Beer anniversaries this weekend with Garage Band, Sew Hop’d, Art History. An Indiana Mead fest, and Things We Don’t Say releases.Read More
Weekend in Chicago Beer, May 21-23on May 20, 2021 at 7:00 pm Read More »
Director Iris Sowlat uses social isolation as a framework for the lovers; plus PARA.MAR Dance Theatre offers live classes and performances with THAWEN.
In the end, it wasn’t their dueling families that led to Romeo and Juliet’s death—it was a pandemic. In act five, scene two of Romeo and Juliet, we discover that Friar John’s mission to carry a letter from Verona to the banished Romeo in Mantua, letting him know that the reports of Juliet’s death were part of a ruse devised by Friar Laurence to get her out of marrying Paris, has been thwarted by fear of “the infectious pestilence” that has shut down Mantua to outsiders.…Read More
The Black experience is more than slavery or Laquan McDonald police killings. The past is harmful, but it can also be blissful.
One of the most joyful experiences of 2021 for me was tuning into a Verzuz battle between R&B groups Earth, Wind & Fire and the Isley Brothers.
For the uninitiated, Verzuz is a pandemic webcast pastime that matches groups or musical artists against each other. Think the internet version of what the late legendary DJ Herb Kent did weekly on the radio with his “Battle of the Best.”
For more than three hours on the night of Easter Sunday, we listened to classic discs from the two groups while the audience kept score. Earth, Wind & Fire jams conjured backyard barbeques. The Isley Brothers’ quiet storm melodies inspired romance. The delight of hearing decades-old songs that my parents had exposed me to, such as “Can’t Hide Love” and “Footsteps in the Dark,” warmed me and brought back childhood and teenage memories.
I thought of Verzuz while reading my friend Badia Ahad-Legardy’s new book “Afro-Nostalgia: Feeling Good in Contemporary Black Culture,” a rumination on how today’s Black artists go beyond trauma and racism to evoke positive emotions. Recollection and joy are paramount to the collective narrative about Blackness.
Ahad-Legardy, a professor and vice provost at Loyola University, writes that in the 18th century white people believed that people of African descent could not experience nostalgia. It was thought that they lacked the capacity for the feelings and sensations. The white American view of Africa was so bleak that it was hard to imagine anyone longing for that place as home.
“Black memory is not limited to traumatic resonances of the past, nor are they constituted only through or in relation to histories of violence,” Ahad-Legardy writes. “I consider afro-nostalgia a lens through which we can conceptualize the desires of the African-descended to discern and devise romantic recollections of the past in the service of complicating the traumatic as a singular black historical through line.”
In other words, the Black experience is more than slavery or Laquan McDonald police killings. The past is harmful, but it can also be blissful. Neither perspective is the singular one.
Ahad-Legardy argues that it isn’t elitist or erasure to use the emotion of nostalgia in contemporary Black imagination. Black people deserve a break from experiencing or consuming images of trauma. Let’s face it — living, driving or breathing while Black can be fraught in this country.
“Afro-Nostalgia” focuses on current examples in literature, music, visual and culinary arts that make us feel good — with ample Chicago cultural practitioners featured. Tricia Hersey’s “The Nap Ministry” is an interactive art installation and uses afro-nostalgia to implore Black folks to rest as an act of resistance and reparations for our ancestors’ labor. Kerry James Marshall’s paintings feature dark figures frolicking in the grass as birds fly above. Krista Franklin mines through rituals and history for her beautiful and complex collages. Rhonda Wheatley employs vintage devices such as rotary phones and record players in her art installations.
For me, nostalgia emanates through joy and memory. Remembering Saturday morning chores while the television blared “Soul Train” in the background. Rummaging through my high school senior book and finding pictures of me and my girls rocking asymmetrical haircuts. Listening to Raekwon vs. Ghostface on Verzuz.
The 1990s, which is when I came of age, is a constant source of elation. Even in sadness, remembrance is a tonic. Two friends of mine died earlier this year and I’m wistful as I think of how Damani embodied Black boy joy and Rudy regaled his loved ones with a vocabulary word of the day and succulent brisket.
I tie smell to nostalgia. One day I cooked collard greens and polished my wood floors as buttermilk pies caramelized in the oven. I stepped out on my back porch for a bit, and when I returned inside, all the aromas had fused together instantly reminded me of my grandmother.
Nostalgia is subjective. The political climate in the U.S. has some people longing for the good ole days of June Cleaver and Jim Crow. That’s not the sentimentality Ahad-Legardy writes about, nor one that I would embrace. Nostalgia is the past, but we also get hints of it in the present.
Ten years from now I’ll smile at the joy I currently feel when I hear the beads clink on my 5-year-old daughter’s braids.
Natalie Moore is a reporter for WBEZ.org.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed back against calls from the U.S. to wind down the Gaza offensive, appearing determined to inflict maximum damage on Hamas in a war that could help save his political career.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip —Israel unleashed a new wave of airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday and Hamas fired more rockets into Israel, despite growing signs that the sides were close to a cease-fire that would end 11 days of heavy fighting.
In an apparent sign of progress, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting of his Security Cabinet, where the issue of a cease-fire was expected to be debated.
An Egyptian official said Israel has informed his government, which is mediating a truce, that it intends to end its military operations in Gaza. Speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing behind-the-scenes diplomacy, he said an announcement was expected following the Security Cabinet meeting.
The official spoke shortly after Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi talked by phone with President Joe Biden. The two leaders discussed ways to stop violence in the Palestinian Territories, el-Sissi’s office said.
In Washington, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said reports of a move toward a ceasefire were “clearly encouraging.” She said the U.S. was trying “to do everything we can to bring an end to the conflict.”
With U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urging an immediate cease-fire, a U.N. Mideast envoy was in the Gulf state of Qatar to help with efforts to restore calm, a diplomatic official said. Energy-rich Qatar often helps mediate between Israel and Hamas and has donated hundreds of millions of dollars for development and humanitarian projects in Gaza in recent years. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.
Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas official based in Lebanon, also said he expected a cease-fire within the coming day.
Biden on Wednesday publicly pressed Netanyahu to wind down the operation. The Israeli leader initially pushed back, appearing determined to inflict maximum damage on Hamas in a war that could help save his political career. But by Thursday evening, Israeli media were reporting that a cease-fire agreement was expected to take effect by early Friday, perhaps sooner.
Despite the signs of progress, fighting continued into the evening, with Israeli airstrikes on targets in Gaza and Palestinian militants firing rockets toward Israeli cities. In past rounds of violence, fighting has picked up in the final hours, with each side trying to eke out a final achievement before a cease-fire went into effect.
Earlier Thursday, explosions shook Gaza City and orange flares lit up the pre-dawn sky, with bombing raids also reported in the central town of Deir al-Balah and the southern town of Khan Younis. As the sun rose, residents surveyed the rubble from at least five family homes destroyed in Khan Younis. Heavy airstrikes also hit a commercial thoroughfare in Gaza City.
The Israeli military said it struck at least three homes of Hamas commanders in Khan Younis and another in Rafah, targeting “military infrastructure,” as well as a weapons storage unit at a home in Gaza City.
On Wednesday, Biden told Israel on Wednesday that he expected “a significant de-escalation today on the path to a cease-fire” — but Netanyahu pushed back, saying he was “determined to continue this operation until its aim is met.” It marked the first public rift between the two close allies since the fighting began and posed a difficult test of the U.S.-Israel relationship early in Biden’s presidency.
Visiting the region, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Israel has “the right to defend itself against such unacceptable attacks.” But he also expressed concern about the rising number of civilian victims and voiced support for truce efforts.
Even as the diplomatic efforts appeared to gather strength, an Israeli airstrike smashed into the Khawaldi family’s two-story house in Khan Younis, destroying it. The 11 residents, who were sleeping outside the home out of fear, were all hospitalized, said Shaker al-Khozondar, a neighbor.
Shrapnel also hit his own home, killing his aunt and wounding her daughter and two other relatives, he said. Al-Khozondar spoke from the bedroom where his aunt Hoda died. The windows were shattered and the bed pillows and rubble stained with blood.
Weam Fares, a spokesman for a nearby hospital, confirmed the death and said at least 10 people were wounded in strikes overnight.
Heavy airstrikes also pummeled a street in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, destroying ramshackle homes with corrugated metal roofs nearby. The military said it struck two underground launchers in the camp used to fire rockets at Tel Aviv.
The current round of fighting between Israel and Hamas began May 10, when the militant group fired long-range rockets toward Jerusalem after days of clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a flashpoint site sacred to Jews and Muslims. Heavy-handed police tactics at the compound and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers had inflamed tensions.
Since then, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes that it says have targeted Hamas’ infrastructure, including a vast tunnel network. Hamas and other militant groups embedded in residential areas have fired over 4,000 rockets at Israeli cities, with hundreds falling short and most of the rest intercepted.
At least 230 Palestinians have been killed, including 65 children and 39 women, with 1,710 people wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not break the numbers down into fighters and civilians. Hamas and militant group Islamic Jihad say at least 20 of their fighters have been killed, while Israel says the number is at least 130. Some 58,000 Palestinians have fled their homes.
Twelve people in Israel, including a 5-year-old boy, a 16-year-old girl and a soldier, have been killed. The military said an anti-tank missile fired from Gaza hit an empty bus near the frontier on Thursday, lightly wounding an Israeli soldier.
Since the fighting began, Gaza’s infrastructure, already weakened by a 14-year blockade, has rapidly deteriorated. Medical supplies, water and fuel for electricity are running low in the territory, on which Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade after Hamas seized power in 2007.
Israeli bombing has damaged over 50 schools across the territory, according to advocacy group Save the Children, completely destroying at least six. While repairs are done, education will be disrupted for nearly 42,000 children.
Israeli attacks have also damaged at least 18 hospitals and clinics and destroyed one health facility, the World Health Organization said. Nearly half of all essential drugs have run out.
___
Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Samy Magdy in Cairo and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Osama Hamdan also told The AP that Mohammed Deif, an elusive Hamas commander who has been hunted by Israel for decades, is alive and remains in charge of Gaza military operations.
BEIRUT — A senior Hamas official said in an interview Thursday that he expects a cease-fire between the group’s Gaza branch and Israel within a day, but warned that Hamas has “no shortage of missiles.”
Osama Hamdan also told The Associated Press that Mohammed Deif, an elusive Hamas commander who has been hunted by Israel for decades, is alive and remains in charge of Gaza military operations.
Deif, also known as Abu Khaled, is by far Israel’s most wanted target in Gaza. He has survived multiple Israeli assassination attempts, and is rarely seen in public. Israeli media have said there were two more failed attempts during the current Israel-Hamas war, the fourth in just over a decade.
Hamdan told the AP that Deif is “still heading the operation and directing the joint operations” of Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and other factions. He provided no evidence for that statement.
Since the conflict began, Israel has leveled a number of Gaza City’s tallest office and residential buildings, alleging they house elements of the Hamas military infrastructure.
On Saturday, an Israeli strike destroyed the 12-story al-Jalaa Building, an office and residential tower where the offices of the AP and the TV network Al-Jazeera were located. The military gave a warning ahead of the strike and occupants evacuated safely.
The AP has called for an independent investigation. AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt has said in statement that the AP had no indication of a Hamas presence in the building. “This is something we actively check to the best of our ability,” he said.
Hamdan denied there was any military presence belonging to Hamas or any other armed group in the building.
In the interview, Hamdan said his group could continue bombarding Israel for months if it chose to do so.
“I can assure that what we saw during the first days in terms of bombarding Tel Aviv and some areas in Jerusalem, can continue not only for days or weeks but for months,” said Hamdan. But he added that he believed a cease-fire announcement is near.
Hamdan, who is based in Beirut, is a member of Hamas’ powerful decision-making political bureau.
Hamas is a militant off-shoot of the pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood and has sworn to pursue Israel’s destruction. It has been branded a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S., the European Union and other Western allies.
Founded in 1987, Hamas consists of a secretive military wing and an above-ground political organization. Its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, runs Hamas from exile in Qatar. The group’s power center remains Gaza, the small territory it seized from internationally-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ forces in 2007.
Also Thursday, Haniyeh in a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asked for a wide “mobilization of Arab, Islamic and international support” to stop Israeli airstrikes, the official IRNA news agency reported. It said this was Haniyeh’s second note to Khamenei since the latest war between Israel and Hamas erupted.
The war broke out on May 10, after Hamas fired long-range rockets at Jerusalem following weeks of clashes in the holy city between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police. The protests were focused on the heavy-handed policing of a flashpoint sacred site during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers.
Since then, the Israeli military has launched hundreds of airstrikes that it says are targeting Hamas’ militant infrastructure. Palestinian militants in Gaza have fired more than 4,000 rockets toward Israeli cities and towns.
At least 230 Palestinians have been killed, including 65 children and 39 women, with 1,710 people wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Twelve people in Israel, including a 5-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl, have been killed.
Hamdan said Egypt and Qatar have been involved in cease-fire negotiations and suggested that progress was being made. “This is the tentative vision that I believe that within 24 hours will lead to an understanding or an agreement,” he added.
Hamdan said that as part of the talks, Hamas and a smaller militant group, Islamic Jihad, demand that Israeli police agree not to enter Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site. During the Jerusalem tensions that preceded the current war, Israeli riot police firing tear guns, stun grenades and rubber bullets clashed with Palestinian stone throwers in the compound. Israel is bound to reject any Hamas demands linked to Jerusalem.
During the current fighting, Hamas missiles have been hitting deeper inside Israel and with greater accuracy than ever before, including several barrages on Tel Aviv.
Hamdan said the arsenal was far from being depleted. “There is no shortage of missiles,” he said, without elaborating.
On Thursday, Hamas received verbal support from ally Iran, which has armed militant groups through the region.
Gen. Esmail Ghaani, who heads Iran’s expeditionary Quds Force, sent letters to Deif and a commander of the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, praising “their resistance” against Israel, according to state media in Tehran.
“We will stand by you,” Ghaani said in the letters to the Palestinian commanders.
___
Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
David Kaplan joins the show to discuss the moment Justin Fields became a Bear, Nagy taking playcalling duties, and his memories of Charles Leno Jr. in a Bers uniform!
The post Keepin It 100: A Chicago Bears Podcast – Re-Kappin the Draft with David Kaplan first appeared on CHI CITY SPORTS l Chicago Sports Blog – News – Forum – Fans – Rumors.Read More
Glassman Chrein, who is believed to be the fourth woman in league history to serve as a team president, has plenty on her plate when she begins June 1.
The Fire have a new president, and she will have a lot on her plate when she begins.
On Thursday, the team announced Ishwara Glassman Chrein has been named club president to replace predecessor Nelson Rodriguez. Glassman Chrein, who is believed to be the fourth woman in league history to serve as a team president, will start with the Fire on June 1.
Like sporting director Georg Heitz, Glassman Chrein will report directly to owner Joe Mansueto. Heitz will continue to run the soccer side of the Fire, and Glassman Chrein will helm the business operations.
Consulting firm Sportsology, which the Fire used when they hired Heitz, led the search.
In a statement, Mansueto said the Fire believe Glassman Chrein can grow the team’s fan base and be an ambassador for the franchise around the area.
“In Ishwara, we have found a dynamic, experienced sports executive to head up our business operations,” Mansueto said. “She is a passionate and enthusiastic leader that has a proven track record of building businesses and increasing revenue.”
Before joining the Fire, Glassman Chrein was the head of sports partnerships and business development at Yahoo Sports/Verizon Media. Among her duties, she led relationships with the traditional Big 4 and other sports leagues, broadcast network NBC, and also oversaw gaming operations and links with broadcasters.
She won’t be lacking for things to do with the Fire, who are still working to recover after a decade of decay under former owner Andrew Hauptman.
One of the goals for the franchise is finding 20-25 acres of city land to build a state-of-the-art training facility, which has already proven difficult. She’ll also have to navigate a still-uncertain economic landscape due to the COVID-19 pandemic, effectively push the upcoming new logo, and convince more people to care about the Fire and come to Soldier Field even as the on-field product continues to languish.
“I am so thrilled to be joining the Fire at such an important inflection point in the club’s history,” Glassman Chrein said in a news release. “I’m fortunate to join a team where the owner loves Chicago, cares deeply about the players and staff, and is fully invested in building a successful team on and off the pitch. I’m looking forward to getting started and meeting everyone involved with the club, especially the fans.”
Rodriguez resigned in January after becoming club president in January 2018. He was shifted to a business-only role in December 2019 when Heitz was hired.
Following Rodriguez’s departure, chief operating officer John Urban served as interim president.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Are the Israeli airstrikes following us? If you’re in Gaza City these days, no matter who you are, that’s an easy thing to believe.
No one knows where the next explosion will be, or when. Getting an hour’s notice from the Israeli military may save some lives, but not all airstrikes are preceded by warnings. And the constant sound of bombing fuels the pervasive dread that at any moment, any place — including the one right where you’re standing — could become the next target and, shortly afterward, be wiped from the landscape.
In the past week, I have lost my family farm to an airstrike. The building I worked in for many years — longtime location of The Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in my native Gaza City — was leveled an hour after the Israeli military ordered occupants to evacuate. We managed to flee and escape unscathed, at least physically.
And on Wednesday morning, as another day of bombardment in Gaza began — as Israel and Hamas continued to exchange fire — I thought I was going to lose my home, too.
___
Shortly after 9 a.m., my cellphone rang and awakened me. I looked at the number. It was my mother, calling from the apartment next door, where she lives.
I wondered through my grogginess: Why is she calling me at this time? She knows I stay up until dawn filing news reports about the ongoing war.
As I prepared to answer, I realized: Not only was my mother calling me, but she was standing right in front of me in my bedroom, too. She’d come directly in, through the apartment door that I leave unlocked in case there’s an emergency and my family can’t reach me by phone.
Something was amiss. I saw immediately what she was carrying: the “emergency bag” found in every house in Gaza. Such bags are filled with passports, IDs, personal items and the things we don’t want to lose under the rubble if the house is bombed.
Al-Andalus Tower is being targeted, my mother said. If true, this was very bad news.
The imposing building sits just 30 yards from the apartment building where my mother, various uncles, cousins and I live — the only central location in my life still intact after the past week of disarray. Our building is six floors high; if the 15-story Al-Andalus was brought down, it could fall on our home and crush it.
That’s not just idle speculation. For us, there’s terrifying precedent behind it.
In the 2008-09 war, Israel bombed Al-Andalus repeatedly, destroying half of it (it was later rebuilt). We had evacuated our building back then because a ground invasion was underway and tanks were close.
When we returned after the January 2009 cease-fire took effect, our building had been damaged badly. Windows were blown out. Flying debris had torn the curtains. Light fixtures were smashed and furniture broken.
All of this ricocheted through my mind on Wednesday morning as my mother’s words sank in. I rose, gathered myself, dressed and moved fast. My extended family was in peril. They needed me.
____
Sometimes, you downplay the danger. Sometimes it’s simply what you have to do.
That’s what I did this time with my uncles and their children when I found them all in the stairwell, hurrying down, deeply uncertain. Go to the basement, I exhorted: Maybe this is just a rumor. It might be a false warning. I told them I’d stay upstairs, seek out the facts and make sure that everything was OK.
Everything should be fine, I told them. I wondered when I would actually feel as confident as I was trying to sound.
They headed downstairs, leaving behind apartments with the front doors left open to reduce the concussive effects of bombs and the air they might push through the doorways. I stayed in my mother’s apartment next door to mine. It had a view, and I am, after all, a person whose job it is to observe and chronicle what is happening.
Shortly afterward, I was speaking with an editor about coverage plans. Suddenly, my world shook. An explosion. I looked out the window and saw smoke rising from the roof of Al-Andalus. I hung up and realized it was time for me to go to the basement, too. More explosions were coming.
Understand: At this moment, I was not directly worried about my own building. The Israelis say they are looking for Hamas targets. There is no Hamas in my apartment house. Of this I am certain.
Everyone in our building is known. We don’t have strangers who could be potential targets. I know my cousins. I know my uncles. I know everyone. They are my family. They are not part of any factions. They are not members of Hamas. Some of them have permits to enter Israel.
Because of all this, I have held to a belief that my building is safe. But I cannot speak for the buildings nearby. I have no idea who lives in Al-Andalus or why the building — which has remained largely empty since it was rebuilt — might have been targeted. And as I have come to believe, there is no safe place in Gaza.
___
I ran down to the basement and was astonished to find it empty. I was confused. That’s where they had all been headed. Where had they gone? Were they safe? Or had they fled and been caught up in some of the chaos?
I rushed outside, looked around. I was worried, nervous, afraid — but not frantic. Being frantic does you no good in a place where frantic things can be visited upon you from the sky at unexpected moments.
I found my family outside, in the open street, about 200 yards (meters) away from the building. It was not far, but it was far enough to be out of reach of what was happening to Al-Andalus, which was being targeted for sure.
As we watched, another powerful explosion hit the structure. More black smoke rose, but the building still stood. There was none of the heavy damage that an F-16 bomb would do — as it had with our office building just four days earlier.
The building’s roof and some apartments on its top floor had been hit from the side furthest from our building. And our apartments? They were intact, untouched, left to stand at least another day.
Some of my younger relatives were terrified, including my little 5-year-old nephew. We sent him to my sister’s house, driven there by my brother. And the rest of us? Slowly, deliberately, tentatively, we carried our emergency bags back into our building. And we contemplated the words that are shaping our days: Evacuate. Flee. Bomb. Explosion.
We wanted to nudge things back toward normal. We realized that we had no power to do so.
And so we watch, emergency bags packed, wondering when the next word of an explosion will turn out to be only a rumor — or, worse, when the next rumor moving from one set of lips to another set of ears will become a real explosion that will change more lives here forever.
___
Fares Akram is a journalist in Gaza for The Associated Press.
JERUSALEM — Israel is at war with Hamas, Jewish-Arab mob violence has erupted inside Israel, and the West Bank is experiencing its deadliest unrest in years. Yet this may all bolster Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Just over a week ago, the longtime Israeli leader’s political career seemed all but over. He had failed to form a coalition government following an indecisive parliamentary election, and his political rivals were on the cusp of pushing him out of office.
Now, as Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers wage their fourth war in just over a decade, Netanyahu’s fortunes have changed dramatically. His rivals’ prospects have crumbled, Netanyahu is back in his comfortable role as Mr. Security, and the country could soon be headed for yet another election campaign that would guarantee him at least several more months in office.
The stunning turn of events has raised questions about whether Netanyahu’s desperation to survive may have pushed the country into its current predicament. While opponents have stopped short of accusing him of hatching just such a conspiracy, they say the fact that these questions are being asked is disturbing enough.
“If we had a government, security considerations would not be mixed with political considerations,” opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on Facebook. “No one would ask themselves why the fire always breaks out just when it’s most convenient for the prime minister.”
Lapid appeared to be poised to make history early last week, saying he was wrapping up the final details of arranging a government that would end Netanyahu’s 12-year rule.
“In a few days, we should be able to swear in a new Israeli government that is functional and that is based on broad agreements and the common good,” he declared, hours before the war erupted.
The sudden outburst of fighting was the culmination of a series of events that have made it increasingly difficult, and maybe impossible, for Lapid to assemble his coalition.
His alliance was to include diverse groups that span the spectrum from right-wing to left-wing Jewish parties, as well as an Islamist party, unified by little more than their opposition to Netanyahu.
Such a coalition would make history. An Arab party has never officially been part of an Israeli governing coalition.
Netanyahu himself had courted the same Arab party when he was granted the first chance by Israel’s figurehead president to assemble a coalition government after the March 23 elections.
But as it became clear Netanyahu could not secure the required parliamentary majority, things began to heat up between Jews and Arabs in the contested city of Jerusalem, in large part due to the actions of the prime minister’s allies.
Israelis and Palestinians both claim east Jerusalem and its sensitive holy sites. These competing claims lie at the heart of their conflict and have repeatedly triggered violence.
The Cabinet minister in charge of police, a Netanyahu loyalist, authorized the closure of a popular gathering spot outside Jerusalem’s Old City used by Palestinians during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. When protests broke out, heavy-handed Israeli police tactics led to days of unrest that peaked with police raids on the Al Aqsa Mosque. The violent scenes caused outrage across the Muslim world.
At the same time, Jewish settlers pressed ahead with attempts to evict dozens of Palestinians from their homes in a nearby east Jerusalem neighborhood. Itamar Ben-Gvir, a leader of a racist anti-Arab party aligned with Netanyahu, temporarily set up what he called a “parliamentary office” in the neighborhood, further enraging residents.
Then, on May 10, in an event widely seen as a provocation, thousands of far-right flag-waving Israeli activists gathered for a planned march through the heart of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City to celebrate Israel’s capture of contested east Jerusalem in 1967.
At the last minute, the Israeli government ordered marchers to change their route, but by then it was too late. Hamas, saying it was protecting Jerusalem, launched a barrage of long-range rockets at the city, crossing an Israeli “red line” and sparking the war.
As the war intensified, violent clashes between Jews and Arab mobs erupted in cities across Israel. The violence also spilled over to the West Bank, where more than 20 Palestinians have been killed in stone-throwing demonstrations against Israeli security forces in recent days, according to Palestinian health officials.
In this fraught environment, it appears unlikely that Lapid will be able to cobble together a government by a June 2 deadline.
Naftali Bennett, a far-right politician and key partner, abandoned the talks last week after the fighting began. Mansour Abbas, the leader of the Arab party, suspended negotiations. He has said he will resume them if the fighting ends, but time is running out.
Lapid’s office says he will work until the last minute to try to form a government. If he fails, the country most likely will be plunged into an unprecedented fifth election in little over two years.
It is a script that fits Netanyahu’s needs well and reinforces his image as a survivor. The unrest has diverted attention away from his ongoing corruption trial, and Netanyahu is at his best when focused on security issues, projecting a calm and powerful demeanor in his frequent TV appearances.
Netanyahu has been desperate to remain in office throughout his trial, using the position to rally public support and lash out at police and prosecutors.
A new campaign would leave him in office until at least the new election this fall. It would also give him another chance at forming a friendlier coalition with his religious and nationalist allies that could grant him immunity from prosecution.
Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Israel’s Hebrew University, said she did not think Netanyahu had conspired to keep himself in office. But she called him a master of manipulating events in his favor.
“I think he controlled how much oil he puts into the fire,” she said.
“From Netanyahu’s perspective, he’s looking only at his trial and his power base,” she added. “This is where Israeli politics are at. It’s the political survival of this prime minister and not the public interest.”
Netanyahu’s prospects bolstered amid Israel-Hamas fightingon May 20, 2021 at 3:56 pm Read More »
