It’s Noon in Israel: The Combat in Muscat is About to Begin
Also, Netanyahu games the election calendar, and Israel begins repaying a debt that can never be settled.
(DeeVidAI)
It’s Thursday, February 5, and the Islamic Republic appears to have invented time travel. The ayatollahs seem convinced they’ve returned to 2012 and are once again heading to talks with the United States in Oman to offer tactical concessions on their nuclear program. As in the secret Muscat channel that preceded President Barak Obama’s nuclear deal, the regime appears to believe it can extract yet another favorable agreement from a gullible American administration.
But Donald Trump’s delegation hasn’t benefited from this time-bending technology. They are firmly planted in 2026—and are headed to Muscat not to revive the JCPOA, but to dismantle Iran’s ballistic missile program, choke off its proxy network , and save the people of a weakened Islamic Republic. Ending the nuclear program is just the cherry on top.
For a moment, it looked as though the two timelines might collide. Earlier this week, we witnessed a distinctly 2012-style maneuver when Tehran succeeded in shifting the venue of the talks from Turkey to their home turf of Oman. That is not an encouraging sign.
Israel, however, is living in the present. This evening at 6 p.m., the security cabinet will convene for an emergency meeting—an unusual step that does not suggest an imminent negotiated resolution.
I’m not sure whether this appears in The Art of the Deal, but in general when two sides enter negotiations with radically incompatible expectations, the outcome is rarely amicable compromise.
Still, as with so much else today, everything hinges on one unpredictable political phenomenon: the Trump effect.
Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with American Evangelical leaders in December. (@netanyahu/X)
Benjamin Netanyahu’s preferred election date until now was September 8. It is the only Tuesday of the month that does not fall on a holiday (and holding elections on September 1, the opening day of the school year, is out of the question). That was until the ultra-Orthodox parties realized it meant voting four days before Rosh Hashanah. At least half a mandate would be in Uman, Ukraine on pilgrimage to the grave of a Hasidic leader. Most of them are not expected to vote for Yair Golan.
So why not October? The conventional wisdom holds that Netanyahu has no interest in holding elections shortly after the third anniversary ceremony of the massacre, with reminders of the greatest failure looming just before voters head to the polls. But the original election date is October 27—three long weeks later. The ultra-Orthodox signaled that if the draft law passes, there is no problem holding elections on schedule. If not, they will probably still vote for the budget despite their threats, but will need to “punish” the government by advancing the dissolution of the Knesset, even if only symbolically. They were promised that the draft law would be the first passed in the term; now, at best, it will be the last.
Aside from Uman and Rosh Hashanah, the election will be decided by a group of roughly 300,000–400,000 people—Likud voters from 2022 who, according to some polls, have drifted to Bennett and Lieberman, but most of whom are still far from deciding how they will vote. They all subscribe, without exception, to four positions: first, that Netanyahu bears primary responsibility for October 7, and his evasion of this is ridiculous. Second, that Netanyahu bears primary responsibility for the achievements against Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria that followed, and it is doubtful anyone else could have delivered them. Third, that the ultra-Orthodox should be sent to the opposition and their young people to the army and the labor market. Fourth, that there is one coalition partner worse than all others—the Arab parties.
Not a single politician competing for their votes embraces all of these principles, hence the awkward and complex maneuvering by everyone. Bennett signaled this week the path he will try to thread through this needle’s eye: he promised not to sit with Arab party leader Mansour Abbas, tried to diminish Yair Golan as “the next energy minister—speaks from the gut but an October 7 hero, no worse than Deri,” and concluded with the promise: “I will steer.” Bennett’s task is complex, not least because he has already said that after the wholesale breaking of promises in 2021, he no longer promises anything—even to his children. But mainly because, according to the polls, his future coalition is far less popular than he himself is. Netanyahu can impose a vow of silence on his partners and faction members. Who can shut Yair Golan up?
This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Israel Hayom
To read this article on my website click here
The tatzpitaniyot in happier times (Roni Lifschitz)
There are many images burned into the Israeli consciousness from October 7. One of the most painful is the fate of the IDF surveillance soldiers—the tatzpitaniyot.
Mostly eighteen and nineteen years old, these young women were tasked with watching Hamas. They saw the preparations and warned their superiors—and were promptly ignored. When Hamas stormed their bases on October 7, they paid the price for the IDF’s failure. Fifteen were murdered. Seven were kidnapped. All were eventually returned to Israel alive—except one.
Corporal Noa Marciano’s body was recovered by the IDF in November 2023. An autopsy determined that she had been wounded during an IDF strike on the apartment where she was being held. Her captor was killed in the strike, and Marciano was rushed to al-Shifa Hospital.
There, she encountered Muhammad al-Habil—a doctor by day, and a Hamas commander by night. Faced with a wounded Israeli hostage, he made a choice to abandon humanity.
Sensitive readers may wish to skip what happened next.
Corporal Noa Marciano.
According to Marciano’s father, there exists a video showing the medical professional at al-Shifa deliberately killing his wounded daughter—injecting air into her veins—while she begged for her life.
I recount this harrowing story for one reason: yesterday, the doctor of death, Muhammad al-Habil was eliminated by an IDF strike in response to repeated violations of the ceasefire.
Israel can never repay its debt to the tatzpitaniyot—for what they warned, how they were ignored, and for how they were abandoned. But the elimination of those who tormented and murdered them is the least it can do.
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That photograph of the women Tatzapiyanot is one of the most heartbreaking photos I’ve ever seen. what an avoidable tragedy if only they had been respected and heard