ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION

UNCLAS TEL AVIV 001648 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: -------------- ¶1. Mideast ¶2. Iran -------------- Key stories in the media: -------------- Israel Radio quoted Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley as saying yesterday, at the daily State Department briefing: QThere had been some reporting after yesterdayQs briefing that I think represents some misinterpretation. ThereQs been some reporting that the United States is contemplating financial or economic pressure against Israel. We are not contemplating such action. HaQaretz reported that he U.S. administration has issued a stiff warning to Israel not to build in the area known as E-1, which lies between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim. Anychange in the status quo in E-1 would be "extremel damaging," even "corrosive," HaQaretz quoted th message as saying. Makor Rishon-Hatzofe reportd that the Qmost influentialQ Center for America Progress, which is the Qclosed research center to Obama, has issued a document calling for removingJerusalem from Israeli sovereignty. Major meda reported that yesterday PM Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Arab world to negotiate with Israel on the Arab League's peace initiative, hinting that certain alterations in it would help to advance peace in the region. The Jerusalem Post emphasized NetanyahuQs praise of the QspiritQ of the initiative. Speaking at a reception marking EgyptQs Revolution Day at the Egyptian ambassador's home in Herzliya, Netanyahu said, "We appreciate the efforts by Arab states to advance the peace initiative. If these proposals are not final, they can create an atmosphere in which a comprehensive peace can be reached." QWe hope in the months ahead to forge peace with the Palestinians and to expand that into a vision of a broader regional peace," Netanyahu added. Maariv quoted President Shimon Peres as saying at the ceremony that President Mubarak is capable of being the man who will lead to peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, was quoted as saying in an interview with HaQaretz that the vast majority of American Jews back a settlement freeze. Charles Bronfman, one of the Jewish peopleQs most prominent philanthropists, was quoted as saying in an interview with HaQaretz (English Ed.) that what keeps Israel and U.S. Jewry apart is not lack of religious pluralism, but lack of peace in the Middle East. Reviewing the current state of U.S.-Israel relations, incoming Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren granted a particularly optimistic interview to YediotQs Washington correpondent Orly Azolai, who remarks that his dream may be disturbed by an QAmerican hammer.Q Maariv (Shmuel Rosner) reported that the latest flare-up between the Israeli government and the U.S. administration resulted from a conversation between Oren and the State DepartmentQs Jacob Levy. Yediot (Alex Fishman) reported that over the past few months Israeli and Palestinian officials have drafted a detailed security annex to a future agreement establishing a Palestinian state (including a withdrawal calendar, warning systems, and even GPS devices to be distributed to drivers entering the West Bank). Yediot says that this is how Qwolves are supposed to dwell with sheep.Q The newspaper reported that the document, which was completed around two months ago, will be officially presented this week to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor James Jones, and that the Pentagon, the White House, and the foreign ministries of France, Egypt, Britain, and Jordan have already viewed it over the past few weeks.. The Jerusalem Post quoted Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz as saying yesterday that growing tensions between Israel and the U.S. over construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank will not affect U.S. loan guarantees. HaQaretz and other media reported that yesterday the UN Security Council accused Hizbullah of violations of UNSC Resolution 1701. The Council convened upon a request by the U.S. HaQaretz and Israel Radio quoted IsraelQs Ambassador to the UN Gabriel Shalev as saying that, for the first time, a UN body addressed such Israeli complaints. HaQaretz reported that yesterday Kyler Kronmiller, a diplomat at the American Consulate-General in Jerusalem, visited the protest tent of two East Jerusalem Palestinian families served with an eviction order. The newspaper said that during an initial visit there two weeks ago, Kronmiller did not enter the tent in order not to publicly expose a U.S. protest against house demolitions. The Jerusalem Post reported that yesterday the state called on the High Court of Justice to reject a petition by the NGO Yesh Din calling on it to demolish nine permanent residential buildings in Rehalim, an outpost established on state and private land without government permission in 1991. The Jerusalem Post reported that yesterday Vice PM and Regional Development Minister Silvan Shalom lashed out at the PA for not accepting IsraelQs offer to resume talks unconditionally. The Jerusalem Post reported that the IDF and the United States European Command conducted a joint exercise this week of the X-Band radar that is deployed in the Negev to check its interoperability with Israeli early-warning systems. Maariv reported that John Ging, Director of Operations of UNRWA, left Gaza for two weeks after he refused to hand over aid money to Hamas. Maariv and The Jerusalem Post cited IsraelQs concern that $900 million in U.S. aid to Gaza will be used for terror purposes. The media reported that PM Netanyahu plans to impose faction discipline on his Likud Party during the vote on the so-called "Mofaz Bill" this coming Monday, and any Knesset member who fails to vote with the coalition will be sanctioned. This decision is meant to prevent another humiliating defeat like the one Netanyahu's reform of the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) suffered on Wednesday, when he was forced to pull the bill at the last minute after several coalition members made it clear they planned to vote against, while others ostentatiously absented themselves from the hall. The "Mofaz Bill" would make it easier for a group of Knesset Members to split off from their party and form an independent faction. It is so called because Netanyahu hopes it will enable a group of MKs to quit the opposition Kadima party and join the government, and MK Shaul Mofaz is considered the most likely person to lead such a group. HaQaretz noted that Government Services Minister Michael Eitan (Likud),a staunch opponent of the QMofaz Bill,Q is a primary target of NetanyahuQs dismissal threat. Vice PM and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon (Likud),a close Netanyahu ally, skipped the vote on the ILA bill because he opposes it. However, HaQaretz and other media reported that Netanyahu is trying to reach an agreement with him. Russian Ambassador to Israel Piotr Stegniy was quoted as saying in an interview with HaQaretz that Russia has no desire to regain superpower status. He hinted that, when it comes to territorial compromie, small nations like Israel just cannot act like ig ones. Regarding the issue of weapons to Iran,Stegniy was also quoted as saying that his county honors an arms balance in this Qsensitive regin,Q and that it will not sell any weapons that wil truly upset this balance drastically. The meia reported that far-Right militants Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir (parliamentary aide to National Union Knesset Member Michael Ben-Ari),and Ben-Ari himself, plan to lead a march on Sunday in the Israeli-Bedouin Negev town of Rahat to protest what they call building violations there. The police have only authorized the participation of 60 people in the demonstration. HaQaretz (English Ed.) quoted a World Zionist Organization (WZO) official as saying that the expected election next month of Rabbi Michael Melchior, a dovish politician, will lead to a clash between the WZO and the Jewish Agency, chaired by the hawkish Nathan Sharansky. HaQaretz (English Ed.) reported that a group of 23 students from Jerusalem's Hebrew University came up with a small application which uses the Facebook "status line" to inform hundreds of thousands of users at any given moment about positive facts about Israel. Lawrence (Larry) Franklin, a former senior analyst at the Pentagon, who was accused of revealing secret information to Israel, was quoted as saying in an interview with HaQaretz that he had felt betrayed by then AIPAC officials Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman. However, Franklin was quoted as saying that he had broken the law by telling Rosen about internal rivalries within the U.S. administration. HaQaretz also quoted Franklin on the Iranian issue: QThe Israeli government's intelligence agencies must do everything short of attacking Iranian territory to disrupt the rule of Iran's military theocrats. To take the bait and bomb Iran's known nuclear facilities will gain some time, but it will unite Iranians behind a despised regime. Propaganda, cyberwar, sabotage all are viable weapons [in this struggle]." All secular media (lead stories in Yediot and Maariv) reported that several rabbis, three New Jersey mayors and two state legislators were among the 44 people arrested in New York and New Jersey yesterday in a sweeping corruption investigation that began as a probe into an international money laundering ring that operated between Brooklyn; Deal, NJ; Israel; and Switzerland, and trafficked in goods as diverse as human organs and fake designer handbags. Media reported that the key suspects are members of the Jewish-Syrian community in Brooklyn. Banners in Yediot: QThe Jewish QLaundryQQ and Maariv: QA Money-Laundering Synagogue. The Jerusalem Post cited the results of a poll carried out by the Maagar Mohot Survey Institute: 62% of Israelis believe that Palestinian leaders want to destroy Israel, not live alongside it. Yediot cited the results of a Pew survey: 71% of Israelis have a positive view of the U.S. However, Israel is the only reviewed country where the status of the U.S. has not dramatically increased recently. -------------- ¶1. Mideast: -------------- Block Quotes: -------------- "A QCrisisQ Manipulated" The conservative, independent Jerusalem Post editorialized (7/24): QDiplomacy involves an element of political manipulation -- sometimes even psychological warfare. WeQre witnessing this in the U.S.-Israel relationship. The Obama administration has made a strategic decision to pressure Israel pointlessly, relentlessly, and publicly, while, for now at least, asking little of the Palestinians. The diversionary issue employed in this campaign is housing construction over the Green Line. Washington cannot realistically think that Israel is going to knuckle under and stop building within strategic settlement blocs, or in post-Q67 Jerusalem. So it appears that the administration is engaging in confrontation for the sake of confrontation. The object? To gain credibility with the Arab world in the belief it will give them an incentive to make peace. ItQs the same failed approach pursued by practically every administration since 1967 -- only on hyper-drive. And this time, itQs characterized by manipulatively overplaying the chasm in the U.S.-Israel relationship.... In response, Israel engages in its own, clumsy manipulation.... The Netanyahu government is wrong to think that exacerbating the perception of a crisis in U.S.-Israel relations is the wisest method of setting Qred lines for future negotiations with the Palestinians.... ItQs a [very big] shame that the administration is expending so much energy on an approach that actually reduces the prospects of a breakthrough -- and that in so doing, it is employing manipulative tactics that make mainstream Israelis even more fearful of taking risks for peace. -------------- ¶2. Iran: -------------- Block Quotes: -------------- ¶I. "Last Train to Tehran" Senior columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in the mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot (7/24): QNetanyahu is out of whack. That's what his problem is. He zigzags between the trivial and the main thing. He has no compass. He has no sense of direction. On Sunday, [Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George] Mitchell will arrive. The next day Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will arrive, and on Tuesday National Security Adviser James Jones. Gates was the most outspoken, the most forthright against a clash with Iran. Israelis who met him received the impression that there had been a change in his position. He realizes that the Iranians are determined in their decision to move toward obtaining the bomb. Words will not divert them from their path. He also realizes that Iran is more vulnerable today than in the past to international economic pressure. Now is the time to get him moving.... Obama is losing stature, both in America and also in a large part of the world. II. "No Existential Threat form Iran" Gabi Sheffer, a liberal political science professor at the Hebrew University, wrote in the independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz (7/24): Q[Netanyahu government officials and senior IDF officers] repeat the same mantras that the current Iranian regime will continue to rule, that it will become even more extreme, that Iran will attain a nuclear military capability, that it will not hesitate to use it directly or through terrorist intermediaries, and that it would set off reactionary nuclear armament in other Middle Eastern countries which, in their view, would cause a disaster. Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and other politicians and generals in the West and Middle East have voiced more restrained fears.... There are three basic reservations regarding these much-talked-about concerns over Iran. First, like other small states, Iran seeks to attain nuclear weapons in order to deter other nuclear-armed states from attacking it. So if Iran is not attacked, it will not attack. Second, Iran's goal is primarily to boost its influence in the Muslim world. Third, and most important, with the exception of two atomic bombs that were needlessly used by none other than the democratic and liberal United States -- since Japan was very near surrender -- no other country possessing nuclear weapons has used them. The other reasons for not using nuclear weapons are numerous. The main reason is these states' fears, including Iran's, of a response by other nuclear-armed countries.... Other reasons for refraining from using nuclear weapons include moral considerations, fear of mistakenly striking allies in the region, concern over widespread destabilization and other related factors. The conclusion is that even if Iran attains nuclear weapons, it does not pose a real existential threat to other countries, Israel included. It would behoove Israeli politicians and defense officials to take these considerations into account and cease disseminating statements about the existence of this threat and military operations against Iran. Even if the Iranian threat is not completely imagined, it is completely weak and the Israeli public should understand this rather than allow itself to be dragged into supporting a destructive military operation. CUNNINGHAM