ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION

UNCLAS TEL AVIV 001384 SIPDIS STATE FOR NEA, NEA/IPA, NEA/PPD WHITE HOUSE FOR PRESS OFFICE, SIT ROOM NSC FOR NEA STAFF SECDEF WASHDC FOR USDP/ASD-PA/ASD-ISA HQ USAF FOR XOXX DA WASHDC FOR SASA JOINT STAFF WASHDC FOR PA CDR USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL FOR POLAD/USIA ADVISOR COMSOCEUR VAIHINGEN GE FOR PAO/POLAD COMSIXTHFLT FOR 019 JERUSALEM ALSO ICD LONDON ALSO FOR HKANONA AND POL PARIS ALSO FOR POL ROME FOR MFO SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: OPRC KMDR IS SUBJECT: ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION -------------- SUBJECTS COVERED IN THIS REPORT: -------------- Mideast -------------- Key stories in the media: -------------- With slight variations in style, all media reported that PM Ehud Olmert is challenging some of the conclusions attributed to him in the Winograd Commission's interim report on the Second Lebanon War. According to his aides, Olmert is examining ways of presenting his concerns to the Winograd panel, either in written form or if he is asked to appear in front of the commission for a second time. The sources also expressed their puzzlement at what they describe as a gap between the encouragement the panel gave Olmert during his testimony and the harsh conclusions in the report, which spoke of a "failure." On Thursday the Winograd Commission released the transcripts of the testimonies of Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz. In his testimony, Olmert criticized the performance of the ISRAEL Defense Forces and gave his backing to Peretz. Peretz, meanwhile, argued that he had not been told by the IDF that there were problems in the army's preparedness. Halutz said the IDF failed in the war in two areas: by not shortening the war and by not putting an end to the short-range Katyusha rockets attacking the North. Olmert's objections to parts of the report relate to a number of issues. The commission wrote about a conversation between Olmert and FM Tzipi Livni on the second day of the war in which she recommends "to start thinking about a diplomatic way of ending the incident." Livni testified that Olmert told her to "relax" because the army has "targets for 10 days." Olmert is challenging the facts as they had been presented by Livni. He is critical of the commission for not asking him about the foreign minister's testimony, while the commission quotes her testimony in the report without asking for his response. The Jerusalem Post reported that Deputy National Advisor Elliott Abrams recently told a group of Jewish Republicans that the Bush administration is undertaking much of its current Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy to appease the Arabs and Europeans. All media reported that an Arab League delegation, comprising the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan, will visit ISRAEL in the coming weeks to discuss the Arab peace initiative. The Arab League's decision to dispatch the team -- a groundbreaking development in Arab-Israeli affairs -- was made during FM Livni's visit to Cairo on Thursday. Livni met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for two hours and discussed the diplomatic process with the Palestinians and the Arab peace initiative. The FM also met with her Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Ali Abu al-Gheit, and their visiting Jordanian colleague, Abdelelah al-Khatib. ISRAEL Radio quoted Foreign Ministry sources as saying that this was a "historic" development. The two Arab ministers pledged that they would not present ISRAEL with any preconditions or ultimatums during their meetings, but they also stressed that the Arab League delegation is not an alternative to direct contacts between ISRAEL and the Palestinians. Ha'aretz said that a senior GOI source concurred, warning that "the process on the new regional track will not move forward if there is no progress on the Palestinian track." The impending visit by the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers is a continuation of the decision made at the Arab League summit in Riyadh in March, under which the two Arab countries with whom ISRAEL has full diplomatic relations would be responsible for advancing the Arab peace initiative. Maariv quoted Jordan's King Abdullah II as telling an Israeli delegation on Thursday that chances for peace are dwindling. All media reported that Syrian President Bashar Assad told his Parliament on Thursday that the Israeli government is too weak to make peace with Syria, stressing that negotiations must resume from the point they reached in 2000. "There is no progress in the peace process and there is no contact with ISRAEL over this issue, neither secret nor overt, because ISRAEL is not ready for a just and SIPDIS comprehensive peace that requires, to be implemented, strong leadership that could make decisive decisions," Assad was quoted as saying. He warned that "weak governments in ISRAEL are capable of launching aggression." He said the "return of the Golan is nonnegotiable for us," and that the policy of isolating Syria "has faced nothing but failure." Ha'aretz and other media reported that on Thursday in Nablus IDF gunfire hit a Palestinian who was seven months pregnant, wounding her severely and killing the fetus. The IDF said the woman was shot in an exchange of fire with gunmen in the city's refugee camp. An Israeli soldier and a 16-year-old Palestinian were also wounded. Israel Radio reported that this morning two Qassam rockets were launched at the western Negev. Makor Rishon-Hatzofe quoted Transportation Minister and former defense minister Shaul Mofaz as saying as saying that ISRAEL should resume targeted assassinations. The Jerusalem Post reported that on Thursday the Jerusalem Municipality announced that it is weighing the construction of three Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. Alvaro de Soto, outgoing UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, was quoted as saying in an interview with Ha'aretz that he cannot understand "how Jews can surround people with wall and fences." Likud MK Gilad Erdan was quoted as saying in an interview with The Jerusalem Post that ISRAEL is not doing enough to utilize the growing Evangelical support for ISRAEL at a time when a Christian-Jewish alliance is vital in the battler against Islamic extremism. Yediot reported that PM Olmert and his wife Aliza are personally involved in reaching an agreement with the UN that would grant refugee status to 90 refugees from Darfur, while the UN would help find asylum countries for 310 other people. Maj. Gen. (res.) Amiram Levin (former OC Northern Command and former deputy chief of Mossad) was quoted as saying in an interview with Maariv that former PM Ehud Barak's withdrawal from Lebanon had been a "catastrophe," that panic had dictated how ISRAEL went to war in Lebanon last year, and that the occupation corrupts IDF officers. Ben Caspit of Maariv commented that leading Labor Party leadership MK Ami Ayalon was trying to sully Barak through Levin. Maariv reported that American Jews are threatening to stop sending money to Israel, saying this is a "country of beggars." Maariv reported that a new book by Yossi Melman and Meir Javedanfar, QThe Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran,Q reveals that Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had been in charge of Pakistan's nuclear program and later sold its secrets, was in the crosshairs of Israeli intelligence in the 1990s, which failed to define him as a target for assassination. The Jerusalem Post reported that the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the representative body of the UK's Jewish community, paid tribute to outgoing British PM Tony Blair -- a "friend and ally." Leading media reported that Brig. Gen. Miri Regev, the IDF Spokesperson, will retire from her job in the summer. No replacement has yet been named. Ha'aretz quoted PM Olmert as saying on Thursday that he will not blur the fact that there is discrimination in Israel. Speaking before the ISRAEL Democracy Institute, Olmert was referring to the Israeli Arabs. The Jerusalem Post reported that Interior Ministry Director-General Ram Belnikov, in response to a The Jerusalem Post query on Thursday, immediately approved entry to ISRAEL for a three--week-old Iraqi boy in need of lifesaving heart surgery to be treated at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. Ha'aretz (English Ed.) reported that Mideast Piece, a new web site for gay men in the Middle East, is hoping to promote unity with messages of peace and coexistence. The project is the brainchild of John Leonard and Matt Lebow, two American gay men living in ISRAEL who met as volunteers at the Jerusalem Open House, the city's gay and lesbian community center. The site, which has been nominated in two categories for the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards, is in English, but may eventually be translated into Arabic, though it would be a "long way down the road," its creators were quoted as saying. Ha'aretz (English Ed.) ran a feature about Joel Covington, an African-American hip-hop singer from Baltimore, who together with his wife Shoshana, visited ISRAEL in 1999 and fell in love with the country. Various media had written about Covington and his successful legal fight to remain in Israel. -------------- Mideast: -------------- Summary: -------------- Diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn and Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner wrote in the independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz: "The attitude toward Olmert's domestic problems is being seen in Jerusalem as an insult and as a reflection of the differences in approach within George W. Bush's administration." Senior columnist Nahum Barnea wrote on page one of the mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot: "The transcript of [Olmert's] testimony to the Winograd Commission, which was published on Thursday morning, includes very few words that could embarrass him." Editor-in-Chief Amnon Dankner wrote on page one of the popular, pluralist Maariv: "The near-complete media consensus for the dismissals stems from the media's thirst for drama." Senior columnist and longtime dove Yoel Marcus wrote in Ha'aretz: "A leader who doesn't know how to run a war and doesn't know how to make peace should go home." Senior columnist and chief defense commentator Zeev Schiff wrote on page one of Ha'aretz: "The ISRAEL Defense Forces has too big an impact on decision making." Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, President of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, who served as (Meretz) education minister, wrote in Maariv: " The 'public opinion makers' must free themselves from the fetters of daily events and look at the true threats lying at Israel's doorsteps and in-house." Block Quotes: -------------- ¶I. "Olmert's Not a Partner" Diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn and Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner wrote in the independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz (5/11): "Leading Israeli sources in Washington heard the following assessment from the US administration: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will end his term next spring, at the latest, and even if he embarks on a political process now, he won't have time to finish it. The public is against him -- both on the left and the right -- and anyway, he will not be able to take any significant steps. In other words, Olmert is a lame duck. Hence, it would be a shame to waste time and money speaking with him before he proves that he will survive the Labor Party primaries and the final Winograd Commission report on the Second Lebanon War. One could find evidence of this perception in the cancellation of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's planned visit to Israel. The cancellation itself was less insulting than the reason publicly given for it: the political situation in Israel. Diplomatic language could have disguised the rationale as a scheduling conflict, but the US State Department insisted on mentioning the problems the prime minister is facing at home. Democracies have their own way of resolving political problems, Rice herself told Al Arabiya-TV; she didn't provide details. The attitude toward Olmert's domestic problems is being seen in Jerusalem as an insult and as a reflection of the differences in approach within George W. Bush's administration. Just a week has passed since the President expressed his support for Olmert, only a few hours after the release of the Winograd report. Rice has reasons to be angry at Olmert, who has not really been enthusiastic about her diplomatic efforts in the region; before one of her recent visits, he embarrassed her by publicizing a phone conversation that he had had with the President." II. "The Witness and the State" Senior columnist Nahum Barnea wrote on page one of the mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot (5/11): "Olmert heaved a sigh of relief on Thursday: The transcript of his testimony to the Winograd Commission, which was published on Thursday morning, includes very few words that could embarrass him. The burden of embarrassment falls mainly on the shoulders of some of the commission members.... The members of the commission were not there to conduct a journalistic interview with Olmert. Anyone who reads the praise showered upon him by [commission member] Prof. Ruth Gavison, and here and there, in slightly less polished terms, by Prof. Yehezkel Dror as well, finds it difficult to understand how they conform to the final text of the report.... The commission chose to disqualify for publication a substantial portion of the exchanges of words between its members and the witnesses. Sources in the Prime Minister's Office who received the full transcript on Thursday argue that the sections that were shelved included a further set of compliments for Olmert. Gavison praised him for his decision to continue the warfare after the cease-fire resolution, and also praised him for the content of UN Security Council Resolution 1701." III. "The Hysteria" Editor-in-Chief Amnon Dankner wrote on page one of the popular, pluralist Maariv (5/11): "For a few days it appeared as if the Winograd Commission was a court in which Olmert and Peretz were found guilty of terrible acts of malice, such as collaborating with the enemy or pouring sugar into the fuel tanks of the IDF tanks.... Of course, had the fruits of such a consultation [with the chief of staff and high-ranking officers] been, God forbid, ground operations that would have caused hundreds of fatalities, imagine what sharp words the commission would have used for the fact that the Prime Minister preferred external misguided counsel over the levelheaded and restrained proposal of Dan Halutz to settle for aerial activity for the time being. But who feels like considering such things when a general fanfare is heard of cleansing ourselves in the blood of leaders, of slaughtering scapegoats and of the foolish and false hope that we can solve the problems by dismissals?.... The near-complete media consensus for the dismissals stems from the media's thirst for drama, from the smugness of self-aggrandizing writers who have become kingmakers and king-deposers, and from theQense of bitterness of journalists who praised the decision to go to war, and called for a comprehensive ground operation that could have ended in heavy disaster and are now reorganizing reality backwards and forwards in order to come out looking good." IV. "Let Olmert Not Botch Peace, Too" Senior columnist and longtime dove Yoel Marcus wrote in Ha'aretz (5/11): "The Winograd Commission will take care of teaching Olmert how to run a war. But how to prevent the next one is something he'll have to learn on his own. The one escape hatch left to Olmert after his inevitable fall is to keep the next war from breaking out. As someone who supported Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan and promised to continue in his path by means of convergence (to the 1967 borders),the question is whether he is prepared to start immediate talks with the Arab countries, including Syria, on the basis of the SAUDI plan. This is the best plan the Arabs have offered us to date because all the details need mutual consent. Moderate Arab states are just as worried about confrontational Islam as we are, and ISRAEL should take advantage of that to reach an agreement. If Olmert has the guts, let's see him do something. A leader who doesn't know how to run a war and doesn't know how to make peace should go home." ¶V. "In the Shadow of the Army" Senior columnist and chief defense commentator Zeev Schiff wrote on page one of Ha'aretz (5/11): "The main conclusion emerging from the testimony given to the Winograd Commission by the three most important players -- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and former chief of staff Dan Halutz -- is that the army dominates in its relationship with the government. This was especially true in view of the political leadership's lack of security-related experience. The conclusion is that the ISRAEL Defense Forces has too big an impact on decision making." VI. "The Next Elections" Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, President of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, who served as (Meretz) education minister, wrote in Maariv (5/11): "The big fear is that the crisis over the Lebanon War will bring forth an extremist nationalist-religious-ultra-Orthodox government.... This would be a government without maneuvering room that would increase Israel's isolation and create an economic disaster.... The resignation [of Olmert and Peretz] is indispensable for one main reason: To strengthen the moderate forces in Israeli society -- the Labor Party and Kadima -- and to avert an extremist right-wing-ultra-Orthodox government. The 'public opinion makers' must free themselves from the fetters of daily events and look at the true threats lying at Israel's doorsteps and in-house." CRETZ