The Coalition That Saves the Israelis: Proposal for a Step Towards an End of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Netanyahu promised to legalize wildcat settlement outposts even though the Israeli government considers them illegal. He also promises to annex the West Bank “while choosing the timing and considering the national and international interests of the state of Israel.”

The coalition agreements, released a day before the government is to be sworn into office, also included language endorsing discrimination against LGBTQ people on religious grounds, contentious judicial reforms, as well as generous stipends for ultra-Orthodox men who prefer to study instead of work.

The package laid the groundwork for what is expected to be a stormy beginning for the country’s most religious and right-wing government in history, potentially putting it at odds with large parts of the Israeli public, rankling Israel’s closest allies and escalating tensions with the Palestinians.

“What worries me the most is that these agreements change the democratic structure of what we know of as the state of Israel,” said Tomer Naor, chief legal officer of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a watchdog group. Some of these changes will be irreversible one day, like when Netanyahu won’t be prime minister.

The guidelines were led by a commitment to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel,” including “Judea and Samaria,” the biblical names for the West Bank.

Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — territory the Palestinians seek for a future state. Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements home to around 500,000 Israelis who live alongside around 2.5 million Palestinians.

The Palestinian leadership emphasized that there was only one way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the creation of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.

Without a negotiated two-state solution, “there will be no peace, security or stability in the region,” said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

After 12 years as prime minister, Netanyahu is back in office. His government is made up of religious parties that are far-right and affiliated with the West Bank settlers movement.

The deal grants favors to Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right politician who will be the new national security minister.

It includes a commitment to expand and vastly increase government funding for the Israeli settlements in the divided West Bank city of Hebron, where a tiny ultranationalist Jewish community lives in heavily fortified neighborhoods amid tens of thousands of Palestinians. Ben-Gvir lives in a nearby settlement.

The clause says the country’s anti- discrimination laws will be changed to allow businesses to refuse service because of a religious belief.

Members of Ben- Gvir’s party said the law could be used to deny services to the gay community. Netanyahu left a clause in the coalition agreement when he said he would not let the law pass.

Among its other changes is placing Bezalel Smotrich, a settler leader who heads Religious Zionism party, in a newly created ministerial post overseeing West Bank settlement policy.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Smotrich said that annexation of the West Bank would not happen right away.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/29/1145952664/benjamin-netanyahus-new-israeli-government-will-make-west-bank-expansion-a-prior

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Israel’s “Conserved Right Footprints” on the Dialogue of Israel and the Palestinians

Critics say the law will undermine government checks and balances and erode a critical democratic institution. They also say Netanyahu has a conflict of interest in pushing for the legal overhaul because he is currently on trial for corruption charges.

“Since (the new government’s) intention is to weaken the Supreme Court, we’re not going to have the court as an institution that would help guard the principles of freedom and equality,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, told reporters.

Two of Netanyahu’s key ministers have criminal records. Deri, who served time in prison in 2002 for bribery, pleaded guilty to tax fraud earlier this year, and Netanyahu and his coalition passed a law this week to allow him to serve as a minister despite his conviction. Ben-Gvir was convicted in 2009 of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization.

In a rare meeting with one of the coalition’s most radical members, Israel’s figurehead president expressed deep concern about the government’s stance on discrimination against the country’s Arabs. “Ben-Gvir must calm the winds” was the recommendation from Herzog.

The government platform also mentioned that the loosely defined rules governing holy sites, including Jerusalem’s flashpoint shrine known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, would remain the same.

Ben-Gvir and other Religious Zionism politicians had called for the “status quo” to be changed to allow Jewish prayer at the site, a move that risked inflaming tensions with the Palestinians. The emotional epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the site.

Jordan would retaliate if Israel attempts to change Jerusalem’s status over the objections of Jordan, King Abdullah II warned in an interview with CNN published Wednesday.

What’s the big deal? It wasn’t as planned. This past week in Jerusalem has been violent after Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians, including a 61 years old woman, during a raid on the West Bank. Dozens more were injured.

“In the context of this attack and escalating violence, it’s important that the government and people of Israel know America’s commitment to their security remains ironclad. The U.S. has supported the project for nearly 75 years. America’s commitment has never waivered, and never will.”

The people of East Palestine, Ohio, just want help, truth and accountability after a freight train wreck smothered their town with a toxic cloud and left them afraid to drink the water.

But these Ohioans in the epicenter of an environmental crisis, which suddenly arrived on their doorsteps on February 3, are also becoming political extras on an early stage for GOP White House candidates like former President Donald Trump.

When disaster strikes, toxic politics in America is not far behind, and accidents such as hurricanes and transportation crashes are used by adversaries to try to damage those in power.

Republicans are using the derailment to claim that while President Joe Biden is lavishing billions on Ukrainians he visited in a daring trip to wartime Kyiv this week, he is neglecting needy Americans back home.

“You are not forgotten,” Trump said. “We stand with you. We pray for you. And we will stand with you and your fight to help ensure the accountability that you deserve.”

The Ohio Disaster: Not as a Rescuer as Yet as an Accidental Explosion in Dense Washington, Sens. Ted Cruz and Sen. Ilhan Omar

The Ohio disaster is also allowing the public a glimpse into the rarely seen Washington duel between regulators and freight firms, which has huge implications for keeping Americans safe as vast trains – some as long as 150 cars, some carrying poisonous chemicals – rumble through towns and cities. While pretending to be a rescuer now, he slashed environmental and safety regulations in office. Huge transportation firms, meanwhile, pay lobbyists millions of dollars to loosen safety rules and staffing levels as they seek to maximize profits, even while rewarding shareholders and scrimping on safety.

Republicans sense vulnerability. “He is an incompetent who is focused solely on his fantasies about his political future & needs to be fired,” tweeted Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who, like Buttigieg, might also have another White House race in his future.

Still, perhaps the consequences of the derailment could unlock unusual coalitions in Washington. Conservative Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and progressive Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota are both demanding reforms, for instance. But in Washington, expectations of bipartisan action after a catastrophe often wane as time passes.

It’s no wonder residents question whether they are being heard given the political hypocrisy and complex layers of federal, state and local responsibility.

Their concerns are only exacerbated by the fact that hazardous smoke that rose over their homes followed a controlled burn of several wagons containing chemicals, which was ordered by officials to forestall an even worse disaster – a massive explosion.

One substantive — a train derailment and subsequent chemical burn-off that has potentially jeopardized the health of understandably angered residents of the town.

The U.S. is America Right Here, and We’re Ready to Show You What It Is Trying To Tell You About Hurricane Maria

A response that some saw as sluggish has ramped up. Norfolk Southern will be forced to pay for the clean-up operation and the government’s expenses by the Biden administration.

Yet many townspeople mistrust officials who tell them they are in no danger, contrasting the evidence of their own senses with what they are being told.

While Trump brought some comfort to people in a region that overwhelmingly voted for him, it was still a partisan political play.

“I sincerely hope that when your representatives and all of the politicians get here, including Biden, they get back from touring Ukraine, that he’s got some money left over,” Trump said in East Palestine, in Columbiana County, which he won with 72% of the vote over the current president in the 2020 election.

“The community has shown the tough and resilient heart of America,” Trump said, “and that’s what it is — this is really America right here. We’re standing in America.

In response, Biden tweeted about the disaster while in Europe, blaming his predecessor’s administration for making it harder to implement rail safety measures and telling residents, “We’ve got your back.”

Trump pledged bottled water sourced from his hotels and bought burgers for firefighters in a local McDonald’s as he adopted the trappings of a presidential post-disaster visit to polish his own political profile. He boasted how he had deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency – which is currently operating in East Palestine – during his presidency. He did not mention the mismanagement that contributed to the disaster after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico.

The rule that Trump reversed called for trains with hazardous materials to be retrofitted with electronically controlled brakes.

What did Biden do last November when Russia had invaded Palestine, and what did he do? A letter by Pence and David A. Buttigieg

Current and possible presidential candidates rushed to catch up with Trump. Haley asked if Biden should be with people in Ohio. Haley had promised that she would be tougher than Biden on Putin. The president traveled to Europe to say that Putin would never win the war. Vice President Mike Pence, who might run in 2024, said he was glad that Biden went toUkraine but it would have been better if he had gone to Palestine first.

One of the most well-known Transportation secretaries in modern history is Buttigieg. Since the scheduling nightmare of last year for Southwest, he has been thrust into the spotlight during travel meltdowns in the aviation industry.

“The people of East Palestine cannot be forgotten, nor can they be simply considered the cost of doing business,” Buttigieg wrote in the letter, which was clearly designed for an audience wider than Shaw.

I was focused on making sure that our folks on the ground were all Set but could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident and that’s a lesson learned for me,” said Buttigieg.

Buttigieg said he had been “respecting the role that the independent NTSB plays and staying out of their way” but vowed to be “focused on action, not on politics, not on show” when he visits East Palestine.

Now that Biden is back on US soil, the odds of him making his own visit – to empathize with townspeople and to show he’s on top of the response – must be rising. Perception is a theme of such trips. The presence of a leader in the government makes them want to help and assures those who have been touched by disasters that they are not forgotten.

The other: political. As President Biden took what was by all accounts a daring trip to Ukraine as Russia’s war on the country was heading toward its one-year anniversary, Republicans were criticizing Biden for going there instead of East Palestine.

Seeing a political opportunity, former President Donald Trump and a cadre of other conservatives descended on the small town of fewer than 5,000 residents. Trump insulted the Biden administration with “Trump”- branded water and campaign hats. Under pressure, Pete Buttigieg met with local leaders and offered his own rejoinders to the former president.

People in town are concerned about the long term effects on the air and water they drink, even though political leaders are mired in short-term politics.

In East Palestine Who Shows Up Is Not Necessarily a Sign of Whos Helping Bringing About Real America: Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio)

East Palestine is in a county that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the 2020 presidential election, and conservatives have held up the community as something of an example of the kinds of people the political parties value.

At a time when the country is in a political realignment centering on education and geography, there have been pitched battles about what “real America” is.

Under political pressure, Secretary Buttigieg, himself a former Midwestern mayor, made the trip to East Palestine this week, three weeks after the disaster happened.

“Leaders show up,” Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, told Fox News ahead of the trip, “and he hasn’t been here, and that is sending a big signal to this community that the administration just really doesn’t care, and that’s the message that they are receiving.”

Biden said he was keeping a close watch on it since he had spoken with every single major figure in both Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The rail company Norfolk Southern was criticized by the EPA administrator during his trip to East Palestine for not showing up.

“They have to show up and make some kind of apology for what happened to them”, said Regan in an interview this week. “They caused this mess. They must clean it up. And they have to prove to us and to the community that they’re genuine in all of the declarations that they’ve made. Not showing up to public meetings isn’t a great way to start.”

Asked about a lack of trust in the federal government from the community in the wake of the disaster, Regan invoked the importance of being transparent with residents, providing resources and also being there.

While in town, Buttigieg called for stronger rail- safety rules, swatted back at Trump and tried to stay focused on the substance.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1159382554/in-east-palestine-who-shows-up-isnt-necessarily-a-sign-of-whos-helping

How Did the Biden Voting Campaign Against Lyman-Baxter and the Transportation Safety Rule Stop? A Call to the Prosecutor

There isn’t any evidence that would’ve helped stop this particular wreck. Safety advocates have also said DOT has been slow to respond and and that it could have reinstituted the rules when Biden became president, but didn’t.

Homendy said other safety measures could have been put in place, even if the rule wouldn’t have prevented this.

While conservatives have descended on the town and called out Biden from afar, they haven’t given anything in the way of real solutions to prevent these kinds of disasters in the future, which the industry has lobbied against.

“Enough with the politics,” Homendy said. This has gotten political and I don’t understand why. This is a group of people who are hurting. This is not about politics. This is about addressing their needs, their concerns. This should be about that.