Netanyahu’s defeat of the judiciary: a rebuke to the prime minister after a three-decade campaign against the state supreme court

Biden said on Tuesday he won’t invite Netanyahu to the White House in the near term, and issued a stinging rebuke to Netanyahu’s judicial reforms, which were delayed by mass protests and strikes.

Two politicians are still supporters of Netanyahu and he is doing a good job. But there’s another element that they cannot contemplate and that is Netanyahu has become a victim of his own hubris.

Yair Lapid, Israel’s opposition leader, said that Netanyahu’s efforts have ruined the relationship. Israel was the US’s main ally for a long time. The most extreme government in the country’s history ruined that in three months.

A coalition member told me that Netanyahu didn’t feel a need to confront the judiciary even though the right-wingers became anti-Supreme Court. When he was indicted, he failed to win four consecutive elections, which led to him being forced out of office. Now he’s back with a vengeance and he’s allowed his allies who in the past he reined-in, to go all-out against the Supreme Court,” they added.

Background: The prime minister finally paused the legislation on Monday after a general strike and mass protests threw Israel into chaos, but he said he planned to return to the effort in the next legislative term. Critics say Netanyahu is pushing through the changes because of his own ongoing corruption trial, which he denies.

Netanyahu and the Judenation War: A Tribute to Israel in the Light of a Biblically Inspired Story of the Judgement of Solomon

It was also announced on Tuesday that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will visit Jerusalem next month, a trip that is certain to inject the likely Republican presidential contender into Israel’s national tumult and its increasingly fraught relationship with the US.

“At a time of unnecessarily strained relations between Jerusalem and Washington, Florida serves as a bridge between the American and Israeli people,” DeSantis told the Jerusalem Post, which announced details of his planned keynote address at an April 27 event.

“We are in the middle of an important debate, we will overcome it,” Netanyahu said in a statement to staff on Tuesday after announcing that the legislation will be paused until after Passover.

“You are going to Passover, on the eve of Seder you will sit with the families. You can fight, but only a little, and you will come to an agreement. He said that their goal is to reach agreements among both of us.

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When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his decision to delay a controversial plan to weaken the country’s judiciary on Monday, he invoked the biblical story of the Judgement of Solomon, where the king had to rule between two women, both claiming to be the mother of a child. Solomon ordered the child be cut in two, and the woman who protested was determined to be the real mother.

Right-wing politicians called on the crowd to gather in the street, allowing Netanyahu to speak, even as protesters from both sides showed up together for the first time in weeks.

“Even today, both sides in the national dispute claim love for the baby – love for our country,” said Netanyahu. I am attentive to the desire of many citizens to relieve the tension that is building up between the two camps, and aware of the enormous tension that is building up between them.

Aviv Bushinsky, who served as Netanyahu’s media adviser for nine years, said the timing of the address was meant to give Netanyahu a positive backdrop for his much-awaited speech.

He is playing a game, according to a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There is no certainty in Israel, and I am not sure that he’s not happy about this, because you can never know what will happen.

Bushinsky asserts that if Netanyahu had been in charge, he would have pulled the plug on the judicial change a long time ago.

His coalition depends on it and he is standing by it. But now, analysts say he’s backed into a corner between appeasing protesters and keeping his government intact.

Before Netanyahu announced the delay, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party broke the news, noting that part of the delay agreement was to establish a National Guard. There was an idea that Ben Gvir was about to be allowed to set up his own militia, which caused alarm.

Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Tuesday that putting Ben Gvir in charge of the National Guard is “the equivalent of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.”

Ben Gvir was quick to address the concerns about the new body. “Let’s put things straight: no private army and no militias,” he said in a statement published on his Telegram page.

The Prime Minister’s Judiciary Shake Up: The Role of Security and Security in Israel’s Fragmentation and Coalitions

Analysts say that the prime minister is faced with very few options. If he sides with his coalition and votes on the overhaul, crippling protests and strikes would resume. His coalition could collapse if he pulls off the brakes.

The leader of Israel has only one option left, which analysts say will be a moderated judicial shake up plan bill over the Knessets recess period which ends on April 30, and where concessions from his right wing coalition members are not too extreme.

Bushinsky thinks Netanyahu will try to run away from the bill and hope that things will get better in the future.

Analysts say, however, that what could once again unite the fragmented country and have the public rally behind the government is a potential security threat, either from neighboring countries or through conflict with the Palestinians.

A security crisis would reorient the government’s attention, said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem, whether it arises from conflict with the Palestinians, the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon or others.

Palestinians are once again paying the price for the election choices of Israel. There may be a lull in Tel Aviv, but the reality is the same for Palestinians.

How Netanyahu will act remains uncertain, and not everyone is optimistic that the recess period will yield any kind of consensus or moderation in his position.

“I have not detected any indication that tells me that the prime minister is actually entering into the negotiations with a keen interest in achieving consensus … including comprises on core aspects of the judicial overhaul,” said Plesner.

Plesner notes, however, that Netanyahu and his Likud party emerged “politically injured” from the last few months, losing not only legitimacy and support in the eyes of the Israeli people, but also in the eyes of his own Likud voters.

Saudi Arabia’s recent decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Security concerns in the Middle East despite Saudi Arabia and Washington’s security concerns

Saudi Arabia’s cabinet approved on Wednesday a decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as Riyadh builds a long-term partnership with China despite US security concerns, Reuters reported. Saudi Arabia has approved a memorandum on granting the kingdom the status of a dialog partner in the SCO, state news agency SPA said.

Background: Formed in 2001 by Russia, China and former Soviet states in Central Asia, the body has been expanded to include India and Pakistan, with a view to playing a bigger role as counterweight to Western influence in the region. The SCO is a security union of several countries. Iran also signed documents for full membership last year. Countries belonging to the organization plan to hold a joint “counter-terrorism exercise” in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region in August.

Why it matters: Riyadh’s growing ties with Beijing have raised security concerns in Washington, its traditional ally. The US does not change policy regarding the Middle East as a result of Chinese influence around the world. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have voiced concern about what they see as a withdrawal from the region by the United States, its main security guarantor, and have moved to diversify partners. Washington says it will stay an active partner in the region.

Why it matters: There is a thriving market for captagon in the Gulf, and United Nations and Western anti-narcotics drug officials say Syria, shattered by a decade of civil war, has become the region’s main production site for a multibillion-dollar drug trade that also exports to Europe.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/middleeast/netanyahu-options-israel-mime-intl/index.html

Menaceh Aliyev: Aramco, the Prime Minister of Israel, and the Kurdistan-Iraq Conflict

Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco will acquire a 10% stake in China’s Rongsheng Petrochemical in a strategic deal worth $3.6 billion that would significantly expand its presence in China.

The series, “London Class,” is produced by the Saudi state-backed media conglomerate MBC group and depicts Iraqi women working as maids for Kuwaiti women and being accused of theft.

The show was not aired in Kuwait, according to Arabic media, because it has nothing to do with the country.

The show was written by Kuwaiti writer Heba Hamada and directed by Egyptian Mohamed Bakir. The critic responded by saying that Iraq is the mother of civilization and that all Arabs lean on it.

Mustafa Jabbar Sanad, a member of parliament in Iraq, accused the show of “erasing the value of well-known Iraqi talents … to distort the image of the Iraqi people as a whole, not just women.”

Hamada was the subject of criticism in 2019 because of a similar show she wrote called “Cairo Class,” which caused strife between Kuwaitis and Egyptians due its portrayal of Egypt. That show is on a streaming service.

The question of honor, particularly that of Iraqi women, has long been a sensitive issue in Kuwaiti-Iraqi relations. Saddam Hussein had accused Kuwait of hurting the women of Iraq and of causing his invasion of the country in 1990.

He questioned whether Saddam could be tried over Kuwait for saying it would reduce Iraqi women to prostitutes. “He (Hussein) defended Iraq’s honor and revived its historical rights over those dogs,” Saddam said, referring to the Kuwaitis.

Anshel Pfeffer is the Israel correspondent of The Economist and a writer for Ha’aretz. He is the author of “Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu.” The views are of his own. At CNN you can read more opinions.

I have never heard a single word of criticism against the Prime Minister of Israel. Even when the party leader had been in some of his worst moments, they still gave fulsome praise. But now, no more.

Should there be even the slightest doubt, the minister assured me they were in total agreement with the policies themselves — which amounts to a series of laws aimed at weakening Israel’s Supreme Court and removing its powers to hold the government to account.

Our conversation took place six weeks ago, half-way through the Knesset, Israel parliament’s winter session. The four laws would be passed by the end of the session. By then it was already clear to the minister and other senior figures that they were in deep trouble.

How did Netanyahu, a master manipulator of public opinion, the only Israeli politician to ever win six elections and come back twice from the wilderness of opposition, the second time just last November, get it so wrong? He failed to anticipate the backlash from the Israeli public, including the non-political tech sector and reserve officers. He assumed that the legislation would be meekly accepted because it would have removed checks and balances from Israel’s democracy.

Finally, this week, as Israel began to descend into chaos with Netanyahu’s own defense minister publicly breaking with him on the legal policy (he was fired for that) and the trade unions and employers jointly announcing a general strike, Netanyahu announced a “timeout” for “true dialogue.”

His supporters are not quite sure what to say. One senior Likud politician tried to excuse the prime minister’s short-sightedness through his strengths. “Netanyahu sees his mission as prime minister as taking care of Israel’s big issues. He has always focused on security, diplomacy and economics. According to the politician, Constitutional affairs never seemed to be important to him. So goes the explanation.

The Last 30 Years: When Israel Became a Better Place to Rejoin the Israeli Government and the World? The Story of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion

Having just delivered a sixth election victory, returning to office just 18 months after losing power when so many said he was finished, he is no longer prepared to listen to the few relatively pragmatic voices who have remained in his inner circle.

He was elected leader of the party for the first time 30 years ago. His time as prime minister totals 15 and a half years, more even than Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion. He believes Israel’s rapid recovery from the Covid-19 epidemic, its burgeoning foreign relations, and the recent diplomatic agreements with Arab countries are all due to him.

He is convinced that everything good that happened to Israel in the last few decades was down to his stewardship and that every time the experts disagreed with him, he was right. So who is anyone to tell him now that he’s making a big mistake?