Comments (0)Knesset Passes Amendment on Withdrawal Referendum
December 14, 2009Jerusalem
JTA Wire Service
An amendment approved by the Knesset will advance a bill requiring a referendum on Israeli territorial withdrawal as part of any future peace deals.
The 68-22 vote Wednesday that passed the amendment came two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Syria was ready to restart peace negotiations without first requiring Israeli agreement to a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
The referendum bill has passed its first reading in Knesset.
Government members from the Labor Party, which is part of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, split their vote on the amendment.
An Israeli law requires a referendum on any territory under Israeli control, including the Golan, but it requires that the Knesset pass legislation mandating how the referendum would be handled.
Israel’s Cabinet Approves Priority Areas Map
Israel’s Cabinet approved a new map of priority areas, including millions of shekels for dozens of West Bank settlements.
The vote Sunday was 21 votes to 5. The five votes against the plan were from Labor’s five ministers.
The ministers also decided to create an exceptions committee. The committee will have 30 days to decide whether to add Ashkelon to the list of communities and whether to exclude settlements outside of the security fence. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, head of the Labor party, told the Cabinet that the national priorities map “disproportionately represents” residents of isolated settlements and gives a “prize” for right-wing extremism, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Some 91 out of 121 settlements are on the list, including several settlements in isolated West Bank areas beyond the security barrier, according to reports, representing about 120,000 people. In addition, the inclusion of Arab Israelis represented by the new map has risen from 8 percent to 40 percent. The map also reportedly does not include areas where Gush Katif evacuees from Gaza live.
About 1.9 million people are included in the priority areas of the map.
Prime Minister Netanyahu, at the beginning of the cabinet meeting, told the ministers that the new map was an attempt to draw the periphery closer and close the gaps that exist between the different areas of the country.
“In the decision that will be submitted today, two million citizens are included,” Netanyahu said. “Approximately 40% of the State of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens are included in this decision. We are providing benefits in education, employment and infrastructures. We are also trying to provide tangible aid to those who bear the security burden every day. We will hold a discussion and decide; I am sure that we will make the best decision.”
The proposed map was widely released last week in advance of the Cabinet meeting.
Women Stabbed, Reprisals Feared Following West Bank Mosque Attack
Israeli security officials are concerned that Palestinian attacks on Jews will increase after the torching of a West Bank mosque.
The army has increased its presence in the Nablus area of the West Bank, where vandals raided a mosque in the village of Yasuf before dawn Friday, burning furniture, prayer rugs and holy texts and defacing the mosque’s walls, according to reports. One line of graffiti read “Price tag—greetings from Effi.” Effi is a Hebrew name and “price tag” refers to the strategy extremist settlers have adopted to exact a price in attacks on Palestinians in retribution for settlement freezes.
The increased security is reportedly to prevent more attacks by Jewish extremists and reprisal attacks by Palestinians.
A day after the mosque attack, an Israeli woman was repeatedly stabbed in the back at a bus stop in the West Bank. The woman, 22, was attacked late Saturday night near Gush Etzion; she is recovering at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital. The attacker escaped. Another person waiting at the bus stop was not harmed.
It was unclear if the stabbing was connected to the Mosque attack.
Meanwhile, dozens of Religious Zionist rabbis and activists from around the county were set to visit the village Sunday in order to help clean and fix the mosque, and donate copies of the Koran to replace the holy books destroyed in the arson attack, Ynet reported.
The rabbis arrived at a junction near the village and, though the visit had been properly coordinated were detained by the IDF Sunday afternoon. By the time they had permission to enter the village it was too late and they left, Ynet reported, The Korans were taken into the village by a Muslim representative.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government recently announced the launch of a 10-month settlement freeze with an eye toward accommodating the Obama administration’s attempts to revive peace talks.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, slammed the attack. “This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government’s efforts to advance the political process for the sake of Israel’s future,” Ha’aretz quoted him as saying.
The Israeli army is continuing to investigate the incident. As of Sunday afternoon, no arrests had been made.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.