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Newsletter : 9fax0127.txt
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>Israel Faxx
>JN Jan. 27, 1999, Vol. 7, No. 18
Driver Apprehended at 112 mph
By IsraelWire
Police on the Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem Highway apprehended an 18-year-old new driver clocked at 112 mph in an area with a maximum speed limit of 60. The driver, who was arrested, told police he was speeding because he received notification that his brother was injured in a motor vehicle accident when his car flipped over near the Bet Shemesh Interchange.
American Oleh Appointed Defense Minister
By David Gollust (VOA-Jerusalem)
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has appointed veteran Likud party figure Moshe Arens as defense minister. The previous defense chief Yitzhak Mordechai was fired Saturday and is now running against Netanyahu in the May election.
Netanyahu named Arens defense minister only a day after trouncing
him by a 5-1 margin in a primary election for the leadership of the
right-wing Likud party.
Arens, an American immigrant who had served as defense minister
twice before in Likud governments, has been bitterly critical of
Netanyahu's performance as prime minister.
But in a show of unity, he appeared alongside the prime minister
and Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon at a news conference and
announced he would take the defense portfolio once again.
Netanyahu said Arens would continue in the defense job, if he wins
the elections, and said his security team would stick to a tough
approach in demanding reciprocity for Israeli concessions in the
peace process with the Palestinians.
The prime minister is being challenged in the election beginning
May 17 by Labor party leader Ehud Barak and a new centrist movement
led by former defense chief Mordechai.
Most analysts expected Netanyahu to face either Barak or Mordechai
in a run-off June 1, with the ultimate winner tasked with
assembling a working coalition in a divided Knesset.
In an Israel Radio interview, Likud Knesset member Meir Shitreet
said Israel -- facing critical decisions for peace -- cannot afford
another shaky coalition of either the left or right. He said the
principals in the election should agree on a government of national
unity.
Under the 1993 Oslo Accord, Israel and the Palestinians are to
complete negotiations on the final-status issue of the peace
process by May, and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat is threatening
to unilaterally declare statehood in the absence of a negotiated
agreement.
Israel tried a unity government of Labor and Likud with mixed
success in the mid-1980s as it withdrew from its invasion and
occupation of most of southern Lebanon.
Golan Retention Law is Approved
By David Gollust (VOA-Jerusalem)
Israel's Knesset has approved legislation that will make it harder
for the next Israeli government to turn the Golan Heights back to
Syria under a peace agreement.
The Knesset voted 53-30 to approve the bill, which would make any
turnover of land in the Golan dependent on a majority vote of the
full 120-member Knesset, and approval by Israeli voters in a public
referendum. The measure was sponsored by the small "Third Way"
party, which has strong support among 17,000 Golan settlers.
Israel captured the strategic plateau overlooking the Sea of
Galilee -- or Lake Kinneret -- from Syria in the 1967 Middle East
war, and effectively annexed the area in 1981.
Its status has emerged as an issue in the Israeli election
campaign, with former Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai's new
centrist party calling for a reopening of peace talks with Syria
based on territorial compromise in the Golan.
"Third-Way" Knesset member Alex Lubovsky says Syrian President
Hafez al-Assad has not altered his demand for a return of the
entire Golan all the way to the shoreline of the Kinneret -- and
it is such an eventuality that the legislation seeks to prevent:
"i want to be very frank with you. The situation, as of now, as long as President Assad of Syria is alive is that -- in some sense there is no third-way in the Golan. Namely it's either to go down to the Kinneret or not to have a peace agreement. Because Assad wants as a pre-condition to the negotiation that Israel will agree to give up all the Golan Heights."
It is reported that before his assassination in 1995, Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed in principle to hand back the entire
Golan in return for Syrian security guarantees.
Syria broke off a preliminary peace dialogue with Israel in 1996
and insists it should resume only on the terms said to have been
offered by Rabin.
Though designed to complicate the return of the Golan, the terms
of the Knesset bill would also apply to mainly Arab east Jerusalem
which Israel has annexed, but which Palestinians want as the
capital of a future Palestinian state.
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