The Times of Israel is liveblogging Sunday’s developments as they unfold.
The chairman of the US House Judiciary Committee says Sunday that if the impeachment case against US President Donald Trump were put to a jury, there “would be a guilty verdict in three minutes flat.”
Representative Jerry Nadler, whose panel will begin drawing up articles of impeachment this week, tells CNN that the evidence that Trump put personal interests above those of his country in dealing with Ukraine is “rock solid.”
He did not rule out the possibility of a House vote on impeaching Trump by the end of the week.
That would put it on a fast track to a trial before the Republican-controlled Senate, where Trump is expected to prevail.
Nadler’s committee will meet Monday to begin weighing evidence compiled by the House Intelligence Committee on whether Trump linked military aid and a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky to a request that Kyiv investigate a potential 2020 rival, Democrat Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.
Nadler would not speculate on what might be included in the articles of impeachment.
But he describes the central allegation as being that Trump “sought foreign interference in our elections several times, both for 2016 and 2020, and that he sought to cover it up” thus posing “a real and present danger to the integrity of the election” coming in November.
— AFP
US President Donald Trump warns Sunday that North Korea has “everything” to lose through hostility toward the United States, after Pyongyang said it had carried out a major new weapons test.
“Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way,” Trump tweets in response to the unspecified test at the Sohae space launch center.
“He signed a strong Denuclearization Agreement with me in Singapore,” Trump continues. “He does not want to void his special relationship with the President of the United States or interfere with the US Presidential Election in November.”
— AFP
Likud and Blue and White are raising the possibility of holding the election on a Monday, rather than a Tuesday, in March, the Kan public broadcaster reports.
They are discussing the prospects of a March 2 or March 16 vote.
Elections are held in Israel on Tuesdays. But setting the date for the looming vote has been complicated by the Purim holiday (March 10), and Memorial Day for IDF soldiers whose places of burial are not known (March 3), both of which fall on Tuesdays.
Likud reportedly is seeking the latest possible date, while Blue and White wants the earliest.
Likud negotiator Yariv Levin is set to meet with Blue and White’s Avi Nissenkorn, who chairs the Knesset’s Arrangements Committee.
“After all of our compromise offers were rejected by Blue and White, I find myself forced to discuss with him the date for the entirely unnecessary elections,” he laments, according to the Kan public broadcaster.
Should no government be formed by Wednesday, Israel will go to its third election in under a year, likely in March.
Ultra-Orthodox protesters from the hard-line so-called Jerusalem Faction are clashing with police in the capital.
The demonstrators, who are protesting the arrest of a draft-dodger, are blocking Bar Ilan Street in Jerusalem.
Seven have been arrested.
המשטרה עצרה שבעה מפגינים חרדים שהתעמתו עם כוחות המשטרה במחאה על מעצר עריק ברחוב בר אילן בירושלים. חלק מהמפגינים פונו לאחר שחסמו את הכביש לשני הכיוונים
(צילום: א. כהן)@VeredPelman pic.twitter.com/wdvpkJcgO6— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) December 8, 2019
Police have resolved a February 2009 rape case in the central city of Raanana, recently arrested a key suspect, reports say.
The suspect is apprehended after questioning, with DNA samples linking him to the scene, according to Channel 12. He was arrested two weeks ago and is described as a 35-year-old Israeli citizen from Kfar Saba.
The victim of the attack was a woman in her 30s, who said a man she did not know had attacked her.
The Iran-backed Houthis’ defense minister in Yemen’s Sanaa threatens to attack Israel.
Major General Mohammed Al-Atefi tells Al-Mayadeen that Israel has been involved in the Yemen conflict between the Iran-backed rebels and Saudi Arabia since it began in 2015.
Yememi armed forces “have completed all aspects of military preparation to qualify it to launch a strategic attack leading to the paralysis of the enemies’ abilities,” he says.
“There’s no doubt revenge is coming,” he says.
New Right leader Ayelet Shaked calls on Netanyahu to disregard the limitations of a transitional government and annex the Jordan Valley immediately.
“Of course a transitional government has the ability to annex the Jordan Valley,” she tells a conference of the Makor Rishon newspaper in Jerusalem, claiming that Israel’s current government, which has been considered “transitional” since the April elections, should be able to act as any other government without additional limits.
Netanyahu in September vowed that if reelected he would immediately annex the Jordan Valley, a swath of land linking the West Bank to Jordan that Israel views as a vital security asset, in what was widely seen as a bid to attract support from right-wing voters.
Shaked says he needn’t and shouldn’t wait.
“I think that the Netanyahu government must annex the Jordan Valley right now. I hope it does. I want it to. It must,” she says.
— Raoul Wootliff
Thousands of Iraqi protesters stream into streets and public squares in the capital and restive south on Sunday, saying they are not deterred by deadly violence meant to “scare” them.
In Baghdad, crowds of anti-government demonstrators throng Tahrir Square, the epicenter of their movement.
Late Friday, unidentified gunmen attacked a parking complex near Tahrir where demonstrators had been squatting for weeks, leaving 20 protesters and four police officers dead, medics tell AFP.
Protesters feared it signaled that their movement would be derailed but by Sunday, the numbers gathered under the sun in Tahrir are staggering.
“They’re trying to scare us in whatever ways they can, but we’re staying in the streets,” says Aisha, a 23-year-old protester.
At least 452 people — the vast majority of them protesters — have died and 20,000 have been wounded since the rallies erupted.
— AFP
A labor dispute in the Egged bus company could cause transportation disruptions on Monday morning, between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m.
Barring changes, drivers in Jerusalem will hold a meeting at that time over their work conditions.
A Palestinian worker is assaulted outside a ritual bath in the West Bank settlement-city Modiin Illit, reports say.
He is said to have been attacked and lightly injured by four men, after refusing them entry into the building.
Police are looking for the suspects.
The US Justice Department’s internal watchdog will release a highly anticipated report Monday that is expected to reject US President Donald Trump’s claims that the Russia investigation was illegitimate and tainted by political bias from FBI leaders. But it is also expected to document errors during the investigation that may animate Trump supporters.
The report, as described by people familiar with its findings, is expected to conclude there was an adequate basis for opening one of the most politically sensitive investigations in FBI history and one that Trump has denounced as a witch hunt. It began in secret during Trump’s 2016 presidential run and was ultimately taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller.
The report comes as Trump faces an impeachment inquiry in Congress centered on his efforts to press Ukraine to investigate a political rival, Democrat Joe Biden. Trump also claims the impeachment investigation is politically biased.
The release of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s review is unlikely to quell the partisan battles that have surrounded the Russia investigation. It’s also not the last word on that investigation. A separate internal investigation continues, overseen by Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, and led by a US attorney, John Durham.
— AP
Egyptian officials say a jihadist attack has killed a police conscript in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula.
The officials say that the terrorists attacked a police checkpoint in the town of Rafah early on Sunday, also wounding two conscripts who were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Authorities say that security forces killed a fighter, and wounded others, in clashes that followed the assault.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to talk to reporters.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, which bares the hallmarks of an Islamic State affiliate based in northern Sinai.
Egypt is battling an Islamic State-led insurgency in the Sinai that intensified after the military overthrew an Islamist president in 2013.
— agencies
A Syrian opposition news site reports that unidentified aircraft bombed Iranian-controlled weapons storehouses last night, killing at least four members of Tehran-supported militias.
According to the Syrian Step News agency, the airstrike occurred around 10 p.m. on Saturday, targeting munitions depots in the Boulkamal region of Syria, near the Iraqi border, an area that has reportedly been hit by many Israeli raids in the past year.
The outlet cites “well-placed sources” as saying that the four people killed were guards at the storehouses who were members of militias backed by Iran.
— Judah Ari Gross
Netanyahu is ordering his Likud ministers to immediately return to the country and remain in Israel until Wednesday, when the Knesset is expected to dissolve and new elections called, Channel 12 reports without providing an explanation.
At least two ministers — Miri Regev and Ofir Akunis — cancel their travel plans.
UK Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell says his party has done everything in its power to make amends with the Jewish community following the anti-Semitism scandal in the party.
“We’ve done everything, I think, we can possibly do. We’ve apologised to the Jewish community”#Marr asks Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell about anti-Semitism in the Labour Partyhttps://t.co/X0aR3j9iz6 pic.twitter.com/9CVbcX2pqg
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) December 8, 2019
“I worry this has had its effect,” he tells BBC, referring to the allegations of anti-Jewish hatred plaguing the opposition party. “We have done everything I think we can possibly do. We have apologized to the Jewish community and I repeat that. We have always got to learn lessons. I want us to be a shining model.
“I apologize to the Jewish community for the suffering we have inflicted on them. I say to them we are doing everything possible. We are going to learn more lessons and we want to be the shining example of anti-racism that the Labour party should be. Having gone through this horrible, horrible period, we come out of it now actually showing respect to the Jewish community and tackling this issue, and enabling the Labour party to tackle anti-Semitism in our wider society.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says that the impact of Thursday’s general election will be “felt for decades” as campaigning enters the final stages.
The prime minister is hoping to regain the majority that his Conservative Party lost in 2019, with a slew of polls released on Saturday suggesting he was narrowly on course to achieve his goal.
The stakes could barely be higher, with the fate of Brexit still to be settled.
“We’re fighting for every vote and… this is a critical moment for this country, the choice on Thursday is unbelievably stark,” he tells Sky News.
He compares the election to other “historic elections” such as 1906, 1945 and 1979.
“The impact of this election will be felt for decades to come,” he writes in an open letter.
— AFP
President Reuven Rivlin meets with the Lebanese businessman who bought Adolf Hitler’s hat and donated it to a Jewish group to keep the items out of the hands of neo-Nazis.
Rivlin tells Abdallah Chatila: “What you did was seemingly so simple, but this act of grace shows the whole world how to fight the glorification of hatred and incitement against other people. It was a truly human act. I know you have been thanked many times, but it was important for me to say it loud and clear here at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem – we appreciate it and thank you for it very much.”
Chatila paid 50,000 euros ($55,300) for the item and also purchased other Nazi memorabilia, which will also be donated.
“When I read about the artifacts being for sale, I immediately thought I have to buy them and destroy them. Then I thought I have no right to decide what to do with the items, and am so glad they are now at Yad Vashem. I feel a shiver when I understand how important this is for the Jewish people, but I think there is a wider message for the whole world, that ‘never again’ is not a meaningless slogan. Through acts such as this, we can ensure that these things never happen again,” he says.
Meeting Abdallah Chatila this morning who last month purchased artifacts associated with Hitler which will be held by Yad Vashem. I thanked him, saying at a time when people deny historical facts, his act is of huge importance and a clear message to the whole world – #neveragain pic.twitter.com/eLS1xDNgww
— Reuven Rivlin (@PresidentRuvi) December 8, 2019
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns that Israel won’t agree to a ceasefire agreement with Gaza’s rulers Hamas — which has reportedly been in the works for months — if rocket fire at Israel from the Palestinian enclave persists.
“There will be no ceasefire if the fire continues,” says Netanyahu at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting.
He speaks a day after three rockets are fired at the south, drawing retaliatory Israeli strikes.
The prime minister warns that if terror groups don’t hold their fire, the November flareup in which an Islamic Jihad commander was killed by Israel would be “just a preview” of what would come.
He also says he instructed the army and defense minister to prepare accordingly, without elaborating.
The chairman of the US House Judiciary Committee says Sunday that if the impeachment case against US President Donald Trump were put to a jury, there “would be a guilty verdict in three minutes flat.”
Representative Jerry Nadler, whose panel will begin drawing up articles of impeachment this week, tells CNN that the evidence that Trump put personal interests above those of his country in dealing with Ukraine is “rock solid.”
He did not rule out the possibility of a House vote on impeaching Trump by the end of the week.
That would put it on a fast track to a trial before the Republican-controlled Senate, where Trump is expected to prevail.
Nadler’s committee will meet Monday to begin weighing evidence compiled by the House Intelligence Committee on whether Trump linked military aid and a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky to a request that Kyiv investigate a potential 2020 rival, Democrat Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.
Nadler would not speculate on what might be included in the articles of impeachment.
But he describes the central allegation as being that Trump “sought foreign interference in our elections several times, both for 2016 and 2020, and that he sought to cover it up” thus posing “a real and present danger to the integrity of the election” coming in November.
— AFP
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