The New York Times - 12.09.2019

A8 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

JERUSALEM — In the 2009

campaign that returned him to of-

fice, Prime Minister Benjamin Ne-

tanyahu of Israel called for the de-

struction of Hamas, the militant

group that controls Gaza. But af-

ter the election, he settled for

weakening and containing Ha-

mas.

So it was a bit embarrassing for

the prime minister when he had to

be whisked off the stage at a cam-

paign event Tuesday night in

southern Israel for fear of incom-

ing rocket fire — from Gaza.

By Wednesday, critics and com-

mentators were having a field day,

questioning Mr. Netanyahu’s sin-

cerity about his latest election-eve

vow, to annex the Jordan River

valley.

“Netanyahu promised the pub-

lic a dramatic statement, but the

public was ultimately given dra-

matic footage instead,” Sima Kad-

mon, a political columnist with the

popular newspaper Yediot

Ahronot, wrote of video clips from

the city of Ashdod that were

widely shared on Israeli and Pal-

estinian social media.

“It’s become evident that Ha-

mas is running the best campaign

out there against Netanyahu,” she

wrote. “Nothing that any opposi-

tion leader might say about Ne-

tanyahu’s failure in security is go-

ing to stick in the public’s mind the

way a rocket being intercepted

over the prime minister’s head is.”

The military said its warplanes

had struck 15 militant targets, in-

cluding a Hamas tunnel,

overnight in Gaza in retaliation for

the two rockets that were fired.

Three more rockets were

launched out of Gaza at lunchtime

on Wednesday, the military said.

No casualties were reported on

the Israeli side.

So deep is the distrust of Mr. Ne-

tanyahu’s showmanship, particu-

larly in the lead-up to hotly con-

tested elections like the current

one, with voters returning to the

polls next Tuesday, that even

some of his supporters are doubt-

ing his sincerity about the annex-

ation.

Shlomo Zadik, 70, a onetime pio-

neer in a Jordan Valley settle-

ment, said that Mr. Netanyahu

had won his vote with the annex-

ation pledge. But he added, “I will

vote for him because of the hope

that he will fulfill his vow, but not

because I actually think he will.”

Mr. Netanyahu is fighting for

his political survival, while facing

possible charges in three corrup-

tion cases. A special hearing with

the attorney general has been set

for early October. Mr. Netanyahu’s

Likud party is running neck and

neck in the polls with the centrist

Blue and White alliance led by Mr.

Netanyahu’s main rival for the

premiership, Benny Gantz, a for-

mer military chief of staff.

Addressing the rocket fire from

a campaign rally of his own, Mr.

Gantz said: “Today, we saw how

big words translate into zero ac-

tion.”

Gabi Ashkenazi, another of the

three former military chiefs on the

Blue and White slate, was speak-

ing at the same time in Ashkelon,

just up the coast from Gaza, but

did not leave the stage when the

sirens went off.

In a peeved response to some of

the more mocking reactions from

Blue and White’s camp, Likud is-

sued a statement early Wednes-

day saying, “The lowest point of

the election: Three former chiefs

of staff are joking about firing at

the Israeli prime minister.”

But voters on the right and the

left are taking Mr. Netanyahu’s

campaign promises with a large

pinch of skepticism.

He has pledged in the past to

build in a particularly contentious

and problematic area of the West

Bank known as E1, east of Jerusa-

lem, but has apparently backed

down under international pres-

sure. Days before the last election,

in April — which ended inconclu-

sively — he vowed to annex all of

the Jewish settlements in the

West Bank, including the most iso-

lated, in an effort to rally right-

wing voters.

That has rightists asking why

he has not annexed an inch of

West Bank territory over his last

decade in office, or 13 years over

all.

Many noted that Mr. Netanyahu

has not even fulfilled a Supreme

Court-sanctioned commitment to

evacuate the tiny Bedouin hamlet

of Khan al-Ahmar. Built without

Israeli permits in the West Bank

hills between E1 and the Jordan

Valley, its fate has been at the cen-

ter of a Palestinian and interna-

tional campaign.

Eti Dar, 65, a pension consultant

from Mevasseret Zion, a Jerusa-

lem suburb, said she had sup-

ported Likud in the past but would

now give her vote to Blue and

White.

“Last night was all about media

spin,” Ms. Dar said of the Jordan

Valley announcement. “If Netan-

yahu had really wanted and

meant to annex anything, he

would have done so 10 years ago,

not two days before the elections.”

“He is an actor,” she added, “and

it’s time for him to get off the

stage.”

Irit Pazner Garshowitz contribut-

ed reporting.

Right and Left Skeptical

Of Netanyahu Proposal

By ISABEL KERSHNER

Hamas rocket fire

drives the prime

minister off a stage.

LONDON — A Scottish court
ruled on Wednesday that Prime
Minister Boris Johnson’s decision
to suspend Parliament was un-
lawful, a remarkable rebuke of the
government’s hard-line tactics in
trying to pull Britain out of the Eu-
ropean Union.
A panel of three judges in the
Court of Session, Scotland’s high-
est civil court, found that the deci-
sion to send lawmakers home for
five weeks at the height of the
Brexit crisis was “unlawful be-
cause it had the purpose of stymy-
ing Parliament.”
The ruling suggested that Mr.
Johnson had misled Queen Eliza-
beth II by telling her he wanted to
shutter Parliament for banal pro-
cedural reasons, while in fact do-
ing it to silence lawmakers op-
posed to his Brexit plans. It was
another indication to some schol-
ars of the prime minister’s open
disdain for constitutional norms
and legal obligations during the
chaotic early weeks of his leader-
ship.
It also deepened Mr. Johnson’s
political morass. In angling to ex-
tract Britain from the European
Union by Oct. 31, with or without a
deal, Mr. Johnson has lost his
working majority in Parliament,
exiled veteran Conservative law-
makers and failed twice to secure
an early election. He is now prom-
ising to press ahead despite a law
designed to stop a no-deal Brexit.
At least one ex-Conservative
lawmaker said on Wednesday
that the prime minister should re-
sign if he lied to the queen. A few
other lawmakers vowed a sit-in to
reopen Parliament.
The government had said it was
suspending, or “proroguing,” Par-
liament to prepare for the start of
a new legislative session. But the
Scottish court disagreed, saying
there was no evidence of Mr. John-
son having done anything but try-
ing to free himself of parliamenta-
ry oversight as he pursued an
abrupt Brexit over the objection of
lawmakers.

“This was an egregious case of

a clear failure to comply with gen-

erally accepted standards of be-

havior of public authorities,” a

summary of the ruling said. “It

was to be inferred that the princi-

pal reasons for the prorogation

were to prevent or impede Parlia-

ment holding the executive to ac-

count and legislating with regard

to Brexit, and to allow the execu-

tive to pursue a policy of a no-deal

Brexit without further parliamen-

tary interference.”

The decision did not itself re-

open Parliament. Instead it set up

a showdown next week at Brit-

ain’s Supreme Court, which had

already said it would review the

case and address the question of

whether to halt the suspension of

Parliament.

In doing so, the Supreme Court

will either endorse the Scottish

court’s decision, eliciting a torrent

of demands for the prime min-

ister’s resignation, or reject it and

side instead with the High Court

in London, which said last week

that the suspension was not open

to a legal challenge.

The British government said it

was “disappointed” by the Scot-

tish court’s decision and would file

an appeal, describing the suspen-

sion as “legal and necessary” for

normal procedural reasons. The

group of lawmakers who brought

the case called for Parliament to

be immediately reconvened.

The office of the speaker of the

House of Commons, however, said

decisions about reconvening Par-

liament rested in the govern-

ment’s hands.

It is within a prime minister’s

rights to suspend Parliament, and

the High Court in London noted

that there were no legal limits on

how long the chamber could be

closed between sessions.

But suspensions typically last

only a few days, without major po-

litical implications. Sending law-

makers home as they sought to

block the prime minister’s Brexit

plans, on the other hand, has been

described by scholars as constitu-

tionally suspect, if not unconstitu-

tional.

The Scottish court said parlia-

mentary oversight was “a central

pillar of the good governance prin-

ciple enshrined in the constitu-

tion.”

British lawmakers also voted

on Monday, the day before the

shutdown took effect, to demand

that the government release pri-

vate messages from senior offi-

cials about why they had sus-

pended Parliament. But on

Wednesday night the government

rebuffed lawmakers, saying the

request was “unprecedented, in-

appropriate and disproportion-

ate.” Parliament had little lever-

age to enforce its order while not

in session.

While it is the prime minister’s

decision to suspend Parliament,

the measure is formally carried

out by the queen. In this case, the

Scottish court said Mr. Johnson’s

advice to the queen asking her to

suspend Parliament was unlaw-

ful. The court said it would make

an order declaring that the advice,

and the suspension itself, was

“thus null and of no effect.”

It was not clear when that order

would be made.

Scottish law is different from

the law in England and Wales, in-

cluding on constitutional matters,

scholars said on Wednesday, one

reason the rulings in Scotland and

in London may have conflicted.

But the government angered

Scots when some unidentified

Downing Street officials hinted to

British news outlets that the rul-

ings differed because the Scottish

judges were politically biased.

Robert Buckland, the govern-

ment’s secretary of state for jus-

tice, quickly contradicted those

claims, saying “our judges are re-

nowned around the world for their

excellence and impartiality.”

The team that brought the case

said it had done so in Scotland be-

cause English high courts were

not sitting in August.

The parliamentary shutdown

began on Tuesday in raucous

scenes, with opposition lawmak-

ers throwing themselves at the

speaker’s chair to keep him from

standing up and allowing the

chamber to be closed.

Parliament was not scheduled

to sit again until mid-October, only

weeks before Britain could crash

out of the European Union with-

out a deal.

When Mr. Johnson announced

the suspension two weeks ago, it

seemed likely to curtail the time

that lawmakers had to stop him

from pursuing a no-deal Brexit, an

outcome that could create food

and medicine shortages. But the

shutdown quickly became a liabil-

ity: It united a fractious opposi-

tion and emboldened lawmakers

from his own Conservative Party

to defy him on major votes.

And in the end, lawmakers

moved quickly enough that they

passed a law seeking to force Mr.

Johnson, in the absence of a new

Brexit deal by late October, to ask

Brussels for a delay.

Mr. Johnson, though, has vowed

never to ask for an extension, sug-

gesting that he may look for ways

to skirt the law. That could draw

the Supreme Court into the Brexit

impasse once again, scholars said,

and provoke an even more acute

constitutional crisis than the one

Britain already faced.

Adding to the government’s

troubles, it was forced on Wednes-

day to publish an internal docu-

ment warning that, if Britain left

the European Union without any

agreement on Oct. 31, there could

be jammed ports, shortages of

foods, medicines and fuel, price

rises and possible public disorder.

The document, dated Aug. 2,

had been prepared for a contin-

gency exercise called Operation

Yellowhammer. Some of its find-

ings were leaked earlier to the

London Sunday Times, though at

the time the government sug-

gested that the document cited

was out of date.

But after a vote by lawmakers

on Monday, it finally released the

document on Wednesday evening

saying that it represented “a rea-

sonable worst-case scenario.”

The possibilities included de-

lays of more than two days for

trucks at the port of Dover trying

to embark for France, with the

worst disruption lasting for three

months until traffic stabilized at

50 percent to 70 percent of its cur-

rent level. Passenger delays and

insufficient quantities of medi-

cines were also possible.

As for food, “there is a risk that

panic buying will cause or exacer-

bate food supply disruption,” the

document said, while in localized

areas there could also be prob-

lems with water supplies because

of shortages of chemicals for

treatment.

“Protests and counter-protests

will take place across the U.K. and

may absorb significant amounts

of police resource,” the document

adds, “There may also be a rise in

public disorder and community

tensions.”

Suspension of British Parliament Was Illegal, Top Scottish Court Rules

Parliament, above. A court suggested on Wednesday that Prime Minister Boris Johnson may have

misled Queen Elizabeth in asking that she suspend Parliament as a Brexit deadline approached.

ANDREW TESTA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By BENJAMIN MUELLER

Stephen Castle contributed report-
ing.

direct rule on the region after a se-

cession attempt.

In recent weeks, politicians

from various pro-independence

parties have been squabbling

over whether to call new regional

elections, or to push for secession

again. The fracture has been deep-

ened by a rift between two of the

main separatist leaders, who are

at loggerheads over the issue.

Carles Puigdemont, the former

leader of Catalonia who has been

living in Brussels to avoid pros-

ecution in Spain on charges of re-

bellion, doesn’t want to hold re-

gional elections.

Oriol Junqueras, the former

deputy leader who is in jail await-

ing a judicial verdict on charges of

rebellion and other crimes, favors

regional elections. Mr. Junqueras

could face up to 25 years in prison

if found guilty of rebellion.

The Spanish government could

exploit these divisions to help end

the territorial conflict. But Prime

Minister Pedro Sánchez has his

own political problems.

His Socialist party won a clear-

cut general election in April, but

he failed in July to get a majority

in Parliament to vote him into of-

fice as prime minister.

Since then, he has been trying

unsuccessfully to form a coalition

BARCELONA, Spain — Hun-
dreds of thousands of Catalans
demonstrated in Barcelona on
Wednesday in favor of independ-
ence from the rest of Spain, but
their numbers were smaller than
in previous years, underlining
deep divisions within the inde-
pendence movement.
For an eighth consecutive year,
pro-independence protesters
used Catalonia’s national day to
press their cause. They also called
for the release of jailed pro-inde-
pendence politicians.
About 600,000 people took part
in the rally, according to local po-
lice, down from about one million
in 2018.
“We all still want to have an in-
dependent Catalan republic but
we don’t all agree on what kind
and how to get there, which is
what happens when our best poli-
ticians are now being held in pris-
on and silenced by the Spanish
state,” said Anna Riba, 26, one of
the demonstrators.
The leaders of the separatist
movement are divided over how
to revive a movement that came to
an abrupt and chaotic halt in Octo-
ber 2017, when Spain’s central
government imposed a period of

government with the far-left

Unidas Podemos party, raising the

likelihood of another general elec-

tion in November to help break

the deadlock. It would be the

fourth election in Spain in four

years, a mark of the fragmenta-

tion of the country’s politics.

Mr. Sánchez has until Sept. 23 to

get voted into office by Parlia-

ment, or instead force voters to re-

turn to the polls in November.

At Catalonia’s national day cele-

bration, known as the Diada, some

participants said their main con-

cern was the outcome of the trial

of Mr. Junqueras and 11 other for-

mer separatist leaders, whose

charges include rebellion, sedition

and misuse of public funds.

The Supreme Court is expected

to announce its ruling by mid-Oc-

tober, by which time Mr. Jun-

queras and other defendants will

have spent two years in jail, after

being denied bail in late 2017.

During a recent visit to Madrid,

Quim Torra, the regional presi-

dent of Catalonia, warned that the

conviction of former separatist

leaders could trigger civil disobe-

dience in Catalonia and major

street protests, like those in Hong

Kong.

One demonstrator said he was

not worried about the fragmenta-

tion of the pro-independence

movement.

“There is always a period of

fragmentation after the kind of de-

feat that we suffered in 2017,” said

Roger Mallola.

Last month Mr. Mallola co-

founded an association to help

promote a new generation of poli-

ticians firmly committed to unilat-

eral independence. “We need to

reorganize, but I’m certain that

it’s just a matter of time,” he said.

Protesters with Catalan independence flags in Barcelona, Spain, on Wednesday at a demonstration held annually since 2012.

BERNAT ARMANGUE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

600,000 Rally for Catalan Independence

Barcelona Demonstration Reflects Differences on How to Break From Spain

By RAPHAEL MINDER

Carles Puigdemont, former

leader of Catalonia, lives in

Brussels to avoid prosecution.

OLAF MALZAHN/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK