Israeli court upholds sanctions on controversial Arab MK Zoabi
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) A five-judge panel at the Israeli High Court of Justice on Wednesday rejected a petition to reinstate Arab MK Hanin Zoabi’s Knesset privileges.
In July, the Knesset Ethics Committee banned Zoabi from the Knesset plenum after she made a string of statements in support of terrorism. Although she can still vote on bills, she cannot take part in floor debates. She is also banned from Knesset committee hearings. The ban is in effect until Jan. 29, 2015.
Zoabi, a member of the Balad party, in 2010 participated in the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla that was intercepted in the Mediterranean Sea by the Israeli Navy. In June, when three Israeli teens were missing and believed to be held hostage by Palestinians terrorists, she said the perpetrators should not be called “terrorists” (it was later discovered that the teens were executed by their captors shortly after the abduction). After Israel launched Operation Protective Edge this summer, she authored an online essay advocating popular resistance and a siege on Israel.
A majority of High Court justices—Miriam Naor, Elyakim Rubinstein, Esther Hayut, and Hanan Melcer—upheld the ethics panel decision. “We saw no compelling reason to second guess the Ethics Committee, as it enjoys a wide latitude in such decisions,” they wrote. Justice Salim Joubran dissented.
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Israeli disability rights law applied to Judea and Samaria
(JNS.org) Sixteen years after the law granting equal rights to Israeli citizens with disabilities was legislated, IDF Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon recently signed a command that will make the law effective immediately in Judea and Samaria, Israel Hayom reported. Israeli laws do not automatically take hold in Judea and Samaria, and need to be signed off by the local sovereign—in this case, Alon.
The disability rights law requires municipalities and regional and local councils in Judea and Samaria to make public institutions and facilities, including transportation, accessible to people with disabilities. Recently, MK Orit Struck (Habayit Hayehudi) advocated for the “Norms Law,” which would have applied all laws passed in the Knesset to Judea and Samaria. The proposal passed in the Knesset Ministerial Committee on Legislation, but former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and former Finance Minister Yair Lapid objected to it, and Livni filed an appeal that essentially buried it.
Samaria Regional Accessibility Coordinator Yishai Kopler, who has lived with cerebral palsy since childhood, pushed for the implementation of the law in Judea and Samaria and took it upon himself to begin making the region more accessible prior to the legal requirement to do so.
Kopler said his disability has never held him back. “Instead of doing things in five minutes, I do them in seven minutes,” he said.
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Likud party approves Netanyahu’s proposal to move up primaries
(JNS.org) In a secret vote on Wednesday, the Likud Central Committee approved Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to move the party’s primaries up to Dec. 31, in addition to giving the prime minister the right to place two candidates of his choice on the Likud list. Sixty-five percent of the committee’s members supported Netanyahu’s initiatives.
In the wake of Wednesday’s vote, there is a growing belief that former Likud minister Gideon Sa’ar will not challenge Netanyahu for the party’s leadership position in the primaries.
“Likud members outright rejected the unprecedented media campaign that promoted anyone running against Netanyahu,” the prime minister’s primaries campaign team said in a statement. “[Likud members] expressed sweeping confidence in the prime minister.”
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Palestinian Authority calls off security cooperation with Israel after official’s death
(JNS.org) The Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership said it will end all security cooperation with Israel in response to the death of a PA official on Wednesday, despite evidence that the official died of a heart attack and that the Palestinians prevented him from being treated by Israel.
Jibril Rajoub, former head of the PA’s Preventative Security Force,said that the PA would halt “all forms of security coordination with Israel for deliberately killing Minister Ziad Abu Ein,” Ma’an News Agency reported. Abu Ein, a convicted terrorist who headed the PA’s “Committee against the Separation Wall and Settlements,” died after a confrontation with Israeli soldiers during a protest over tree planting near the Jewish community of Adi Ad in Judea and Samaria.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), however, believes that Abu Ein died of a heart attack. IDF paramedics reportedly offered emergency medical assistance to Abu Ein, but the Palestinians instead decided to evacuate him to a hospital in Ramallah, where he died. The IDF has launched an investigation into the incident and said that it is preparing for an upsurge in Palestinian violence following the death.
Both the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist groups had called on the PA to end security coordination, saying that Israel only understands the “language of force.” PA President Mahmoud Abbas called the incident a “crime in all the meaning of the word.”
Abu Ein was a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in Israel in 1982 after being extradited from the U.S. for the murder of two Israelis in Tiberias in 1979. But Abu Ein was eventually freed in a prisoner swap in 1985.
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Israeli party leaders Herzog and Livni form pact to challenge Netanyahu
(JNS.org) Israeli Labor party leader Isaac Herzog and Hatnuah party leader Tzipi Livni have announced that they will unite their parties and run together in next March’s parliamentary elections. The two leaders said that if their alliance was victorious in the race to gain the most Knesset seats, they would rotate the prime minister position.
“When we get the mandate from the president, I will be the prime minister for the first two years and Tzipi Livni will be prime minister for the following two years,” Herzog said, the Jerusalem Post reported.
“We’re uniting for the good of the country, for the better future of our children and grandchildren. We can only win together,” he said.
Polls indicate that a united Labor-Hatnuah list would garner 23 seats in the Knesset, ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party at 21. But Netanyahu could still remain prime minister by forming a coalition of other parties.
Meanwhile, former Israeli communications minister Moshe Kahlon (previously of Likud) announced the name of his new centrist party, “Kulanu,” which means “all of us.” According to polls, Kahlon’s party would garner 10-13 seats and possibly play the role as a “kingmaker” in forming a governing coalition for the right or the left.
French police make 5 new arrests in connection with Brussels Jewish museum shooting
(JNS.org) The French police made five new arrests related to the shooting at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels this past May. Four people, including an Israeli couple, were killed in the attack.
A spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, said that three men and two women were arrested Tuesday in Marseille, the Associated Press reported. The newly arrested individuals are suspected of helping the Muslim man accused of carrying out the shooting, 29-year-old French national of Algerian origin Mehdi Nemmouche, who six days after the attack was arrested at a Marseille bus station while in possession of weapons similar to those used in the museum shooting.
Nemmouche, who has allegedly previously been involved with Islamic extremists in Syria, was charged with “murder in a terrorist context.” On Friday, he was remanded into custody for another three months.
Palestinians show strong support for recent attacks against Jews, poll says
(JNS.org) An overwhelming majority of Palestinians support both the recent attacks against Jews in Jerusalem and continued rocket fire at Israel from Gaza, according to a recent poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.
The poll found that 96 percent of Palestinians believe that Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount are in “grave danger,” while 80 percent support attempts by “individual Palestinians to stab or run over Israelis in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.”
The survey was conducted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Dec. 3-6, with a sample size of 1,270 adults in 127 randomly selected locations and a margin of error of 3 percent. The poll also found that while Palestinians’ belief that Hamas won the summer war with Israel has dropped slightly, 77 percent of Palestinians still support the launching of Gaza rockets at Israel if the so-called Israeli “siege” and blockade of the coastal enclave are not ended.
According to the poll, if Palestinian elections were held today, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would beat out Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas 53-42 percent. Hamas, the terrorist organization governing Gaza, recently said that its six-month unity government with Abbas’s Fatah faction had expired.
Israel indicts U.S. citizen accused of planning to attack Muslim holy sites
(JNS.org) The Israeli government has indicted a U.S. citizen from Texas illegally living in Israel who allegedly planned to attack Muslim holy sites in the Jewish state using explosives.
The man, who is Christian, was identified as 30-year-old Adam Everett Livvix after being arrested Nov. 19. He was charged Monday for conspiring with his roommate, who is an IDF soldier, to steal three pounds of explosives from the Israeli military. Police discovered ammunition in his possession.
“Under questioning, Livvix admitted… he had weighed various ideas about committing terrorist attacks at different venues and even gave preliminary thought to the possibility of attacking venues [of] Islamic holy places in Israel,” the Shin Bet security agency said.
Israeli police also said that Livvix had once pretended to be an ex-U.S. Navy SEAL and received an offer from a unnamed Palestinian man to assassinate U.S. President Barack Obama while Obama was visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2013. Although Livvix declined that offer, the incident spurred the FBI to begin investigating him. Livvix is also wanted in the U.S. on drug charges, Israeli officials said.
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