doubt and I told doctors I needed to go,” she tells Hadashot while holding on to her drip.
• How narrow? According to Walla, the opposition is spitting mad at Zionist Union MK Hilik Bar for flying to China, instead of staying for the vote, despite whip Yoel Hasson telling him not to go.
• “As if Israeli-China ties would collapse if he stayed in the country to deal with what is happening today,” the news site quotes an unnamed opposition figure fuming.
• How narrow? Yedioth reports that (horror of horrors) “even Netanyahu was forced to while away long hours in the Knesset building.”

4. Bibi, he’s just like us: Netanyahu apparently made good use of that time, perusing the Knesset’s dairy cafeteria and its selection of goodies.

• His office has released an exciting video of him making his choices, the Israeli equivalent of a politician ordering apple pie in a Des Moines cafe.

• “Netanyahu discovered the salmon phyllo, wondered if he can put together half the salmon and a third of the pasta, and mulled whether or not to take the yogurt with date honey,” Yedioth’s Itamar Eichner writes on Twitter. “Really, the decision of the century. An attack of populism by the Netanyahu people. I thought elections were canceled. It seems not.”

5. Antsy about Gantz: Mazal Mualem in al-Monitor takes a look at the man who may play juggernaut, once elections do come to fruition, former IDF chief Benny Gantz.

• Poll numbers recently have shown Gantz as Zionist Union leader or alone stealing votes from pretty much every party and possibly challenging Netanyahu.
• “As a former IDF chief of staff, Gantz is no less a security expert than Netanyahu. On the other hand, he is not tainted by corruption and is regarded by the public as a suitable candidate. Even when Netanyahu was at his lowest point in the polls, there was no one who could challenge his high levels of public support or question his suitability as prime minister or ‘Mr. Security.’ Gantz can,” Mualem writes.
• Gantz has not said if he will start his own party or join a center-left party, though Mualem thinks that with poll numbers showing him fairing well on his own, his chances of joining Yesh Atid or Zionist Union are dwindling (and he will likely lay waste to those parties should he run).
• “Neither Lapid nor Zionist Camp head Avi Gabbay will sit twiddling their thumbs once Gantz announces he plans to run. They will accuse him of tearing the center-left apart and claim that Netanyahu will win the election all because of him,” she writes.
• In the meantime, Likud is not wasting any time, with Minister Miri Regev going after Gantz over his ill-fated “anemones speech,” during a lull in the 2014 Gaza war, in which he called on Israelis to return to the area and was widely pilloried when fighting began again.
• Though three weeks separated the speech and the death of a 4-year-old boy by mortar fire, Regev linked the two, drawing fire of her own.
• “Politicking on the blood of a 4-year-old. That’s something we haven’t seen yet,” one pundit comments.

6. Gaza split: Israel Hayom’s lead story reports on a simmering rift between Hamas in Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, who used to hold Sinwar’s job.

• The paper, citing sources in Gaza, claims the two are not on speaking terms, over differences of opinion regarding how to deal with ceasefire talks, calling the tiff “unprecedented.”
• One source tells the paper that the heart of the matter is over whether to make freeing Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for Israeli civilians and the remains of soldiers, the center of the deal, which Sinwar ( a former prisoner) wants. Haniyeh on the other hand, wants to hold out for something bigger.
• “Sinwar may have been painted as more hardline that Haniyeh, since he came from the military wing, but, in actuality, he’s a lot more pragmatic than Haniyeh, who cannot make hard decisions or take responsibility,” the source is quoted saying.

7. Drawing fire: Sinwar cares about prisoners so much, he is apparently making more. On Facebook, the husband of Gazan cartoonist Majda Shaheen writes that she was jailed by Hamas a week ago, and her clothes were recently sent back to her home, leading to fears over her life.

• Israeli journalist Nurit Yonatan notes that Shaheen in the past drew pictures critical of the terror group for taking advantage of ordinary Palestinians.

• A Fatah spokesperson has highlighted the post to attack Hamas, but Hamas denies anyone with her name has been arrested, and now the Fatah spokesperson is apologizing if she’s not a real person, according to my colleague Adam Rasgon.
• In 2014, al-Monitor reported that Shaheen faced death threats over anti-Islamic Jihad cartoons.

8. It’s a mean, nasty world out there: Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump are as locked in as ever, according to Haaretz analyst Zvi Bar’el, particularly regarding protecting Saudi Arabia, despite the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi.

• Israel has kept almost totally mum about the case, even though Trump mentioned Israeli interests in his statement on why he won’t punish Riyadh, and Bar’el says Netanyahu “didn’t deny urging Trump to look after the stability of the Saudi kingdom.”
• “The symbiosis between Netanyahu and Trump doesn’t require proof. When it comes to the Middle East, particularly with respect to Iran and the Palestinian issue, Trump’s and Netanyahu’s positions have become indistinguishable. These twin towers are singing from the same song sheet. And when it comes to moral positions, of course, there is nothing to talk about,” he writes.
• In Foreign Policy, Obama-era official Prem Kumar writes that Trump actually hurt the US Saudi-relationship by tying his horse to one fallible leader. And as for Israeli interests, there’s not much to protect right now.
• “When it comes to Middle East peace, with the Palestinians boycotting the Trump administration, Israel about to go into election season, and conditions in Gaza as difficult as ever, the odds of progress on peace — with or without Saudi support — are about as low as they could be,” he writes.

9. Waste of time: He’s not alone. On the other side of the ideological fence, right-wing Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said the same thing at a conference organized by The Jerusalem Post.

• “I think that the gap between the Palestinians and the Israelis is much too big to be bridged,” she said in English. “I think personally it’s a waste of time. Although I want peace like anyone else, I think I’m just more realistic. And I know that in the current future, it is impossible.”
• In a sign that perhaps many Israelis agree with her, the comments make almost no waves. At the same time, her remarks to Yedioth, published Thursday, that “we lost this round,” get much wider play.
• “It’s clear we made a mistake,” she says. “But we’re learning.”