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Yisrael Beytenu leader slams efforts by incoming coalition to entrench divisions in Israeli society and pass law neutering Supreme Court; Lapid: ‘You know you made a mistake’
The Times of Israel is liveblogging Monday’s events as they unfold.
Maoz says attacks against him are ‘a wild political campaign from the left’
Responding to an outpouring of criticism against his promised appointment to head a Jewish identity office, Avi Maoz, head of the anti-LGBT, misogynistic Noam party, says attacks against him are the political campaign of a bitter minority.
Speaking at his one-man party’s faction meeting, Maoz says the criticism is “a wild political campaign by the left, headed by Yair Lapid and the media, against the elected prime minister and his attempt to form a government.”
“This is a campaign of the minority that lost the elections — against the majority of the people who spoke decisively at the ballot box,” he says.
“This campaign is nothing short of a rebellion and an attempt to prevent a prime minister from forming the only legitimate elected government after the elections,” Maoz continues.
Herzog meets UAE president, reassures him all Israelis support Abraham Accords
President Isaac Herzog meets with UAE’s President Mohammed Bin Zayed, seeking to reassure him that “the Abraham Accords are a national consensus in Israel on all sides of the political spectrum.”
“Now we have to reach cruising altitude,” he continues, “that is, to upgrade ties between us even more, to strengthen them and to bring more nations into the Abraham Accords.”
The two meet in Bin Zayed’s private home in Abu Dhabi.
Bin Zayed tells Herzog “that we built a very strong bridge between the countries that we both can be proud of.”
He also tells his Israeli counterpart that the UAE is Herzog’s “second home.”
Herzog now heads to the airport to head back to his first home, Israel.
In Gulf, Herzog says Israeli leaders must push to expand Abraham Accords
Israeli leaders must continue to work to expand the Abraham Accords, President Isaac Herzog says as he prepared to meet his Emirati counterpart in Abu Dhabi.
“This visit was an opportunity to take stock after two years of the Abraham Accords,” Herzog tells Israeli journalists who joined him for his two-day trip to Bahrain and the UAE.
“It started as an agreement, turned into ties between states, and now the two countries want to upgrade the agreements and are working to add more countries,” he says.
“This requires Israel’s leadership to understand that this challenge continues,” he says, as polls show declining support for the accords in all three of Israel’s new Arab partners.
In a message likely meant to allay concerns in Manama and Abu Dhabi, Herzog stresses that “there is great importance to the Abraham Accords.”
Turning to the Bahrainis, he says that their approach is “to work toward peace and not conflict. The Bahrainis believe deeply in ties with the Jewish community.”
“This shows the massive change in the paradigm in the dialogue between the states and the peoples,” he says.
Labor’s Michaeli: Netanyahu selling our country piece by piece
Labor leader Merav Michaeli says that presumed incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “selling our country piece by piece.”
Michaeli charges that passing the override clause and Netanyahu’s “personal interests” are what motivates him.
“The State of Israel isn’t for sale,” she adds.
Lapid urges Netanyahu: End deal giving anti-LGBT MK control over education programs
Prime Minister Yair Lapid attacks his expected replacement Benjamin Netanyahu for signing over the Education Ministry’s unit responsible for educational vendors to a far-right, anti-LGBT hardliner politician.
“You made a mistake, you know you made a mistake,” Lapid says, calling on Netanyahu to cancel the deal with Noam’s Avi Maoz.
Referring to the dozens of local authorities who have said they would either separately fund their own programming or oppose Maoz’s appointment, Lapid says “we’ll help them because they’re totally correct.”
Yesh Atid opened a hotline last week to assist citizens concerned by the move.
Liberman: Netanyahu’s ‘state of darkness’ is trying destroy Zionist liberal Israel
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman warns that presumed incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands at the head of a “state of darkness” that is trying to destroy “Zionist, liberal Israel.”
Speaking at his party’s faction meeting at the Knesset, Liberman decries the agenda of the far-right religious parties joining with Likud in the next coalition.
“In recent weeks we have seen some disturbing phenomena — starting with an attempt to establish two states for one people and ending with an attempt to enact the override law,” Liberman says.
“Netanyahu is at the head of the state of darkness that is trying to destroy Zionist, liberal Israel,” he says.
Israeli woman hurt when car stoned in West Bank
An Israeli woman is lightly hurt when her car is stoned by Palestinians on Route 505 in the West Bank, medics say.
The Magen David Adom ambulance says the 29-year-old continued driving after the attack and met up with medics at Tapuah Junction.
She is taken to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva with injuries to her face from shrapnel, MDA says.
Sudan’s military, civilian factions sign deal seeking to end crisis
Sudan’s military and civilian leaders sign Monday an initial deal aimed at ending a deep crisis that has gripped the northeast African country since a coup a year ago.
Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan seized power in October 2021, derailing a rocky transition to civilian rule that had started after the 2019 ouster of veteran autocrat Omar al-Bashir.
The past year has seen near-weekly protests and a crackdown that pro-democracy medics say has killed at least 121, a spiraling economic crisis and a rise in ethnic violence in several remote regions.
Divisions among civilian groups have deepened since the coup, with some urging a deal with the military while others insist on “no partnership, no negotiation.”
Monday’s deal was signed by Burhan, paramilitary commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and multiple civilian groups, most notably the Forces for Freedom and Change — the main civilian faction that was ousted in the coup.
The deal — based on a proposal by the Sudanese Bar Association — was negotiated in the presence of officials from the United Nations, Western diplomats as well as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the FFC.
A normalization deal signed between Sudan and Israel has largely been on hold since the coup.
Activists dismiss claim Iran morality police abolished
Campaigners backing Iran’s protest movement dismiss a claim that the Islamic Republic is disbanding its notorious morality police, insisting there was no change to its restrictive dress rules for women.
There are also calls on social media for a three-day strike, more than two months into the wave of civil unrest sparked by the death of Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran.
Amini was accused of flouting Iran’s strict dress code demanding women wear modest clothing and the hijab headscarf, and her death sparked protests that have spiraled into the biggest challenge to the regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran’s Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, in a surprise move over the weekend, was quoted as saying that the morality police units –- known as gasht-e ershad (guidance patrol) — had been closed down.
But activists are skeptical about his comments, which appeared to be an impromptu response to a question at a conference rather than a clearly signposted announcement on the morality police, which is run by the interior ministry.
Moreover, they say, the abolition would mark no change to Iran’s headscarf policy — a key ideological pillar for its clerical leadership — but rather a switch in tactics on enforcing it.
Scrapping the units would be “probably too little too late” for the protesters who now demand outright regime change, Roya Boroumand, co-founder of the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center rights group, tells AFP.
