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Outgoing Labor leader Amir Peretz won't stand in new Israeli elections
The outgoing Labor leader Amir Peretz announced today that he won't stand in the Israeli general election scheduled for 23 March. Peretz announced he was quitting as Labor leader shortly after new Knesset elections were triggered last month following the government's failure to pass an annual budget. Peretz controversially broke a pledge last spring not to serve in a coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu and led Labor into government with its allies, the centrist Blue and White party. Both parties have since sunk in the polls with some surveys indicating that Labor could lose all three of its current seats in the Israeli parliament. Peretz, who is expected to run for president when Reuven Rivlin stands down later this year, has been serving as economy minister while fellow Labor MK Itzki Schmuli is social welfare minister in the outgoing government. A third Labor MK, Merav Michaeli, fiercely opposed joining the "unity government" - in which Netanyahu was supposed to hand the premiership over to Blue and White's Benny Gantz in November - and has said she will run for the party's now-vacant leadership. Labor has also been hit by the decision of its long-time Tel Aviv mayor, Ron Huldai, to form his own centre-left party, the Israelis, ahead of the elections. In a sign of Blue and White's sinking fortunes, Huldai has managed to woo justice minister Avi Nissenkorn as his second-in-command. However, recent polls show that, after a strong start, Huldai's party may only win around five seats, a similar haul to Blue and White which itself came close to unseating Netanyahu in three inconclusive general elections in 2019-20. Netanyahu's biggest threat appears now to come from Gideon Sa'ar, a former Likud minister, who formed his own party, New Hope, last month and attracted a number of defectors.
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Weeks, not months, to revive Iran nuclear deal, warns IAEA head
Joe Biden has weeks, not months, to revive the Iran nuclear deal, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned this week. Rafael Grossi was speaking as Tehran last week resumed enriching uranium at its Fordo site to 20 percent and threatened to shut the doors to inspectors from next month. Earlier this week, the European Union sounded the alarm about Iran's activities, labelling them "a very serious development" with "potentially severe proliferation implications".
"It is clear that we don’t have many months ahead of us," Grossi said in an interview for the Reuters Next conference. "We have rather weeks."
The 20 percent level breaches limits set by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but is below the threshold needed for nuclear weapons. Iran had already been enriching uranium up to 4.5 percent purity, in contravention of limits of 3.67 percent required by the accord.
In a statement, the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said: "We urge Iran to refrain from further escalation and reverse this course of action without delay. Continued full and timely cooperation with the IAEA remains critical." He added that the EU supported "intensive diplomacy with the goal of facilitating a US return to the JCPOA and Iran’s return to full JCPOA implementation". The US withdrew from the deal in 2018 and Iran has since ramped-up its non-compliance. Biden pledged on the campaign trail that America would return to the nuclear deal if Iran returned to compliance. He also said he wanted the agreement to be "stronger and longer" and tackle Tehran's ballistic missile programme and its support for terror groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Biden has named William Burns, a former diplomat involved in talks with Iran, to be his CIA head. Read full article
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US bill with $250m boost to Israel-Palestine peace building becomes law
The US Congress has passed a historic bill which will provide a $250m boost to coexistence work in Israel-Palestine, as well as Palestinian economic development. The legislation, which received bipartisan support, was signed after days of prevarication by Donald Trump between Christmas and the new year. It is a major victory for the Alliance for Middle East Peace's decade-long effort to establish an international fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. Labour Friends of Israel has led the UK campaign on behalf of the fund, which is modelled after the International Fund for Ireland and would invest in people-to-people work which brings Israelis and Palestinians together. The Nita M Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act provides $110m over the next five years to peacebuilding projects. It also establishes a new Joint Investment for Peace Initiative providing $140m in support to Palestinian-owned SMEs. Lowey (pictured), a veteran Democrat congresswoman who retired this month, pushed the bill through Capitol Hill with the support of Republican Jeff Fortenberry. The legislation also leaves open the door to other international actors both donating to the fund and participating in its governance, with two seats on its governing body available for non-US players. LFI's former chair, Joan Ryan, visited Washington DC in November 2016 to meet members of Congress and support the drive for the international fund. In November, LFI MPs staged a Westminster Hall debate in parliament as part of our campaign, and won the backing of shadow Middle East minister Wayne David. The UK government became the first in the world to support the notion of an international fund and in 2017 boosted its spend on people-to-people work to $3m over three years. It has since, however, axed all UK support for coexistence work.
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This Month's Two-State Index
Our friends at the Geneva Initiative compile a monthly tracker on the prospects for a two-state solution. You can view December's figure and the calculations behind it here.
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IMAGES: Amir Pererz > © "רווח הפקות"; Iran nuclear deal > Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äusseres, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; Nita Lowey > The Clerk of the United States House of Representives, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons;
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