ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 06 TEL AVIV 002469 SIPDIS STATE FOR NEA, NEA/IPA, NEA/PPD WHITE HOUSE FOR PRESS OFFICE, SIT ROOM NSC FOR NEA STAFF JERUSALEM ALSO FOR ICD LONDON ALSO FOR HKANONA AND POL PARIS ALSO FOR POL ROME FOR MFO E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: IS KMDR MEDIA REACTION REPORT SUBJECT: ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION -------------- SUBJECTS COVERED IN THIS REPORT: -------------- Mideast -------------- Key stories in the media: -------------- This morning, Israel Radio quoted Palestinian sources as saying that top Sharon aide Dov Weisglass will meet today with chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat and PA Minister of Civilian Affairs Muhammad Dahlan to discuss coordination of the disengagement plan between the sides. The radio reported that Vice Premier Shimon Peres and Palestinian PM Ahmed Qurei will talk about the same issue tomorrow. All media reported that the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank is expected to be postponed until mid-August, following Tuesday's meeting of the special ministerial meeting for implementing the disengagement. The media reported on ongoing disagreements within the GOI regarding the date for disengagement. Leading media reported that PA Chairman [President] Mahmoud Abbas met Tuesday with Israeli journalists in Ramallah ahead of the Passover holiday. Ha'aretz highlighted Abbas's complaint about the criticism to which he claims to have been subjected in the Israeli media and about the treatment he has received from the GOI since he took over at the helm of the PA. Yediot stressed Abbas's promise that the evacuation of settlements will take place among security quiet. The media cited Abbas's reassurances to Israel regarding the outcome of the elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in July. Yediot quoted PM Sharon as saying at a pre-Passover toast with Likud members Tuesday that the "guys from Khan Yunis" will plunder the property left behind by Israel in the Gaza Strip "within half an hour." The newspaper quoted Sharon as saying that Israel is interested in coordination with the Palestinians, but that he is not certain whether there is someone to talk to. All media reported that Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was heckled, called a "traitor," and made to feel unwelcome during a visit he made to the Katif bloc of settlements in the Gaza Strip Tuesday. Leading media quoted leaders of the northern West Bank settlement of Homesh as saying Tuesday that Sharon promised representatives of Homesh "all the aid" they need to facilitate their relocation to another community en masse prior to the evacuation. Jerusalem Post reported that some 45 Gaza Strip families have signed up to move to two kibbutzim just northeast of the Green Line (around the Strip). In its lead story, Maariv reported that ahead of the disengagement, the IDF has trained sharpshooters who will be positioned near evacuation sites, poised to "shoot at settlers' legs," should settlers open fire at security forces or take hostages among them. Ha'aretz reported that senior army officers have lately recommended that one of the leading rabbis in the settlements of Samaria (northern West Bank) be put under administrative detention. The recommendation is meanwhile opposed by the Shin Bet, which says such a move would be an "earthquake" for the extremists, but the secret service has not ruled out administrative detention as the disengagement approaches. Israel Radio reported this morning that Israel has asked for indirect financial aid ahead of the disengagement, and that the Bush administration has agreed to grant Jerusalem a USD 3 billion financial guarantee until 2008. Israeli delegates met with the U.S. officials in Washington on Wednesday to begin talks on financial aid for development in the Negev and the Galilee. Jerusalem is also asking for assistance in funding the relocation of IDF bases after this summer's planned disengagement from Gaza and some settlements in the northern West Bank. Finance Ministry D-G Dr. Yossi Bachar met with U.S. national security officials and they discussed forming a joint U.S.-Israeli committee to address the matter. The radio said that the U.S. has also agreed to spread Israel's financial guarantees over the next three years, two years later than was initially scheduled. Ha'aretz reported that Sharon may meet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but not President Bush, during his trip to the U.S. next month, where he will take part in AIPAC's annual conference. Israel Radio reported that in an interview with Lebanon's LBC-TV Tuesday, President Bush demanded that Syria stop supporting Hizbullah and close the organization's offices in Damascus. The President was also quoted as saying that Lebanon will not be a free country as long as an armed militia operates on its territory. Israel Radio cited a response by Hizbullah Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah as saying SIPDIS that his group will not disarm as long as Israel threatens Lebanon. Jerusalem Post reported that Qatar's Ambassador to the UN, Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser, met several days ago with Israel's Representative to the UN, Danny Gillerman, to petition Israel to support its candidacy for the UN Security Council. All media, except the ultra-Orthodox ones, reported on the election of Pope Benedict XVI (German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) on Tuesday. Leading media quoted Jewish figures who are integrally involved in relations with the Vatican, and know Ratzinger personally, as saying that he will continue the positive relations toward Israel and the Jews that characterized the papacy of Pope John Paul II, noting that the new pope visited Israel several times. However, Yediot quoted Vatican experts as saying that the new pontiff does not view dialogue with the Jews as a top priority. A Yediot headline read "White Smoke, Black Past." The newspaper and other media cited the "problematic biography" of Ratzinger, who briefly was a member of the Hitler Youth in the early 1940s. Yediot and Jerusalem Post reported that IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon made a confidential visit to Jordan Tuesday, where he met with King Abdullah and Gen. Khalid Jameel al-Sarayirah, chief of the joint staff of the Jordanian armed forces. Citing the London-based Jane's Defense Weekly, Jerusalem Post reported that Russia has allegedly offered to donate to the PA two Mi-17 transport helicopters to replace those that Israel destroyed in ¶2001. Leading media reported that on Tuesday, citing concerns over "national security," Interior Minister Ophir Pines- Paz extended by one year travel restrictions imposed on nuclear whistleblower Mordecai Vanunu. This morning, Israel Radio reported that Uriel Yitzhaki, Israel's Consul-General to The Hague, was arrested Tuesday evening as he arrived in Israel for a visit on suspicion of accepting bribes in exchange for issuing Israeli passports to people who were not entitled to them. Ha'aretz cited an unprecedented report published Tuesday by the ministerial committee for the restoration of Jewish property, headed by Minister of Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky, which estimated the material damage caused to the Jewish people during the Holocaust at USD 230 billion to 320 billion. The estimate does not include reparations for the suffering of survivors, or for the murder of 6 million Jews. The report's authors call on the GOI to remove obstacles to the process of restoring Jewish property, not only in Europe but in the U.S. and Israel as well. All media reported that a Jerusalem District Court judge ruled Tuesday that alleged underworld kingpin Zeev Rosenstein can be extradited to the U.S., where he will be tried for drug-trafficking offenses. Israel Radio reported that Abbas will meet today with U.S. envoys David Welch and Elliott Abrams, who will try to set a date for Abbas's visit to Washington. Jerusalem Post cited a document made public by the Gaza District on Tuesday, according to which the number of permits issued to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip seeking to enter Israel for humanitarian needs has doubled. Ha'aretz and Jerusalem Post reported that on Tuesday, the High Court of Justice accepted the IDF's position that it could not reopen nine Palestinians stores located underneath Beit Hadassah in downtown Hebron for security reasons. However, the court suggested to the IDF that it consider paying compensation to the shop owners. Hatzofe reported that in talks with senior Russian officials in Moscow over the past two days, a small delegation from the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has discussed the neutralization of the Iranian threat, and Israeli-Russian security cooperation. Based on an Israeli Internet site that uses statistics from the U.S. Senate's web site, Yediot reported that during the past six years, Israeli companies and organizations -- topped by the Israeli firm Merhav, owned by Yossi Meiman --have paid USD 2 million in salaries for lobbyists active in contacts with the U.S. administration and Congress. -------------- Mideast: -------------- Summary: -------------- Veteran op-ed writer and the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's assistant Eytan Haber opined in the lead editorial of mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot: "Only a force majeure -- such a terror attack of a magnitude we have not yet encountered -- can now stop the train [i.e. the disengagement process] that has already left the station." Independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz editorialized: "All the harassment of the Palestinians in this interim period ... will only sow more hatred. Ultimately, no separation fence route will be able to defend Israel from that hatred." Block Quotes: -------------- ¶I. "The Katif Bloc Train" Veteran op-ed writer and the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's assistant Eytan Haber opined in the lead editorial of mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot (April 20): "One side -- the government, the army, the police -- is in awe of the enormous and perhaps most difficult task in Israel's history. While this side will not try to call off disengagement, it will not shed a tear if the date of execution is delayed a bit more and a bit more. Neither [outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Moshe] Bugi Ya'alon, nor [chief of staff-designate] Dan Halutz nor [Police Commissioner] Moshe Karadi wish to go down in history 'thanks' to this plan. The other side, the settlers, believes, hopes and prays that the plan will fade away. They hope for a miracle.... The truth is that only a force majeure -- such a terror attack of a magnitude we have not yet encountered -- can now stop the train that has already left the station. Sharon ... knows that the locomotive is surging forward. The train will stop only long after it runs over anyone standing in its way. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on the eye of the beholder, the train is galloping forward, and only those left on the platform in the empty station in the Katif Bloc believe that it will either stop or return. Blessed are the believers." II. "The Battle For the 'Fingernails'" Independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz editorialized (April 20): "It could be years before the eastern border with the Palestinians is finally settled, but meanwhile, the bulldozers and builders are at work -- as has been the custom of Israeli greed for the last 38 years of occupation -- in an attempt to 'create facts on the ground' against all logic and against Israel's long- term interests. Experience shows, as in the case of the Katif Bloc, that massive construction does not automatically turn an area into an integral part of Israel. This attempt at sleight of hand is going on in discussions with the Americans, the Palestinians, the settlers and the Israeli public.... To get out of this maze, in which Israel and the U.S. do not see eye to eye on the future eastern border of the state, it was decided to fence in Ariel and other settlements in the area but not to connect them to the main security fence. This strange solution, which was given the name 'the fingernails,' and is a compromise between the American opposition to sending the fence like 'fingers' toward Ariel and a declaration that the Ariel bloc would remain outside the fence, is now on the High Court of Justice's agenda. It turns out that parts of those 'fingernails' are on privately owned Palestinian land.... The 'fingernails' plan is meant to delay as much as possible any future discussion of the settlements in the Ariel bloc. All the harassment of the Palestinians in this interim period, harming their source of livelihood, their lands, homes and freedom of movement, will only sow more hatred. Ultimately, no separation fence route will be able to defend Israel from that hatred." CRETZ