Middle East Roundup: December 1, 2015

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Israel and Jordan issue joint tender for Red Sea-Dead Sea canal

(JNS.org) Israel and Jordan announced the issuing of an international tender for the construction of a water canal between the Red Sea and the shrinking Dead Sea.

The two countries made their joint announcement Monday after a meeting between Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom and Jordanian Water and Irrigation Minister Hazim El-Nasser. The meeting was held on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea.

The canal will carry water from the Red Sea north to the Dead Sea, which has been steadily drying out. A fixed amount of canal water will be siphoned off and desalinated to supply drinking water to Israelis, Jordanians, and Palestinians, with the saline byproducts used to replenish the mineral-rich Dead Sea.

“Today we took an additional historic step to save the Dead Sea,” Shalom said Monday. “The joint international tender to be published tomorrow is proof of the cooperation between Israel and Jordan, and a response to those who cast doubt on whether the canal project would ever go ahead. This is an exceptional environmental and diplomatic achievement that testifies more than anything to the fertile cooperation between the countries.”

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Highest-ranking Soviet spy caught in Israel dies at age 97

(JNS.org) Marcus Klingberg, the highest-ranking Soviet spy caught in Israel, died at his home in Paris on Monday. He was 97.

Klingberg, a biologist, was arrested by Israel’s Shin Bet in January 1983 and subsequently convicted of spying on Israel for the KGB over the previous three decades. He was born in Poland in 1918 and fled to the Soviet Union after the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. In the Soviet Union, Klingberg studied medicine and served in the Red Army as a medical officer.

In 1948, Klingberg immigrated to Israel with his wife and daughter and was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1957, he was appointed deputy head of the Israel Institute for Biological Research in Nes Ziona.

Klingberg was secretly arrested by the Shin Bet in 1983 after a lengthy investigation into his activities. Upon interrogation, he admitted to being a spy and was sentenced to 20 years in jail. In 1998, Klingberg was released to house arrest. After his 20-year sentence ended in 2003, he left Israel to go live with his daughter and grandson in Paris. Publicly, he never showed any remorse for his actions.

“To this day I don’t consider myself a spy,” Klingberg once said. “I am not proud of what I did, but I do not regret it either.”

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Thousands in Jerusalem commemorate Jews expelled from Arab countries

(JNS.org) Thousands of people attended Israel’s first official commemoration event for Jews expelled from Arab countries and Iran, held in Jerusalem on Monday.

Social Equity Minister Gila Gamliel spearheaded the initiative, calling the event “Longing for Home.” The ceremony began with a moment of silence for Jews killed in pogroms in Arab countries and Iran. Afterward, emigrants from those countries told their stories and performers took the stage—including singer Kobi Oz (of Tunisian heritage), actress and singer Liraz Charhi (of Iranian descent), musician Gilad Segev (of Syrian descent), musician Haim Oliel (of Moroccan heritage), musician Yair Dalal (of Iraqi descent), singer Dikla (of Egyptian heritage), singer Rita Shalhoun (of Lebanese descent), and actor-singer Guy Zu-Aretz (whose family is from Libya).

Gamliel said the ceremony corrected the lack of acknowledgment of the suffering of more than 800,000 Jews who were forced to flee or were expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 20th century.

“We will work to introduce Jewish heritage from Arab countries and Iran to the Israeli education system,” she said.

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No such thing as male or female brain, Israeli research finds

(JNS.org) A new study by Israel’s Tel Aviv University used more than 1,400 MRI scans to demonstrate that human brains cannot be categorized as “male” or “female.”

“Each person possesses a unique mosaic of characteristics, some more common in females compared to males, some more common in males compared to females, and some common in both,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Daphna Joel of Tel Aviv University’s School of Psychological Sciences and Sagol School of Neuroscience.

She and the other researchers found that a mix of “male” and “female” traits make up the vast majority of brains, regardless of gender, rather than most men displaying exclusively male characteristics and most women displaying exclusively female ones.

Joel completed the study in conjunction with other Tel Aviv University researchers, as well as scientists from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig and the University of Zurich.

Published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study weakens popular claims that men and women have “different brains” and should be taught or treated differently based on gender.

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Netanyahu: Israel and Russia to increase military coordination

(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel and Russia will deepen military coordination amid Russia’s ongoing operations in Syria.

“I just had an important talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin. We agreed to deepen the coordination between us in order to prevent mishaps and to do so on a broad basis,” Netanyahu told reporters after his meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the Paris climate conference on Monday.

“I think that every citizen of Israel understands today, in light of recent events on the Turkish border, the great importance of my trip to Moscow and these ongoing contacts with the Russian president,” he added.

Netanyahu’s announcement comes on the heels of a statement by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon praising security coordination with Russia that has prevented Russia-Israel clashes in the region. According to Ya’alon, a Russian jet recently breached airspace, but the issue was “immediately fixed through communications channels.”

In late September, Netanyahu met with Putin in Moscow to establish a mechanism in order prevent any inadvertent clashes between Israeli and Russian forces operating in Syria.

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BDS inspectors try to enforce labeling of Israeli products in Germany

(JNS.org) A group of self-appointed “inspectors” for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement visited various German businesses on Saturday in a bid to ensure that the businesses are complying with the European Union’s new guidelines removing “Made in Israel” labels for Israeli products from Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights, and eastern Jerusalem, the German newspaper TAZ reported.

The activists, dressed in white overalls, visited downtown shops such as fruit stands and department stores in the German city of Bremen to enforce the rule. One spokesperson for the BDS group, Claus Walischewski, said the inspectors would guess which products were actually imported from beyond Israel’s 1967 lines because it is generally difficult to recognize products imported from Israel.

According to TAZ, the BDS group marked products on the shelves with notes that read, “Caution: The product could come from an illegal Israeli settlement.”

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Israel and Australia strengthen research and business ties

(JNS.org) As part of Israel’s effort to strengthen research and development ties with countries around the world, the Israeli Economy Ministry’s chief scientist, Avi Hasson, signed an agreement with Commonwealth Bank of Australia during the first-ever investment summit between Israel and Australia.

“This is the first multinational Australian corporation joining Israel’s program of collaborating with multinational corporations. This testifies to the program’s global nature and its benefits even for companies from distant countries, especially those that do not yet have a permanent presence in Israel,” Hasson said in a statement.

The Australian bank’s interest is focused primarily on Israel’s cyber-security companies.

“This visit is clearly a testament to the high regard Australia has for the Israeli innovation economy,” said Hasson. “A number of Australian government and trade delegations have visited Israel in recent months, focusing on lessons from the ‘start-up nation’ in promoting innovation and entrepreneurship.”

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Israel to supply Egypt with natural gas for up to 15 years

(JNS.org) Israel’s Leviathan offshore natural gas field is expected to supply the Egyptian company Dolphinus Holdings with up to 4 billion cubic meters (141 million cubic feet) of gas per year for 10 to 15 years, according to a preliminary deal announced last week.

“We’ve worked with Dolphinus before and we expect to reach a final agreement quickly,” Yossi Abu, chief executive of the Israeli company Delek Drilling, told Reuters.

“The Egyptian market is thirsty for gas, both for domestic use and for their export facilities. There is a lot of room for cooperation there,” Abu said.

The Leviathan gas field is expected to begin gas production in 2019 or 2020. Texas-based Noble Energy and Israel’s Delek Group are jointly operating Leviathan as well as the Jewish state’s other offshore gas field, Tamar.

 

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Netanyahu and Abbas shake hands for first time since 2010

(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas shook hands on Monday for the first time since 2010 following a group photo of about 150 world leaders who gathered for the World Climate Change Summit in Paris.

Netanyahu addressed the conference on Monday afternoon. He was scheduled to hold high-level meetings in Paris with French President Francois Hollande, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the prime ministers of Canada, Poland, Japan, Australia, India, and the Netherlands.

The last time Netanyahu and Abbas met face to face was in 2010 during American-brokered peace talks between Israel and the PA. Those negotiations eventually ended in a stalemate over the PA’s refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and Israel continuing new construction beyond the 1967 lines.

 

Israel suspends EUs involvement in peace process over product labeling

(JNS.org) In the aftermath of the European Union’s decision to drop “Made in Israel” labels on Israeli products from Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday suspended Israel’s relations with EU diplomatic contacts on their involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Israel will continue to have government-to-government contact with individual EU member nations, but not with EU-wide institutions until Israel reassesses the European bloc’s diplomatic role in the peace process.

An EU spokesperson said Monday that the EU would keep working on the peace process through the Middle East Quartet (United Nations, United States, EU, and Russia) as well as its Arab partners despite Israel’s decision, because “peace in the Middle East [is] an issue of interest to the entire international community and also to all Europeans.”

Palestinian Authority bans official Hamas television channel

(JNS.org) The Palestinian Authority (PA) banned Al-Aqsa TV, the official television channel of the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group, Walla! News reported Monday.

The PA’s decision was reportedly made to help stop incitement to violence by Hamas in the disputed Palestinian territories. The broadcasts of Al-Asqa TV have focused on documenting and encouraging stabbings and other attacks by terrorists during the current wave of Palestinian terror throughout Israel. At the same time, Palestinian Media Watch has long chronicled incitement to violence against Israelis through the PA’s own official print and broadcast media outlets.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah political party is a rival of Hamas, which seized control of Gaza from the PA in 2007.

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