ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION

UNCLAS TEL AVIV 001710 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. Iran ¶2. Mideast -------------- Key stories in the media: -------------- Yesterday all media reported that on Friday Saudi Arabia sharply rejected American calls for gestures toward Israel. The Jerusalem Post noted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who appeared alongside Saudi FM Prince Saud al-Faisal at a press conference in Washington, downplayed his comments and the extent to which the attitude damages the United StatesQ Arab-Israeli peace program. Over the weekend leading media cited a proposed draft of an updated political platform to be discussed at FatahQs general conference starting tomorrow in Bethlehem: no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; strategic dialogue with Iran; and settlement freeze as precondition to renewing talks. HaQaretz reported that Israel has prevented a number of senior Fatah representatives from Lebanon from participating in the conference. Israel Radio reported that Western intelligence sources have told the British daily The Times that Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and that it is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb. Leading media reported that the police recommended on Sunday that the state indict FM Avigdor Lieberman, saying that evidence exists to back suspicions that he had taken bribes, fraudulently received goods, violated his public office, obstructed justice, harassed witnesses, and laundered million of shekels using a host of shell companies and bank accounts. HaQaretz and Maariv reported that Lieberman allegedly illegally pocketed more than 10 million shekels (around $2.5 million). The media quoted Lieberman as saying that, as with other cases against public figures, these charges will be dropped. HaQaretz and Israel Radio reported that the U.S. and the U.N. sharply condemned the eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and their replacement with Jewish families yesterday. HaQaretz reported that diplomats from the U.S. Embassy sent a protest letter to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, stressing the move went against the spirit of the Roadmap. The diplomats said a high-level protest will be communicated to Israel later on Monday. The move follows the High Court of JusticeQs decision to restore the property to Jewish ownership. (The QCommittee of the Sephardic Community in Jerusalem had purchased it in the late 19th Century.) Yesterday The Jerusalem Post reported that President Obama is pressing to halt U.S. Jews plans to buy land in East Jerusalem. Leading media reported that yesterday Israel opened a road from Hebron to the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba to Palestinian traffic for the first time in eight years. Yesterday Maariv cited IsraelQs anger over BritainQs financing of Palestinian construction in East Jerusalem. HaQaretz reported that on Thursday Israel asked the Spanish government to halt its funding for the human rights group Breaking the Silence, which had been critical of the IDF for its conduct during Operation Cast Lead. HaQaretz quoted Judge David Shoham of the Ramle MagistrateQs Court as saying last week that Israeli authority applies to disputed territory near Latrun. The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom reported that yesterday the IDF and Treasury were at loggerheads over the significance of a cost-saving plan that was approved over the weekend by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and that is meant to save the military over 100 million shekels (around $25 million) annually. HaQaretz reported that the IAF is considering buying T-50 Golden Eagle fighter jets from South Korea. The planes, produced by Korean Airspace in partnership with Lockheed Martin, would be used by pilot school cadets in advanced stages of combat pilot training. Leading media reported that IsraelQs National Fraud Unit arrested seven Israelis and Americans on the morning of August 2on suspicion of a large-scale scam against U.S. tax authorities. According to an initial probe, 62-year-old Jerusalem resident Marvin Berkowitz, who holds both Israeli and American citizenships, obtained the personal data of American prisoners, posed as them and appealed to the U.S. tax authorities for tax refunds due from the period prior to their incarceration. The money, at times amounting to tens of thousands of dollars a case, was then deposited in Israeli bank accounts. IDF Radio reported that Berkowitz is a convicted felon who immigrated to Israel in 2003. All mainstream media highlighted the murder of two young people and the wounding of fifteen others by an unknown assailant at Tel AvivQs gay and lesbian center on Saturday night. -------------- ¶1. Iran: -------------- Block Quotes: -------------- "Opportunity for Sanctions" The independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz editorialized (8/2): QIn their talks in Jerusalem, [senior] U.S. officials proposed a middle way aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and at averting a regional war. The public statements by Benjamin Netanyahu indicate that the American message has been received in Jerusalem. The Prime Minister has softened his rhetoric on Iran. He has stopped talking about a Qsecond HolocaustQ and has made it clear that he, like his predecessors, sees the Iranian threat as an international problem, not just an Israeli one. This is a welcome development, and it is incumbent upon him to continue to coordinate with Washington on the issue. -------------- ¶2. Mideast: -------------- Block Quotes: -------------- ¶I. "Back to Those Noes" Veteran journalist and television anchor Dan Margalit wrote in the independent Israel Hayom (8/2): QAt first Barack Obama bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia, and now Hillary Clinton has clashed with his foreign minister, but Riyadh is unwilling to make even the smallest symbolic gesture to Israel. It is in favor of Israeli-Palestinian peace, and mainly is in favor of reining in Iran on its way to producing nuclear weapons, but not at any price that the desert kingdom might have to pay. Then came the August 1 proposed draft platform for the Fatah congress, which included opposition to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. Palestine will be only for the Palestinians, but the Jewish people has no right to self-determination. These are the moderate Palestinians, the supposed peace-seekers who flood the Israeli media with fictions as if Nablus is almost New York. To the above we need to add Bashar Assad's statement that there would be no negotiations without Israeli consent in advance to a complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights. If that is the case, what then is going to have to be negotiated? That is the yield that we have harvested from the moderate Arab world, which declares its desire for peace, in the space of just a single weekend. It demonstrates that the fundamental American belief in unconditional cooperation with the Palestinians and the Saudis was a mistaken course of action. Senior officials in the Obama administration have begun to realize that Benjamin Netanyahu's slogan, Qif they give-they'll get,Q ought to be translated into English and Arabic. When Washington gives unilaterally, Riyadh and Ramallah take what they get free of charge. That is no way to build confidence. That is no way to build peace. That is only the way to build walls. A few days after the Six-Day War, Israel voiced its willingness to make far-reaching compromises with its Arab neighbors. As if it hadn't defeated them in an overtly defensive war. The Arab leaders convened in Khartoum, Sudan, and rejoined with their three famous noes to Israel-no to peace, no to recognition and no to negotiations. It takes a great deal of optimism to continue to hope that 2009 is not the same as 1967. II. "Netanyahu Is Fleeing the Challenge" Senior op-ed writer Akiva Eldar commented in the independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz (8/3): QThe Saudis announced Saturday that they will not open their skies to let our backpackers make their way to India, and unless there is some last-minute hiccup, the Fatah conference will announce that it is in no way willing to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. The Arabs are thus paying back the leader of the rightist camp who has taken his political life in his own hands and gained Qbroad national support for a Palestinian stateQ.... Avoiding the challenge to his new stance (even though he claims it is an old one) on solving the conflict raises the suspicion that the Prime Minister is counting on the Arabs' refusal to pay the cost of the entry ticket to the negotiating arena. Instead of paying the political price for the changes in the government's positions, he is passing the burden of proof onto the Arab side and is demanding that they alter their position. When terrorism is at a low, they raise the issue of a Jewish state; when the Americans demand that the Jews cease construction in the settlements, he demands that the Arabs embark on normalization. III. "Better Late than Never versus Too Little, Too Late" The Director of the Interdisciplinary Center's Global Research in International Affairs Center, columnist Barry Rubin, wrote in the conservative, independent Jerusalem Post (8/3): Q No one seems to realize, and it is better to avoid saying so in public, that Israel has won a tremendous diplomatic victory. Obama who, before running for office, was arguably hostile to Israel and who began his term as an incredibly popular new president by confidently issuing an ultimatum demanding Israel concede on the construction issue, has now for all practical purposes backed down. Of course, as always, much of the QcreditQ is due to a Palestinian leadership which made crystal-clear its intransigence on making peace, along with Arab regimes who told the Obama administration they wouldn't help. And of course as best-supporting actors, Iran and Syria also treated Obama with contempt and showed they weren't at all interested in any real compromise with the U.S. Indeed, the administration itself helped sabotage its own policy. By coming out of the starting-gate so critical of Israel, it unintentionally signaled to Arabs to sit back and enjoy a U.S.-Israel confrontation. And since the new U.S. government made its desire to avoid friction with Arabs or Muslims clear, they knew there would be no cost for defying Obama. In their basic course, Arab regimes and Iran, Israel and the Palestinians are not about to make huge changes. And so U.S. policy is the only aspect of the region that really shifts much. IV. "The Other Abu Mazen" Former Mossad Director Ephraim Halevy wrote in the mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot (8/2): QThese days, the Foreign Ministry is circulating a well-prepared document to all its delegations that refutes the claims that people are trying to make against Israel, the IDF and its commanding officers about the action taken in the Gaza Strip over the past eight years.... On the other hand, Israel is currently investing a good deal of hard work in its effort to assist, in every way possible, the Fatah movement to hold its congress in one of the West Bank cities.... But regrettably, forgetfulness and the ability to make others forget are not the exclusive province of Fatah leaders. Dealing with the threat of Israel and its officials in and out of uniform being dragged into international court has been imposed on it by Abu Mazen and those who obey him.... Only if its international diplomatic status is recognized as a political entity will [the Palestinian AuthorityQs] intentions be able to be realized. This is what Abu Mazen and his justice minister are working for. How will the directors of the security establishment explain to their underlings the meaning of the political echelon's longing to smear Abu Mazen while he works to fulfill the dream of having IDF officers sit on the defendants' bench in The Hague? When the Goldstone Report is published, every officer in the IDF will know that the major defendant is none other than Mahmoud Abbas. Can anyone explain to us the meaning of our policy in light of the reality that is taking shape? ¶V. QThatQs No Way to Make Peace Shlomo Avineri, Hebrew University Professor of Political Science and former director-general of the Foreign Ministry, wrote in Ha'aretz (8/2): QThe [Geneva Initiative] document is not a peace initiative, but rather a draft for an armed armistice that would make life in Israel and the Palestinian state one of mutual siege, full of suspicion and threats.... In short, this is an ineffective and unpractical militarization of peace arrangements. An early alert and security mechanism would have to be part of any arrangement, but a cumbersome, multidimensional and force-oriented system such as this is a recipe not for peace, but for friction and misunderstanding. It would make the people of Israel and Palestine the subjects of countless competing military, local and international authorities. Let's hope the U.S. administration realizes this, in case this bizarre program is ever presented to it. MORENO