Daily Briefing Jan. 6 – Verbal jousting in Knesset, and Jerusalem’s Arabs

Welcome to The Times of Israel’s Daily Briefing, your 15-minute audio update on what’s happening in Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish world, from Sunday through Thursday.

Political correspondent Tal Schneider and documentary filmmaker Natan Odenheimer join host Jessica Steinberg on today’s podcast.

Schneider takes a deeper look at the arguments that broke out during Wednesday’s Knesset session, over a bill that would allow thousands of illegally built homes, mostly in Arab communities to connect to the power grid.

Likud politicians accused Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of caving to Ra’am, an Islamist party in his coalition, causing Bennett to lose his cool. Schneider discusses the pressures Bennett is experiencing, and the fact that his predecessor, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was heading for the same power grid agreement.

Odenheimer, one of the two creators behind The State of Jerusalem production company, discusses the third in a series of three shorts about Jerusalem. This one looks at the Israelization of Palestinians in Jerusalem, and why more Arabs living in Jerusalem are suddenly learning Hebrew and studying in Jewish Israeli institutions.

Discussed articles include:

Power struggle: Bill to hook up illegal Arab homes to grid passes in stormy session

State of Jerusalem: The Maqdasyin

State of Jerusalem: The Christian Community

State of Jerusalem: The ‘Secular’ Struggle

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