Jason Greenblatt is in Israel for ambassador Friedman’s daughter’s wedding — but he will also meet another couple: Gantz and Netanyahu. Will the two come together for Trump’s peace plan or will they bury it?

By Amir Tibon , HAARETZ 
Election banners in Jerusalem for the Likud party, showing U.S. President Donald Trump shaking hands with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Benny Gantz’s Kahol Lavan, September 9, 2019. AFP

WASHINGTON — The results of Tuesday’s election left U.S. followers of Israeli politics in a state of confusion, with Israel’s political future seemingly harder to predict than ever.

While it is clear to everyone in Washington that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost the election, it is much less clear who actually won it. Also unclear: Whether Israel will have a government in the next few months or if another election will have to take place in the winter.

With 98 percent of the votes counted on Thursday afternoon, Netanyahu had almost certainly failed in both of his election objectives. First, his Likud party did not receive the largest number of seats, being two behind the centrist Kahol Lavan party led by former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz. Second, and more crucially, the bloc of right-wing and religious parties that support giving Netanyahu legal immunity in the pending corruption charges against him fell well short of garnering the 61 seats necessary for a majority in the Knesset.

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By Robert F. Worth, NYT

Amr Nabil/Associated Press

The missiles that struck last weekend in Saudi Arabia did not just destroy oil tanks. They also dealt the final blow to a doctrine that has been fading for years: the belief that the United States maintains a security umbrella able to protect the oil-rich Persian Gulf states from their enemies — and, especially, from Iran.

President Trump’s miscalculations helped get us here. But the current Gulf crisis is not just about this administration and the pitfalls of its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. The United States has been disengaging from the Middle East since the catastrophe of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Now that shale has made America so much less dependent on the Middle East’s oil, it is hard to imagine any American president risking significant blood and treasure to defend Saudi Arabia.
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Regrettably for both Israelis and Palestinians, the paper doesn’t consider Palestinian illiberalism – embodied by Mahmoud Abbas, who’s serving the 15th year of a four-year term – to be worth column space.

by  Sean Durns, ISRAEL HAYOM

Israel is increasingly “illiberal” argues Robert Kagan in an unprecedented four-page spread in The Washington Post (“Israel and the decline of the liberal order,” Sept. 12, 2019). Kagan’s argument, made on the eve of Israel’s second free and fair election in five months, falls flat on its face. Indeed, not only is it Israel’s second election in less than a year, polls suggest that the election, with topics hotly debated in the press, is likely to be quite close – the precise opposite of what one would see in an illiberal polity. But this isn’t the only flaw in a deeply flawed piece.

As Washington Examiner editor Seth Mandel detailed in a must-read Twitter thread, Kagan’s argument is a “master class in straw men, undefined terms, nut-picking, outsourcing and historical ignorance.”
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Coalition deadlock persists after 96.5% of total votes counted; center-left-Arab bloc up to 57 seats

By TOI STAFF Today, 11:06 am

Benny Gantz’s Blue and White centrist party has opened a two-seat lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, according to updated voting results Thursday morning from the Central Election Committee.

With some 96.5 percent of all votes in Tuesday’s elections having been counted, Blue and White had 33 seats to Likud’s 31. Third was the Joint List alliance of Arab-majority parties at 13, followed by the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas with nine and United Torah Judaism with eight. Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu also has eight, Yamina has seven, Labor-Gesher has six and the Democratic Camp has five.

The center-left bloc, including the predominantly Arab Joint List — which has never been a member of the government — has increased its power to 57 seats, with the right-wing and religious bloc at 55. Neither has the 61-seat majority necessary to form a coalition, leaving Yisrael Beytenu in the kingmaker position.

The updated results came after the tallying of some 180,000 so-called double envelope votes cast by diplomats, security forces, handicapped citizens, hospital patients and staff, and prisoners.
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Shaked says 55-member bloc for coalition talks is just a ‘vague idea’; Smotrich hints party will demand a commitment not to form government with Gantz

By TOI STAFF

Ayelet Shaked (R), leader and candidate of the New Right party that is part of the Yamina political alliance, speaks to the press while flanked by Jewish Home candidate Moti Yogev (L), National Union party leader Bezalel Smotrich (2nd-L), and Jewish Home party leader Rafi Peretz (C) at the alliance’s headquarters in Ramat Gan, September 17, 2019. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP)

Senior members of the Yamina party on Thursday cast doubt on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement a day earlier of a united front of right-wing and religious parties ahead of coalition talks, with its leader, Ayelet Shaked, saying that bloc was “still just a vague idea.”

Right-wing and ultra-Orthodox political leaders rallied around Netanyahu Wednesday, agreeing to present the united front after they jointly came up short of winning enough seats in Tuesday’s elections to form a new majority government.

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Likudniks say he’s even ready for rotation with Gantz

By Gil Hoffman, JPOST

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will push for Blue and White to join a national-unity government led by him, sources close to Netanyahu said Wednesday, following a meeting of the Likud faction at Jerusalem’s Orient Hotel.

The sources who participated in the closed-door meeting said Netanyahu would publicly pursue a coalition with all of Blue and White, though his private preference would be that Benny Gantz break up his Blue and White Party and join without Yesh Atid.

Likud MKs said that Netanyahu asked to not discuss his tactics for building a coalition. But MKs said they have received an impression that he would agree to a rotation in the Prime Minister’s Office with Gantz, as long as Netanyahu goes first.
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While Israel struggles to form a new government, the AfD („Alternative for Germany“) party would like to congratulate the only democracy in the Middle East on its thriving, vibrant system of self-rule – even if it sometimes can be a headache.

By Petr Bystron, INN

We know that Israelis can often feel left alone amid a host of enemies, in world where everybody seems to be against them. Believe me, we know the feeling. In Europe, it has become consensus (especially on the left) to criticize Israel for merely trying to defend itself, while turning a blind eye to the aggression and human rights abuses of Hamas, Hezbollah and other neighboring states.

We in the AfD are the only party in Germany to challenge this status quo. While our political opponents try to smear us as “fascist” or even “neo-Nazi”, we are actually a solidly conservative party which follows a political program very similar to that of the Christian Democrats before Angela Merkel took her party far to the left, and decided to open the borders for mass Islamic immigration – as even a study by the Christian Democrat related Hanns Seidel Foundation showed.
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T. Belman. I like what Liberman is saying and doing.  He is being demonized by too many people on the right. In April Netanyahu castigated him for demanding his law on the draft. Liberman was fully within his right to demand it.  Netanyahu’s mistake was he didn’t demand the UTJ and Shas to accept it.  Too late now,  he has upped his demands. But I don’t think he is being unreasonable. He is opposing the power of the religious community and that is a good thing. Somebody has got to do it.

Secondly he has put the kibosh on the participation of the Joint List in the government.  By doing so, he has increased the likelihood that Rivlin will task Netanyahu first to form the government. Netanyahu’s options are clear.  Either form a coaltion with B&W or Liberman or both.  If they combine to insist on much of Liberman’s demands thereby forcing Netanyahu and the religious parties to accept it, I would have no trouble with it.  I think it would be a good thing for Israel.

Most commentators are wringing their hands at the outcome of the elections.  Not me.

Yisrael Beytenu chairman calls on Netanyahu and Gantz to focus on a unity government. “For us, there is no other option.”

By Elad Benari, INN

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman on Wednesday published a post on his Facebook page in which he reiterated his position that he will only be part of a unity government between the Likud and Blue and White.

“Since last night, after the results of the exit polls were published, I have been hearing all kinds of commentators and experts presenting all sorts of scenarios and trying to form imaginary coalitions,” wrote Liberman.

“In order not to waste your time, I want to make it clear: Yisrael Beytenu, as we have said throughout the election campaign, will sit only in a broad liberal national government that will consist of three parties – Yisrael Beytenu, the Likud and Blue and White.”
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https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=318367862080039

Elevation of the state department’s chief hostage negotiator seen as a win for US secretary of state Mike Pompeo

Julian Borger, GUARDIAN

Robert O’Brien arrives at a court in Stockholm in July to witness the trial of the US rapper A$AP Rocky, a mission that infuriated the Swedish government. Photograph: Michael Campanella/Getty Images

Donald Trump has appointed the state department’s chief hostage negotiator – whose most prominent international role until now was monitoring the Swedish trial of the US rapper A$AP Rocky – to be John Bolton’s successor as national security adviser.

Unlike his firebrand predecessor, Robert O’Brien is seen as a low-profile loyalist, and his appointment is widely viewed in Washington as a win for the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who had competed with Bolton for the president’s ear.
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Unity government? Liberman plus the religious right? Gantz getting Arab support? With inconclusive results, someone will have to compromise to avoid 3rd elections in a year

By Michael Bachner, TOI Today, 1:36 pm

“It’s pretty exciting and new to me that voting could actually make a difference, lead to a real change in the country’s fate. You can vote in Russia, but it will make no difference.”

By Cnaan Lipshiz, JTA

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin chats with Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar during a ceremony unveiling a monument to heroes of resistance in concentration camps and ghettos during World War II, on June 4. (photo credit: SERGEI ILNITSKY / REUTERS)

JTA) — Less than a year after he immigrated to Israel from Russia, Dima Eygenson has already voted twice in his adopted country.

In April, Israeli voters cast ballots in an election that resulted in a virtual tie between the longtime incumbent prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and political newcomer Benny Gantz. On Tuesday, they were back at the polls because Netanyahu couldn’t cobble together a governing coalition.

“I’m a seasoned voter by now,” Eygenson, a 39-year-old marketing specialist, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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AT 10:30 PM

Likud: 32
Blue and White: 32
Joint List: 12
Yisrael Beytenu: 10
Shas: 9
United Torah Judaism: 8
Yamina: 7
Democratic Camp: 5
Labor-Gesher: 5
Otzma Yehudit: 0

Right-wing bloc without Liberman: 56
Center-left, Arab parties and Liberman: 64

By Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, BESA

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,291,

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Beyond its unquestionable vitality for Israel’s security, the Jordan Valley in its full geographical scope can accommodate millions of Israelis and national infrastructure that cannot be compressed into the coastal plain. If PM Netanyahu’s declaration of sovereignty is not immediately borne out by a surge of building and focused governmental support, it will sputter and die.

PM Netanyahu’s promise to apply sovereignty to the Jordan Valley is worthy of praise. The reasons for doing so were already evident to PM Levi Eshkol in the immediate wake of the 1967 the Six-Day War, and were fully fleshed out in the Allon Plan. As the plan stated: “The eastern border of the state of Israel must be the Jordan River and a line that crosses the Dead Sea in the middle…. We must add to the country—as an inseparable part of its sovereignty—a strip approximately 10-15 kilometers wide, along the Jordan Valley.”

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Self-mutilation as a Jewish cultural strategy and the sad history of the Yevsektsiya

By Dara Horn, TABLET

The teenage boys who played competitive athletics in the gymnasium in Jerusalem 2,100 years ago had their circumcisions reversed, because otherwise they wouldn’t have been allowed to play. In the Hellenistic empire that conquered Judea, sports were sacred, the entry point to being a person who mattered, the ultimate height of cool—and sports, of course, were always played in the nude. As one can imagine, ancient genital surgery of this nature was excruciating and potentially fatal. But the boys did not want to miss out.

I learned this fun fact in seventh grade, from a Hebrew-school teacher who was instructing me and my pubescent classmates about the Hanukkah story—about how Hellenistic tyranny gained a foothold in ancient Judea with the help of Jews who went along for the ride. This teacher seemed overly jazzed to talk about penises with a bunch of adolescents, and I suspected he’d made the whole thing up. At home I pulled a dusty old book off my parents’ shelf, Volume 1 of Heinrich Graetz’s History of the Jews. There I discovered that it was true, and also far worse.
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Speaking to Efi Triger on Army Radio’s Good Morning Israel program, Netanyahu went farther than he did just 11 days ago, when he visited Hebron.

BY GIL HOFFMAN, TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST

A BULLDOZER at work in Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. (photo credit: REUTERS)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said for the first time on Monday morning that if re-elected on Tuesday, he would annex Kiryat Arba and the Jewish areas of Hebron.

Speaking to Efi Triger on Army Radio’s “Good Morning Israel” program, Netanyahu went farther than he did just 11 days ago when he visited Hebron and delivered a historic speech just outside of the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Expectations had been high that he would use the platform to declare his intention to apply Israeli sovereignty to the mostly Palestinian city, or at the very least to the 4% of the city of that includes the Tomb  of the Patriarchs and the section where the Jewish community lives.
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ARUTZ SHEVA

Central Election Committee bars left-wing NGO ‘Zazim’ from busing in Arab voters to polling stations on election day.

The Central Elections Committee issued an injunction Sunday night against the left-wing NGO Zazim’s initiative to bus 15,000 Arab voters to voting booths on election day, ruling that the initiative is in violation of the election laws.

The injunction came following a petition submitted by the Likud arguing that Zazim, which is heavily funded by the US-based New Israel Fund, is violating the election the laws.

In 2017, the Knesset passed the “V15” law aimed at preventing foreign funded non-party political organizations from interfering in the elections. The law was passed following the efforts of V15, a US-funded group, which actively worked to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu in the 2015 national elections.
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