ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION

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SUBJECT: ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION

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SUBJECTS COVERED IN THIS REPORT:
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1. Iran


2. Mideast

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Key stories in the media:
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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.

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1. Iran:
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Block Quotes:
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"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.

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2. Mideast:
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Block Quotes:
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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