A7News: Doctors Without Borders confirms slain terrorist was an employee

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Friday, Aug. 24 '18, י"ג באלול תשע"ח



HEADLINES:
1. DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS CONFIRMS SLAIN TERRORIST WAS AN EMPLOYEE
2. NETANYAHU: LITHUANIA IS PART OF MY FAMILY HISTORY
3. AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER OUSTED
4. HOUSING MARKETS BOOMING IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA
5. REPORT: PA FOILED ATTACK NEAR MAJOR ISRAELI HIGHWAY
6. TWO DEAD, ONE WOUNDED IN PARIS SUBURB KNIFE ATTACK
7. 'TRUMP'S COMMENTS ABOUT ISRAEL NO REASON TO GET ALARMED'
8. 'TRUMP IS PUSHING THE PA INTO A CORNER'


1. DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS CONFIRMS SLAIN TERRORIST WAS AN EMPLOYEE
by David Rosenberg

Israel said a terrorist who was a member of the Geneva-based organization "Doctors Without Borders" opened fire at IDF troops on the Gaza border earlier this week, a charge the group said Friday it was investigating, after it had confirmed the death of an employee.

The terrorist was eliminated Monday morning, after he opened fire on Israeli troops. An Israeli tank later shot at and killed the terrorist.

On Friday Doctors Without Borders issued a statement confirming that the slain terrorist had been a member of the group, but said it could not confirm yet that he had opened fire on Israeli troops.

"Doctors Without Borders (MSF) confirms that one of its employees, Hani Mohammed Almajdalawi, was killed in Gaza on Monday, August 20, 2018," the organization said in a statement.

"Doctors Without Borders is working to verify and understand the circumstances regarding this extremely serious incident, and is not able to comment further at this stage."

On Thursday, Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Major General Kamil Abu-Rukun, slammed the Geneva-based group for what it called "Terrorism Without Borders".

"Hani al-Almajdalawi, who tried to infiltrate through the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip while he was armed with a rifle, opened fire toward military forces and even threw an explosive device at them," it said.
AFP contributed to this article.


2. NETANYAHU: LITHUANIA IS PART OF MY FAMILY HISTORY
by Arutz Sheva Staff

[youtube:2046497]

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met Friday with Lithuania's president, Dalia Grybauskaite, at the presidential palace in the capital city of Vilnius.

"This is your first time in the country," said Grybauskaite as she welcomed Netanyahu. "I hope you will enjoy everything – our climate, the greenery, and the people, the hospitality."

Netanyahu responded by saying that he was excited about the first official state visit by a sitting Israeli head of government to the country, saying that it had both important "historical meaning", as well as personal significance.

"I have to tell you that this is not a regular visit for me," said Netanyahu. "It's full of historical meaning, both the history of the Jews here in Lithuania and also my personal history, my family's personal history. My great-grandfather came from Lithuania."

The Prime Minister flew to Lithuania on Thursday, the first by an Israeli premier, to attend a conference of Baltic leaders.


3. AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER OUSTED
by Gary Willig

Scott Morrison was selected as Australia's new Prime Minister Friday after hardline members of the ruling Liberal Party forced the ouster of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Morrison became Australia's fifth prime minister in the last five years.

Former home affairs minister Peter Dutton forced the "spill," or leadership challenge, in protest against Turnbull's more liberal policies. Dutton, Morrison, and Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop competed to replace Turnbull as prime minister, with Morrison emerging as the victor.

Morrison, an ally of Turnbull who served as a treasurer and immigration minister under the former prime minister, is the architect of Australia's hardline policies against asylum seekers.

"Our job ... is to ensure that we not only bring our party back together, which has been bruised and battered this week, but that will enable us to ensure we bring the parliament back together," Morrison said after he was tapped to become prime minister.

He cited Australia's continuing drought as "our most urgent and pressing need right now."

Dutton stated that his "course from here is to provide absolute loyalty to Scott Morrison."

Turnbull announced his retirement from the House of Representatives and politics following his ouster. His departure would erase the ruling coalition's one-seat majority and could lead to early elections.

Defense Industry Minister Christopher Pyne strongly criticized hardline elements in the Liberal Party for challenging Turnbull's leadership. "I think some people should have considered the greater good of the people of Australia, and the government, rather than their own self-interest and ambition," he said.

Another minister in the coalition, Nationals MP Darren Chester, wrote on Twitter: "Australia. We owe you an apology. I'm sorry. You deserve better than many of the things our Federal Parliament has served up to you for the past 10 years."

The last Australian prime minister to serve a full term in office was John Howard, who was defeated when he ran for reelection in 2007.


4. HOUSING MARKETS BOOMING IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA
by JTA

Growing up in a Jerusalem apartment, Aaron Lipkin used to marvel at the two-story houses that he would see on weekend drives with his parents.

It made little difference to him that those houses were in Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria. A religious Zionist, he sees no problem living in the territory that the United Nations views as occupied land.

So when he and his wife went house hunting in Jerusalem 19 years go and couldn't find anything in their price range, they ventured north to the town of Ofra in southern Samaria. Ever since they have lived there in the two-story house of Lipkin's dreams.

A generation later, Lipkin is facing the same problem. His kids want to move back to Ofra — but now it, too, is unaffordable. Lipkin bought his house in 2000 for 550,000 shekels (about $200,000 in 2018 dollars, correcting for inflation). Now he sees houses the same size in Ofra sell for at least 1.5 million shekels, or $411,000.

In fewer than 20 years, in other words, the price of housing in the town has doubled.

"We're not sorry for a second when we think about the price of the house, the ease of buying it," Lipkin, the spokesman for Ofra and a tour guide, told JTA while sitting in an chair in the corner of his spacious living room. "Today we're shaking from fear. We have five kids and we have no idea how our kids will buy their own house without becoming enslaved to a crazy mortgage."

Since the Lipkins moved across Israel's pre-1967 borders, or the Green Line, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have followed their lead. In 2000, there were fewer than 200,000 settlers living in Judea and Samaria, excluding eastern Jerusalem, according to B'Tselem, a left-wing Israeli organization. Now the number is closer to 450,000. And home prices are rising accordingly.

Many of the settlers are ideological — committed to the principle of Jews living in Judea and Samaria and Israel retaining control of the area. But others were drawn by the quality of life offered by settlements — larger houses, more green space and intimate communities.

The Israeli government has also facilitated that comfort, building access roads that avoid Palestinian Authority-controlled areas and increasing the number of bus lines that go directly to the Israeli communities. The changes mean that many settlers can live their lives, if they choose, largely avoiding contact with the Palestinian villages around them. Even towns farther from the Green Line, like Ofra, have the feel of a suburb.

But now Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are becoming more like Israel in yet another way: The country's festering housing crisis, which has seen home prices balloon for a decade, is moving across the Green Line. The safer Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria feel, the faster their home prices rise to meet the national average.

According to a November 2016 paper by the Shoresh Institute, a research group in Israel, housing construction in the settlements did not keep up with population growth. An October 2016 paper by Israel's Center for Political Economics found that the number of average monthly salaries needed to buy a home in the settlements rose from 87 in 2003 to 152 in 2015. That's only 10 paychecks less than the national average of 162.

"There's no concern that this investment is risky because of the location of our community," said Miri Maoz-Ovadia, a spokeswoman for the Binyamin Regional Council, a local authority that governs some Israeli communities in southern and central Samaria. "The concern is that the longer we wait, the prices will only go up. It's slower, but it's happening and we can see it."

Like Lipkin, Maoz-Ovadia has a professional interest in talking up the settlement housing market. And for her, too, it's also personal. A year and a half ago, she and her husband bought a fixer-upper house with a yard in Kochav Yaakov, a town about an hour's drive from Jerusalem, for 1.1 million shekels. Now the same houses are selling for 1.5 million.

"Families want to buy," Maoz-Ovadia said. "They want a house with a yard and they see potential here to get it."

The housing market is also booming in Efrat, a town that acts as a bedroom community for nearby Jerusalem. Some politicians, including Education Minister Naftali Bennett, have pushed annexation of so-called consensus towns like Efrat — those that most Israelis assume will remain part of the country under any future scenario — for years.

Israel's government has also had an impact on the market. As he walked through an empty corner townhouse for sale in Efrat, real estate agent Yaniv Gabbay said as the prospect of a Palestinian state — and corresponding settlement evacuation — becomes more and more distant, Israelis feel increasingly comfortable investing in properties located in Judea and Samaria. Another townhouse in this development sold for 2 million shekels, about $550,000, in 2016, before it was built. This five-bedroom unit on the corner was going for 2.6 million shekels as of May.

In an Instagram Q-and-A on Monday, Prime Minister Netanyahu said "I can promise you that no settlements in the Land of Israel will be evacuated."

"Planting that type of money into a property in Efrat, they're not as nervous about what's going to happen to their money," Gabbay said. "They know there are a lot of people putting money into this area, in terms of where Efrat sits today in the political climate."

Israel's right wing is also increasing the country's settlement building. According to Peace Now, a left-wing Israeli NGO that monitors settlement activity, the number of construction starts in Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria was 17 percent above the annual average in 2017.

On Wednesday, Israel announced the advancement of construction plans for 1,000 more housing units in Judea and Samaria.

"Even if God knows how many people want to buy in a certain area, all of a sudden you've built up two new mountains worth of property," Gabbay said. "There's supply that's started to catch up with the demand, but the demand hasn't waned."

Hagit Ofran, who heads Peace Now's Settlement Watch project, said the main problem facing any potential settlement evacuation is the sheer number of residents who live far from the pre-1967 Green Line. She is less worried abut Israelis who move to Judea and Samaria for quality-of-life reasons than the tens of thousands of ideological settlers who are committed to living in the heartland of the historic Land of Israel.

"The challenge Israelis will have in a peace agreement is evacuating thousands of families and it will cost money, and take time, and pain the heart, even if people agree to fight the settlers in this," Ofran said. "Most of the settlers will respect the Knesset's decision."

Some residents of Israeli towns in northern Samaria said quality of life was the driving factor in bringing them to the area.

When Miriam Shatsky and her husband were looking to buy a home recently, a mortgage agent laughed at them after they revealed their salaries and said they wanted to live in the central Israeli city of Modiin. A few months ago they were able to buy a five-bedroom apartment for slightly more than $300,000 in Karnei Shomron, a settlement with a large English-speaking, or Anglo, population.

"Real estate in the territories was really risky and we didn't know we wanted to settle here," Shatsky said. "As we got better jobs, the target kept moving farther and farther away. Actually, Modiin sounded very interesting to me, but it was knocked off the table because it wasn't affordable. A lot of Anglo communities are in places that aren't affordable. That definitely [was] a significant factor in ending up here."

Lipkin said that after living in Samaria for a while, the differences between quality-of-life concerns and ideology blur. With right-wing politicians frequently calling for some form of settlement annexation, Israel is doing more to absorb the settlements than to leave them. And in the meantime, more Israelis keep moving in.

"You have people who come for quality of life, and after 18 years they'll tell you 'it's the Land of Israel and we need to settle it,'" Lipkin said. "I don't have a drop of worry about evacuation. I see that Judea and Samaria is part of the State of Israel."


5. REPORT: PA FOILED ATTACK NEAR MAJOR ISRAELI HIGHWAY
by Arutz Sheva Staff

A major attack on a heavily-travelled Israeli highway linking Tel Aviv with the capital was foiled recently by Palestinian Authority security forces.

According to a report Friday morning by Yediot Ahronot, a large explosive device was found by PA police close to Route 443 – a major roadway between Jerusalem and the coastal plain which passes by the central Israeli city of Modiin.

The bomb, security experts say, was likely intended for Israeli military forces driving down the 443. The planned attack may have been meant to escalate tensions in the region with the hope of ending ceasefire talks between Israel and the Hamas terror organization.

The explosive device was reportedly found on a small access road between two Palestinian Authority-controlled towns near Route 443.

PA security officers discovered the bomb, and called in a special sapper unit to defuse the device. The bomb was built with two gas tanks attached to an explosive charge, and included a large number of nails, which were to have served as shrapnel.

After the discovery of the explosive device, PA authorities notified their Israeli counterparts, and kept Israeli security officials updated in real-time as the bomb was defused.

The bomb type is reminiscent of explosive devices used in the past by the Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad terror group, experts say.


6. TWO DEAD, ONE WOUNDED IN PARIS SUBURB KNIFE ATTACK
by Arutz Sheva Staff

Two persons have been killed and one seriously wounded in a knife attack in the Paris suburb of Trappes.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Reuters.

It was later revealed, however, that the two persons murdered are the attacker's mother and sister. Now police are checking the possibility that the incident is criminal in nature.

Police told Le Parisien that the attacker was in a pavilion shouting, "Allahu Akbar," and threatened that "If you enter I smoke you all."

He was shot by police after coming out of the pavilion and threatening officers, according to Le Parisien. Reuters reported that the attacker has died.

Le Parisien also said that the attacker has been known to police since 2016 as someone who has incited to terror.

Trappes, home to a large Muslim population, has in the past had about 50 locals who went to fight for ISIS in Syria and Iraq, French security sources have told AFP.


7. 'TRUMP'S COMMENTS ABOUT ISRAEL NO REASON TO GET ALARMED'
by Hezki Baruch

[youtube:2046420]

Israelis and supporters of the Jewish state should not be alarmed by President Donald Trump's recent comments regarding the future of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, a leader of the Republican Party in Israel told Arutz Sheva on Wednesday, arguing that the president's comments have been taken out of context.

Marc Zell, an attorney and senior official at Republicans Overseas Israel, spoke with Arutz Sheva on Wednesday hours after President Trump addressed supporters at a rally in West Virginia.

During the rally, the president touted his decision to relocated the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, fulfilling a campaign promise.

"I also recognized the capital of Israel and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem. And I understand now what happened, because every president - many, many presidents, said 'We're going to do it. We're going to move our embassy to Jerusalem. It's going to be the capital of Israel. We're going to do it - and then they don't do it. Politicians - they don't do it."

"I was inundated with calls from foreign leaders. Every country: 'Don't do it, don't do it - please don't do it.'"

"But I approved it, and it should have been done years ago," he said.

The president added that given his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the Palestinian Authority would have to "get something very good next" for negotiations to succeed, "because it's their turn next," without naming any specific steps. "Israel will have to pay a higher price, because they won a very big thing."

The comments led some Israeli lawmakers to express concern regarding the president's position, and reporters repeatedly asked National Security Advisor John Bolton on Wednesday to comment on the president's comments.

Zell, however, downplayed the significance of Trump's comments Tuesday night, saying that there was nothing new being said.

"I'm not particularly concerned about President Trump's statement at the West Virginia rally because he said it before. And that is, Israel's going to have to give up something as part of a negotiation. That's common sense."

In addition, Zell pointed to the administration's pro-Israel bona fides – including the selection of Bolton and Mike Pompeo, both known for their strong support for Israel, to senior positions – and policies adopted by the administration which have bolstered Israel's security in the region.

"But, I'm not concerned primarily for two reasons. One: This is simply not the time to roll out any kind of political solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Arabs in particular are not interested in sitting down and talking about us. Two: We have other problems in the region that are far more pressing: Iran and Turkey, just to name two of them."

Zell then added a third reason: "This president, in particular, and his vice president, Mike Pence, and this incredible team of foreign policy advisors that he has around him; Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State; John Bolton, the National Security Advisor; and my friends who are councilors at the White House – they all have Israel's back.

"We've never had a situation in the American-Israeli relations where we've had such a strong team that understands Israel's needs and supports Israel and supports Israel's rights to determine its own internal issues, its national security issues, and issues of its own sovereignty.

"So even if, by some miracle, they actually rolled out this so-called 'peace plan', this political settlement idea, and tried to implement it, I'm not concerned because I know that from Israel's standpoint this administration will be extremely fair and sensitive to Israel's needs."


8. 'TRUMP IS PUSHING THE PA INTO A CORNER'
by Benny Tocker

Danny Ayalon, who served as deputy foreign minister and Israeli ambassador to Washington, said that the PA should not have high hopes and Israel should not be concerned about President Trump's speech in which he mentioned that there would be a price for recognition of Jerusalem.

"The Palestinians are continuing to attack and they are not prepared for any compromise. Trump's statement gives leverage to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to press Abbas and present him as a refuser of peace, in the face of a speech that talks about concessions by Israel," Ayalon told Arutz Sheva.

He believes that the American president is saying things for the world's ears, but does not really intend to make far-reaching demands from Israel. "Trump's words are no different from what he said in the election campaign. Trump is unpredictable. But the main reason for the timing of this statement is the proximity to the UN General Assembly in New York. He has to prove that he has done something about the Palestinian issue, especially as European leaders are constantly harassing him on this issue. Trump is doing everything to prove that he is acting to the best of his ability and the Palestinians are hindering the process."

Ayalon believes that if implemented, President Trump's "Deal of the Century" will be good for Israel. "Trump's outline has not been published, but according to what is known, it will not include the division of Jerusalem and the issue of the Palestinian refugees will not be brought up at all. What will be included is a presentation of defensible borders for Israel and a demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. This president is the friendliest Israel has ever had and therefore I believe that there is no special concern in Jerusalem about his words."

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