Half of Israelis Believe Govt. is Not Serious about Fighting Crime

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir (AP)
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir (AP)
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Half of Israelis Believe Govt. is Not Serious about Fighting Crime

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir (AP)
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir (AP)

Israeli officials in the government coalition criticized National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for “embarrassing the government”, accusing him of causing a global crisis for Israel with his foolish statements.

One of the ministers said that tens of millions of social media followers do not agree with the racist statements that Ben-Gvir made on Wednesday, which showed Israel as an apartheid state.

Ben Gvir said his right to safe movement in the West Bank was more important than the rights of Arabs to free movement.

The US administration and the European Union also condemned the Minister’s statement.

During an interview with Channel 12, Ben-Gvir was asked about the West Bank and his failure to combat violence and crime in Arab society.

“My right, and my wife’s and my children’s right, to get around on the roads in Judea and Samaria is more important than the right to movement for Arabs,” he responded, adding: “That’s the reality. That’s the truth. My right to life comes before their right to movement.”

The boycott Israel movements launched campaigns against Ben-Gvir and various far-right officials who made similar statements or supported apartheid behavior.

Palestinian-US model Bella Hadid slammed Ben-Gvir’s comments and posted the video clip from the interview and shared it on Instagram with her 60 million followers.

"In no place, no time, especially in 2023, should one life be more valuable than another's," said Hadid in the post. "Especially simply because of their ethnicity, culture, or pure hatred."

Ben Gvir's supporters tried to underestimate Hadid's position, saying that she is the daughter of an Arab father from Nazareth, who uses her social media platforms to attack Israel constantly.

MSNBC broadcaster Mehdi Hasan echoed Hadid’s statement, saying: “A top Israeli minister just openly admitted to apartheid.”

Social media was packed with similar positions from all over the world.

-Ongoing protest

The Arab public in Israel continued to protest the escalation of crime and began preparing for a strike in schools and local and municipal councils next week.

They stressed the government is not serious about combating crime and arresting its organizations.

A survey published by the Hebrew newspaper Maariv revealed that there was a significant difference between the positions of Arab and Jewish citizens towards the government's policy regarding crime in Arab society.

Seventy percent of the Arab respondents and 40 percent of the Jewish respondents believe the government does not want to deal with crime in Arab society.

About 39 percent of all respondents believed the government wants to fight crime, but it is not succeeding.

Almost 77 percent of all respondents said they fear that crime in the Arab community will spread to the Jewish community, and 59 percent of the Arabs, compared to 37 percent of the Jews, said they were terrified of this scenario.

A total of 46 percent of the Arabs said the government was responsible for the increase in crime, 18 percent blamed the police, and four percent considered the Arab society to be violent.

On the other hand, 27 percent of the Jews, including 36 percent of the voters of the right-wing coalition parties, considered that the increase in crime is due to the violent Arab society, and 23 percent said that the reason is the government's weak performance.



Trump Says Will Speak with Putin on Tuesday About Ending War in Ukraine 

US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters, watched by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, aboard Air Force One on his return to Washington, DC, US, March 16, 2025. (Reuters) 
US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters, watched by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, aboard Air Force One on his return to Washington, DC, US, March 16, 2025. (Reuters) 
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Trump Says Will Speak with Putin on Tuesday About Ending War in Ukraine 

US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters, watched by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, aboard Air Force One on his return to Washington, DC, US, March 16, 2025. (Reuters) 
US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters, watched by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, aboard Air Force One on his return to Washington, DC, US, March 16, 2025. (Reuters) 

US President Donald Trump said he plans to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday and discuss ending the war in Ukraine, after positive talks between US and Russian officials in Moscow.

"We want to see if we can bring that war to an end," Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a late flight back to the Washington area from Florida. "Maybe we can, maybe we can't, but I think we have a very good chance.

"I'll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work's been done over the weekend."

Trump is trying to win Putin's support for a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine accepted last week, as both sides continued trading heavy aerial strikes through the weekend and Russia moved closer to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.

There was no immediate response from the Kremlin to a request for comment from Reuters.

The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin had sent Trump a message about his ceasefire plan via US envoy Steve Witkoff, who held talks in Moscow, expressing "cautious optimism" that a deal could be reached to end the three-year conflict.

In separate appearances on Sunday TV shows in the United States, Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Trump's National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, emphasized that there were still challenges to be worked out before Russia agrees to a ceasefire, much less a final peaceful resolution to the war.

Asked on ABC whether the US would accept a peace deal in which Russia was allowed to keep stretches of eastern Ukraine that it has seized, Waltz replied, "Are we going to drive every Russian off of every inch of Ukrainian soil?" He added that the negotiations had to be grounded in "reality."

Rubio told CBS a final peace deal would "involve a lot of hard work, concessions from both Russia and Ukraine," and that it would be difficult to even begin those negotiations "as long as they're shooting at each other."

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that he saw a good chance to end the Russian war after Kyiv accepted the US proposal for a 30-day interim ceasefire.

However, Zelenskiy has consistently said that the sovereignty of his country is not negotiable and that Russia must surrender the territory it has seized. Russia seized the Crimea peninsula in 2014 and now controls most of four eastern Ukrainian regions since it invaded the country in 2022.

RUSSIA DEMANDS 'IRONCLAD' GUARANTEES

Russia will seek "ironclad" guarantees in any peace deal that NATO nations exclude Kyiv from membership and that Ukraine will remain neutral, a Russian deputy foreign minister said in remarks published on Monday.

In a broad-ranging interview with the Russian media outlet Izvestia that made no reference to the ceasefire proposal, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said that any long-lasting peace treaty on Ukraine must meet Moscow's demands.

"We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement," Izvestia cited Grushko as saying.

"Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance."

Putin has said his military incursion into Ukraine was because NATO's creeping expansion threatened Russia's security. He has demanded that Ukraine drop its NATO ambitions, that Russia keeps control of all Ukrainian territory seized, and that the size of the Ukrainian army be limited. He also wants Western sanctions eased and a presidential election in Ukraine, which Kyiv says is premature while martial law is in force.

PEACEKEEPERS

Trump, who has upended US policy by shifting closer to Moscow, has described Ukraine as being more difficult to work with than Russia. He held an explosive meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last month that ended with the Ukrainian leader leaving the White House early.

But Ukraine's acceptance of a proposed ceasefire has now put the onus on Russia to cede to Trump's demands and will test the US president's more positive view of Putin.

Ukraine's allies in Europe and Britain have said that any ceasefire and ultimate peace agreement must be negotiated with Ukraine involved in talks.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Saturday that Western allies other than the US were stepping up preparations to support Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire with Russia, with defense chiefs set to firm up "robust plans" next week.

Britain and France both have said that they are willing to send a peacekeeping force to monitor any ceasefire in Ukraine.

Russia has ruled out peacekeepers until the war has ended.

"It does not matter under what label NATO contingents were to be deployed on Ukrainian territory: be it the European Union, NATO, or in a national capacity," Grushko said.

"If they appear there, it means that they are deployed in the conflict zone with all the consequences for these contingents as parties to the conflict," he said.

"We can talk about unarmed observers, a civilian mission that would monitor the implementation of individual aspects of this agreement, or guarantee mechanisms. In the meantime, it's just hot air."

French President Emmanuel Macron said in remarks published on Sunday that the stationing of peacekeeping troops in Ukraine is a question for Kyiv to decide and not Moscow.