News

After more than a year of discussions, fears, promises and assessments – U.S. President Donald Trump delivered a landmark speech in Washington Wednesday, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel.

As expected, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the announcement, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared that the U.S. can no longer act as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli security forces are on alert for a possible escalation in Jerusalem and in the West Bank.

The Likud’s election committee decided Thursday to endorse a decision by the party’s internal court to cancel the February 23 leadership race and declare Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the uncontested winner.

The decision ended a legal dispute over whether to hold a single candidate Likud primary once it emerged that Netanyahu was running unchallenged.

Committee chairman, former Haifa District Court judge Menahem Neeman, said Netanyahu would be the party’s candidate for prime minister in the next election and no leadership contest could be held beforehand.

The Knesset late Monday approved the second and third readings of a bill which effectively postpones a previous law mandating ultra-Orthodox conscription into the IDF.

The new law was voted in by a count of 49 in favor and 36 opposed.

Likud MKs Sharren Haskel and Yoav Kisch did not take part in the vote.

MK Merav Ben-Ari (Kulanu) also skipped the vote, but made sure to find an opposition MK to offset her absence.

JTA — In April 2014, nearly 60 percent of Israel’s 1.7 million Arab citizens said they felt “part of the state and its problems.” The 11 months that followed saw the nationalistically motivated murders of four teenagers — three Jewish and one Arab — a two-month war in the Gaza Strip, a wave of terror in Jerusalem and a tense election campaign.

By March 2015, the month of the election, only 28 percent of Arab-Israelis felt part of the country and its problems.

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation will not vote Sunday on a controversial bill that would enshrine Israel’s status as the Jewish state, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the measure off the agenda.

The bill, which has come up for debate in various forms over the last few years, will instead be discussed by a special committee comprising Knesset members from the various coalition parties, Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party said in a statement.

Lahav Harkov.-

New legislation by MK Yoel Hasson (Zionist Union) may create an awkward situation for the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday, as it calls to implement the ideas in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2009 Bar-Ilan speech, calling for a two-state solution with a demilitarized Palestinian state.

Sunday’s vote on the bill to implement the principles of the Bar-Ilan speech is the first time the speech will be brought to a vote in the Knesset or cabinet. The bill is unlikely to be approved by the ministers.

The Joint List, which spent much energy campaigning in Hebrew during the last election using words such as ‘democracy’ and ‘equality,’ has failed to clearly condemn the surge in terrorism, instead blaming the Israeli government and the “occupation.”

Ayman Odeh, who heads the Arab-Jewish communist Hadash Party and who identifies as secular, has failed to live up to his election campaign rhetoric, in which he frequently quoted Martin Luther King.

The Oslo peace process is not the only export from Norway to Israel that is facing tough times ahead of Monday’s return of the Knesset from its extended summer and holiday recess.

So is the so-called Mini-Norwegian Law, which allows ministers and deputy ministers to quit the Knesset and enable the next candidate on their party’s list to enter, but permits the ministers to return to the legislature if they quit the cabinet.