UN Security Council members stress Al Aqsa status quo

UN Security Council members voiced concern on Thursday and stressed the need to maintain a status quo at the Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, days after Israel's new far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir briefly visited the site, reports Reuters.

The decades-old status quo allows only Muslim worship at the compound, a site also revered by Jews, who call it the Temple Mount. An Israeli official said Ben-Gvir complied with the arrangement that allows non-Muslims to visit but not pray.

Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour pushed for the Security Council to take action - a move that was unlikely given the United States traditionally shields Israel. The United States, Russia, China, France and Britain are all council veto powers.

"What red line does Israel need to cross for the Security Council to finally say, enough is enough," Mansour told the 15-member council, accusing Israel of showing absolute contempt.

Senior UN political affairs official, Khaled Khiari, told the council it was the first visit to the site by an Israeli cabinet minister since 2017.

"While the visit was not accompanied or followed by violence, it is seen as particularly inflammatory given Ben-Gvir's past advocacy for changes to the status quo," he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for all parties to refrain from steps that could escalate tensions in and around the holy sites

Israel's UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan told reporters ahead of the meeting, "Jews are permitted to visit the holiest site in Judaism. It is the right of every Jew, every Jew. Israel has not harmed the status quo and has no plans to do so."

Ben-Gvir once called for ending the ban on Jewish prayer at the site, but has been non-committal on the issue since aligning with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Other members of Ben-Gvir's Jewish Power party still advocate such a move.

The United States is committed to a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and was "concerned by any unilateral acts that exacerbate tensions or undermine the viability of a two-state solution," US Deputy UN Ambassador Robert Wood told the council.

"We note that Prime Minister Netanyahu's governing platform calls for preservation of the status quo with relation to the holy places. We expect the Government of Israel to follow through on that commitment," Wood said

Is Netanyahu-Itamar Ben-Gvir alliance a good omen?

Israel Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Thursday congratulated Benjamin Netanyahu on his election victory as final results confirmed the former premier's triumphant comeback at the head of a solidly right-wing alliance.

Netanyahu's victory is set to end an unprecedented stalemate in Israel after five elections in less than four years.

This time Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli politician of his generation, won a clear parliamentary majority, boosted by ultranationalist and religious parties.

Tuesday's ballot saw out the centrist Lapid, and his rare alliance of conservatives, liberals and Arab politicians which, over 18 months in power, made diplomatic inroads with Turkey and Lebanon and kept the economy humming.

With the conflict with the Palestinians surging anew and touching off Jewish-Arab tensions within Israel, Netanyahu's rightist Likud and kindred parties took 64 of the Knesset's 120 seats.

Netanyahu still has to be officially tasked by the president with forming a government, a process that could take weeks.

"The time has come to impose order here. The time has come for there to be a landlord," tweeted Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Religious Zionism party, Likud's likely senior partner.

He was responding to a stabbing reported by Jerusalem police. In the West Bank, troops killed an Islamic Jihad militant and a 45-year-old man in a separate incident, medics said. Queried on the latter death, the army said it opened fire when Palestinians attacked them with rocks and petrol bombs.

Later in the evening, air attack sirens went off in southern Israel after militants in Gaza fired a rocket that was apparently intercepted by missile defences, the military said.

A West Bank settler and former member of Kach, a Jewish militant group on Israeli and US terrorist watchlists, Ben-Gvir wants to become police minister.

Israeli media, citing political sources, said the new government may be clinched by mid-month. Previous coalitions in recent years have had narrower parliamentary majorities that made them vulnerable to no-confidence motions.

With coalition building talks yet to officially begin, it was still unclear what position Ben-Gvir might hold in a future government. Since the election, both he and Netanyahu have pledged to serve all citizens.

Ben-Gvir's ascendancy has stirred alarm among the 21% Arab minority and centre-left Jews - and especially among Palestinians whose US-sponsored statehood talks with Israel broke down in 2014.

While Washington has publicly reserved judgment pending the new Israeli coalition's formation, a US State Department spokesman on Wednesday emphasized the countries' "shared values".

"We hope that all Israeli government officials will continue to share the values of an open, democratic society, including tolerance and respect for all in civil society, particularly for minority groups," the spokesperson said.

US Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides said he spoke with Netanyahu and told him he looked forward to "working together to maintain the unbreakable bond."

 

Netanyahu-Ben Gvir government may bring Israel economic sanctions

On Tuesday, voters turned out in record numbers in order to have their say in the democratic process, resulting in the election of a government led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and including outspoken political extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, if its campaign promises are fulfilled, could radically impact the nation’s economy.

The economy that Netanyahu government stands to inherit is actually doing pretty well, compared to other developed countries. Israel currently boasts the second-lowest inflation rate in the OECD and one of its highest growth rates. As such, the country’s incoming leaders will have more economic degrees of freedom than other nations may have.

With that in mind, “The promises made by these parties are such that they can very quickly lead Israel down the rabbit-hole,” said Prof. Dan Ben-David, Head of Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research and an economist at Tel-Aviv University. According to him, the threat posed to Israel’s economic well-being by the nation’s new leadership is both present and substantial.

“In terms of straightforward economics, they are promising tons of money to various sectors. Netanyahu has promised free education from the age of zero, he talked about freezing interest rates and arnona (municipal tax payments), he promised to give full funding to all of the Haredi schools,” Ben-David said. “That’s going to cost a lot of money, not to mention the fact that it’s completely going to mortgage Israel’s future.”

Basic economics aside, there is a critical political factor in play. If Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party manages to reform the country’s judicial and political systems as it intends to do, it could lead to severe ramifications on the world stage.

“Those actions can basically bring down the developed world’s wrath on us,” Ben-David warned. “When you have Jewish supremacists in leading political cabinet positions, what does that say about Israel’s ability to defend itself against accusations of apartheid elsewhere? All you need to do is look at what happened in South Africa to get a glimpse of the kind of economic sanctions that we may get hit with if this government follows through with even a part of the things that they promised to do.”

A sufficient amount of serious economic turmoil from mishandling or severe sanctions could in turn lead to the evacuation of Israel’s largest economic contributors, Ben-David warned.

“It could happen way before the international community wakes up. The entire hi-tech industry, all of the physicians and the entire senior faculty in all of the research universities in Israel make up less than 4% of the population,” he said. “If a critical mass of the young, educated and skilled people in Israel reach the conclusion that it’s game over and leave in the next few years, then the game ends a lot quicker than it would have otherwise.”

It is still uncertain which of the many promises made by the entering parties will come to fruition, but if Israel’s new leadership doesn’t tread carefully, those who put them there could be in for even more change than they asked for.

 

Israel: Netanyahu poised for comeback

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared well placed to return to power as exit polls following Tuesday's election showed his right-wing bloc heading for a narrow majority lifted by a strong showing from his far-right allies.

Israel's longest-serving premier, on trial over corruption charges which he denies, was poised to take a narrow majority of 61 or 62 of the Knesset's 120 seats, according to Israeli television exit polls.

"It's a good start," Netanyahu, 73, said in a video broadcast by Israeli public broadcaster Kan 11, but added that exit polls were not the real count.

A final result is not expected until later in the week and wrangling broke out immediately with Netanyahu's Likud party warning of possible attempts to falsify the results.

Israel's fifth election in less than four years exasperated many voters, but turnout was reported at the highest levels since 2015.

The campaign was shaken up by firebrand West Bank settler Itamar Ben-Gvir and his ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism list, now poised to be the third-largest party in parliament after surging in from the political margins.

"The time has come that we go back to being in charge of our country!" Ben-Gvir said in a speech punctuated by chants of "Death to Terrorists" from hundreds of cheering supporters.

Netanyahu's record 12-year consecutive reign ended in June 2021 when centrist Yair Lapid and his coalition partner Naftali Bennett managed to stitch together an alliance that included an Arab party for the first time.

Security on the streets and soaring prices topped the list of voter concerns in a campaign triggered by defections from Prime Minister Lapid's unlikely ruling coalition of right-wing, liberal and Arab parties.

The campaign was dominated by the outsized personality of Netanyahu, whose legal battles have fed the stalemate blocking Israel's political system since he was indicted on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges in 2019.

Lapid's camp was poised to take 54-55 seats, with his There Is a Future party coming in second-largest in parliament, according to the polls.

Speaking to supporters at his party headquarters, Lapid stopped short of conceding the election and said he will wait until the final results were in.

"We have no intention to stop," Lapid said. "We will continue to fight for Israel to be a Jewish and democratic, liberal and progressive state."

He campaigned on his stewardship of the economy as well as diplomatic advances with countries including Lebanon and Turkey. But it was not enough to stop the right.

The result, however, left Netanyahu depending on support from Ben-Gvir and fellow far-right leader Bezalel Smotrich, who have moderated some extreme anti-Arab positions but still call for anyone deemed disloyal to Israel to be expelled.

The prospect of a government including Ben-Gvir, a former member of Kach, a group on Israeli and US terrorist watch-lists, and who was once convicted for racist incitement, risks alarming allies including Washington.

It also reinforced Palestinian scepticism that a political solution to the conflict was likely after a campaign which unrolled against a backdrop of increasing violence in the occupied West Bank, with near-daily raids and clashes.

"The election results proved what we already know, that we have no peace partner in Israel," Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in a statement.

The outcome could be affected by whether or not Balad, a small Arab party, gets over the threshold for entry into parliament, which could shake up the distribution of seats and potentially thwart Netanyahu.

The Central Elections Committee said it had found no sign of any manipulation and said there was no basis to rumours of supposed fraud.