A7News: PA sentences American to life in prison with hard labor

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Monday, Dec. 31 '18, כ"ג בטבת תשע"ט



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HEADLINES:
1. PA SENTENCES AMERICAN TO LIFE IN PRISON WITH HARD LABOR
2. ISRAEL'S POPULATION NEARS 9 MILLION - INCLUDING 6.6 MILLION JEWS
3. 'BENNETT WILL LEAP FORWARD'
4. WATCH: IDF FORCES SEARCH FOR GIVAT ASSAF TERRORIST
5. JERUSALEM STABBING TERRORIST GETS 18 YEARS IN PRISON
6. 'WE DON'T NEED MESSIAHS IN OUR POLITICS'
7. 'THIS WILL BE NETANYAHU'S LAST TERM AS PM'
8. PA REVERSES BAN ON ISRAELI IMPORTS


1. PA SENTENCES AMERICAN TO LIFE IN PRISON WITH HARD LABOR
by Davd Rosenberg

An American citizen was sentenced to life in prison by a Palestinian Authority court Monday for involvement in the sale of Arab-owned real estate to Jews.

On Monday, the Grand Criminal Court in Ramallah sentenced Isaam Akel, an Arab American who also holds an Israeli identification card, to life imprisonment with hard labor, the PA's WAFA media outlet reported.

According to the report, Akel had been brought before the court on December 23rd after being indicted for the "sale of land to a foreign country".

A US government official responded to the report, saying that the US was aware of the sentence, and would provide "consular assistance".

"We are aware of reports that a U.S. citizen has been sentenced by a Palestinian court. When a U.S. citizen is incarcerated abroad, the U.S. government works to provide all appropriate consular assistance."

Akel disappeared in October, after the Palestinian Authority called for his arrest, accusing him of facilitating the sale of Arab-owned property in the Aqaba Darwish section of the Old City of Jerusalem to Jews.

Under PA law, selling of land to Jews is illegal and punishable by death. However, such sentences must be approved by the PA chairman, and current chairman Mahmoud Abbas has preferred to authorize life sentences for such offenses, possibly due to fear of an international backlash.

In 2014, Abbas toughened the PA law against selling property to Israeli Jews, so that any Palestinian Arabs involved in renting, selling or facilitating real estate transactions with citizens of "hostile countries" in any way would receive life imprisonment and hard-labor.

Last month, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman demanded the Palestinian Authority release Akel.

"The Pal Authority has been holding US citizen Isaam Akel in prison for ~2 months," tweeted, Friedman.

"His suspected 'crime'? Selling land to a Jew. Akel's incarceration is antithetical to the values of the US & to all who advocate the cause of peaceful coexistence. We demand his immediate release."


2. ISRAEL'S POPULATION NEARS 9 MILLION - INCLUDING 6.6 MILLION JEWS
by David Rosenberg

Israel's population neared nine million on the eve of the new year, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics reported Monday.

A total of approximately 8,972,000 people lived in Israel as of December 31st, according to the CBS' estimates.

Of those nearly 9 million people, roughly 74.3%, or 6,668,000, are Jews. Approximately 1.88 million, or 20.9% of the population, are Arabs, while 426,000 (4.8% of the total) are neither Jewish nor Arab, and are classified as "Others". A large portion of this third category are non-Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who moved to Israel under the Right of Return after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

According to the CBS report Monday, Israel's population grew by two percent during 2018. Of the total population growth in 2018, 81% was the result of natural growth (the number of live births minus the number of deaths), while 19% was the result of net positive migration to Israel.

A total of 28,000 new immigrants moved to Israel during 2018, while 185,000 children were born. In addition, 12,000 returning citizens moved back to Israel in 2018.

Of the 185,000 live births in 2018, 74.4% were to Jewish mothers, compared to 22.8% to Arab mothers. Only 2.8% of live births were to mothers in the "Others" category.

By comparison, 7,000 Israelis emigrated from Israel in 2018, and there were a total of 45,000 deaths recorded.

Most immigrants to Israel in 2018 were not Jewish, with net Jewish migration (the total number of Jewish immigrants to Israel minus to number of Jewish emigrants leaving) at 12,600. The level of net Arab migration – primarily returning citizens – was 2,300, while the net balance of migration for Others was 17,700.

In 2018, immigration made up 84% of the total increase in number of non-Jewish, non-Arab (Others) citizens in Israel.


3. 'BENNETT WILL LEAP FORWARD'
by Benny Tocker

[audio:2051762]

Strategist Yehoshua Mor-Yosef predicted on Sunday that HaYamin HeHadash, the new right-wing party of ministers Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, will not succeed in crossing the six-seat threshold in the election this coming April.

"I do not see Bennett and Shaked achieving 10 seats, that's a lot of votes. Let's say that they will succeed in reaching five or six Knesset seats. That would be a very nice achievement," he told Arutz Sheva in an interview.

Bennett and Shaked's split from the Jewish Home, opined Mor-Yosef, is for long-term purposes.

"This is all about preparations for the day after Binyamin Netanyahu, when there will be a reshuffle and they will have to run together as one unit for the leadership of the Likud or try to draw votes from the Likud that will go to them after Netanyahu exits, and then they will either take control of the Likud from the outside or they will dismantle the Likud after the Netanyahu era," he said.

"Naftali Bennett understands politics and knows how to play the game. He brought great achievements to religious Zionism, so I think this move really gives him a chance to leap forward," added Mor-Yosef, who expressed hopes that the right will not be harmed in the upcoming election as a result of Bennett and Shaked's move.

"The move by Naftali and Ayelet is mainly designed to realize the popularity of Ayelet Shaked but also that of Naftali Bennett, which is larger than the Jewish Home brand, and to translate it into Knesset seats. The big question is whether they will succeed in increasing the seats of the nationalist camp or will they play in the same pool and simply pass seats from side to side. If that is the case, at best they have not changed anything, and perhaps, heaven forbid, it can go to places of losing votes because of the high electoral threshold."

The biggest winner of this move, opined Mor-Yosef, is Minister Uri Ariel. "Minister Ariel is in a difficult battle over the leadership of Tekuma. Now it is clear that it is less important is who will head Tekuma; what is important is who will head the union between the National Union and the Jewish Home because it is clear that they cannot run separately."

"If Bezalel Smotrich heads the united list, it will have a very sharp color and this will reduce its capabilities because he is perceived as more extreme than Uri Ariel. He is also the most experienced among the entire group that is in the Jewish home today," said Mor-Yosef.

Therefore, he continued, "they will do the right thing if they choose Uri Ariel to head the joint list of the Jewish Home and the National Union. This will succeed in bringing the votes of all the knitted skullcaps."


4. WATCH: IDF FORCES SEARCH FOR GIVAT ASSAF TERRORIST
by Arutz Sheva Staff

📹 To watch the video: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/256939

Israeli security forces operated in the Ramallah area overnight, continuing the manhunt for the terrorists responsible the planning and execution of the shooting attack at Givat Assaf earlier this month.

Two IDF soldiers were killed and two more Israelis wounded in the shooting attack on December 13th, which took place just days after a drive-by shooting attack on a group of Israeli civilians outside of Ofra, just north of Givat Assaf.

Early Monday morning, IDF forces, along with the Shin Bet internal security agency and Border Police officers conducted searches in the Binyamin district of Samaria, and arrested a number of suspects.

During the searches, Arab rioters attacked IDF forces, hurling stones and firebombs at Israeli soldiers. Israeli security forces used crowd-control methods to disperse the rioters. There were no injuries reported among the Israeli forces.

As part of the overnight operations, Israeli forces closed off entrances and exits to the Palestinian Authority-controlled village of Kobar, conducting searches in the village and arresting suspects, including relatives of terrorists involved in the recent spate of attacks.


5. JERUSALEM STABBING TERRORIST GETS 18 YEARS IN PRISON
by Arutz Sheva Staff

On Monday, Jamil Tamimi, an Arab resident of Jerusalem, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in a plea deal for a stabbing attack he committed in 2017.

On Friday, April 4, 2017, Tamimi stabbed three civilians at a light rail stop near the Old City of Jerusalem. 25-year-old Hannah Blandon, a British student was murdered.

Two others were injured, including a pregnant woman in her 30s and a male in his early 50s.

Tamimi was neutralized and arrested at the scene by an off-duty police officer. He was known to be mentally ill with a criminal record.

At the time, a Shin Bet spokesperson reported that the terrorist may have been attempting to commit suicide at the time of the attack.
https://www.facebook.com/www.0404.co.il/videos/1509302632475846/


Photography: Yonatan Sindel Flash90
Jamil Tamimi, 58, a member of the Tamimi clan, who stabbed and killed British tourist Hannah Bladon on April 14, 2017, is brought for a court hearing at the Yerushalayim District Court, on June 7, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)


6. 'WE DON'T NEED MESSIAHS IN OUR POLITICS'
by Arutz Sheva Staff

Former Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin on Monday attacked the leaders of the center and left parties at Calcalist's 2019 conference.

"Our political system is delusional," Diskin said."All parties are founded around messiahs - Lapid, Ganz, Livni and Kahlon - these are dictatorial parties. Today there are no parties of values, no ideology, and the atmosphere is transparently drab, with no commitments."

"This is a political system where everything is more of the same. The right is divided into a new right. There is no longer any left in the State of Israel because Meretz has forgotten Zionism. Politics is a joke. Something new must be created and it cannot be done in the next four months."

"The new politics should not be built on messiahs, but on people who present a significant conceptual and ideological alternative," he said.

Referring to the Nationality Law, Diskin said: "People have sand in their eyes and don't see the real issue. The only thing that will make Israel a Jewish and democratic state is a Jewish majority. If there is no Jewish majority, then it will not be neither Jewish nor democratic. The politicians do not want to deal with the real question of how to preserve a Jewish majority in the country."

"This question leads them to other questions they do not want to deal with, such as the question of two states or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Diskin said. "The Nationality Law will not suffice to preserve it, but will accomplish the job of harming the democratic character of the State of Israel."


7. 'THIS WILL BE NETANYAHU'S LAST TERM AS PM'
by Arutz Sheva Staff

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked predicted Monday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will serve for one more term as premier before retiring from politics.

Shaked, who along with Education Minister Naftali Bennett recently broke away from the Jewish Home party to form the New Right (Hayamin Hahadash) faction over the weekend, spoke at an event hosted by Calcalist Monday morning, touching on the political prospects for the coming election.

During her address, Shaked predicted that Netanyahu would serve for one final term as Prime Minister following the elections to the 21st Knesset, slated for April 9th, before retiring from politics.

"My estimation is that this will be the Prime Minister's final term, since he's not young. We don't know what will happen with the investigations, but I hope that the cases against him will be closed, allowing him to finish his term. But I really don't know what will happen."

Netanyahu, 69, has served as premier for four terms – three of them consecutive – and is on track to becoming the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel's history if he remains in office by July 16th. Current polls show Netanyahu's Likud leading in the upcoming election by a wide margin.

Shaked expressed optimism regarding her newly-established party's prospects in the 2019 election.

"The joint efforts between myself and Bennett will win a lot of seats," said Shaked.

Recent polls show the New Right winning anywhere from six to 14 seats.

"We're going into the unknown," continued Shaked. "We didn't expect to win 20 mandates in the first poll. Three months before the election, the polls really don't mean anything, so there's no reason right now to deal with the polls. We need to deal with our work."


8. PA REVERSES BAN ON ISRAELI IMPORTS
by Elad Benari

The Palestinian Authority (PA) on Sunday backtracked from its decision to ban imports of vegetables, fruits and poultry from Israel, just three days after announcing the ban.

According to Channel 10 News, the PA's "ministry of agriculture" said that, following the Israeli government's decision to resume imports of fruits and vegetables from the Palestinian Authority, it was decided to once again allow the import of agricultural products from Israel.

The bureau clarified, however, that the PA reserves the right to respond accordingly if Israel again attempts to harm Palestinian Arab farmers.

The PA announced the ban just last Thursday, saying it came "in response to the Israeli Minister of Agriculture's decision to ban the importation of Palestinian fruit and vegetables".

The decision was described as "an important national decision on the road to Palestinian independence" and "a serious move to find alternative Arab and foreign markets through Jordan."

This is not the first time that the PA has banned Israeli companies and imports. Two years ago, it decided to "punish" Israel by halting imports to the PA from five major Israeli food production companies.

The PA's "anti-economic crimes unit" in Ramallah later indicted two companies that marketed Israeli products.

In March of 2015, the PA declared an "economic war" against Israel and launched a campaign calling to boycott Israeli products.

A month earlier, a national Palestinian committee announced it would prohibit the sale of products by six major Israel companies in areas of Judea and Samaria controlled by the PA.