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Late Edition
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VOL. CLXIV . . . No. 56,808
© 2015 The New York Times
$2.50
NEW YORK, TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 2015
NETANYAHU SAYS
NO TO STATEHOOD
FOR PALESTINIANS
Iran Sent Arms
To Iraq to Fight
ISIS, U.S. Says
Deploying Missiles in
Sign of Growing Role
TACTIC ON EVE OF VOTE
Israeli Prime Minister’s
Position Is Seen as a
Right-Wing Push
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — Iran has deployed advanced rockets and
missiles to Iraq to help fight the
Islamic State in Tikrit, a significant escalation of firepower and
another sign of Iran’s growing influence in Iraq.
United States intelligence
agencies detected the deployments in the past few weeks as
Iraq was marshaling a force of
30,000 troops — two-thirds of
them Shiite militias largely
trained and equipped by Iran, according to three American officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss
sensitive intelligence reports on
Iran.
Iran has not yet launched any
of the weapons, but American officials fear the rockets and missiles could further inflame sectarian tensions and cause civilian
casualties because they are not
precision guided. Their deployment is another dilemma for the
Obama administration as it trains
and equips the Iraqi military and
security services to help defeat
the Islamic State, but unlike Iran
is unwilling to commit fighters
and advisers who join Iraqi
forces in the field.
One senior American military
official who tracks classified intelligence reports said Iran had
deployed Fajr-5 artillery rockets
and Fateh-110 missiles and their
launchers. Another senior American military official who also
monitors sensitive government
reports on Iran said the deployed
weapons were similar to the
Fajr-5 rockets and Fateh-110 missiles but were slightly different
and had different names. The official offered no other details. The
C.I.A. declined to comment.
Either way, American officials
Continued on Page A9
By JODI RUDOREN
JACK GUEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at a campaign rally in Tel Aviv. Voters go to the polls on Tuesday.
Haitian Leader’s Power Grows as Scandals Swirl Irresistible TV,
By FRANCES ROBLES
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti —
With a brisk clap of his hands,
Michel Martelly summed up the
first steps he would take if he
ever left the music business and
became the president of Haiti.
“First thing, after I establish
my power, which would be very
strong and necessary, I would
close that congress thing,” Mr.
Martelly was quoted as saying in
1997, when he was still a hugely
popular singer. “Out of my way.”
His words have proved prophetic. A political crisis almost
four years into Mr. Martelly’s
presidency gave life to the fantasy he once described: He is now
running the country without the
checks and balances of a parlia-
Governing With Few
Checks and Balances
as Allies Fall
ment.
After Mr. Martelly and his opponents in Parliament could not
agree on elections, most legislative terms expired, and the seats
remain empty. Only 11 elected officials remain in the entire country, and the president is one of
them.
For two months, Mr. Martelly
has governed Haiti by executive
order, concentrating power in the
hands of a man who, his critics
say, is a prisoner of his past, sur-
rounded by a network of friends
and aides who have been arrested on charges including rape,
murder, drug trafficking and kidnapping.
As Mr. Martelly strengthens
his hold on power, scandals involving those close to him have
continued to mount, raising questions about the president’s ability
to lead.
One of Mr. Martelly’s senior
advisers was jailed for six
months during the president’s
tenure after being accused of killing a man in a gunfight at the Dominican border. Another friend of
the president vanished last year,
shortly after being released from
jail in a marijuana trafficking
case.
The prosecutor in that case
Continued on Page A6
Failed by Law and Courts, Troops Come Home to Repossessions
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG
and MICHAEL CORKERY
Charles Beard, a sergeant in
the Army National Guard, says
he was on duty in the Iraqi city of
Tikrit when men came to his California home to repossess the family car. Unless his wife handed
over the keys, she would go to
jail, they said.
The men took the car, even
though federal law requires lenders to obtain court orders before
seizing the vehicles of active duty
service members.
Sergeant Beard had no redress
in court: His lawsuit against the
auto lender was thrown out because of a clause in his contract
that forced any dispute into mandatory arbitration, a private system for resolving complaints
where the courtroom rules of evidence do not apply. In the cloistered legal universe of mandatory arbitration, the companies
sometimes pick the arbiters, and
the results, which cannot be appealed, are almost never made
public.
That is the experience for
many Americans who are contractually obligated to resolve
their disputes with investment
advisers or lenders in this way.
But it is supposed to be different
But Durst Film
Tests Ethics, Too
By JONATHAN MAHLER
It was the sort of publicity you
cannot buy. The day before HBO
broadcast the final episode of the
six-part documentary series
“The Jinx,” the subject of the
film, Robert A. Durst, was arrested on a murder charge.
The arrest gave the impression
that something dramatic would
happen in the finale, and the
show did not disappoint. Mr.
Durst delivered what sounded a
lot like an unwitting admission of
guilt: “What the hell did I do?”
he whispered to himself in the
bathroom, apparently unaware
that his microphone was still on.
“Killed them all, of course.”
The
filmmakers,
Andrew
Jarecki and Marc Smerling, had
seemingly managed to elicit a
confession from Mr. Durst, the
estranged son of one of New
York’s most prominent real estate families, who had been connected to three murders over
three decades.
But with this cinematic coup
Continued on Page A20
JERUSALEM — Under pressure on the eve of a surprisingly
close election, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on
Monday doubled down on his appeal to right-wing voters, declaring definitively that if he was returned to office he would never
establish a Palestinian state.
The statement reversed Mr.
Netanyahu’s endorsement of a
two-state solution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict in a 2009
speech at Bar Ilan University,
and fulfilled many world leaders’
suspicions that he was never
really serious about peace negotiations. If he manages to eke out
a fourth term, the new stance
would further fray Mr. Netanyahu’s ruinous relationship with the
Obama
administration
and
heighten tension with European
countries already frustrated with
the stalled peace process.
“I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian
state today and evacuate lands is
giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel,” he said in a video interview
published on NRG, an Israeli
news site that leans to the right.
“There is a real threat here that a
left-wing government will join
the international community and
follow its orders.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s chief challenger, Isaac Herzog of the center-left Zionist Union, backs the
two-state solution and has promised to try to restart talks with
the Palestinians, though he has
warned an agreement may not be
possible. He has, however, made
Mr. Netanyahu’s alienation of allies, especially Washington, a
prime campaign point, and said
Israel’s international isolation is
itself a security threat.
With his conservative Likud
Party trailing the Zionist Union in
the last pre-election polls, Mr.
Netanyahu has ratcheted up his
statements in a panicky blitz of
interviews and campaign stops in
recent days. He accuses rivals of
Continued on Page A10
Paul Is Capturing an Audience;
The Challenge Is Winning Votes
By JEREMY W. PETERS
MATT BLACK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Charles Beard at home in Hanford, Calif. His car was repossessed while he was deployed to Iraq.
for the troops who are deployed
abroad, say military lawyers,
state authorities and Pentagon
officials.
Over the years, Congress has
given service members a number
of protections — some dating to
the Civil War — from reposses-
sions and foreclosures.
Efforts to maintain that special
status for service members has
run into resistance from the financial industry, including many
of the same banks that promote
the work they do for veterans.
While using mandatory arbitra-
tion, some companies repeatedly
violate the federal protections,
leaving troops and their families
vulnerable to predatory lending,
the military lawyers and government officials say.
“Mandatory arbitration threatContinued on Page B5
NATIONAL A12-18
INTERNATIONAL A4-11
ARTS C1-8
After Freedom, a Life in Limbo
U.N. Re-examines Fatal Crash
Big Break, With a Price Tag
Leon Brown, left,
and his half
brother, exonerated in September after decades
in prison for rape
and murder, lead
uncertain lives in
poverty while
waiting for a pardon from Gov. Pat
PAGE A12
McCrory of North Carolina.
A panel will look into the cause of the
plane crash in 1961 that killed Dag Hammarskjold, then the secretary general of
the United Nations, while he was on a
PAGE A11
peace mission in Africa.
For young musicians like Lulu Prat of
the trio the Prettiots, the chance to perform at the South
by Southwest
Music and Media
Conference
comes at a cost
— for the Prettiots it’s about
$10,000 in expenses. PAGE C1
A Republican Budget Vision
House Republicans are expected to propose a 2016 budget that partly privatizes
Medicare, turns Medicaid into block
grants to the states and repeals the AfPAGE A17
fordable Care Act.
NEW YORK A19-23
Overdoses Test Wesleyan Ethos
Wesleyan University has been trying to
balance a tradition of open-mindedness
with concerns for student safety in the
aftermath of 12 hospitalizations related
to a bad batch of the recreational drug
PAGE A19
known as Molly.
BUSINESS DAY B1-8
Price of Oil Hits Six-Year Low
Oil prices fell about 2 percent as traders
began to reckon with weak seasonal demand while many refineries schedule
PAGE B1
shutdowns for maintenance.
SCIENCE TIMES D1-8
SPORTSTUESDAY B9-14
Uncomfortable No More
UConn Again in Prime Position
Connecticut was named the top overall
seed for the women’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournament,
which begins Friday and will also
include Maryland, South
Carolina and
Notre Dame as
No. 1 seeds.
PAGE B12
Former Vice President Al Gore has
warned of the dangers of climate
change for years. Now he’s found a new
PAGE D1
role: energy optimist.
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27
David Brooks
PAGE A27
U(D54G1D)y+=!$!?!#!,
AUSTIN, Tex. — While his rivals were slogging their way
across New Hampshire this
weekend, Senator Rand Paul was
here, some 1,700 miles away at
the South by Southwest festival,
where he was competing for oxygen not with other Republicans
but with a Judd Apatow premiere
and with Grumpy Cat — the Internet meme, in the fur.
Mr. Paul dropped by a cocktail
bar for a concert. He fielded
questions in a Twitter “town hall”
and almost filled two hotel ballrooms with intrigued festivalgoers who came to hear him speak
on Sunday night. His staff made
sure it was all documented for his
Snapchat followers.
Who is the Republican frontrunner for 2016? It is often hard
to tell. But there is little debate
about who is the biggest curiosity
in the race: Mr. Paul, the junior
senator from Kentucky, who has
been building the most unorthodox campaign for the Republican
nomination, bringing his brand of
libertarian conservatism to audiences that are more inclined to
vote Democratic.
Being a political curiosity is far
different from being politically
credible, however. And Mr. Paul
is facing a challenge that will be
Continued on Page A18