Netanyahu Hits the Likud Streets to Postpone Elections
Iyar 13, 5770, 27 April 10 02:30
by Hillel Fendel
Netanyahu and FeiglinIsrael news Photo
(Israelnationalnews.com) This Thursday it will be decided: Will the Likud accept Netanyahu's mad drive to postpone democratically-scheduled party elections, or not? The more nationalist party members say Netanyahu's bid is directly connected to his de facto freeze on Jewish construction in Jerusalem.
With a critical Likud party vote scheduled for Thursday, Binyamin Netanyahu is pulling out all the stops in order to have it go his way. He wants to postpone elections for the party's influential Central Committee for nine months, allowing him to pass the critical end-of-construction-freeze period without undue pressure from the party's more nationalist members.
Moshe Feiglin, leader of the party's nationalist Manhigut Yehudit faction, is making similar efforts to ensure that the party constitution is not changed and that elections are held on time – next month. He and others expect that his ideology's influence in the party will increase if the elections are held as scheduled – and that this will be critical for the important decisions being made now and in the coming months.
The critical vote comes on the heels of media reports that Netanyahu has come to an agreement with Obama wherein he would announce that construction in Jerusalem is not frozen, but that actually nothing would be built. The agreement even includes a clause, according to Maariv's well-connected Ben Caspit, that if the agreement is leaked or pressure mounts unduly on Netanyahu, he would be "allowed" to approve some small-scale construction in Israel's capital.
Netanyahu has scheduled at least six meetings with party members around the country in the coming two days – in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ashkelon, Netanya and Tiberias. In addition, he has urged party Cabinet ministers to take his side, but several of them are not doing so. Before a TV interview last week, thousands of text messages were sent to Likud members from Likud headquarters, urging them to watch him promise not to compromise on Jerusalem.
Netanyahu claims that elections at this time would be "a great mistake that will breach our internal unity in the face of the national and international challenges that we face."
But the Feiglin camp says that not only would postponing the elections mar the party's democratic process, but it would also allow Netanyahu relatively free rein to stop construction in Jerusalem, extend the construction freeze in Judea and Samaria, and head towards the formation of a Palestinian state.
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De Facto Freeze on New Homes in United Jerusalem
Iyar 12, 5770, 26 April 10 09:33
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(Israelnationalnews.com) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has ordered a “bureaucratic” halt for approving new building in some areas of Jerusalem that the Palestinian Authority demands as part of a new Arab state within Israel’s current borders.
The Prime Minister rejected the reports, saying that building in Jerusalem would continue and "we will continue to stand on our essential principles," but foreign media quoted Israeli sources that Jerusalem city officials been told to hold up processing building requests.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has consistently said as late as last week that he will not halt construction of homes for Jews in all of Jerusalem, despite President Obama’s demands, Doing so could be interpreted as de facto recognition of PA sovereignty over a divided capital and an implicit Israeli surrender of claims to the areas, including the Old City.
Jerusalem Councilman Meir Margalit said, "It's not just that building has stopped: The committees that deal with this are not even meeting anymore." However, Efrat Orbach, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, stated, "There is no freeze, there is bureaucracy.”
There was no indication how long the unofficial freeze will last. Prime Minister Netanyahu nearly half a year ago announced a 10-month building freeze on new Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria.
Building inspectors have conducted a media display of strictly enforcing the freeze. Earlier this month, special “Yassam” police units swarmed on the upscale town of Efrat, south of Jerusalem and heavily populated by Americans, and destroyed a new patio that a family was building for a Bar Mitzvah celebration.
However, at least two contractors told Israel National News that new building has begun on some homes in several areas.
Prime Minister Netanyahu faced an abrupt and public verbal drubbing by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month when the Vice President’s visit coincided with a routine announcement by the Interior Ministry that one stage of a seven-step bureaucratic process hds been passed for construction of 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo a totally Jewish community.
The bureaucratic move was reported as if the project had received final approval and was to be built immediately, angering American and PA officials. Local officials said the final process for approval could take up to two years or more.
"Following the Biden visit and the mishap, the Prime Minister asked that a mechanism be put in place to prevent a recurrence of this kind of debacle, according to government spokesman Mark Regev.
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