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Yisrael Beiteinu and the Coalition Government: Coming Closer
Talks between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Yisrael Beiteinu party chairman Avigdor Lieberman are moving toward agreement on a coalition deal, even without a decision on ministry portfolios.
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Editor: Alex Traiman
Chag Sameach
Sunday, October 08, 2006
16 Tishrei 5767
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1. Yisrael Beiteinu and the Coalition Government: Coming Closer
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By Hana Levi Julian
Talks between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Yisrael Beiteinu party chairman Avigdor Lieberman are moving toward agreement on a coalition deal, even without a decision on ministry portfolios.
| After a meeting on Friday between the two men, Lieberman told reporters that if he decides to accept a deal with Olmert’s coalition, final talks over the five conditions he set for joining the government could take less than two hours. He also said the agreement could be made even without a final decision on ministry portfolios. "That is not on the agenda," he said.
“If there are negotiations on our entry into the government and we decide that we want to join, it will take an hour or two,” said Lieberman on Sunday. The first hurdle, he said, would be decided when he presents a proposal to the Knesset for a change in the government structure. Olmert has agreed to back the legislation at its first reading.
Yisrael Beiteinu’s Five Conditions for Joining the Coalition
Lieberman set a total of five conditions for joining Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s rapidly weakening Kadima-led coalition:
1) Changing the form of the government to direct elections and writing a constitution;
2) Establishing a state commission of inquiry to look into the alleged mismanagement of the recent war with Hizbullah terrorists in southern Lebanon;
3) Officially ending Olmert’s “convergence” (unilateral withdrawal) plan;
4) Revoking the orders to destroy illegal outposts; and
5) Passing a law that would allow civil marriage.
Moving to Direct Elections, Writing a Constitution
Olmert agreed in a meeting with the Yisrael Beitenu chairman on Friday to support Lieberman when he moves to forward a bill in the Knessset to create a constitution and restructure the current system of government.
Opposition to the measure is already rising. Minister of Science, Culture and Sports and Labor Knesset member Ophir Pines-Paz opposed Lieberman’s plan to change the electoral system. “The earlier attempt to change the form of government to direct elections failed,” he said. “The results were the opposite of its goals.” He added that the problem with the system involves the people, rather than the government structure itself.
Meretz party chairwoman Zahava Gal-On also weighed in on the issue, calling Lieberman’s initiative to change the form of government “dangerous to democracy.”
Establish a State Commission of Inquiry
Along with numerous IDF reservists and politicians across the political spectrum, Lieberman has called for the establishment of a state commission of inquiry to investigate charges of mismanagement of the recent war with Hizbullah terrorists in southern Lebanon.
Olmert has until now refused to do so, although last week the Supreme Court demanded a formal explanation from the government as to why, in response to a petition by the Movement for Quality Government.
Shortly after the end of the war the Prime Minister said in a speech to the nation, delivered in the Katyusha-battered port city of Haifa, that such a commission – which would have the power to recommend the dismissal of government ministers and IDF commanders – was “not what the nation needs.”
End to Olmert’s “Convergence” Plan
Olmert will also have to officially and permanently put to rest the idea of a unilateral withdrawal plan if he wants Lieberman join forces and strengthen the wavering coalition government.
Such a move would inspire little opposition, however, even from within Olmert’s own Kadima party. Several Kadima members including Olmert himself have stated recently that unilateral disengagement is no longer relevant at this time.
Olmert received a great deal of support for the statement across the political spectrum, including Knesset members from his own party who initially voted for the plan.
A few Kadima MKs even went on record, including MK David Tal, formerly of Shas and Labor-One Nation, who said that in light of the two-front war forced upon Israel, "there is nothing to talk about now regarding further expulsions and unilateral moves. The whole idea of unilateralism has been shown to be worthless."
Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres, too, agreed that Olmert's unilateral withdrawal plan would likely not be occurring in the near future - and possibly not at all. Speaking with American Jews in New York last August, Peres said that the war in Lebanon "lowered the chances" for a unilateral Disengagement-like retreat from Judea and Samaria.
Illegal Outposts – Another ‘Central’ Issue
On Sunday morning, Olmert reiterated his opposition to Lieberman’s demands on the issue of illegal outposts as well. “He is against evacuating outposts, which is one of the most central issues for us. This is something that we brought to the cabinet... For us, this is a [main plank of our] platform.
“We are insisting that this government, this very government, evacuate illegal outposts and stop the process so that no new outposts are established in the future.”
Yisrael Beitenu Knesset member Esterina Tartman responded by saying the issue of illegal outposts is equally important to her party.
“Our debate with them is over what is illegal. If some neighborhood or other is enlarged and someone in some court prefers to define it that way, while a legal expert at a different level describes it differently, the issue is open to interpretation.”
Civil Marriage Law
In a move which appears to cater to the party’s almost entirely Russian immigrant constituency, Yisrael Beitenu’s demands also include passage of a law allowing civil marriage. At present, marriages are performed only with permission of the State Rabbinate.
The Sephardic religious party Shas has voiced strong opposition to such a law and threatened that any such legislation would require agreement of the entire coalition in order to pass.
Tartman, however, said she believes an agreement can be reached with Shas on this issue.
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2. Olmert, Abbas Aids Discuss Talks Amid PA Violence
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By Alex Traiman
Despite infighting between PA political factions, and Hamas statements that it will never recognize Israel, PM Ehud Olmert continues to push for bilateral talks with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
| This past week, senior aids of Olmert and Abbas met to lay the groundwork for a formal meeting between the two leaders.
The expected meeting is partially due to pressure exerted by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. During her visit last week, Rice called on Olmert to help improve Abbas's image among PA residents. The meeting between Olmert and Abbas may take place sometime after the conclusion of the weeklong Sukkot festival.
Olmert aids Yoram Turbovicz and Shalom Turjeman, and Abbas aids Rafik el-Husseini and Saeb Erekat attempted to set the preliminary conditions for a formal meeting, but failed to agree on terms. Further preliminary talks will most likely take place later this week.
Abbas’s aids have requested the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, as an Israeli gesture of goodwill.
Israel wants any formal meeting to take place without preconditions. Furthermore, Israel has stated it will not release any prisoners until IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit is returned. Shalit was kidnapped in an Arab terror raid across the Gaza border on June 25.
Formal talks would likely boost the status of Abbas, who is currently unable to maintain any sense of decorum within the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh addressed a gathering of several thousand Arabs in Gaza on Friday to muster support for his struggling Hamas party. Last week, fighting between Hamas and its rival Fatah faction spilled out on to the streets with over a dozen killed and several dozen wounded.
Fighting broke out due to the suffering PA economy, and the failure of Hamas to join together with Fatah for the formation of a unity government. A government with both Haniyeh and Abbas, head of the Fatah faction, would most likely create the conditions for renewed international aid to the PA.
Foreign aid had been restrained following the recent election of Hamas, an internationally recognized terror organization, to legislative power within the PA.
Abbas, successor to Yasser Arafat as chairman of the PA, has required that Hamas recognize the State of Israel before any unity government can be formed between the rival factions.
Haniyeh has consistently refused Abbas’ demand, stating during Friday’s rally, "The government and the Hamas movement will not recognize Israel and will not give up any Palestinian principle, including the land of our fathers and grandfathers."
Haniyeh did express a willingness to reach a hudna, or a long-term cease fire which serves a period for rearming, with Israel, but only after an independent Palestinian state is created along the 1967 border. Furthermore, a shrunken Israel would then have to grant right of return to Arabs who previously fled to Syria and Lebanon.
In the middle of his speech at a Gaza soccer stadium, Haniyeh fainted due to dehydration, but came to and finished his speech after resting for several minutes. Haniyeh is fasting, as are many Arabs during the Muslim month of Ramadan. Haniyeh gave the address standing in front of a large picture of exiled Hamas terror chieftain Khaled Meshal.
During the address, Haniyeh warned that any efforts by Abbas to bring down the Hamas government would fail, and urged Abbas to continue talks toward the formation of a unity government.
In response to Haniyeh’s remarks, Fatah parliamentary faction leader Azzam al-Ahmed called for new legislative elections within the Palestinian Authority.
"How can one authority have two heads blaming each other?" Ahmed stated during a press conference in Ramallah. "If so, we must turn again to the people. Any country whose government reaches a dead end calls for early parliamentary elections. Those who trust themselves do not fear the people.”
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3. Kassam Attack Barely Misses Sderot Mayor’s Home
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By Hana Levi Julian
Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal was flung to the floor of his living room Saturday night after a Kassam rocket landed next to his house. An Islamic Jihad terror group claimed responsibility for the attack.
| No one was injured in the rocket attack launched by members of the Islamic Jihad-linked al-Quds Brigades terrorist organization, although residents were shaken up by the incident.
“I was thrown from my chair by the force of the explosion,” said Moyal. “I knew immediately that it was a Kassam rocket and went to see if any of the neighbors were hurt.”
Moyal said, “to [his] happiness”, that no one was wounded in the attack, except for the neighbors who went into shock, but “there is damage to my house and to other houses... mainly damage to window panes and the walls.”
This attack barely missed Moyal’s house, but last week another family was not so lucky. A Kassam scored a direct hit on their home, wounding two residents and sending seven others into shock.
“It just doesn’t stop,” Moyal said. “If the rocket had landed another 10 meters in, we would have had to bury people tonight.” The mayor underscored the inability of the IDF to deal effectively with the ceaseless attacks.
“Nothing has been done about this matter. Just as we say all the time, this embarrassment of Kassam firings at Sderot needs to be stopped,” he said. “Instead of celebrating [the Sukkot holiday] we are sustaining Kassam rockets."
Local Palestinian Authority (PA) sources said IDF helicopters were flying over Gaza Sunday morning. Soon after the attack Saturday night, IDF soldiers also fired two missiles at the launch site from which the Islamic Jihad terrorists had fired the rockets.
Last week Israel Air Force pilots struck two cars in northern Gaza near the town of Beit Hanoun. Pilots fired missiles at one car carrying Islamic Jihad terrorists, injuring two, as well as firing on a second vehicle with members of the al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades, wounding three. Both vehicles caught fire.
IDF artillery was directed at terror targets in the Beit Hanoun areas of northern Gaza as well. PA sources reported a number of people were injured and a factory caught fire as a result.
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4. British Historian Claims to Have Found the Temple Treasures
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By Gil Zohar
What happened to the 50 tons of gold, silver and sacred treasures looted from Herod's Temple following the Roman legionnaires' sack of Jerusalem on Tisha b'Av in the year 70 CE?
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The Arch of Titus in Rome, erected shortly after the death of Titus who reigned as emperor from 79 to 81, clearly depicts Roman soldiers bearing on their shoulders the golden candelabrum, silver trumpets and bejewelled Table of the Divine Presence which the Roman emperor Vespasian and his son Titus carted back to Rome as trophies of war. Between 75 CE and the early 5th century, the treasure remained on public display in the Temple of Peace in Rome's Forum. Many Jews believe – almost as an article of faith – that the Temple artifacts remain there in Rome, secreted away in vaults beneath the Vatican.
But in a newly published book, British historian Sean Kingsley, basing himself on untapped historical texts and new archaeological sources, argues that the treasures were removed from Rome after the Vandal invasion of 455 CE.
Kingsley, whose book God's Gold: The Quest for the Lost Temple Treasure of Jerusalem was released October 5 by John Murray, says that the loot was first taken to Carthage in Tunisia, then to Hippo Regius in Algeria, and on to Constantinople – today known as Istanbul, Turkey, before finally being returned to the Holy Land in the mid 6th century. At that time, the treasures were ultimately hidden in the Judean wilderness, beneath the remote Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Theodosius, 12 km east of Bethlehem.
It's a plausible argument that has almost messianic implications. If the Temple treasures were retrieved, the discovery could help lead to the actual rebuilding of the Temple, the resumption of biblical sacrifice – and the coming of the Messiah.
“One thing is for sure – it is not imprisoned deep in Vatican City. I am the first person to prove that the Temple treasures no longer languish in Rome,” says Kingsley, an expert on the East Mediterranean economy in Late Antiquity.
Kingsley’s sources include Josephus Flavius, the 1st-century Jewish general turned renegade who chronicled the history of the failed Jewish revolt against Rome. Kingsley also found evidence in, among others, the works of Procopius, a court historian of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, who died in 562, and from Theophanes Confessor (c.760-817), a Christian monk from Constantinople.
In Chronographia, which spanned 284 to 813, Theophanes recorded that Geiseric the Lame, king of the Germanic tribe of the Vandals, loaded the treasures that "Titus had brought to Rome after the capture of Jerusalem" on a boat and took them to his North African capital Carthage in 455. Although history remembers the Vandal sack of Rome as extremely brutal (and their act made the word 'vandalism' a term for any wantonly destructive act), in actuality Geiseric honored his pledge to Pope Leo I not to make war on the people of Rome. The Vandals did however take gold, silver and many other things of value away from the city.
In the crusade of 533 to restore the lost Roman provinces of North Africa, the Byzantine general Flavius Belisarius seized the treasure from a Vandal ship fleeing the harbor of Hippo Regius, today known as Annaba or Bone, Algeria. It was then shipped to Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium. In recognition of Belisarius' great victory, the Emperor Justinian granted him a Roman triumph (the last one ever given) upon his return to Constantinople. In the procession were paraded the spoils of the Temple of Jerusalem which Belisarius had recovered.
In the 7th century, the Persians sacked Jerusalem, killing thousands of Christians, and dragging the Patriarch Zacharias to Persia. Kingsley believes that his replacement, Modestus, spirited away the treasures to their final hiding place in the Judean Desert in 614. The Monastery of St. Theodosius, where Kingsley believes the relics may be today, was founded in 476.
According to Kingsley, "The treasure resonates fiercely across modern politics. Since the mid-1990s, a heated political wrangle has been simmering between the Vatican and Israel, which has accused the papacy of imprisoning the treasure.
"The Temple treasure remains a deadly political tool in the volatile Arab-Israeli conflict centered on the Temple Mount [the site of the Jewish Temple and the Muslim Dome of the Rock].
"The treasure's final hiding place - in the modern West Bank ... deep in Hamas territory - will rock world religions."
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5. Anti-Islamic Video in Denmark, Middle Eastern Muslim Outrage
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By Hana Levi Julian
Egypt’s largest Islamic group urged Muslims across the world Saturday to boycott products from Denmark after viewing a web video that mocked Islam’s founder, Mohammed.
| In the video, a young Danish woman appeared to be participating in a drawing contest that was held last summer by the populist Danish People’s Party Youth. A group of men and women in their 20’s and 30’s were laughing and talking in the video filmed at a camp held August 4-6th. The woman, who was not identified, sketched a picture of a camel and told the other contestants it had the “head of Mohammed” and beer bottles for humps.
Danish People’s Party Youth Chairman Kenneth Kristensen expressed regret, saying the young politicians would have to take responsibility for what they had done, but refused to apologize for the video. Kristensen said only that the clip was in “bad style” because it “overshadows [our] political line,” according to the Associated Press. The political group is known for its anti-immigration views.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamic organization, condemned the video which first appeared late last week, saying it represented “new Danish insults” to Islam. The organization urged the world to boycott countries that allow any religiously-offensive material to be produced and publicized.
The Brotherhood was careful to emphasize the concept of non-violent protest in its statement, however, urging Muslims to “express denouncement through peaceful means, by demonstrations and protests.”
Depictions of Mohammed in 12 cartoons a year ago by Danish artists led to violence and bloodshed in worldwide demonstrations – including numerous demonstrations of Muslim rage in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. The protests came after the caricatures were published by a Danish daily newspaper in September 2005. Islamic law forbids the drawing or any other depiction of Mohammed.
The cartoons were eventually distributed and published internationally, setting off demonstrations which in several instances ended in bloodshed. For weeks afterward, Islamic communities in numerous countries continued to hold violent protests and call for revenge against newspapers which published the cartoons.
The Danish government steadfastly refused to apologize to the Islamic community, saying the pictures were produced by independent media, not state-run newspapers. In response, some Islamic clerics called for assassination of the artists who drew the caricatures.
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6. What Happens when Sukkot Falls on Shabbat?
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