Terra Incognita: Why Eli Yishai must not resign

His departure would add an injustice to the death and ruination the fire left behind. Leaving means walking out on responsibility, not owning up to it.

Seth J. Frantzman
Terra Incognita/JPost
07 December '10

Last week, after being shocked by initial reports that 40 had perished in a fire on the Carmel, I was glued to the news and Internet trying to find out about the great natural catastrophe.

Always in the back of my mind was the worrying sense that it would not take long for the recriminations and complaints to start circulating.

Sadly the prediction came true. Yossi Sarid, a former education minister and Meretz MK, was the first to chime in. He must have begun writing his op-ed soon after learning of the fire, because it was ready by the early morning of December 3. He titled his rant “Israel devours its own people – this time with fire” and explained to readers that “you don’t have to be a genius to predict horrible disasters... Israel is a stupid, lawbreaking state.”

He appears to have been the first wellknown person to point fingers at Interior Minister Eli Yishai. “I also wrote about the minister in charge, the interior minister who is in no hurry when everything goes up in flames. He relies on God, whose salvation is instantaneous, like the blink of an eye. The minister is ready to set Jerusalem on fire at any moment as well.”

As if taking their cue, the blamers began the mantra: Eli Yishai must be the fall guy.

(Read full story)

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Biden's Sulk

Benny Avni
Hudson New York
19 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

By the time Vice President Biden got to profess his love for Israel at Tel Aviv University Thursday, the bear hug he came to deliver was replaced by bear claws, and his mission - to declare “no space” between Israel and America when it comes to Iran’s nukes - was all but forgotten.

There is no question that the announcement of a plan to build 1600 new housing units in the neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, released by Israel just as Biden landed on Monday, was ill-timed and altogether boneheaded. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he claims, was blindsided by his interior minister Eli Yishai’s decision, he should have done more to censor his cabinet member.

Since then, however, Netanyahu endlessly apologized to Biden, assuring his guest that no one meant any disrespect to him or to President Obama (even though, unlike most Israelis, they consider Ramat Shlomo an “occupied territory.”) But before finally saying Thursday that he “appreciates” Netanyahu’s overtures, Biden publicly sulked for too long. He demonstrably arrived late to a Tuesday dinner hosted by Netanyahu, and expressed “condemnation” of the Jerusalem plan - the harshest of diplomatic phrases. Headlines across the world described an “Israeli slap in the face” of America. C’mon, get over it. Diplomatic snafus - and consequent attempts to walk them back - are not all that rare, and they are not unique to Israel either.

Last Friday, the UN Security Council issued a statement that urged Israelis and Arabs to avoid provocations at holy religious sites. It was triggered by Palestinian rioting over an Israeli plan to renovate West Bank biblical tombs, holy to both Jews and Muslims. The Arab-initiated Security Council action marked a departure from a long-held American policy to prevent the UN's top body from acting on any Arab-Israeli issue. The reason for that policy quickly became obvious: Palestinian officials used the council statement to further raise religious tensions across the region, declaring Israel’s “desecration” of Islam’s holy sites a violation of international law.

(Read full article)
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There is a reason Israel doesn't roll over when Mahmoud Abbas bats his eyelashes

Stephanie Gutmann
Telegraph.co.uk
11 March '10

Like many of my friends in Israel I am still scratching my head over the announcement by Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai that he will grant construction permits in contested East Jerusalem — just as Vice President Biden swanned into town to play Big White Peace Broker between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The announcement seems to have temporarily sabotaged talks that Biden was eager to set up… now, chop-chop (Air Force Two is idling on the runway for goodness sake!) and he has reacted in his characteristic over-the-top way, by saying that the lack of an agreement over Palestine, is “endangering US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Oh please. Like what’s really irking the Taliban and Al-Qaeda is the placement of borders over in Palestine. If there was a “final status agreement” everybody would settle down and take up crocheting. The VP’s comment reveals some profound confusion about how the region works.

Almost everyone — Israeli and Palestinian alike — admits in private that with Hamas busy stock-piling Iranian weapons and tightening its law enforcement and Sharia noose on the citizens of the Gaza Strip, there was little chance either side’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas or Bibi Netanyahu, would commit to terms that change the status quo significantly. Both, in their own way, are quite preoccupied with very large existential threats. Whether a border is moved a few miles to the east or west seems quite trivial. A permanent status agreement is merely a trophy the Obama-ites would like to hang on their wall. Both leaders, to a certain extent, will help their friends in the US keep the office walls looking perky, even though those ever-waffling American friends are increasingly less useful to either side.

(Read full article)
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