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Tag: Israel

  • Israel to use anti-terror tech to counter coronavirus ‘invisible enemy’

    Israel to use anti-terror tech to counter coronavirus ‘invisible enemy’

    Israel plans to use anti-terrorism tracking technology and a partial shutdown of its economy to minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.

    Cyber tech monitoring would be deployed to locate people who have been in contact with those carrying the virus, subject to cabinet approval, Netanyahu told a news conference in Jerusalem.

    “We will very soon begin using technology … digital means that we have been using in order to fight terrorism,” Netanyahu said. He said he had requested Justice Ministry approval because such measures could infringe patients’ privacy.

    In an escalation of precautionary measures, Netanyahu’s government announced that malls, hotels, restaurants and theaters will shut down from Sunday, and said employees should not go to their workplaces unless it was necessary.

    However vital services, pharmacies, supermarkets and banks would continue to operate.

    Health officials urged people to maintain social distancing, and not to gather more than 10 people in a room.

    The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, confirmed that it was examining the use of its technological capabilities to fight coronavirus, at the request of Netanyahu and the Health Ministry.

    Avner Pinchuk, a privacy expert with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said such capabilities could include real-time tracking of infected persons’ mobile phones to spot quarantine breaches and backtracking through meta-data to figure out where they had been and who they had contacted.

    “I am troubled by this announcement. I understand that we are in unique circumstances, but this seems potentially like over-reach. Much will depend on how intrusive the new measures are,” said Pinchuk.

    The Shin Bet, however, said in its statement that quarantine enforcement was not on the table. “There is no intention of using said technologies for enforcement or tracking in the context of isolation guidelines,” it said.

    Netanyahu said it was not an easy choice to make and described the virus as an “invisible enemy that must be located.” He said Israel would follow similar methods used by Taiwan.

    “In all my years as prime minister I have avoided using these means among the civilian public but there is no choice,” Netanyahu said.

    The latest announcement follows a series of ever-stricter restrictions imposed by Israel to contain the virus.

    The Israeli military said earlier on Saturday that it had ordered all troops to be back on their bases by Sunday morning, and that combat soldiers should prepare for a lengthy stay with no leave for up to a month.

    Last week anyone entering Israel was ordered to self-isolate for two weeks and schools have been shut. Tens of thousands of Israelis are presently quarantined.

    Israel’s Health Ministry said 193 people have tested positive, with no fatalities. Many had been on international flights in the past two weeks. (reuters)

  • Israeli opposition head Gantz wins chance to form new gov’t

    Israeli opposition head Gantz wins chance to form new gov’t

    Benny Gantz – the leader of Israel’s centrist Blue and White party and the main rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – will be tasked with forming a new government on Monday after winning a majority of recommendations from lawmakers.

    Israeli President Reuven Rivlin is due to officially give Gantz the mandate to form a government on Monday, hours before Israel’s new Knesset is scheduled to be sworn in.

    Israel has been without a government for more than a year after three consecutive inconclusive elections left no party able to build a parliamentary majority.

    In the last election on March 2, neither Netanyahu’s bloc of right-wing and religious parties nor the Gantz-led bloc of centre-left and Arab parties won a decisive majority.

    Netanyahu claimed victory, however, after his conservative Likud party emerged as the largest party in the 120-seat Knesset with 36 seats. Gantz’ centrist Blue and White came in second with 33 seats.

    On Sunday, a disjointed opposition came together to back Gantz, including Avigdor Liberman of the ultra-nationalist, secular Yisrael Beiteinu party with seven mandates, and 15 lawmakers on the Arab Joint List.

    Rivlin summoned Gantz and Netanyahu to an “urgent” meeting at his Jerusalem residence on Sunday night to discuss a possible emergency unity government.

    After meeting with Rivlin, Netanyahu and Gantz “agreed that (their parties’) negotiating teams will meet as soon as possible,” they said in a joint statement.

    Unity government negotiations have previously failed over Netanyahu’s refusal to give up the premiership, and Gantz’s refusal to sit with an indicted prime minister.

    Netanyahu’s corruption trial had been due to start on Tuesday, but was postponed to May 24, after courts were put on emergency schedules as part of coronavirus prevention measures, a Jerusalem District Court statement said.

    Netanyahu has been charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three corruption cases after allegedly offering political favours in return for positive press coverage and helping wealthy business contacts in return for gifts.

    It is the first time in Israel’s history that a sitting prime minister has been indicted. (dpa/NAN)

  • Israeli, Palestinian trade dispute winds down as both sides lift bans

    Israeli, Palestinian trade dispute winds down as both sides lift bans

    Israeli Defence Minister, Naftali Bennett, on Thursday said that a ban on Palestinian agricultural exports has been lifted, meaning the end of a trade dispute that has lasted for months.
    Bennett said the decision was made in response to the Palestinian Authority agreeing to lift a ban on importing Israeli-produced meat that drastically hurt Israeli cattle breeders.
    The Palestinian Agriculture and Economy Ministries in Ramallah confirmed that the import of livestock from Israel had resumed.
    Earlier, Israel had banned the export of Palestinian agricultural products in response to the Palestinian Government’s decision to expand its ban beyond calves and sheep and stop importing Israeli products including fruit juices and mineral water.
    Israel controls the import and export of goods into and out of the Palestinian Territories, including along the border with Jordan.
    According to the Israeli Globes business daily, Israeli exports to the Palestine in 2019 amounted to close to four billion dollars.
    However, Palestine had in October declared that it would seek to disengage its economy from that of Israel amid absent peace negotiations.
    The defused trade situation comes just weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his Middle East plan which foresees Israel extending its sovereignty over 30 per cent of the occupied West Bank.
    Palestinians reject the plan, fearing that it would recognize Israeli claims to parts of the West Bank that they were proposing for a future state.(dpa/NAN)

  • Past ‘evils’ are resurfacing, Germany and Israel warn at Holocaust event

    Past ‘evils’ are resurfacing, Germany and Israel warn at Holocaust event

    The “evil spirits” of racism and anti-Semitism are re-emerging, the presidents of Germany and Israel warned in Berlin on Wednesday as they marked 75 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

    Speaking at a special parliamentary session in the Bundestag, Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Germans had a responsibility to never forget their Nazi past and to stop hatred from spreading.

    “The evil spirits of the past are reappearing today under a new guise,” he said.

    “More still, they are presenting their ethno-nationalist, authoritarian thinking as a vision, as a better answer to the questions of our time.”

    Israeli President Reuven Rivlin echoed those concerns in his own speech, warning that the continent was being “visited by ghosts from the past”.

    “Ugly and extreme anti-Semitism is hovering over the whole of Europe,” Rivlin told German lawmakers.

    Both men were speaking after attending high-profile anniversary events in Jerusalem and at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland in recent days.

    The solemn occasions were dominated by fresh fears over the safety of Jews in Europe, more than seven decades after the Nazis murdered over six million Jews during World War II.

    Sitting in the audience in Berlin were MPs from the far-right AfD party, whose leaders have openly railed against Germany’s remembrance culture and its ongoing atonement for the atrocities committed under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.

    Leading AfD lawmaker Alexander Gauland in 2018 described the Nazi era as “a speck of bird shit” in German history.

    Quoting Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, Steinmeier warned: “It happened, so it can happen again.”

    – ‘Very negative influence’ –

    Rivlin was only the second Israeli president to speak at the German parliament’s annual remembrance event, after Shimon Peres in 2010.

    Peres used his speech at the time to issue an emotional plea for the world to bring the remaining perpetrators of Nazi crimes to justice.

    But faced with a dwindling number of people who lived through World War II, attention is shifting to making sure that the horrors of the Holocaust are not forgotten.

    On the eve of their Bundestag speeches, Rivlin and Steinmeier visited a centuries-old Jewish secondary school in the German capital.

    “We have the fourth, fifth and sixth generation after the Holocaust and World War II,” Rivlin told students.

    “Now we have to find a way to let you, and to let your children know what happened, and prevent it from happening again.”

    Steinmeier urged young people to complement their history lessons with real-life “experiences” by travelling to Israel and visiting concentration camps like Auschwitz, where 1.1 million people were killed.

    The German president, who serves as a kind of a moral arbiter for the nation, also voiced concern about the “very negative influence” of social media.

    He said his speech at Israel’s memorial event last Thursday, in which he urged Germans to confront their past, attracted an “unbelievable” amount of negative reactions on Facebook.

    – ‘Mass exit’ of Jews? –

    Alarm about anti-Jewish hatred has catapulted to the top of Germany’s political agenda after a suspected neo-Nazi gunman tried to storm a synagogue filled with worshippers in the city of Halle in October.

    After failing to break down the door, he shot dead a female passer-by and a man at a kebab shop instead.

    According to government figures, Germany recorded 1,799 anti-Semitic offences in 2018, up nearly 20 percent on the year before. Of those, 69 were classed as violent attacks.

    German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned this week that nearly one in two Jews has considered leaving the country.

    Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has already taken steps in recent months to tighten legislation on anti-Semitic crimes and punish online hate speech.

    Germans “bear the responsibility of making everyone feel safe at home in Germany and in Europe”, Merkel said recently.

    As a close diplomatic ally, Germany treads carefully when commenting on Israeli politics.

    But Berlin joined a lukewarm European response Tuesday to the Middle East peace plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    “Only a negotiated two-state solution, acceptable to both sides, can lead to a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” Maas said.

  • Trump peace plan embraced in Israel, rejected by Palestinians

    Trump peace plan embraced in Israel, rejected by Palestinians

    President Donald Trump’s long delayed Middle East peace plan won support in Israel on Wednesday but was bitterly rejected by Palestinians facing possible Israeli annexation of key parts of the West Bank.

    Trump, who unveiled the plan on Tuesday at the White House standing alongside Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with no Palestinian representatives on hand, said his initiative could succeed where others had failed.

    Major powers and some regional players responded with caution, saying Trump’s project deserves study while stressing that a durable solution to the conflict can only emerge through Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

    But Trump’s proposals reportedly included no Palestinian input and grants Israel much of what it has sought in decades of international diplomacy, namely control over Jerusalem as its “undivided” capital, rather than a city to share with the Palestinians.

    It also offers a US green light for Israel to annex the strategically crucial Jordan Valley — which accounts for around 30 percent of the West Bank — as well as other Jewish settlements in the area.”History knocked on our door last night and gave us a unique opportunity to apply Israeli law on all of the settlements in Judea (and) Samaria,” said Israel’s rightwing Defence Minister Naftali Bennett, using the Israeli term for the occupied West Bank.

    The Blue and White party led by Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s main election rival in March 2 polls, embraced Trump’s proposals as offering “a strong, viable basis for advancing a peace accord with the Palestinians”, in a statement late Tuesday.But the head of Israel’s leftwing coalition Labour-Gesher-Meretz, Amir Peretz, condemned Netanyahu’s expected move towards “unilateral annexations”.

    – Palestinian state? –

    Trump’s proposal foresees the creation of a “contiguous” Palestinian state but under strict conditions, including a requirement that it be “demilitarised”.

    On the flashpoint issue of Jerusalem, Trump said Israel should retain control over the city as its “undivided capital”.

    At the same time, the Palestinians would be allowed to declare a capital in parts of east Jerusalem beyond an Israeli security wall, the plan said.The US president also painted a future where some $50 billion in investments would eradicate the misery gripping Palestinians today.

    But the Palestinians angrily rejected the entire plan.

    “This conspiracy deal will not pass. Our people will take it to the dustbin of history,” Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said.

    The Hamas Islamist movement, which runs the Gaza Strip, said it could never accept compromise on Jerusalem being capital of a future state.

    Near the town of Tubas in the Jordan Valley on Wednesday, protesters waved Palestinians flags as Israeli soldiers looked on.

    “If the Americans try to implement this plan the Palestinian people will make it fail,” said 63-year-old Khaled Sawafta.

    A headline in the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida summed up the sentiment.

    “No! A thousand times No!” it read.

    – Mixed international reaction –

    International reaction was at best cautiously positive.

    The French foreign ministry on Wednesday welcomed Trump’s “efforts” and pledged to “carefully study” his proposal.

    British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called it a “serious proposal”.

    Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, tore into Trump’s deal as “completely unacceptable”.

    The ambassadors from three Arab nations — Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — were at the White House, providing some evidence of Trump’s claim to have growing support around the region.

    Saudi Arabia said it “appreciates” Trump’s efforts and called for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks.

    Russia, a growing force in Mideast politics, sounded sceptical.

    “We do not know if the American proposal is mutually acceptable or not,” Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told Russian news agencies.

    Netanyahu was due in Moscow on Wednesday to present the plan in person to President Vladimir Putin.

    – Impeachment, indictment –

    Trump himself is in the midst of an impeachment battle over his alleged abuse of power and he faces a difficult re-election campaign in November.Pro-Israel evangelical Christians form a key part of his voter base and they have backed his frequent moves to bolster Israel’s position in the Middle East.

    Netanyahu was formally indicted on three corruption charges Tuesday after he abandoned an attempt to seek parliamentary immunity.

    His rightwing Likud faces a neck-and-neck race with rival Gantz’s centrist Blue and White in a month, with Netanyahu seemingly gambling that his high-profile partnership with Trump will galvanise his support.

  • Israel advises against “unnecessary” travel to China

    Israel advises against “unnecessary” travel to China

    Israel’s Ministry of Health has joined several countries around the world in warning its citizens against “unnecessary” travel to China in light of the coronavirus outbreak.

    The ministry warned Israelis to avoid the Hubei region, the epicenter of the virus, altogether.

    A number of patients have been checked for the virus in Israel and the West Bank after suffering symptoms of respiratory disease, such as fever and coughing.

    As of Monday morning all cases — apart from one — had tested negative for the virus. The results of that case are still pending.

  • Israeli parliament set to dissolve itself, head into third elections

    Israeli parliament set to dissolve itself, head into third elections

    With only hours to go until the final deadline to form a government in Israel runs out, chances of a third election within a year looked all but unavoidable on Wednesday as lawmakers continue to deadlock.

    The two largest parties in Israel’s 120-seat parliament – caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White – have agreed on March 2 as the date for the third election if no last-minute agreement on a governing coalition is reached before the deadline at midnight (2200 GMT).

    The parliament will pass legislation on the election date on Wednesday, Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein has said.

    A third election within under a year is unprecedented in Israel and attests to the intensity of the political stalemate in the country.

    While Netanyahu has failed twice to form a majority coalition in the wake of April 9 and Sept. 17 elections, Gantz has failed once.

    Netanyahu has insisted on staying in office for at least another six months, while Gantz has declined to sit with the Likud so long as Netanyahu, who stands accused of corruption, remains prime minister.

    Netanyahu, Gantz and kingmaker Avigdor Liberman, of the far-right, secular Yisrael Beiteinu party, have pointed their fingers at each other for the failure.

    Almost three years after the corruption allegations surfaced, Israel’s attorney general announced last month that Netanyahu would be the country’s first sitting prime minister to be indicted.

    The 70-year-old faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust for allegedly offering political favours in return for more positive press coverage and helping out wealthy business contacts in return for expensive gifts.

    He has until Jan. 1, 2020 to ask lawmakers to vote for granting him immunity, as a Knesset member, against criminal charges.

    Although Netanyahu is undeniably under pressure, there has been no open revolt against him in the Likud or the public.

    Only one leading Likud member, former education minister Gideon Saar, has announced that he will challenge the prime minister for the party leadership.

    Judging by opinion polls, the indictment announcement has not decimated support for “Bibi” among Likud members or voters, nor is there an immediate end in sight to the paralysingt ie between the right-wing religious and centre-left blocs in the Knesset. (dpa/NAN)