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Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Far right joins Israel coalition - 0 views

  • Israel's Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has signed a coalition deal with the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, officials say. Under the agreement, Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman would become foreign minister, said officials from Mr Netanyahu's Likud party.
  • He is a strong supporter of the Israeli settler movement and opposes exchanging land for peace with the Palestinians.
  • Yisrael Beiteinu would get five other cabinet posts, including internal security, infrastructure, tourism, and the integration of new immigrants.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Barak 'agrees to Likud coalition' - 0 views

  • Israel's Labour leader Ehud Barak has reached a provisional deal with PM-designate Benjamin Netanyahu on forming a coalition, Israeli army radio says. The centre-left Labour party is divided over whether to join a government with Mr Netanyahu's Likud and will vote on the agreement shortly. The right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu and Orthodox Jewish Shas parties have already agreed to join a coalition.
  • Mr Barak is defence minister in the current government and would retain the post in the next government, Israeli army radio reported. Under the draft agreement, Labour would also get five cabinet posts and the government would commit to continuing negotiations with the Palestinians and to respecting previous deals made with them.
  • A Likud member of the Knesset, Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, said there was general agreement between Likud and Labour on the main international challenges facing the incoming government. "In terms of other issues like the peace process with the Palestinians, and probably other day-to-day issues, there will be an argument, but this is not what's going to bring the government down," he told the BBC. "Because in practical terms, I don't think that either side really believes that it's possible to reach an agreement with the present Palestinian leadership in the near future."
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  • Army radio also said the government would commit to working against unauthorised Jewish settlements in the West Bank. With Labour's support, Mr Netanyahu would have 66 seats in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament.
  • Israel's centre-left Labour party has narrowly voted to join a coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud.
  • The far right Yisrael Beiteinu and ultra-Orthodox Jewish party Shas have already agreed to join the coalition. The centrist Kadima has so far refused to join over policy differences.
  • If he won support from all of Labour's MPs, he would command 66 seats in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament.
  • He wants to have Labour on board in order to calm widespread fears that a narrowly right-wing Israeli government could jeopardise renewed peace efforts with the Palestinians.
  • About half of the party's 13 lawmakers objected to Mr Netanyahu because of his long-standing opposition to peace efforts which Labour has backed, Haaretz newspaper reports. Mr Netanyahu has refused to sign up to the two-state formula which has underpinned more than 15 years of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
  • Some delegates chanted "disgrace" as the result came in. Mr Barak is defence minister in the current government and would retain the post in the next government, reports suggest.
  • Under the draft coalition agreement, Labour would get five cabinet posts and the government would commit to continuing negotiations with the Palestinians and to respecting previous deals made with them. Army radio said the government would commit to working against unauthorised Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
  • A Likud member of the Knesset, Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, said there was general agreement between Likud and Labour on the main international challenges facing the incoming government.
  • "Because in practical terms, I don't think that either side really believes that it's possible to reach an agreement with the present Palestinian leadership in the near future."
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Anger over Palestinian Nakba ban proposal - 0 views

  • Israeli campaigners and left-wing lawmakers have condemned moves to ban Israeli Arabs from marking the Nakba - the "catastrophe" of Israel's creation.On Sunday a government panel backed putting the bill, proposed by the party of far-right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, before the Israeli Knesset. A Labour minister opposed it; Hadash, a mainly Arab party, called it "racist".
  • Under the proposed legislation, people caught marking the Nakba could be jailed for up to three years. Avigdor Lieberman's party, Yisrael Beiteinu, says the bill is "intended to strengthen unity in the state of Israel". The Hadash MK Hanna Swaid called it "racist and immoral" and "a fierce insult on democratic and political rights".
  • Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog, said it "could impair freedom of expression and freedom of protest and achieve the opposite goal - increasing alienation and strengthening extremists".
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  • Mr Lieberman's party also wants to introduce a loyalty pledge, which would demand that Israeli-Arabs swear allegiance to Israel as a "Jewish, Zionist and democratic" state, before they can be issued with their ID papers.
Pedro Gonçalves

UN security council's EU members to condemn Israeli settlements expansion | World news ... - 0 views

  • blunt criticism from the US of Israel's announcement on Monday of plans to build an extra 1,500 homes in the settlement of Ramat Shlomo.US state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said: "We are deeply disappointed that Israel insists on continuing this pattern of provocative action. These repeated announcements and plans of new construction run counter to the cause of peace. Israel's leaders continually say that they support a path towards a two-state solution, yet these actions only put that goal further at risk."
  • William Hague, the British foreign secretary, urged Israel to revoke the decision, saying that if it was implemented, "it would make a negotiated two-state solution, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, very difficult to achieve". All Israeli settlements were "illegal under international law", he added.
  • French officials also sharply condemned the move, describing it as illegal colonisation.
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  • On Tuesday, the general assembly passed a non-binding resolution condemning settlement activity by 196 votes to six.
  • The approval of the next stage in the construction of hundreds of apartments in Ramat Shlomo, across the pre-1967 Green Line, follows Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's authorisation last month for the development of a controversial expanse of land near Jerusalem, known as E1.
  • The Ramat Shlomo plan caused a major diplomatic row between Israel and the US when it was first announced during a visit to Jerusalem by US vice-president Joe Biden in the spring of 2010.
  • Construction on E1 has been opposed by the US for many years as it would effectively close off East Jerusalem – intended to be the future capital of Palestine – from the West Bank, and further divide the West Bank into northern and southern spheres.
  • some Israeli analysts believe it is also being driven by next month's general election in Israel, in a bid to consolidate the rightwing vote for the ruling Likud party in coalition with hardliner Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu."This is our campaign," a Likud source told the Israeli daily Ma'ariv. "Until now, it has worked excellently. The timing is deliberate."
Argos Media

Hardliner Avigdor Lieberman set to become Israel's foreign minister | World news | guar... - 0 views

  • Avigdor Lieberman, the outspoken far-right Israeli politician, is set to be appointed his country's next foreign minister in a new coalition deal.
  • Under the deal, agreed late on Sunday night, Lieberman would be both foreign minister and a deputy prime minister, giving him an important influence in shaping the new government's policies.
  • Both Netanyahu and Lieberman have stopped short of endorsing a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians, which may set them at odds with the international community, particularly the Obama administration which has promised to "aggressively" pursue a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
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  • His party would also have four other ministers in the cabinet, including national security minister, as well as the post of deputy foreign minister.
  • Lieberman, 50, a Russian-speaking immigrant born in Moldova, resigned from the government in January last year in protest at the restarting of peace talks with the Palestinians, saying: "Negotiations on the basis of land for peace are a critical mistake ... and will destroy us."He is an unashamed hardliner who campaigned on the promise of a new law aimed at the country's Arab minority which would require Israelis to swear an oath of loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state or lose their citizenship.He also advocates carving out part of the Galilee that is home to Arab Israeli villages and handing it over to Palestinian control, stripping the residents of their Israeli citizenship. Those policies proved popular enough for him to come third at the polls, but the oath of loyalty is thought unlikely to come into law.
  • The agreement between Netanyahu and Lieberman gave a taste of the policies that would follow. "Toppling the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip will be an Israeli strategic goal," the agreement said. The new government would act "with determination" to stop rocket fire by militants in Gaza.It also said: "The government will not conduct political negotiations with terrorist organisations or terrorist elements."Settlements are likely to continue to grow – Lieberman himself lives in Nokdim, a settlement south-east of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
  • Netanyahu has said the current peace talks with the Palestinians will not succeed and that he would rather pursue an "economic peace", by which he means financial investment in the occupied West Bank.
  • He also intends to make Iran the centre of his foreign policy. The agreement said: "Israel will make every effort, especially with regard to the international community, to prevent the nuclear armament of Iran, while emphasising that a nuclear Iran, representing a danger to Israel, countries in the region and the entire free world, is unacceptable."
  • Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said: "We have to declare that sadly there is no partner on the Israeli side to negotiate with."
  • Lieberman, an immigrant and former nightclub bouncer from former Soviet Moldova, does not talk about Palestinian independence. Instead, his party's vision on the two-state solution states: "Israel needs to explain that the demand for a Palestinian state and the refugees' right of return is a cover for radical Islam's attempt to destroy the State of Israel." Lieberman was a member of the current Israeli government, but walked out in January last year as soon as peace talks restarted with the Palestinians.
  • Britain, in particular, is critical of Israel's settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, all of which are illegal under international law. But that cause might be harder to argue in future given that the almost 500,000 Israeli settlers include Lieberman and his family, who live in Nokdim, deep inside the West Bank.
  • Lieberman's main target has been his country's own Arab minority, who make up a fifth of the population, and of whom he has said: "Israel is under a dual terrorist attack, from within and from without. And terrorism from within is always more dangerous than terrorism from without."
  • It was this campaign, particularly his call for Arabs to swear an oath of loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state, that won him so much support in the elections. He has even suggested that some elected Arab MPs in the Israeli parliament should be tried for treason and then executed.He also appeals to more secular Israelis, arguing in favour of civil marriages, as well as advocating a more presidential style of government.
Argos Media

Netanyahu, Lieberman 'struck secret deal for West Bank construction' - Haaretz - Israel... - 0 views

  • Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has struck a secret deal with Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman for highly contentious construction on West Bank land known as E1, Army Radio reported Wednesday.
  • The plan is for the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim to build 3000 new housing units on the territory, which stretches between it and Jerusalem, the source was quoted as saying.
  • Construction in the area is particularly sensitive because it would create contiguity between the settlement and the capital, which in turn would prevent Palestinian construction between East Jerusalem and Ramallah.
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  • This would also make it difficult to reach agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on the question of permanent borders.
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