Tag Archives: Netenyahu

Israel to hold early election in April: Netanyahu spokesman

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel will hold an early general election in April, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, after members of his governing coalition met to discuss differences over legislation.

“The leaders of the coalition decided unanimously to dissolve parliament and go to a new election in early April,” the spokesman wrote on Twitter, quoting from a statement issued by Netanyahu’s political partners.

A coalition crisis over a military conscription bill affecting exemptions from compulsory service for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men led to the decision.

Netanyahu, now in his fourth term as prime minister, has been governing with a razor-thin majority of 61 seats in the 120-member parliament. He heads the right-wing Likud party.

Under Israeli law, a national election had to be held by November 2019. Netanyahu’s government would remain in place until a new one is sworn in, after the April poll.

A series of corruption probes against Netanyahu and pending decisions by Israel’s attorney general on whether to follow police recommendations to indict him had raised speculation he would opt to seek a public show of confidence at the ballot box.

Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing in the cases and has given no indication he will step down if charged.

The 69-year-old Israeli leader made no immediate comment after his meeting with the coalition leaders. Recent opinion polls have shown his popularity remains strong among Israelis.

The likelihood of an early election increased in November after Netanyahu’s defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, quit the government, leaving the ruling coalition with its one-seat majority.

No one in Netanyahu’s Likud has made a public challenge against him, and the party is expected to close ranks around him in the coming election.

Outside Likud, Yair Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid opposition party, is seen as the strongest candidate to succeed Netanyahu in any upset. Lapid’s party is second to Likud in opinion polls.

Israel’s former army chief, Benny Gantz, is seen as a dovish potential candidate who could tip the balance in favor of a center-left bloc, but has not yet thrown his hat in the ring.

On the right, Lieberman and Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home party, could both seek to lead a right-wing bloc if Likud emerges in a weaker position in an election.

Netanyahu first led Israel from 1996 to 1999, and returned in 2009. His current government has been in power since May 2015.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Andrew Roche)

Looking ahead to Trump presidency, Netanyahu refocusses on Iran

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participates in a forum hosted by the Center for American Progress in Washington November

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has resumed his attacks on a nuclear deal with Iran, seeking Donald Trump’s help to smash a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s foreign policy legacy.

Following up on remarks he made this month to a Washington think tank, the conservative Israeli prime minister said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday “there are ways, various ways of undoing” last year’s accord.

The Republican president-elect is also no fan of the deal between Iran and six world powers under which Tehran agreed to suspend a suspected drive to develop atomic weapons in return for a lifting of most sanctions against it.

During the U.S. election campaign, Trump called the pact – against which Netanyahu lobbied long and hard – a “disaster” and “the worst deal ever negotiated”. But he has also said it would be hard to overturn an agreement enshrined in a U.N. resolution.

Asked if he had any ideas on how to unravel the deal, Netanyahu said on the television program: “Yeah, I have about five things in my mind”. Pressed for specifics, he said: “I’ll talk about it with President Trump.”

That discussion will likely take place soon after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Shortly after the election, Netanyahu said he and Trump had agreed to meet at the first opportunity.

Scrapping the deal would, at the very least, be complicated.

“It’s difficult to see the advantage for the U.S. in abrogating the deal at this stage,” said Jacob Parakilas, an expert on U.S. foreign policy at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.

“It would be nearly impossible to convince Europe, Russia and China to restore their sanctions on Iran in the absence of clear evidence of Iranian violations of the deal. So any sanctions the U.S. restored would have much less impact on the Iranian economy,” he said.

Yair Lapid, an Israeli opposition leader, said he doubted whether the deal could be undone given “the Chinese, Russians and Europeans are already in Iran signing deals”, and he said any discussion on it should take place “behind closed doors”.

In the run-up to Trump’s inauguration, Netanyahu has been laying the groundwork for a closer relationship with Trump.

The two met in September on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, when the Israeli leader also held talks with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. A week after the election, Netanyahu sent his U.S. ambassador, Ron Dermer, to see the president-elect and his transition team.

Dermer hailed Trump as “a true friend of Israel”.

CHEMISTRY

Netanyahu has used similar language to describe Obama, but the superlatives have done little to mask a lack of personal chemistry and a relationship strained by policy differences over Iran and Jewish settlement on occupied land.

In recent months, however, Netanyahu had largely refrained from attacking the Iran deal as Israel finalised a 10-year, $38 billion military aid package with the Obama administration.

Nearly a year ago, the commander of Israel’s armed forces, Lieutenant-General Gadi Eisenkot, offered a nuanced view of a deal that Netanyahu had dubbed a historic mistake. The agreement, Eisenkot said in a speech, presented many risks but also “many opportunities”.

Trump, himself, could also face opposition from within his new administration to cancelling the Iran deal.

James Mattis, the former general who Trump said he intends to nominate as secretary of defence, has called for strict enforcement of the agreement but stopped short of calling for its abrogation.

“It may be possible in time to build up support for a multilateral restoration of sanctions,” Parakilas said. “But at the moment that’s just not really the case – and ending U.S. participation in the deal right now would make it more, not less, difficult.”

Last year, before the agreement was signed, Netanyahu angered the White House by addressing the U.S. Congress, where he argued that the deal would pave Iran’s path to nuclear arms.

Three years earlier, he famously held up a cartoon bomb at the United Nations, drawing a red line just below a label reading “final stage” to a nuclear device.

But Netanyahu seemed to backtrack in the interview.

Asked if Iran, which has denied seeking atomic weapons, would move quickly towards a bomb if the agreement was undone, Netanyahu said that was not the case prior to its signing.

“I think Iran didn’t rush to the bomb before there was a deal,” he said.

“Really?” his questioner asked.

“No, because they were afraid of retribution,” Netanyahu said.

(Editing by Luke Baker and Alison Williams)