ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 06 TEL AVIV 003951 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: -------------- Israel Radio cited police concerns that anti- disengagement activists will step up their deterrence efforts, including causing damage to infrastructure facilities. Jerusalem Post reported that Vice PM Ehud Olmert lashed out on Wednesday at settlers who say that the fate of Jerusalem will be the same as the Gaza Strip if the disengagement plan is implemented, calling such settlers "stupid." Israel Radio reported that IDF Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Harel met on Wednesday night with Palestinian Deputy Interior Minister, Gen. Jamal Abu Zayd, to discuss ways to enhance security coordination in preparation for the disengagement. Ha'aretz reported that Israel has agreed to consider a number of proposals for creating an overland connection between Gaza and the West Bank following the disengagement, as well as measures that will make it much easier for people and goods to enter Israel from the territories. However, the newspaper quoted a senior Israeli source as saying: "Everything will depend on security. If they [the Palestinians] give us a few months of quiet, we can agree to allow trucks to pass. But an event like the suicide bomber [caught] at Erez Checkpoint on Monday distances this." James Wolfensohn, the Quartet's envoy on the disengagement, was quoted as saying in an interview with Ha'aretz Wednesday that over the past two weeks, there has been significant progress in Israel-Palestinian talks on economic and civil aspects of the disengagement, which had previously been stuck due to a dispute over the agenda. Wolfensohn was also quoted as saying that trust between Israelis and Palestinians is at a 10-year low. Ha'aretz and Israel Radio reported that U.S. officials visited the Gaza Strip last week to prepare Wolfensohn's visit in the Strip, despite the travel ban imposed by the U.S. administration since the October 2003 attack on a U.S. embassy convoy. Ha'aretz reported that Israel and Egypt are close to agreeing on the deployment of 800 Egyptian policemen along the western side of the Philadelphi route on the Rafah border. On the other hand, the newspaper believes that Israel is retracting for now the idea of expanding development in the border segment south of the Gaza Strip -- between Kerem Shalom in the north and Eilat in the south. Israel Radio quoted a senior GOI official as saying that the forthcoming agreement does not constitute a change on the ground, does not modify the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, and does not constitute a military threat. Israel Radio reported that several members of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, including chairman Yuval Steinitz, strongly objected to Egyptian troops being positioned along the border. Jerusalem Post quoted FM Silvan Shalom as saying on Wednesday that Israel would take control of areas in Gaza for a few days if there is going to be fire leading up to and during the Gaza withdrawal, even if it means harming innocent Palestinians. Yediot and the ultra-Orthodox newspapers quoted Col. Brig. Gen. Eival Giladi, head of coordination and strategy at Sharon's bureau, as saying that Israel will use fighter jets if the Palestinians attack it during the disengagement. Based on international media reports citing a British announcement, Ha'aretz and Israel Radio reported that Quartet representatives -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Russian FM Sergei Lavrov, and top EU foreign affairs official Javier Solana -- will meet in London today to discuss the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Ha'aretz also cited Reuters as saying that foreign ministers of the G8 group of industrialized nations will meet in London today to discuss the pullout. Israel Radio quoted senior Palestinian sources as saying that Palestinian PM Ahmed Qurei met in Nablus on Wednesday with representatives of militants wanted by Israel and negotiated their joining the PA's forces. Leading media reported that wanted members of Fatah opened fire on Qurei in Nablus's Balata refugee camp. All media cited the belief of senior Labor Party officials that the party's primaries will be postponed because of suspected fraudulent registration of voters. Yediot reported that Jomhury e-Islami, a conservative Iranian newspaper associated with the regime, has accused Yediot's special envoy to Tehran Orly Azolai of having visited Iran in order to generate a conflict among the candidates in the presidential election. Yediot cited Iran's Culture Ministry as saying that Azolai never visited Iran. Jerusalem Post and other media reported that the IAF destroyed four Qassam rockets on the outskirts of the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip early Wednesday meeting. Ha'aretz quoted Transportation Minister Meir Sheetrit at saying at the Knesset on Wednesday that Islamic Jihad is initiating, planning, and carrying out acts of terror in keeping with directives coming from Damascus. Maariv reported that this week, U.S. helicopters launched missiles at positions of Syria's border guard at the Syrian-Iraqi border. Maariv also quoted the CEO of a Russian weapons firm as saying as saying that a new Russian-Syrian arms deal is in the making. Yediot cited a "secret document" drafted by the Foreign Ministry, according to which Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi is interested in relations with Israel. Jerusalem Post notes that Secretary Rice's Cairo speech failed to impress intellectuals in the Arab world. Citing the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jerusalem Post cited a survey issued this week by The Israel Project, a Washington-based group seeking to strengthen Israel's image, which found an increasingly hostile attitude to Israel among graduate students at top U.S. universities. Ha'aretz reported that the Foreign Ministry's Appointments Committee, headed by FM Shalom, named Jeremy Issacharoff on Wednesday as political attache to Washington, the No. 2 post at the embassy. -------------- Mideast: -------------- Summary: -------------- Independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz editorialized: "The arrogance broadcast by Israel's representative [Ariel Sharon] merely emphasized the weakness of his partner, [Mahmoud Abbas,] and served no purpose, even though the demand for an end to the terror is justified." Liberal op-ed writer Yael Paz-Melamed wrote in popular, pluralist Maariv: "Most of the value systems of the two camps [i.e. the Left and the Right] are substantively different, and this leads to a difference in patterns of behavior." Settler leader Israel Harel wrote in Ha'aretz: "Today ... there [still] remains a sliver of hope that the evil decree [of disengagement] can be prevented." Middle East affairs commentator Guy Bechor, a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center, wrote in mass- circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot: "Israel, which established the Palestinian Authority in the framework of the Oslo Accords, now faces a political body that has no intention of reaching a political arrangement with it." Block Quotes: -------------- ¶I. "A Chill Wind at the Summit" Independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz editorialized (June 23): "The meeting between Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas did indeed seem, as the Palestinians claim, like one between a senior commander and a junior officer who did not carry out his mission as expected, or like one between a landlord and a tenant who did not pay his rent on time.... Sharon could have skipped the humiliation and focused on his demands. If he was trying to win the hearts of his voters, he did so at too high a cost.... The arrogance broadcast by Israel's representative merely emphasized the weakness of his partner, and served no purpose, even though the demand for an end to the terror is justified. In the end, arrogance will not benefit the Israeli public, which would be better served by a strong and independent interlocutor.... It is doubtful Abbas will be capable of providing Israel with security, or even a promise of security, in the foreseeable future; and it is doubtful that Sharon is capable of promising the Palestinians a continuation of the diplomatic process after the withdrawal from Gaza. His political situation does not enable him to make promises. The hope is that the very fact of the withdrawal from Gaza will improve the atmosphere between the parties and set in motion the dynamic of the diplomatic process, and that a withdrawal successfully coordinated with the PA will open the door to a more optimistic next step." II. "The War of the Orange and the Blue" Liberal op-ed writer Yael Paz-Melamed wrote in popular, pluralist Maariv (June 23): "The difference -- the ostensibly substantive difference -- between the rallying of the Right and the silence and apathetic reaction of the Left is not an indicator of how strongly the Left is committed to its ideology. It is essentially an indicator of the ideology itself. The worldview of the moderate Left, to which many people in the center of the political spectrum also subscribe, is one of commitment to life, even at the cost of land and walls [such as the Western wall]. Life is the supreme value. It comes before the Greater Land of Israel, and long before violent and uncompromising conflicts over some buildings from illegal settlement outposts. Moreover, this camp feels a genuine revulsion for extremism in any form, for fanaticism arising mainly out of religious messianism. Most of the value systems of the two camps are substantively different, and this leads to a difference in patterns of behavior. The right-wing camp, and particularly the extreme Right, believes that almost anything is permissible for the sake of the Land of Israel -- to break laws, to disrupt normal life, to deprive another people of liberties, to humiliate them, to crush them into the dust. For what does it matter? The main thing is that they should understand that the Land of Israel is something sacred.... He who believes in life stays at home to live it. He works hard to succeed in maintaining his priorities in life. That is why you will see many more [anti-disengagement] orange ribbons on the roads. That is why the Left ought not to have fallen into this trap, by trying to create a presence of [pro- disengagement] blue ribbons. This is not the way of the Left." III. "Still a Sliver of Hope" Settler leader Israel Harel wrote in Ha'aretz (June 23): "Many of those who supported the disengagement yesterday are today voicing serious doubts as to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's true motives and the prices -- strategic, ideological and human -- that we are going to pay. With the terror continuing, coupled with threats that if Sharon is slow in implementing additional withdrawals, the terror of the past years will be just a preface to the true war of terror, it is natural for people to be changing their positions.... Blocking roads and other such 'dedicated' antics will not open the floodgates, which is the only thing at this late hour that can prevent the historic mistake of the uprooting.... Today, less than 60 days before the first policemen report to Gush Katif and begin to tear the settlers from their homes, their lands and their communities, there [still] remains a sliver of hope that the evil decree can be prevented." IV. "Stop the Show" Middle East affairs commentator Guy Bechor, a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center, wrote in mass- circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot (June 23): "Israel, which established the Palestinian Authority in the framework of the Oslo Accords, now faces a political body that has no intention of reaching a political arrangement with it, but rather intends to continue to undermine Israel with temporary 'hudnas' [ceasefires] in order to prepare militarily.... Even the methods of action by the current top Palestinian leaders, Qurei and Abbas, very much resemble those of Yasser ARAFAT at the time: dissatisfaction as a strategic policy, zero self-responsibility, Israel is always to blame and outward weakness behind which lies an aspiration for power. Help me, Abu Mazen asked the Prime Minister this week, as if he did not have thousands of troops under his authority. In this too, Abbas continues his predecessor's policy of the powerful moaning over their fate. The time has come to remove the veil enveloping our region, the time has come to declare that from now on there will be no more steps of 'coordination' with the PA or various 'relief measures,' and that Israel will carry out disengagement exactly as it planned from the outset: unilaterally, with no phony coordination. If the PA wants to take control of the territory, that's its business and the business of its Arab sisters. Disengaging from Gaza and northern Samaria [the northernmost part of West Bank] should therefore also be a disengagement from the PA, and from all the evils it has brought on Israel since the day of its establishment and until today." CRETZ