La fin de 13 jours de conflit? Donald Trump a annoncé hier soir que l’Iran et Israël avaient accepté un “cessez-le-feu total” devant débuter aujourd’hui. Après avoir fustigé les deux camps pour leur violation du cessez-le-feu ce matin, le président américain a assuré qu’il était en vigueur.

Donald Trump a assuré mardi que le cessez-le-feu entre Israël et l’Iran était désormais en vigueur, après avoir accusé les deux belligérants de l’avoir violé plus tôt. Le président les avait appelés à la mesure, se disant “pas content” d’eux, et leur demandant d’arrêter de lancer des missiles et de faire rentrer tous les avions.

Israël et l’Iran se sont eux accusés mutuellement d’avoir violé le cessez-le-feu et s’étaient dits prêts à riposter fermement à toute agression.

Le président iranien Massoud Pezeshkian a déclaré mardi que son pays ne cherchait pas à se doter de l’arme atomique, mais qu’il continuerait à défendre ses “droits légitimes” pour son programme nucléaire civil. Il a ajouté que l’Iran était prêt à résoudre les différends “à la table des négociations”.

– Benjamin Netanyahu a également annoncé avoir atteint “tous les objectifs” de son attaque contre l’Iran, en ayant éliminé la “double menace existentielle” du nucléaire et des missiles iraniens..

De la Turquie à l’Arabie saoudite, en passant par la Russie et la France, la communauté internationale s’est félicitée de la conclusion d’un cessez-le-feu et a appelé les deux parties à le respecter.

La guerre déclenchée par Israël contre l’Iran le 13 juin a fait à la date de mardi au moins 610 morts et plus de 4700 blessés, selon un nouveau bilan communiqué par le ministère de la Santé iranien

L’Iran “prêt à résoudre les différends à la table des négociations”, affirme son président

Le président iranien Massoud Pezeshkian a déclaré mardi que son pays ne cherchait pas à se doter de l’arme atomique, mais qu’il continuerait à défendre ses “droits légitimes” pour son programme nucléaire civil, alors qu’un cessez-le-feu est entré en vigueur avec Israël.

“Nous attendons de vous que vous leur expliquiez, dans vos relations avec les Etats-Unis, que la République islamique d’Iran cherche uniquement à faire valoir ses droits légitimes”, a déclaré Massoud Pezeshkian lors d’un appel téléphonique avec le président des Emirats arabes unis, Mohammed ben Zayed, selon l’agence officielle Irna.

Il a ajouté par ailleurs que l’Iran était “prêt à résoudre les différends (…) à la table des négociations”.

Le président iranien dit que son pays respectera le cessez-le-feu si Israël fait de même

Le président iranien Massoud Pezeshkian a déclaré que Téhéran respecterait le cessez-le-feu avec Israël, à condition qu’Israël en respecte également les termes.

“Si le régime sioniste ne viole pas le cessez-le-feu, l’Iran ne le violera pas non plus”, a affirmé Massoud Pezeshkian lors d’un entretien téléphonique avec le Premier ministre malaisien Anwar Ibrahim, selon le site de la présidence.

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L’article Israël – Iran: Le président iranien dit être prêt à revenir “à la table des négociations”.. Vidéos est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Benjamin Netanyahu has begun to impose an overhaul of Israel’s institutions, which most of his fellow citizens do not want. The prime minister has succeeded in pitting against him some of the most influential entrepreneurs in the digital economy he prides himself on having created.

The head of the central bank, the leading representatives of the judiciary, all the former army chiefs of staff, the former leaders of the intelligence services, thousands of reservists, notably from the air force, the association of medical personnel and doctors… The list of the country’s driving forces who have warned him against such a move, to no avail, is endless.

His own camp is alarmed by this stubbornness. Netanyahu’s coalition was elected in November 2022 for four years, with 64 seats out of 120 in parliament. But for months, opinion polls have shown that most Israelis reject this reform or want it to pass only with the opposition’s approval by consensus.

A significant proportion of Netanyahu’s voters are turning away from him, witnessing the tearing apart of the Jewish majority – 80 % of the population – whose effects promise to be felt for years. Yet Netanyahu persists. On July 24, his coalition reduced the Supreme Court’s supervisory power over his actions and those of local administrations and the appointment and dismissal of senior civil servants.

It thus weakens the justice system’s ability to fight corruption and nepotism. But, more than the substance of the legislation, its passage by force is shocking. Netanyahu repeatedly refused to hear the chief of staff before the vote, even as discord spread through the army’s ranks. Thousands of reservists are no longer volunteering for the military, to which they are indispensable.

Radicalized base and messianic far right

According to the daily newspaper Haaretz, two generals dispatched in uniform to the Knesset waited for hours without being able to meet with certain ministers they were supposed to inform about the gravity of the crisis. The day after the vote, the major international rating agencies published harsh analyses. Netanyahu dismissed them.

Once again, the prime minister who has been on trial for corruption since 2020 says he will negotiate with the opposition before proceeding with his reforms. There is every reason to fear that this promise will amount to nothing. Justice Minister Yariv Levin intends to tackle the appointment of government legal advisors and Supreme Court judges during the fall to bring the institution in line.

Even among the ultra-Orthodox parties, at war with the Supreme Court for three decades, doubts are emerging. They realize secular and liberal Israelis are turning against their community. Only the radicalized electoral base of the “Bibists” and the messianic far right, which thrives on Israel’s colonial war in the Palestinian territories and dreams of a Jewish theocracy between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, remain adamantly committed to the reform.

For over 15 years, Netanyahu ruled by pitting one part of Israel against another: Jews against Arabs, Mizrahi Jews against Ashkenazis, the country’s center against its periphery, and the “people” against the institutions. It was a tactic, a way to become indispensable. Now it is his very legacy.

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L’article Debate. Benyamin Netanyahu and the politics of division est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on course for victory in Tuesday’s elections, according to exit polls.

The polls, which forecast the outcome before official results, give his right-wing bloc a slim majority of seats over his opponents.

Such a result would mark a dramatic comeback for Mr Netanyahu, toppled last year after 12 straight years in power.

The election was widely seen as a vote for or against Mr Netanyahu’s return.

Official results, which could still produce a different outcome, are expected in the coming hours.

As the polls were announced at 22:00 (20:00 GMT) upbeat music burst from loud speakers at the central venue of Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party in Jerusalem.

“It looks like we can be optimistic and have some hope we are about to get a stable coalition with Bibi [Mr Netanyahu] as the prime minister,” said 34-year-old Likud supporter David Adler, from Jerusalem.

“But as it’s been in the past three years, nothing it sure until the coalition is set up,” he cautioned.

Mr Netanyahu, 73, is one of Israel’s most controversial political figures, loathed by many on the centre and left but adored by Likud’s grassroots supporters.

He is a firm supporter of Israel’s settlement-building project in the West Bank, occupied since the 1967 Middle East war. Settlements there are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

He opposes the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict – a formula supported by most of the international community, including the Biden administration in the US.

Mr Netanyahu is also currently on trial for alleged bribery, fraud and breach of trust – charges he fiercely denies. His possible partners in a Likud-led coalition government have said they would reform the law, in a move which would bring a halt to his trial.

Israel TV exit polls suggest Mr Netanyahu’s bloc will command 61 or 62 seats in the 120-seat knesset (parliament).

According to the polls, Likud stands to be the biggest party, with 30-31 seats, commanding a majority with the support of nationalist and religious parties.

Likud’s ultranationalist ally Religious Zionism appears to have won 14 seats, which would make it the third largest party.

The centre-left party of incumbent Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who brought down Mr Netanyahu in elections last year, is forecast to win 24 seats.

If the polls are confirmed, it will stave off the prospect of a sixth election in just four years after analysts predicted deadlock.

It would mark a remarkable turnaround for Mr Netanyahu, who’s political future was widely written off after Mr Lapid formed an unlikely alliance of ideologically diverse parties to take power in June 2021.

At the time, Mr Netanyahu vowed to bring it down as quickly as possible. He engineered its collapse after just 12 months.

World Opinions + Agencies

L’article Israel elections: Netanyahu in lead, exit polls say est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Don’t expect the coalition formed by the outgoing prime minister’s disgruntled minions to lead to much change in an already dreadful state of affairs.

Israel’s prospective “change government” is a coalition of unlikely partners with only one goal in mind – changing the country’s prime minister. But will ousting Benjamin Netanyahu from power lead to positive change in Israel, or for that matter Palestine?

The long journey that led to the formation of this motley coalition, including four national elections and tough protracted negotiations, has demonstrated that in a confident and prosperous Israel, personal ambition trumps politics, and politicking outweighs ideology.

In fact, it was Netanyahu who first revealed unrestrained willingness to pursue any and all paths to further his personal ambitions and interests. It was he, after demonising any cooperation attempt with Palestinian Arab parties as un-Zionist, who pursued a coalition agreement with the United Arab List to preserve his premiership. And it was he who helped organise and legitimise the most openly racist elements in the Israeli society, ensuring they pass the threshold and enter the Knesset.

But Netanyahu “the magician” seems to have lost his magic. He has gone too far, lied too much, and stepped over too many associates to stay on top.

Indeed, nothing explains the formation of this new coalition of political extremes better than animosity – the animosity of political leaders exacting revenge against the man who once and again deceived or outright burned them.

Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman, the prospective prime minister and finance minister, respectively, have both previously served as Netanyahu’s chiefs of staff. Gideon Sa’ar, the prospective justice minister, was once his cabinet secretary. Even Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, who are spearheading the coalition effort to oust Netanyahu from office, have both been ministers in his cabinet in the past.

But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. After years of feeding on his minions like a scorpion, Netanyahu’s offspring are out to devour him in a twisted ritual of political Matriphagy.

Once Netanyahu is neutralised and unable to mount a comeback, the “change government” will, for all practical purposes, lose its raison d’etre.

The coalition partners have merely agreed to disagree on the big issues, and are unlikely to agree to any consequential policy change, let alone a new national agenda, transformative or even transitional.

Expect instead lots of political wrangling on major changes to the welfare state, for example.

Lieberman, the prospective hardcore secular nationalist finance minister, may insist on shifting budgets away from the religious parties’ associated schools and institutions.

Whether Prime Minister Bennett, himself a religious orthodox Jew, will opt to block any such moves or encourage them in order to weaken his competitors among the other religious parties, remains to be seen.

But Bennett won’t be able to make any sudden or extreme moves on more consequential issues, such as settlement expansion or annexation, without risking a coalition implosion.

With a majority of no more than 61 out of 120 parliament seats, any defection by any displeased eccentric could lead to the undoing of the “change government”.

It is therefore anyone’s guess how this evolves or rather devolves in the coming days and weeks. But if you thought it couldn’t get any worse than Netanyahu, think again.

Bennett, the former leader of a prominent settler group and a fanatic whack who prides himself on killing Arabs, has even fewer scruples than Netanyahu.

Paradoxically, his party failed even to cross the threshold necessary to have any seats in the Knesset in the April 2019 elections.

Now he is destined to become prime minister.

Go figure.

True to form, the political establishment spiders and scorpions will soon be at it again, if or when Likud decides to depose the criminally indicted Netanyahu from the party leadership, especially now that he is officially on trial on serious charges of corruption and fraud and could very well end up in prison.

Such development is sure to open the way for different, more coherent coalition possibilities for the right and far-right parties that make up the majority in the Knesset.

The first thing these parties will do is to throw the “overly pragmatic” United Arab List under the bus.

The United Arab List hopes that its support for the government, which oppresses its own people on the other side of the Green Line, may win it some financial crumbs, but once Netanyahu is gone, the Israeli right is sure to coalesce once again without it.

Despite its preoccupation with personal political vendettas and its media’s preoccupation with the political circus, Israel has in fact been consistently moving further to the right for years.

Today, the hardcore right-wing Likud party maintains some 30 seats in parliament while the presumably “centrist” Labor party, which governed Israel over three decades, is a mere political footnote.

For the past several decades, both establishment parties have given birth to a variety of extremist parties that support illegal settlement expansion and annexation, and fundamentally oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state.

These parties are indispensable for any future coalition government – without them, no major political party can govern.

In short, don’t expect the “change government” to lead to much change in an already dreadful state of affairs. But expect the inevitable changing of the “change government” to produce more of the same, but worse.

Netanyahu may be finished, but short of a miracle, Netanyahu’s Netanyahus are here to stay.

By Marwan Bishara Senior political analyst at Al Jazeera

L’article Netanyahu’s Netanyahus take charge in Israel est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

The union came into being after far-right leader Naftali Bennett, a kingmaker whose Yamina party has six seats in parliament, joined hands with Lapid’s Yesh Atid party. With 17 seats, Yesh Atid is the second-largest party in the 120-member Knesset – the Israeli parliament.

Who is Naftali Bennett, Israel’s potential prime minister?

Naftali Bennett is close to replacing Israel’s veteran prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Bennett is a multi-millionaire former tech entrepreneur who made a name in politics with right-wing, religious-nationalist rhetoric.

Lapid enlists Defence Minister Gantz

Israel’s opposition leader moved closer to unseating Netanyahu after agreeing terms with several parties, including one led by Defence Minister Benny Gantz.

Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party and Gantz’s centrist Blue and White said in a joint statement they had “agreed on the outlines of the government and core issues relating to the strengthening of democracy and Israeli society”.

Israeli parties in race to build anti-Netanyahu coalition

Israeli politicians battling to unseat Netanyahu are racing against the clock on the final day of talks to build a governing coalition comprised of bitter ideological rivals.

They have until a minute before midnight (20:59 GMT) on Wednesday to cobble together an administration that would end 12 years of rule by Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

World Opinions News -agencies

L’article Israeli parties due to unveil anti-Netanyahu coalition est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has denied reports that a meeting took place between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Israeli officials on Sunday.

“I have seen press reports about a purported meeting between HRH the Crown Prince and Israeli officials during the recent visit by @SecPompeo. No such meeting occurred. The only officials present were American and Saudi,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud wrote on Twitter on Monday.

Israeli media reported earlier that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held secret talks in Saudi Arabia on Sunday with Crown Prince Mohammed, also known as MBS.

The reports by Israeli public broadcaster Kan and other outlets came weeks after Israel reached deals to establish relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.

I have seen press reports about a purported meeting between HRH the Crown Prince and Israeli officials during the recent visit by @SecPompeo. No such meeting occurred. The only officials present were American and Saudi.

— فيصل بن فرحان (@FaisalbinFarhan) November 23, 2020

The deals were brokered by the administration of United States President Donald Trump, who leaves office in less than two months.

There has been widespread speculation, within Israel and the US, that Washington may push for other Arab states to follow suit before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was in Israel last week, was also at the reported talks, according to Kan’s diplomatic correspondent.

Pompeo has confirmed he was in Neom on the Red Sea as part of a Middle East Tour and met MBS.

Netanyahu’s office, US State Department and the US embassy to Israel had not commented on the reports.

Saudi stance

Publicly, Saudi Arabia has said it would stick to the decades-old Arab League position of not having ties with Israel until the Jewish state’s conflict with the Palestinians is resolved.

The Palestinians have condemned the normalisation deals as “a stab in the back”, urging Arab states to hold firm until Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian territory and agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state.

In late August, Netanyahu said Israel was holding “unpublicised meetings with Arab and Muslim leaders to normalise relations with the state of Israel”, without naming any countries.

But, amid speculation that smaller Arab states, such as Oman, were also interested in a deal, Saudi Arabia has stood out as the key target for Israel, given the kingdom’s wealth and influence.

Sunni Arab states, and especially Israel, worry that Biden may seek to revive the Iran nuclear deal agreed between Tehran and world powers during Barack Obama’s presidency, which was scrapped by Trump.

Trump’s administration has also downplayed the importance of human rights issues in international diplomacy and was particularly cautious about criticising Saudi Arabia’s rights record, notably about the murder by Saudi agents of prominent journalist and Saudi royal critic Jamal Khashoggi.

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

L’article Saudi Arabia denies meeting between MBS and Israeli officials est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.