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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Netanyahu clinches support of 64 MKs; Herzog to Ben Gvir: Your image raises concerns |
| 2022-11-11 |
Key bits here, more at the link for those really interested. [IsraelTimes] Likud chair Benjamin Netanyahu reached the required majority of recommendations from politicians to form the next government on Thursday, as President Isaac Herzog continued consultations with parties elected to the Knesset.With all parties making up Netanyahu’s bloc recommending him following last week’s election, the opposition leader had officially clinched 64 votes in the 120-seat parliament for his return to the premiership, and was expected to be tasked by Herzog with forming a government on Sunday. Meeting MK Itamar Ben Gvir of the Otzma Yehudit faction on Thursday afternoon, Herzog repeated his concerns caught on a hot mic a day earlier over the far-right politician’s positions. "I said that your party has a certain image that raises concerns in many places, regarding the treatment of Arabs in our state and region. World leaders are asking me," Herzog told Ben Gvir. He added, "I am asked in the Moslem world about the Temple Mount. This subject is sensitive." The president was heard telling representatives from Shas on Wednesday: "You’re going to have a problem with the Temple Mount. That’s a critical issue," adding that with Ben Gvir — who has pushed for major changes at the flashpoint holy site — "you have a partner that the entire world is anxious about." In his fact-to-face with Herzog Thursday, Ben Gvir responded: "God forbid, I do not treat Arabs as a monolith. I just returned from Eilat and saw students from a Nazareth high school. You should have seen it, everyone said, ’Ben Gvir, come take a selfie.'" The Otzma Yehudit chair said that he would work for the benefit of the entire country, but emphasized: "there should be order." On the matter of the Temple Mount, Ben Gvir told the president that "we are not saying that the Temple Mount is not holy to others, but we have to remember that the Temple Mount is our heart, our history." "All of us are against racism, and it’s impossible to say to a Jew, you can’t ascend the Temple Mount because you are Jewish. I am for equal rights," he said. Ben Gvir and many on the political right have long pushed for greater access and control over the Temple Mount, which is largely administered by the Jordanian Waqf. Currently, Jews can only visit the site at certain times, and are barred from praying there, though the latter limitation has been increasingly broken in recent years. Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am did not recommend any candidate for prime minister during their session with Herzog. "We have accepted the decision of the voters, but we are not giving up our right to be partners and to influence. We fear that this new government will deliberately harm the achievements that Ra’am accomplished," Abbas said, referring to its work in the outgoing coalition. Ra’am made history last year when it became the first Arab party in decades to join an Israeli coalition under then-prime minister Naftali Bennett, shunning the rejectionism of the other Arab factions. "We hope that the government that will be established will agree to uphold the status quo of the al-Aqsa Mosque," Abbas said, referring to the Temple Mount mosque that is Islam’s third-holiest site. Future Religious Zionism MK Ohad Tal said that the relationship with Diaspora Jewry "is at the top of our agenda," referencing plans to work on education, world youth groups and fighting antisemitism. Yisrael Beytenu declined to formally back any candidate for the next prime minister during their meeting, saying that the outcome of the election is "very clear." MK Oded Forer said the party is particularly concerned that the expected future government will push to amend the Law of Return, which currently offers Israeli citizenship to anyone with at least one parent with Jewish ancestry. Any such change, said Forer, "would be scandalous in terms of our worldview." The current law is strongly opposed by the ultra-Orthodox parties as well as many in Religious Zionism, for granting citizenship to many not considered Jewish under Orthodox Jewish law. |
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