Israel’s Early Elections: What Role Did The U.S. Play?
Do the Obama administration’s tentacles extend to the crisis that led to the dissolution of Israel’s parliament and the scheduling of early elections that could spell the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s long tenure as prime minister?
In March, this column quoted an informed diplomatic source in Jerusalem who reported that Obama administration representatives held meetings with Finance Minister Yair Lapid to discuss the possibility of replacing Netanyahu.
The diplomatic source said the Obama administration identified Lapid as a moderate who could be helpful in pushing the Israeli government into accepting a framework to create a future Palestinian state.
Following months of internal bickering, Netanyahu fired centrist and leftist members of his coalition last week, setting March 17 as the date for new national elections.
The decision came after Lapid and dismissed Justice Minister Tzipi Livni repeatedly accused Netanyahu of distancing himself from the U.S. and bringing relations with Israel’s most important ally to a crisis point.
Lapid and Livni took issue with Netanyahu’s decisions to expand Jewish communities in eastern Jerusalem, which they said helped bring the relationship with the Obama administration to the brink.
In October, Israel’s Ynet news website reported that a request by Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon to meet with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and National Security Adviser Susan Rice during his visit to Washington had been denied by the White House.
The reported move was highly unusual and seen as a snub of Netanyahu’s government. It also helped set off a firestorm against Netanyahu in Israel, with Livni and Lapid leading the charge.
Also in October, the U.S. used uncharacteristically harsh language to oppose a plan for Israel to build 2,610 new homes on empty lots in Givat Hamatos, a Jerusalem neighborhood in the eastern section of the city where Palestinians want to build a future state.
Immediately following a meeting between Netanyahu and President Obama in October, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki and White House spokesman Josh Earnest released nearly identical statements slamming the construction.
The bickering between the U.S. and Israel fueled, in large part, the coalition crisis that resulted in Netanyahu’s decision to dissolve his coalition. Lapid is widely expected to run against Netanyahu for the prime minister seat.
What Does Race Have To Do With It?
A common accusation of Americans protesting the death of Eric Garner is that police targeted the single cigarette salesman because of his race.
Lost in much of the nation’s conversation about Garner’s death, however, is that just prior to his arrest on Bay Street in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island, New York Police Department Chief Philip Banks singled out the precinct for a crackdown on the illegal sale of 75-cent cigarettes.
According to the New York Daily News, the crackdown directly led to the chain of events that ended with Garner’s arrest and death. The paper quoted a source close to the Garner investigation who revealed that Banks sent a sergeant from his own offices in July “to investigate complaints of untaxed cigarettes being sold in the Tompkinsville neighborhood.”
The newspaper reported that Banks’s office focused on Bay Street specifically, even surveilling the area and taking pictures of men thought to have been involved in the illicit cigarette sales.
Five months earlier, in March, the untaxed single cigarettes issue was discussed at a meeting in Banks’s office, according to the Daily News.A source told the Daily News a caller to the city’s 311 hotline complained about the issue, identifying one of the cigarette sellers as “a man named Eric.” One day later, Garner was arrested for selling the untaxed cigarettes. He would be arrested three more times before the fatal run-in on July 17.