ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION

UNCLAS TEL AVIV 001974 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: -------------- Over the weekend, controversy over the GOIQs announcement that it would build 455 housing units in the West Bank dominated the media. The media reported that DM Ehud Barak approved the plan. Today HaQaretz reported that most of the housing approved by PM Benjamin Netanyahu was already under construction. On Sunday, Maariv and other media reported that on September 6 Netanyahu announced that at the three-way summit with President Obama and PA President Mahmoud Abbas, which is due to take place at the end of this month, he does not intend to announce a complete freeze, but rather only a Qreduction in the scale of construction.Q Maariv quoted Abbas as saying over the weekend that if construction continues, there will be no summit. The media reported that yesterday in MaQaleh Adumim and Hebron, right-wing activists protested against the expected construction freeze. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) was quoted as saying at the official ceremony marking 80 years of the massacre of 67Jewish residents of Hebron: QThose who believe that Jerusalem will rise from the Hebron disaster have learned nothing. Those who believe that by drying up Ariel and MaQaleh Adumim we will build Tel Aviv and Netanya may unfortunately eventually stumble where others have.Q The media reported that around 20 Peace Now demonstrators protested at the site of the MaQaleh Adumim rally. The media quoted White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as saying on Friday that Qthe United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop.Q The media reported that the EU also rebuked Israel on its new settlements plans. On September 7, HaQaretz quoted U.S. Government officials as saying that they have succeeded in extracting "pledges" from a number of Arab states to move toward normalization of relations with Israel. The officials, who refused to name the states in question, said that the promised gestures were offered in response to Israel's agreement to initiate a construction freeze in West Bank settlements. Speaking from Africa on Israel Radio this morning, FM Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel should review with the U.S. the assurances given by former President George W. Bush. Israel Radio reported that PM Netanyahu will visit Egypt next week to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Yesterday, The Jerusalem Post quoted senior officials as saying on September 6 that the Defense Ministry is preparing for the possibility that the U.S. will decide to leave missile defense systems in Israel following a joint missile defense exercise the two countries hold next month. Yediot reported that next Wednesday, Gaza-based families of Hamas prisoners detained in Israel will take part in a cross-border protest coordinated with Gilad ShalitQs family. Yesterday, Yediot reported that the Saudi Transport Minister objected to oveflights of his country by Israeli civilian airliners, saying that Qthe Israelis will defile the Islamic holy places. Maariv reported that a Palestinian family testified before the Military Police regarding Human Rights WatchQs claim that, during Operation Cast Lead, IDF soldiers killed 11 Palestinians who were holding white flags. Media quoted PM Netanyahu as saying at SundayQs cabinet meeting that the nearly one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union who have come to Israel since 1989 QrescuedQ the country and should be considered Qone of the greatest miracles that happened to the state. Yesterday, The Jerusalem Post reprinted a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report analyzing the role of Qinaccurate media reportsQ in disputes between the U.S. and Israel. Spats between the GOI and HaQaretz are mentioned in the Post story. Yediot reported that an anti-establishment Iranian cartoonist calling himself Qthe IranianQ is exposing his works at a Haifa exhibition. Yesterday, The Jerusalem Post published the results of a poll for The Israel Project that gathers Arab public opinion on a number of key issues: Hamas's approval rating has sunk to significantly low levels in the West Bank and even lower levels inside Gaza. The survey, conducted by Stan Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, included face-to-face interviews with hundreds of adults in Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza, along with a series of focus groups in Cairo and Ramallah. While the numbers indicate ongoing, deep hostility toward Israel in the Arab world, the poll also shows signs that powerful players in the region, such as Hamas, are in deep trouble at home, and that the people living under their direct rule are becomingly increasingly vocal in their criticism. According to the poll, 58% of Gazans said they disapprove of the job being done by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, while 42% of them said they "disapprove strongly." Fifty-seven percent of Palestinians in the West Bank also said they disapprove of Hamas, but only 16% disapproved "strongly." The poll also shows Fatah would beat Hamas by a solid 10 percentage points in both the West Bank and Gaza, if Palestinians were to vote in parliamentary elections today. While Fatah's popularity was much higher than Hamas's in the West Bank, by a 45-28% margin, Fatah was still able to edge Hamas by 3% in Gaza, where 33% of those polled said they favored Fatah, compared to 30% for Hamas. When asked who was responsible for the current crisis in Gaza, Israel was overwhelmingly blamed by all the groups polled. But while 5% of Egyptians and Jordanians blamed Hamas for the current crisis, 35% of Palestinians in the West Bank said Hamas was to blame, while 16% of Gazans agreed. Additionally, of all the places polled, Gazans made up the highest percentage -- 38% -- of those who said they believed that both Israel and Hamas, together, were responsible for the current Gaza crisis. Nonetheless, Gazans and Jordanians both showed a surprisingly high level of support for direct negotiations with Israel. More than half of those two groups -- 52% of those polled -- said they believed Palestinians should negotiate directly with Israel, accep its right to exist and honor past agreements. hirty-nine percent of Egyptians said the same, compared to 36% of Palestinians in the West Bank. Also surprising, Greenberg said, was that while 35% of the other groups polled stressed the importance of releasing Gilad Shalit, an overwhelming two-thirds of Gazans said the same. The poll also revealed that nearly a decade after the breakdown of the Camp David Accords between Yasser Arafat, then-US president Bill Clinton and then-prime minister Ehud Barak, a majority of those polled in Egypt, Jordan and the West Bank expressed regret that Arafat failed to accept the peace deal proposed there. Fifty-six percent of West Bank Palestinians said that in retrospect, they wished ARAFAT had accepted the agreement, while 50% of Jordanians and 39% of Egyptians said the same. In Gaza, 57% of those polled said they did not regret Arafat's rejection of the deal. Greenberg said that these West Bank results show a change of heart since the breakdown of the Camp David talks. -------------- Mideast: -------------- Block Quotes: -------------- ¶I. "Bibi Shall Not Fall Again" Senior columnist and longtime dove Yoel Marcus wrote in the independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz (9/8): QWhether Bibi's statements were coordinated or not, he is playing with fire with his construction games. The upcoming visit by U.S. Envoy George Mitchell will give us a better picture of where we stand. In any case, Obama has not been weakened to as great an extent as the Israeli media claims. Almost every president suffers a certain loss in popularity in public opinion polls at this stage of his term.... The question is, how long can Bibi satisfy the right wing while also reaching an understanding on the American plan to establish a Palestinian state as part of a pan-Arab arrangement? The Obama administration has made its expectations of Israel clear. And despite the threats of several right-wing politicians, it is unlikely that a majority to topple this government can be found.... Netanyahu may be playing a flip-flopping game, but he will soon have to make a decision. Not only because it is the majority's desire, but first and foremost because he doesn't want to lose the premiership yet again. And if any refrain is running through his head, it is probably something along the lines of the heroic poem about Masada: Bibi shall not fall again. II. "Four Hundred and Fifty-Five Frogs" Senior op-ed writer Akiva Eldar commented in Ha'aretz (9/8): QOn Sunday evening, after signing some of the authorizations needed to build 455 new housing units in West Bank settlements, Defense Minister Ehud Barak rushed from his ministry in Tel Aviv to a conference in Herzliya. There, the Labor Party Chairman declared that Qit is our obligation to support, soberly but with an open mind, the American initiative to bring about a comprehensive regional agreement in the Middle East.Q The only explanation for this is that Barak has reason to believe U.S. President Barack Obama will swallow another 455 frogs. III. "The Man Who Will Decide Former Meretz leader, former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, and chief Israeli promoter of the Geneva Initiative, wrote in the independent Israel Hayom (9/7): QThe idea that the construction of additional housing units must immediately be approved, beyond the thousands of units whose construction has already begun, and only then will construction be frozen -- though not in Jerusalem -- is doomed to failure. The Americans cannot accept such a scorched stew. The Palestinians cannot allow themselves to return to the talks on the basis of this formula, whereas the keepers of the faith in the Likud will not compromise on any freeze -- even if it is wrapped in a temporary expansion of construction in the settlements. In fact, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is stuck, shortly after his election, between a rock and a hard place. He has to calculate who is with him and who is against him. He is trying, naturally enough, to connect between his personal supporters, even if they are on the hawkish side of the map, and the more moderate figures in his camp, whom he joined following the Bar Ilan speech. This is Netanyahu's moment. The ball is in his court, and the decision has to be made in the period between the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur [roughly September 19 through 28]. Netanyahu can expect a majority in the Knesset for any decision that he makes. If he sticks to the formula of a freeze following an expansion of construction, he will enjoy the support of a majority of his current coalition; if he agrees to a historic move of a real construction freeze and launching serious negotiations with the PLO leadership on a final status arrangement within six months, he will gain the support of part of his faction's Knesset members, as well as the support of those on the left of it].... However, it is reasonable to assume that choosing the second option sends a chill through him. Every prime minister in the history of the state -- both on the Right and on the Left -- has preferred to act with a broad coalition, from the center rightwards.... But the distance from being caught between a rock and a hard place, to the uplifting situation he can reach between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, could be shorter than a stone's throw. IV. QOne More Tug and the Rope Will Break Conservative columnist Nadav Haetzni wrote in the popular, pluralist Maariv (9/6): QIn practice, Netanyahu is being led today by Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, and even though only half of the Labor Party's Knesset members vote for him, he has become the Labor Party voters' prime minister.... [Netanyahu] has got enough rope to maneuver cleverly, in hopes that he would not take his eyes off the goal for which he had promised to strive. But lately, it also has become clear to the leaders of Netanyahu's camp that he is going back to the old, disliked pattern of his first term, according to which, when faced with pressure from the left wing, the press and international elements, he changed his skin, signed the Hebron Agreement, embraced Arafat, and gave his consent to the Wye Memorandum. ¶V. "Plain Speaking" The conservative, independent Jerusalem Post editorialized (9/7): QTime will tell if the Israelis are right about having changed American minds [on settlement construction freeze]. To give Netanyahu his due, at his Bar-Ilan speech in June, he tried speaking plain about settlements and about the root causes of the conflict, but much of what he said was lost on his American and European audiences. The Premier urged the Palestinian leadership to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of its own. Abbas said no. Netanyahu implored them to solve the Palestinian refugee issue outside Israel's borders. Abbas ignored him. The Premier urged them to negotiate the establishment of a non-militarized Palestinian state. Abbas's advisers scorned the notion. Netanyahu also tried some plain speaking to the settlers, saying Israel did not want to rule over the Palestinians. Granted, it would have been better had he stated unequivocally that even a deal with the Palestinians he could live with would entail uprooting communities outside the settlement blocs. Yet given the constraints of our political system and the inhospitable political environment in Europe and in Washington, there is just so much plain speaking Netanyahu can usefully do. So maybe the real problem, in this instance, is not that Netanyahu doesn't speak plainly, but that ears attached to closed minds -- on the Israeli Right, at the EU and in Washington -- have made it difficult for his words to strike a chord. VI. QAmerica Is Calling for Obama Columnist Shmuel Rosner, who was HaQaretzQs correspondent in Washington, wrote in Maariv (9/8): QObamaQs first year is slipping between his fingers.... The legislators are edgy and jumpy.... In April, the settlements were an Qobstacle to peaceQ; they have now become an obstacle, a disturbance, in ObamaQs path as well. He has many reasons to want to clinch a deal with Netanyahu -- one of them is that he doesnQt have time to take care of trivia. VII. QCarter, the Enemy Of Peace Conservative Op-Ed Page Editor Ben-Dror Yemini wrote in Maariv (9/8): QThere are thousands of residents in [Jimmy] CarterQs home state in Atlanta who were evicted from their homes because they donQt have the money to make mortgage payments. The rights of the Smith family, which was thrown into the street in Atlanta, are far more substantiated than the rights of the [East Jerusalem] Hanoun family. But Carter is not looking for justice. He is looking to defame. The criticism over the eviction of the Hanoun family could be justified.... The Palestinians underwent the experience of flight and expulsion in the wake of a declaration of a war of destruction against the fledgling Jewish state. The Jews in Arab states underwent a similar experience -- flight, expulsion, and property confiscation -- although they did not declare war on the Arab states. Whose rights, therefore, are greater? Did Carter ever tell the Palestinians this basic truth? We know the answer. Like other Qpeace activists,Q he treats the Arabs in general, and the Palestinians in particular, like retarded children. They mustnQt be told the truth. They mustnQt be told that if there are rights to be had -- then they are for both Jews and for Arabs. And if there are no rights -- then neither the Jews nor the Arabs have them.... Israel can and should be criticized for the settlement enterprise. Sometimes this criticism is justified. But Carter, like thousands of other Qpeace activists,Q is not bringing peace any closer. Their demonization of Israel strengthens the peace rejectionists.... Carter wrote an article [in the Washington Post] condemning Israel. One of many. Instead of being an honest critic, Carter is becoming part of the incitement mechanism against Israel. Carter is capable of much more. He succeeded in other regions. For some reason, when he deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he loses his fairness and his balance. This doesnQt help promote peace. Just the opposite. This is CarterQs contribution to strengthening Palestinian rejectionism and to distancing the chance of peace. VIII. QAmericaQs Obsession with Dialogue The Director of the Interdisciplinary Center's Global Research in International Affairs Center, columnist Barry Rubin, wrote in the conservative, independent Jerusalem Post (9/7): QSyria won't invade Iraq, it will just keep welcoming, training, arming, financing, transporting and helping the terrorists who do so. The Obama administration has declared the war on terrorism to be over. But it also said that the U.S. viewed al Qaida and those working with it as enemies. The Syria-based Iraqi terrorists fall into that category. America sacrificed hundreds of lives for Iraq's stability. Most of those soldiers and civilian contractors were murdered by the very terrorists harbored by Syria. How can the administration distance itself from this conflict instead of supporting its ally and trying to act against the very terrorists who have murdered Americans?.... how can any ally have confidence that the U.S. Government will support it if menaced by terrorism or aggression? It can't. The problem with treating enemies better than friends is that the friends start wondering whether their interests are better served by appeasing mutual enemies or mistreating an unfaithful ally which ignores their needs. CUNNINGHAM