Rondo Alla Turca

While everyone is on tenterhooks waiting to see the outcome of the Ukraine crisis, I decided this week to digress, moving on to a seemingly unrelated topic.

An op-ed posted in Foreign Policy by Aykan Erdemir a former Turkish politician, caught my eye. Dr. Erdemir is currently senior director of the Turkey programme at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.

“The diplomatic map of the Middle East is shifting yet again. A surprising thaw seems to be afoot between Israel and Turkey, former close partners whose relations nosedived under Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.” Erdemir wrote. “Last week, Erdogan announced that Israeli President Isaac Herzog will visit Ankara in mid-March, which would make Herzog the first Israeli president to visit Turkey since Shimon Peres’s 2007 trip. The Israeli government has yet to confirm the trip, but has acknowledged a possible visit.

Hopes for a Turkish-Israeli rapprochement were bolstered further by a phone call last month between Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu—the first publicly acknowledged conversation between the two countries’ foreign ministers in 13 years.

“That Erdogan is looking for new partners—and appears willing to mend relations—is understandable. He faces a collapsing economy, rising domestic opposition to his rule, conflict with Arab neighbours and traditional Western allies, and new turmoil in the region as Russia prepares to invade Ukraine.”

Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognise the state of Israel in 1949.

Israel and Turkey enjoyed robust diplomatic, security and intelligence cooperation over many years.

However, since Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party rose to power in 2002, bilateral relations have turned sour.

“Now, Turkish president is facing growing isolation in the Eastern Mediterranean and economic woes at home are forcing him to reach out to his sworn enemy.”

Israel is treading carefully, given Erdogan’s frequent antisemitic and anti-Israeli vitriol, which the U.S. State Department called out as “reprehensible” and “incendiary” as recently as May 2021. “I have no illusions with regard to Turkey,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in an interview last week.

High on the list of Israel’s concerns is Erdogan’s unwavering support for Hamas. Ankara has granted Turkish citizenship and passports to senior Hamas operatives, Erdogan has flaunted hosting two senior Hamas leaders, Saleh al-Arouri and Ismail Haniyeh, both of whom are on Washington’s list of global terrorists. It is therefore no surprise that Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency “stressed in the internal discussions about Turkey that any normalisation process must include limiting Hamas activity in Turkey,”  

Rest assured, any normalisation of Israeli-Turkish relations won’t happen as quickly as it did between Israel and the UAE.

Israeli suspicions are understandable considering Erdogan’s efforts to undermine the Abraham Accords, just two years ago.

Since then, Erdogan has made an effort to mend relations with the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries with which Turkey has clashed in recent years—and now, with Israel. “The diplomatic flurry included a November 2021 visit to Ankara by Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, whom Turkish state media demonised as a “dark prince” as recently as 2020. Erdogan clearly hopes to tap into Emirati capital to help stem Turkey’s economic meltdown.

“Since their rapprochement, Abu Dhabi and Ankara have signed a $4.9 billion currency exchange agreement, while Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund has pledged to invest $10 billion in Turkey. The UAE, for its part, not only expects a good return on its investment but also sees Turkey as a potential hedge against Iran as the Biden administration reaches out to Tehran for a new nuclear deal.

While Israel doesn’t have state-controlled petrodollars to shower on Turkey, it does have financial, economic, and technological power in the region. Improved relations with Israel could also help burnish Turkey’s tarnished global image, not least as an investment destination. An unprecedented exodus of Western capital from Turkey over the last few years has risked Turkey’s designation as an emerging market by leading financial institutions and could result in its demotion to the category of so-called frontier markets, placing Turkish bonds and equities below the worthwhile investment level  for most of the world’s funds. That would hasten Turkey’s economic implosion—and compound Erdogan’s political worries.”

In another piece he wrote for Foreign Policy Dr. Erdemir said, “There is also the enticing future possibility of building an Eastern Mediterranean pipeline to bring Israeli natural gas to Turkey and from there to Europe.

This suggested alternative route could help boost morale for Turkish businesses and households protesting paralysing power cuts and skyrocketing utility bills.

Recalling the Turkish-Israeli rift that followed the 2010 Gaza flotilla crisis, Turkey regularly snubbed possible energy deals with Israel, but Erdogan revamped the pipeline project earlier this month and appears enthusiastic about getting back to business. Following the Biden administration’s withdrawal of its support to an envisioned Israel-Cyprus-Greece pipeline last month, which Ankara has spun as a Turkish victory, Erdogan has another reason to capitalise on the Israel-Turkey alternative.

“At least as importantly, Erdogan also hopes that mending relations with Israel and Egypt will help reverse Turkey’s growing isolation in the Eastern Mediterranean. The region has witnessed an astonishing and unprecedented diplomatic and military partnership among Israel, Egypt, the UAE, Greece, and Cyprus, which have all been alarmed by Turkey’s growing assertiveness in the region; the group is also enticed by the prospects of energy cooperation under the umbrella of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum, an organisation Ankara hopes to join one day. Turkey has long seen Greece and Cyprus as archrivals, and another purpose of Erdogan’s diplomatic flurry might be to try to dislodge them from the region’s fast-evolving network of partnerships. As of now, that does not appear to be a price Israel is willing to pay. The Jerusalem Post reported that, according to an Israeli government source, “improvements in Jerusalem-Ankara relations will not come at the expense of Israel’s alliance with Greece and Cyprus.”

While Erdogan’s sudden about-face with Israel has raised suspicions among Israeli analysts, there is a cautious optimism among Israeli officials for a gradual improvement of ties with Turkey. That could allow not only an exchange of ambassadors but also tactical cooperation against Iran and its proxies in the Middle East. Policymakers in Ankara are “no great friends of Iran, to put it mildly, and we can’t afford to make assumptions that will prevent us from creating alliances,” an unnamed Israeli diplomat recently told Haaretz.

Considering Erdogan’s antagonistic attitude toward Israel over the last two decades and his frequent U-turns, it will take time and effort to rebuild trust. But Erdogan surely knows that Israel is now, thanks in part to the Abraham Accords, less isolated in the Eastern Mediterranean than Turkey, and it has less to lose if normalisation attempts with Turkey fail. The onus is thus on the Erdogan government to be proactive in improving relations.

“Ultimately, a real rapprochement built on trust might have to wait for a new Turkish government. A big-tent opposition bloc appears poised to defeat Erdogan in the 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections. But as an embattled Erdogan seeks to undo some of the economic and foreign-policy damage he has wrought, setting in motion a return to better relations with Israel would be a good way to start.” 
Aykan Erdemir said.

Despite the many uncertainties regarding renewed ties with Turkey President Isaac Herzog plans to meet the presidents of Greece and Cyprus in the coming weeks ahead of a possible visit to Turkey for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The trips are meant to assure Athens and Nicosia that a rapprochement with Ankara will not come at the expense of the close ties Israel has developed with them in recent years.

I want to conclude with a Jewish anecdote I have told maybe two or three times in the past. However, this time I’ll recount it in a different context.

In better times before the Erdogan era, my wife and I visited various places in Turkey.

During our last visit we stayed at a hotel in Antalya and toured with a group of Israelis staying at another hotel. Our tour guide was a 40-year-old former English teacher named Ahmet. He told us how he had been forced into early retirement when the Turkish Ministry of Education replaced him with a younger graduate teacher. Finding it difficult to live comfortably on his meagre pension Ahmet took a course in tour guiding in order to supplement his income.

One day while the rest of the group went off shopping Roni and I joined Ahmet who suggested visiting a site not included in the tour itinerary. At that stage in the tour, we had already established an open amicable relationship, so I felt confident enough to tell Ahmet the Jewish anecdote without causing offence or embarrassment.

I explained that almost every Israeli is familiar with the colloquial Hebrew expression that translates as “Kill a Turk and rest," meaning – “Take it easy, one at a time, don’t rush.” I believe it’s derived from the Jewish anecdote.  The whole story goes like this:  

A tearful Jewish mother goes with her son to a railway station before he leaves for the front lines after being recruited to fight in the Czar's army against Turkey in 1877. She is of course very worried about her son's safety and survival. "Listen to me,” she says, “When you get to the front, kill a Turk, and rest, then kill another Turk and rest. Don’t overexert yourself." The reluctant Jewish soldier interrupts her “But what if one of the Turks kills me first.” “But why would he do that,” she replies in total disbelief? “What have you done to him?

Ahmet laughed, understanding that the anecdote wasn’t disparagingly anti-Turkish, just a bit of self-Jewish humour.

 

Have a good weekend.

 

Beni                                                                17^th of February, 2022.

 

Real Estate

Unless you are in the business, either buying or selling, real estate news doesn’t attract much attention. Nonetheless, Times of Israel political correspondent Tal Schneider says it’s very newsworthy.

Ms. Schneider told how Israeli Arabs lured by cheap prices are buying homes in the West Bank. She cited the case of Khaled who lives in Umm al-Fahm, a bustling Arab Israeli town in the north of Israel.

During the week, Khaled lives in Umm al-Fahm where he works as an excavation contractor. Soon, he, his wife and their six children will be going off on weekends to Nablus in the West Bank.

“I have an apartment, with a north-facing view, on the seventh floor of an 11-story building. The view is wonderful and the neighbourhood is great. There are restaurants, playgrounds” says Khaled, (a pseudonym), of his under-construction new holiday apartment in Nablus. “It’s walking distance to hookah cafes, coffee shops and restaurants. For us, it’s a vacation place.”

“While purchasing property in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority is not illegal, having his name published in connection with the trend could cause him problems in both Israel and the PA.

But in private, Khaled, talks openly about his property purchase.” Says Tal Schneider.

I want to add a margin note about Umm al-Fahm: The name indicates that charcoal burners occupied this site at some time during the Middle Ages. Back then it was a small village surrounded by wooded hills. With no thought given to reforestation the charcoal burning came to an end and the village struggled on as a mixed farming and grazing hamlet   in 1596 it appeared in the Ottoman tax registers with a population of 24 households, all Muslim. In 1883, the Palestine Exploration Fund's (PEF) Survey of Western Palestine described Umm al-Fahm as having around 500 inhabitants, of which some 80 people were Christians. The place was well-built of stone, and the villagers were described as being very rich in cattle, goats and horses. It was the most important place in the area besides Jenin. The term “very rich” used by the PEF means by comparison to other places in the region. 

Captured by Iraqi Arab League forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Umm al-Fahm was ceded to Israel along with 14 other villages in the Wadi Ara area in exchange for territory south of Hebron. 

Wadi Ara has drawn a lot of political attention among some Israeli politicians, notably Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu party who proposed transferring the area to the sovereignty and administration of the Palestinian Authority for a future Palestinian state. In return the Palestinian Authority would transfer specific large Israeli settlement "blocs" within the West Bank east of the Green Line to Israel. According to politicians who support this land-swap, Israel would ensure and secure itself as a primarily Jewish state. However, many Israeli politicians disagree and believe it would only decrease Israel's Arab population by a mere 10%, while most Israeli Arabs object to trading Israeli citizenship for Palestinian citizenship.

In November 2015 the radical northern branch of the Islamic Movement centred in Umm al-Fahm was banned by the Israeli Security Cabinet, led by then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The outlawing of the Northern Branch was based on evidence gathered by the Israel Police and the Israeli secret police, Shin Bet, which allegedly showed that the movement had close connections with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The organisation’s suspected ties with Hamas were a major catalyst for the decision; the northern branch received funding from Hamas-affiliated groups, and collaborated with Hamas in its institutional activities.

However, Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen, objected to the Cabinet's decision to outlaw the Northern Branch. According to him, there was no evidence linking it to terror attacks and the decision would be seen as a declaration of war on Israel's Muslim community and an assault on the political rights of its Palestinian minority. Banning the movement would, according to Cohen, do "more harm than good". It would make it more difficult to monitor Northern Branch members/supporters and could cause unrest among Arab citizens in Israel and among West Bank Palestinians. For this reason, the Shin Bet, in opposition to the Israel Police, opposed the ban.

Support for the Northern Branch numbers in the tens of thousands, although it is impossible to know the exact number because the definition of “support” is unclear. Because of the Northern Branch’s extensive social service provisions, it is often difficult to discern between support, sympathy, and the use of services that the state fails to provide. For example, this problem became clear when, as part of the crackdown, the authorities shut down the Jaffa Association for Charity, a charity to which the Israeli welfare services had referred needy families.

Furthermore, much of the Northern Movement’s popularity rests on the charismatic character of Sheikh Ra’ed Salah. It’s difficult to know what is best, to ban him or to bless him, though he can’t be ignored to the point where he will fade into oblivion.

Sheikh Raed Salah, who was imprisoned for inciting terrorism, was released from prison in December last year after completing his sentence.

Residents of Umm al-Fahm gathered at the entrance of the city to greet him carrying flags of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

It’s pertinent to mention the rising popularity of the pragmatic Southern Branch of the Islamic movement led by Mansour Abbas in the current national unity coalition government. 

Back to the main text and Tal Schneider’s piece in the Times of Israel

She claims that a quite a few Arab Israelis, are buying houses or apartments in the 40% of the West Bank where the PA exercises control over most civilian matters.”

Among the most popular areas are Jericho Gate, a new planned neighbourhood on the outskirts of Jericho; Rawabi, the first planned Palestinian city in the West Bank, just north of Ramallah; Tul Karem and Jenin, home to campuses of the American University, where almost half of the student body is Israeli (Israeli Arabs); and Rafidia in Nablus, where Khaled bought his home from a Palestinian contractor when it was under construction.

Khaled paid the equivalent of $95,000 for the 200 square-metre home and then put another $77,000 into upgrading it with custom cabinets, flooring, woodwork and more, as well as hiring a local interior designer, for a final price of $171,000.

The price is a fraction of what most Israelis pay for a new apartment, even in the country’s peripheral hinterlands.

Khaled also bought three dunams (0.75 acres) of agricultural land near al Funduq, a village west of Nablus.

“I bought it for the olives,” he says. “I just enjoy going there, working during the olive harvest and later eating the ‘cured’ olives.”

By Khaled’s estimation, around one in five Israeli Arabs has land or a home in the West Bank.

“Everyone is buying,” he says. His daughter’s teacher and a pharmacist friend of his bought vacation homes in Rawabi. “They go there on weekends and holidays. Everyone around me is buying real estate.”

Thabet Abu Rass, a co-CEO of the Abraham Initiatives shared society organisation and a political geographer, told Tal Schneider that he had invested some of his savings in buying an apartment in the Nablus area.

“There are hundreds of Israeli Arabs investing there, due to a housing crisis in Israel,” he said. “I know less about the extent of the phenomenon in Jericho or Rawabi, but I am aware that there are a lot of transactions there as well.”

One project attracting much attention from Arab Israelis is Jericho Gate (already mentioned). It’s a planned neighbourhood of smart-looking single-family homes and duplexes set along winding, landscaped streets on the south-eastern side of Jericho, with a view toward the Dead Sea.

The project is replete with park space and plans call for cultural centres, commercial space and mixed-use developments.

“In the past, Arab Israelis invested in properties in Turkey, but the return on investment was not worth it anymore. We have Ramallah and the West Bank an hour away. You can go on vacation every week; it’s the Palestinian people, so there is mutual trust, solidarity. Why go to Turkey and worry about crooks out there?” One estate agent told Tal Schneider

Khalil Haju, a Haifa real estate agent, says he has also noticed Arab Israelis putting money in the Jericho project, as well as in Rawabi, though he estimates that only about 5 percent of Israeli buyers purchase the homes as vacation units.

“It’s mainly for families, but Arab Israelis buy them as rentals or an investment, and they don’t intend to actually go there to live,” he says.

“There are a lot of students in Jenin and Nablus, and there’s a custom of buying and renting out apartments there,” he says.

According to Tal Schneider the governor of Jenin, confirmed that Israelis were snapping up property in the city, but noted that he did not have any concrete information on the extent of the phenomenon.

“Apparently, nobody has concrete data on Arab Israelis buying homes in PA-controlled areas of the West Bank. While the tax authority has general data on Israeli investment income generated abroad, it does not specify which of these are real estate investments, said Tax Authority spokesman Avital Lahav.”

On the Palestinian side, laws are in place to keep Israelis of any stripe from buying Palestinian land. To get around the rules, Arab Israelis only buy part of a property — up to 49% — or buy an apartment or condo in a development project, which Palestinian authorities are sometimes willing to overlook.

Moreover, the purchase can be made through a foreign corporation that acts as a middleman, further obfuscating the true extent of the phenomenon, and not all Israelis report their foreign investments to the Tax Authority.

The Bank of Israel keeps overall statistics on Israeli investments abroad, but does not have enough information on a granular level to allow for any meaningful analysis of the trend.

Schneider mentioned another real estate agent who told her that purchases are also made through shell entities registered to Palestinians, to blur the Israeli ownership.

“In principle, it is more difficult to acquire full ownership of land, as opposed to an apartment,” he told her.

“The people buying apartments often obtain a long-term leasehold with the contract registered on the property.” he added.

Housing costs in Israel have soared over the last 15 years.  In Tel Aviv a three-bedroom apartment costs at least $1.25 million. Nearby in the working-class Bat Yam, a similar-sized apartment, even second hand, goes for around $557,000 and in far-flung Kiryat Shmona, on the Lebanese border, new three-bedroom apartments generally go for nearly $283,000. Going up to 200 square metres there would bring the price to around $630,000.

Tracking housing prices in Arab-majority towns in Israel is more difficult, because ownership often transfers within families. In Nazareth, however, three-bedroom units average around $346,000 — cheap by Tel Aviv standards, but downright exorbitant compared to Nablus or Jenin.

“In the West Bank you can buy a 250 square-metre apartment for $63,000, but prices in Ramallah and Bethlehem can get relatively high. A 120-square-metre apartment in Ramallah can cost $126,000. In Rawabi, just a few minutes from Ramallah, a 120-square-metre apartment costs approximately $94,000.”

An ad for a project there advertises a new 171-square-metre home with three bedrooms overlooking a landscape of hills and valleys for $165,000.

Even compared to homes in the Buyer’s Price programme (Israel’s first-time homeowner subsidised housing lottery), prices are still three to four times what they are in Palestinian cities,” she added.

“Nevertheless, prices in Jericho Gate and other luxury projects can run much higher” said Haju, a Haifa real estate agent, who estimates that a single-family home in Jericho Gate averages around $786,000, but for that you get a yard, a pool and 300 square metres of living space.

One of the estate agents quoted by Schneider claims that one factor driving the phenomenon is the lack of bank mortgages available in Arab communities, where mafia-controlled loan sharks have taken over the lending business.

“Most Israeli Arabs have a very hard time getting financing from banks in Israel,” he says. “I think most buyers are simple people who have worked all their lives, saved, and don’t want to lose money by investing in a bank savings account. Investing in businesses during the COVID pandemic has not been an attractive option, so they invest their money in real estate in the PA and assume that it will bring a nice return.”

Purchasing homes in the PA rests on the assumption that the security situation will remain calm enough to make a vacation home in Jericho tenable or keep a real estate investment from crashing.

Despite the money pouring in, jitters are still high that the situation could change at any moment.

I think people are still afraid of a deterioration in the security situation and may even be afraid of losing their investment. But still, there is a certain percentage that continues to invest. They feel that the economic relations between Israel and the West Bank are good, that there is good production in the West Bank, and that there is mutual trade and economic cooperation. And so, there is also prosperity and an increase in real estate purchases there.”  

 

I’m inclined to share some of his optimism.

 

Have a good weekend.

 

Beni,                                                               10^th of February, 2022.

 The Attorney General

“The IDF Can Afford to Be Choosier” posited journalist-author Zev Chafets in a column he wrote for Bloomberg. He was airing a perennial argument about the need for universal conscription.  “From its birth in the War of Independence of 1948, the IDF has carefully cultivated its reputation as a people’s army, unique in the world both as a fighting force and for the commitment of the population to its service. But while there is still mandatory conscription, the IDF’s place in Israeli society is changing along with the nature of modern warfare.

Universal conscription is part of Israel’s founding mythology. But changes in the security landscape mean it’s no longer necessary.”

When Israel was attacked by neighbouring Arab armies in 1948 it had no real army. Every able-bodied man and woman was recruited to defend the country. Well, that was the official narrative repeated time and again by   its foreign ministry, ambassadors, emissaries and friends.

Chafets said a senior officer who had been in charge of recruitment during the War of Independence once confided in him that many thousands of citizens applied for exemptions. Some were recent arrivals from the Holocaust who were psychologically unable to face combat. Others were parents trying to keep their children safe. Some were simply draft-dodgers. Were it not for Israel’s highly trained pre-state militia the fledging state would not have survived.

“Today, Israeli men and women are conscripted at the age of 18, serve for two to three years, and then are placed in active reserve units. There are exceptions to this universal draft. Married women, Arabs, ultra-orthodox men and those judged unsuitable are exempted or given early release. Still, most Israelis serve as a matter of course, and many with pride.” 

So, it was surprising that the annual survey of the Israel Democracy Institute found that, for the first time, a plurality of Jewish Israelis say they would prefer to drop the draft and establish a professional army. Participants in the survey   between the ages of 18 and 44 said they support dropping mandatory conscription.

The survey’s findings came as a shock to many people, but it didn’t surprise military insiders. Earlier this month, General Gadi Eisenkot, the IDF’s former chief of staff, called out the trend. “When I enlisted in the army in 1978, 88% of people eligible for the draft went in,” he said. “In 2015, when my son reached draft age, that figure had fallen to 66%.” Military sources estimate that it’s now more like 50%.  

Predictably, 80% of ultra-orthodox say they prefer to abolish the draft and pay professionals to look after national security. But many young Israelis who aren’t ultra-Orthodox feel that in the absence of existential threat, the army can get along without them, too. 

The IDF itself has adopted a lenient policy toward draft dodgers; it can afford to be generous. More than a decade ago, the IDF adopted a new war-fighting doctrine that does not require massive ground power. Israel’s borders are secure. Its main strategic threat now comes from Iran and its increasingly lethal guerrilla proxies in Lebanon and Gaza.

Iran is too distant and too large to be defeated with conventional battle formations of tanks, infantry and artillery. Hamas and Hezbollah could be overwhelmed by such forces, but the cost of Israeli lives lost on the battlefield and the home front was judged to be too high.

As a result, the IDF has adopted a defensive doctrine of containment. To accomplish this, it has armed itself with expensive and highly complex weapons systems: American-made fighter planes that can strike distant targets, multi-billion-dollar German submarines refitted to provide second strike deterrence against a nuclear Iran, a multi-tiered anti-missile system capable of downing (or lasering) incoming fire from across the border or outer space, and a vast network of cyber and intelligence units capable of anticipating threats and disrupting enemies.

All this, however, has come at the expense of the people’s army concept. You can’t just turn the average conscript into a cyber warrior. The IDF handpicks the best and the brainiest high school kids for its technological needs. It does the same with prospective pilots, naval commanders and candidates for sophisticated commando units.

 

These “first draft choices” are asked to sign up for longer service in exchange for being allowed to hone their skills. Service comes with the additional benefit of eventually joining a self-selected group of veterans who form the core of the civilian high-tech industry. Other recruits are sent to armoured or infantry battalions, support units or rear echelon office work. They are out of the mainstream of the IDF and its central challenges. Many begin to wonder if they are wasting their time.

The army is aware of this. Recently, Avi Kohavi, the IDF chief of staff, publicly stated that ordinary fighting men, not cyber soldiers, are still the heroes. No previous chief of staff has felt the need to make such a reassuring declaration.

So far, Israeli leaders and army top brass have refrained from stating openly that the universal conscription model no longer fits the needs of the country’s national defence in the 21st Century. Some may be concerned that change would widen societal divisions or weaken community bonds and a willingness to sacrifice for country.

They needn’t be. The public has already grasped the reality that the existing model is outdated. Formalising such changes may be gradual, but Israel’s military can afford to be more selective these days. 

That being said, the coalition government managed to pass the first reading of the IDF draft bill for Haredim on Monday.

The bill sets out annual targets for the number of ultra-Orthodox men to be enlisted per year beginning in 2022, with rates of enlistment increasing very slowly for the annual cohort of ultra-Orthodox men turning 18.

Should enlistment targets not be met, the bill provides for a reduction in the state budget for yeshivas, money that is distributed to recognised yeshivas for the purposes of paying students a monthly stipend.

Bennett said the bill would among things help Haredim join the workforce, thus benefitting the entire country.

Not everyone agreed with the prime minister’s optimistic outlook. United Torah Judaism party leader Moshe Gafni shouted at Bennett after the vote that the bill was shameful. Earlier in his speech to the plenum, Gafni said he was more ashamed of the bill than any other in Israel’s history.

Likud MK Yoav Galant, a retired general who headed the IDF Southern Command, told the plenum it would do more harm than good to draft people who do not want to serve.

The bill also temporarily reduces the age of exemption to 21 in order to encourage ultra-Orthodox men to enter the workforce, and over the course of three years then raises the age to 23.

The Supreme Court had ruled that the draft bill must be passed by the end of January.

This week a lot of newsmedia prime time was devoted to exiting Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s “swan song” marking the end of his six-year tenure.  Listening to his speech astute observers and the rest of us detected a direct accusation aimed at former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“There were those who tried to present the harm (they sought to cause) to the rule of law as an ideological move, under the pretext of ‘governance,’

but time and time again, we saw that what really stood behind these moves was a desire to advance personal interests, severely damaging the principle of fidelity to the public.”

Mandelblit, who was appointed to his post by Netanyahu, led the initial corruption investigation into the ex-premier, and faced criticism from officials at both ends of the political spectrum throughout the course of the probe.

Those on the left at first argued that the attorney general was stalling the investigation.

However, when Mandelblit issued charges in three of Netanyahu’s cases, the ex-prime minister and his supporters on the right said that the attorney general was part of a conspiracy spanning the state's judiciary and law enforcement institutions which was determined to oust Israel’s longtime leader.

“The rule of law is not the attorney general’s personal property,” Mandelblit declared in his parting remarks

“Israel must split the attorney-general’s role to ensure rule of law.” 

Opined Professor Yedidia Z. Stern former dean of Bar-Ilan University’s law faculty.

“The current attorney-general’s balanced and cautious approach, under particularly difficult circumstances, is no guarantee for the future. We can’t rely on the miracle to continue.

Israel’s attorney-general wears two hats: He is both legal adviser to the executive branch and the state’s chief prosecutor. The coalition parties want to split the roles so that the state’s chief prosecutor will be autonomous and not subordinate to the attorney-general. However, those who have served as attorney-general, as state prosecutor or as Supreme Court justices (and who have expressed themselves on the subject) unanimously oppose this split. Who is right – the politicians or the jurists?

The attorney-general currently holds vast governmental power in his hands, a centre of gravity of authority that challenges the principle of separation of powers in a democracy. Concern for Israel’s democratic character is growing in the absence of a constitution that would impose restrictions on the attorney-general. To date, the position has been held by people loyal to the public interest, but there may come a day when the office falls into other hands. The current attorney-general’s balanced and cautious approach, under particularly difficult circumstances, is no guarantee for the future. We can’t rely on the miracle to continue. The system itself must address the present concerns.

There are functional difficulties as well: The two roles require entirely different kinds of expertise. An attorney-general who has an excellent professional grasp of civil law will usually be a novice in criminal law, and vice versa. Thus, the chief prosecutor could be a mere apprentice in the criminal field, or the attorney-general could be one in the civil field. In either case, the public interest will be harmed.

This multiplicity of tasks, combined with the lack of experience in one of the areas under his responsibility, creates a huge load on the system. It is busy with current and urgent matters and has trouble making time for strategic concerns. And yet, despite the existence of a State Prosecutor’s Office whose expertise and mission it is to engage with those concerns, the attorneys- general are devoting a significant portion of their time to making decisions on the fate of a specific criminal case involving a public figure. Aside from wasting the time and administrative resources of those responsible for all aspects of the rule of law, the Attorney-General’s Office is attracting public criticism. This state of affairs does not, to say the least, make it easy for the institution to fulfill its central role.

There is also an inherent conflict of interest between the two functions: The attorney-general’s role is to stand with the government and assist it in implementing the policy it was elected to advance. The state prosecutor’s role is to stand up to the government and protect the rule of law from it. These are two entirely different psychological and professional positions. Only angels, not human beings, could with complete openness seek counsel from someone who has the authority to put them on trial.

Faced with these difficulties, the jurists who oppose the split argue, among other things, 

Exiting Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit

that if prosecutorial power is taken from the hands of the attorney-general, his deterrence power before the government would diminish, and his advice would go unheeded. In my view, this is an insulting argument, from both a democratic and a cultural point of view. It assumes that the state’s leaders are a bunch of miscreants who, unless there is a whip over their heads, cannot be trusted. Although it has been proven that there are public figures for whom such concern is justified, this implicit defamatory generalisation is inappropriate. ”

The current heterogeneous coalition is particularly well positioned to formulate an agreement on an institutional and functional split of the Attorney-General’s Office, out of full fidelity to the rule of law, without which we are destined to fail.”

 

Take care.

 

Beni,                                                               3^rd of February, 2022.