Israeli protesters demonstrate in Jerusalem, June 9, 2020. Police commanders voiced concern over the possible influence of Black Lives Matter protests on Israeli demonstrators. Credit: Emil Salman

Police have decided to beef up their forces at demonstrations in the near future out of a fear of increased violence by protesters – inspired by the protests in the United States.

The police’s senior commanders, including acting police commissioner Moti Cohen, recently held situation assessments in which district commanders were instructed to prepare for an escalation in the protests, including scenarios of wide-scale blocking of roads, attacks on police facilities and protesters initiating confrontations with the police.

Recently, police have seen a rise in the scale of the protest, especially because of the economic crisis resulting from the coronavirus outbreak, but because of other issues, too. The demonstrations, which police call “events involving public order,” have attracted great attention lately from the police’s highest levels.

In a number of closed meetings held recently within the police, including one called by Cohen, senior commanders have raised the fear that protesters will act more aggressively at demonstrations all over the country, under the influence of the protests in the United States after the police killing of George Floyd. As a result, police plan on deploying larger numbers of forces in the field during demonstrations, and in particular riot police units.

Police have also identified a rise in violence against symbols that represent the police. For example, anti-police slogans were spray-painted on a patrol car on Wednesday in Kiryat Ata, and two weeks ago two young men threw rocks at a patrol car that arrived to handle an incident on the street where Solomon Teka was shot and killed in Kiryat Bialik, an incident that sparked days of violent protests by Ethiopian Israelis.

A protester is dragged away by police officers during a “demonstration of fury” protest, Jerusalem, June 15, 2020.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg

In addition, a number of police officers have been attacked over the past few weeks, some in Arab communities. But a senior law enforcement official said police are inclined to attribute these incidents to the tension between organized crime groups in the Arab community and not to any influence of the protests in the United States.

On Monday, the Knesset Interior and Environment Committee held a session in which police officials responded to claims of violence against journalists during protests after Haaretz photographer Tomer Appelbaum was attacked during a demonstration in Tel Aviv. The head of the police’s operations department, Commander Yishai Shalem, told the committee that police intend to equip all the officers of the Special Patrol Unit, the special operations and riot police unit with body cameras by the end of the year, but there is still opposition to this inside the police – and no date has been set yet to implement the decision.

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The Israel Police said, “During the recent period protests have increased because of the political and economic situation, mostly because of the spread of the coronavirus and the implications of the national fight against it. Specific public disturbances that are unrelated to what is happening overseas, as well as any attempt to damage national symbols, are dealt with by the police every day of the year with professionalism and determination according to the [police’s] legal responsibility.”

Demonstrators attend a protest against police brutality and the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, at the Place de la Republique square in Paris, France, June 13, 2020. Credit: BENOIT TESSIER/ REUTERS

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-police-brace-for-possible-wide-scale-violent-protests-inspired-by-u-s-1.8929321

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Muslim worshipers pray in the al-Aqsa Mosque compound at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on May 10, 2019 on the first Friday prayers of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. (Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

Palestinian Muslim worshipers pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on May 10, 2019 on the first Friday prayers of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. (Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

Muslim worshipers pray in the al-Aqsa Mosque compound at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on May 10, 2019 on the first Friday prayers of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. (Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

Palestinians pray at the al-Aqsa mosque compound during a holy month of Ramadan, at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Friday, May 10, 2019. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinians walk towards the Qalandia checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem to attend the first Friday prayers in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Friday, May 10, 2019.(AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Muslim worshipers pray in the al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on May 10, 2019 on the first Friday prayers of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. (Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

Tens of thousands of Muslims, including many from the West Bank, prayed peacefully at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Friday, the first in Islam’s holiest month of Ramadan, officials said.

The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf organization which administers the site estimated that there were 180,000 worshipers, some 50 percent higher than last year, when around 120,000 people attended the first Friday prayers. Israeli estimates varied between 135,000 and 180,000.

Azzam al-Khatib, director general of Waqf, said the crowds reached the site “despite checkpoints and a large security presence.” The prayers ended without any major incident, he told AFP.

Israel Police said that they had deployed hundreds of officers and Border Police “to ensure that tens of thousands of worshipers could reach the site and at the same time prevent any incidents throughout the day.”

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Jaffa Gate                                                                                                                      Miriam Alster, Flash 90

Police last night arrested four people, two of them journalists, with two goats they apparently planned to sacrifice on the Temple Mount.

The four were arrested following a report received by the police about suspects in possession of goats making their way to the Temple Mount compound in order to sacrifice the goats as a Passover sacrifice.

Police searched for the suspects’ vehicle, and during the night the vehicle was located when it arrived at the Old City near Jaffa Gate. During a search of the vehicle, goats were found in the trunk.

A preliminary investigation revealed that the suspects are a resident of Ofra in his forties, a 17-year-old boy from central Israel and two journalists. All the occupants of the vehicle were detained for interrogation and their equipment was seized.

The two suspects were investigated for offenses of animal abuse and behavior that could disrupt public order, while the two journalists were released later in the night; Police intend to call them for further investigation. Today the two suspects will be brought before a court.

“The Israel Police will not allow any person or person to incite and cause provocations in any way contrary to the law on the Temple Mount, and will act resolutely against every suspect and agent who acts deliberately to provoke and incite, with focus on these days before the holidays of Nissan and Easter,” the police said.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/262038

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Jews and Muslims clashed Sunday morning on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, with police detaining Jewish visitors who had raised an Israeli flag at the outset of what is set to be one of the most politically sensitive and volatile weeks this year.

According to eyewitnesses, a group of Jewish visitors began singing after they entered the site — holy to both Jews and Muslims — on Jerusalem Day, the anniversary of the day when Israeli forces took control of the Old City and Arab-majority East Jerusalem in 1967.

Muslims at the site — known to them as Haram al-Sharif or the Noble Sanctuary — chanted “Allahu Akbar” at the Jews, with police forces separating both groups.

A video showed young Israelis, dressed in blue and white festive clothes, raising an Israeli flag and immediately being confronted by police officers. Another video showed visitors prostrating themselves on the ground in contravention of regulations barring Jewish prayer at the site.

One of the youths was the son of the ultranationalist lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich of the Jewish Home party, who praised his son for his “bravery and national respect.”

“There will come a day, my son, when the Israeli flag will be raised proudly on the Temple Mount, in the Temple,” Smotrich tweeted.

Footage from the scene showed the officers removing members of the Jewish group from the site.

A police spokesperson said that “a number of visitors were removed from area after not keeping to the guidelines of behavior during the visit,” adding that officers were “questioning the individuals who were removed from the Temple Mount.”

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism and the third-holiest site in Islam. High-profile visits by Israeli officials and rumors of changes to the status quo have preceded outbursts of violence. Under an arrangement in place since Israel’s victory in the 1967 war, non-Muslims are allowed to visit the site but not pray there.

Jews are allowed to enter during limited hours, with police officers guiding them through a predetermined route and forbidding them from praying, displaying religious symbols or raising the Israeli flag.

Security in Jerusalem has been bolstered ahead of a politically tense week that will see Israel celebrate 51 years of the city’s reunification on Sunday, the US move its embassy to the capital on Monday, and the culmination of over six weeks of protests along the Gaza border, when Palestinians mourn the “catastrophe” of the creation of the Jewish state.

A new road sign indicating the way to the new US embassy in Jerusalem is seen on May 7, 2018. (AFP Photo/Thomas Coex)

Later on Sunday, thousands of Israelis are expected to take part in the annual Jerusalem Day parade celebrating 51 years since the reunification of the city during the 1967 Six Day War.

The march, in which primarily religious teenagers march through the Old City decked in white and blue, the colors of the Israeli flag, has raised tensions over its route through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter. In previous years, the march has sparked sporadic incidents of violence between Israeli revelers and local Palestinian residents.

This year, as in years past, the left-wing NGO Ir Amim sent a letter to authorities requesting that they reroute the march so that it doesn’t go through the Muslim Quarter.

Amid fears that the demonstration could inflame tensions with local Arab residents, a police official told the Ynet news site on Friday that officers would show “zero tolerance for verbal abuse or physical violence” during the event.

He urged revelers to be mindful of the political sensitivities of the march, and to “maintain law and order.”

Israelis wave the Israeli flag as they parade through Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City on May 24, 2017 to commemorate Jerusalem Day, marking the reunification of the city following the Six-Day War of 1967. (AFP PHOTO / Menahem KAHANA)

Thousands of uniformed police and Border Police officers were deployed throughout Jerusalem on Sunday. The officers will secure the perimeter of the US embassy during Monday’s opening, assist in securing the visiting American officials and help direct traffic.

On Sunday, major roads in the city will be blocked between 3 p.m. and 11 p.m. due to Jerusalem Day events. They will include Bar Lev Boulevard and Sultan Suleiman Street around the Old City; Jaffa, Hillel, Bezalel and King George streets near the city center; and Ben Zvi Boulevard, which leads to the city’s main entrance.

Israel is also girding for possible violence during Nakba Day protests, a national day of Palestinian mourning marking the “catastrophe” of Israel’s founding, commemorated every year on May 15. Due to the beginning of the month of Ramadan, protests have been moved up to Monday.

Last week, Hamas’s leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar said he hoped that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would breach the border fence from Gaza into Israel during the protests.

In recent Fridays, Palestinian protesters have burned tires along the fence, hurled stones at Israeli troops and flown incendiary kites over dry fields on the Israeli side of the border. Some of the protesters, mainly youths, brandished wire cutters, a popular tool in weekly attempts to cut through the border fence.

According to the Hamas health ministry, 48 Palestinians have been killed since protests and clashes began along the Gaza border on March 30 and hundreds of others have been wounded from gunfire. Israel says it only opens fire when necessary to stop infiltrations, damage to the fence, and attacks.

Israel has repeatedly expressed concern over the possibility of a mass breach of the Gaza fence, in which Palestinians would stream across with terrorists among them, wreaking havoc. Sinwar has vowed in the past that protesters would “breach the borders and pray at Al-Aqsa” mosque on the Temple Mount.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-boot-jews-from-temple-mount-for-raising-israel-flag-on-volatile-day/

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The first shots in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against the Israel Police – who are vigorously and thoroughly investigating the serious suspicions against him – were fired about a year ago. Senior officials in the police tell of vague messages, tendentious rumors and posts on social media that were written by lesser-known Netanyahu supporters.

At the time, MK David Amsalem (Likud) began working on his anti-police legislative initiatives: restricting budgetary independence; mass polygraph tests for officers; and a proposal dubbed the “French law,” which would prohibit the investigation of an incumbent prime minister. These looked random and temporary at the time, and not much importance was attributed to them. The fingerprints of the Prime Minister’s Office and prime minister’s residence were not in evidence.

But everything changed last week, of course, when Netanyahu himself removed the mask from his face and attacked Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich for a “tsunami” of leaks, which never existed and certainly wasn’t proven. Suddenly, the threads were connected, the picture became clear, missing pieces were added to the puzzle. The police top brass are convinced that Netanyahu has decided to destroy their organization, to delegitimize them by slandering the commissioner and others, before the conclusion of the investigations against him and the transfer of his file to the State Prosecutor’s Office.

The proven and most effective way to destroy the credibility of a man in uniform is to attribute political intentions to him. For that purpose, on the eve of the Sukkot holiday, there was a report on a news website that’s close to the prime minister to the effect that Alsheich is planning to run for the chairmanship of Habayit Hayehudi. That is unfounded and unrealistic, if only because of the cooling-off period required by law to do that. But who bothers with petty details nowadays?

The Knesset winter session, which opens Monday, will be conducted in the shadow of the mudslinging by the prime minister’s associates against the organization that is collecting the evidence against him. The mudslinging – at which the group of young people who are friends of his son Yair are experts – won’t be restricted to issues related to the investigations. Every mistake and screw-up by the police will serve as an acceptable reason for the slander.

It started this week. An incident in which a policeman threatened ultra-Orthodox demonstrators with his pistol was follow up by Yonatan Orich, who is Netanyahu’s Facebook editor. “If it develops into a media crisis for the police, it’s liable to deteriorate tomorrow into another leak from the investigations,” he tweeted on his personal Twitter account.

The infamous affair of the installation of metal detectors at the entrances to the Temple Mount after the terror attack there in July also became a tool in the hands of Netanyahu and his associates in the war against the men in blue. The PMO leaked that it was the police who recommended and pushed for the installation of the detectors there.

After the fact, it turned out that just the opposite was true: The police had had reservations. What seemed at the time like a typical incident of evading responsibility and passing the hot potato from hand to hand, from the Shin Bet security service to the police and back, was already then understood by senior police officials as part of Netanyahu’s plot to make the public become disgusted by Alsheich and his forces.

Anyone who hears the top brass of the Israel Police privately discussing Netanyahu and the minister responsible for them, Gilad Erdan, is horrified. To the former they attribute the characteristics and behavior of a professional criminal. To the latter, they attribute political alliances and social connections with Likud activists – some of them dubious characters who were embroiled in legal problems in the past. For now, it makes no difference whether or not the claims are true; the fact that they exist presents a very problematic picture of the situation on the seam line between the police and political leadership.

To his detriment, Public Security Minister Erdan is caught in the middle of all this. It’s no wonder he’s looking for a way out: the Israeli Embassy in Washington; the United Nations – anywhere as long as he can escape the hornets’ nest that threatens to destroy his political career.

Erdan is stuck between a rock and a hard place, between the police and the PMO. Netanyahu’s associates, both family and professional, consider him a traitor – because of Kan, the public broadcasting corporation that Erdan established under their noses when he served as communications minister, and because he didn’t prevent, torpedo or use the power (that he doesn’t really even have) to stop the investigations against Netanyahu.

Now even the police are suspicious of him. They believe Erdan is in cahoots, at least partially, with their persecutor, MK Amsalem. That may not be true: Erdan is neither corrupt nor a crook; far from it. But for him, nothing good will come of this saga.

In the coming months, he will turn into the tragic hero of the conflict. The stronger the attacks by the prime minister and his cronies – and they will intensify – the stronger the demand of Erdan that he stand behind his subordinates and protect them from those who are plotting against them and slandering them. If his behavior is statesmanlike, the rift that already exists between him and the premier will grow. Already now, and for quite some time, they rarely communicate, except when circumstances force them to do so.

Taking a right turn

Avi Gabbay, chairman of the Labor Party and Zionist Union, left behind quite a collection of juicy headlines this week before flying to some conference in Rome on Thursday. For days they talked about him, analyzed his intentions, interpreted him and speculated about him. The media has decided he’s interesting, that he deserves screen time. For someone who was an unknown quantity to most of the public until a few months ago, that’s an achievement.

On Monday night, Channel 2 TV News opened with a sensational item, although it was actually nothing new: Gabbay believes we aren’t necessarily obligated to evacuate isolated political settlements when there’s a peace agreement. The story completely upstaged a large Yesh Atid convention, at which party chairman Yair Lapid delivered an uncharacteristically belligerent and meaty speech. The next day in the media, it was only Gabbay-Gabbay-Gabbay, and no sign of Lapid. If there is a paradise for politicians, it can be found in such small pleasures: raining on your rival’s parade.

The adventures of Gabbay began last Saturday, when he announced he would not invite the predominantly Arab Joint List to join any future government. On another occasion, he said he is not sure there is a Palestinian partner on the other side, at present. He said he doesn’t expect Netanyahu to resign as a result of the investigations. And, of course, there was that statement about the settlements, which placed him at the heart of the right, between Habayit Hayehudi chairman Naftali Bennett and Netanyahu, and so on.

Given the intensity and quantity of these minor scandals, the Labor leader emerged relatively unscathed. On the hard left they grumbled, they were insulted, they whined. But they didn’t attack, didn’t humiliate and didn’t eulogize (with the exception of a few predictable commentaries). Had his predecessor, Isaac Herzog, made similar pronouncements, with the same frequency, his party colleagues would have skinned him alive.

When Herzog suggested three years ago that the Palestinian state solution wasn’t relevant at the time, he was attacked by his colleagues, most notably Shelly Yacimovich: She ran over him twice and then confirmed the kill. That same Yacimovich delivered glowing and fiery speeches this week in favor of her ally, Gabbay. She didn’t accuse him of “betraying the values of the Labor movement,” as she said of his predecessor, but instead credited him with supreme adherence to them. Ultimately, everything is personal, as Don Corleone taught us.

Herzog publicly supported Gabbay’s policy. At the time, he also tried to woo the right-wing electorate, in the knowledge that there is no government on the left, only the sands of the opposition desert.

“The idea of leaving settlements in the territory of the Palestinian state is not new,” Herzog said this week. “I personally discussed it with [Palestinian President] Abu Mazen [aka Mahmoud Abbas] in 2014. He didn’t reject the idea.”

Amir Peretz, who lost to Gabbay in the Labor primary in July, was uncharacteristically silent. He realizes this isn’t the time to quarrel with the elected chairman. Tzipi Livni, the partner in Zionist Union from the Hatnuah party, published a tough condemnation of the statements (in her case, it really is ideological – after all, she’s a converted Likudnik), but she didn’t embark on a campaign against the new leader.

Livni feels somewhat neglected since Gabbay assumed the Zionist Union reins. The new broom doesn’t bother to consult or coordinate every message and every speech with her, as Herzog was careful to do. Gabbay’s approach is totally managerial: An organization doesn’t have two CEOs. The two spoke by phone immediately after the television interview, a conversation that wasn’t easy, and met in private on Wednesday. Gabbay says everything is fine between them and didn’t sound particularly troubled.

The past week proves that Gabbay is prepared to gamble – big-time. Some of his recent comments may have been random in terms of their timing, but not in terms of the path he has chosen to follow. As opposed to Lapid, who was a typical Tel Aviv leftist until he experienced a rude political awakening, Gabbay comes from a Likud home. He voted Likud and, together with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, started a center-right party called Kulanu. He never pretended to be anyone else. He was elected, unexpectedly, by a majority of Labor Party members, just because he is someone else.

His gestures to the right look more credible and less opportunistic. Not only in political terms. Gabbay also decided to speak “Jewish” to his voters. He visited the Western Wall, invited an ultra-Orthodox rabbi to a party convention on the eve of Rosh Hashanah – and there’s more of that to come.

“Twenty years ago, Netanyahu said of us: ‘On the left they’ve forgotten what it means to be Jews,’” he said this week. “Since then, the left has invested all its energy in proving that he’s right. We sanctified liberal values and neglected Jewish values. Nu, so at our convention on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, a rabbi came and taught a few words of Torah. So what?”

Some people in his party are allergic to this kind of talk. One day we’ll find him kissing a rabbi’s beard, said someone. He was referring to the legendary event at which the late Itzchak Mordechay, who was chairman of the Center Party, came to greet Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Shas, at the height of the 1999 election campaign. He caressed the rabbi’s gray beard and placed his fingers on the rabbi’s lips with great respect. This act aroused horror among many of the party’s supporters and sent them to One Israel, headed by Ehud Barak, and to Tommy Lapid’s Shinui party. The Center Party began to plummet in the polls, from 20 anticipated seats to six. Mordechay, who wanted to be prime minister, ended up as transportation minister with the bitter taste of a beard in his mouth.

Winter is coming

Netanyahu is set to announce his choice for the position of military secretary soon. According to the age-old custom in the Israel Defense Forces, when the time comes for change, the chief of staff presents a host of candidates to the prime minister, who is obliged to pick one of them. If he doesn’t find any candidate suitable, he will ask the chief of staff to offer an alternative list. In any case, the chief of staff – to whom the military secretary remains subordinate, even while he’s serving in the PMO – is the one who makes the recommendations

A few weeks ago, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot gave Netanyahu the names of three brigadier generals, all of them admired division heads: Yehuda Fuchs (Gaza Division), Yaniv Asor (Golan Division) and Uri Gordin (the Fire Formation, a reserve paratrooper division). As of today, Netanyahu has yet to decide. So far, this item should fall under the responsibility of our military correspondent – so what brings it down to the depths of a political column?

The reason is Netanyahu’s preferred candidate: Brig. Gen. Ofer Winter, head of IDF Central Command. It’s customary to call him: “Our friend, Ofer Winter.” This officer has been involved in a series of scandals in recent years: the “commander’s letter,” boasting the messianic-fanatical text he sent to his fighters on the Gaza border during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge; his grave and inappropriate behavior in the affair of sexual harassment in his unit; and the information he secretly sent, in contravention of army orders, to a politician who is also his good friend – Education Minister Naftali Bennett – during that Gaza war.

Winter used to meet with Bennett, a member of the security cabinet, in the woods and in the minister’s car, to update him on what was happening in the field, so that the minister could make proper use of the information in the security meetings.

The fact that, as of this writing, Netanyahu is insisting on our friend Winter is inexplicable. Not necessarily because of the large can of worms that should disqualify the officer from such an important and sensitive position in the center of the security tub in the aquarium that is the PMO. We have already learned that when it comes to “ethical” issues, Netanyahu is less than meticulous.
The great surprise is that the suspicious and paranoiac Netanyahu is willing to appoint alongside him, right up close, a person who has a strong and long-standing friendship with Bennett, Netanyahu’s nemesis. Bennett and Winter have been friends for 20 years, since their military service as young commanders in elite IDF units. This friendship proved itself in those woods and the back seat of the official government car in the summer of 2014, as well as in public statements by Bennett in Winter’s favor on several occasions when the officer was receiving negative press.

Netanyahu is capable of angrily dismissing someone out of hand because of a rumor about a minor past connection to someone who was at odds with him a decade ago. So how come he’s willing to adopt the ally of a present and future rival?

The opinion among the political establishment, whose right wing is particularly interested in this story, is that the solution to the mystery can be found in the residence on Balfour Street, Jerusalem. That’s where the person can be found who is pushing, or pushed, for Winter. Someone said he heard journalist Erel Segal say that Winter will be the prime minister’s next military secretary, but Segal denied this when I asked about it.

As of this week, the prime minister is digging in his heels and the appointment of the military secretary is being delayed. The IDF is waiting, the PMO is waiting, and in Habayit Hayehudi, the party that loves Winter, they are hoping and crossing their fingers – and, of course, praying quite a bit.

Yossi Verter – Haaretz Contributor

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.818274

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