This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 06 TEL AVIV 003951 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA, NEA/IPA, NEA/PPD 
 
WHITE HOUSE FOR PRESS OFFICE, SIT ROOM 
NSC FOR NEA STAFF 
 
JERUSALEM ALSO FOR ICD 
LONDON ALSO FOR HKANONA AND POL 
PARIS ALSO FOR POL 
ROME FOR MFO 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: IS KMDR MEDIA REACTION REPORT
SUBJECT: ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION 
 
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SUBJECTS COVERED IN THIS REPORT: 
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Mideast 
 
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Key stories in the media: 
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Israel Radio cited police concerns that anti- 
disengagement activists will step up their deterrence 
efforts, including causing damage to infrastructure 
facilities.  Jerusalem Post reported that Vice PM Ehud 
Olmert lashed out on Wednesday at settlers who say that 
the fate of Jerusalem will be the same as the Gaza 
Strip if the disengagement plan is implemented, calling 
such settlers "stupid." 
 
Israel Radio reported that IDF Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Harel 
met on Wednesday night with Palestinian Deputy Interior 
Minister, Gen. Jamal Abu Zayd, to discuss ways to 
enhance security coordination in preparation for the 
disengagement. 
 
Ha'aretz reported that Israel has agreed to consider a 
number of proposals for creating an overland connection 
between Gaza and the West Bank following the 
disengagement, as well as measures that will make it 
much easier for people and goods to enter Israel from 
the territories.  However, the newspaper quoted a 
senior Israeli source as saying: "Everything will 
depend on security.  If they [the Palestinians] give us 
a few months of quiet, we can agree to allow trucks to 
pass.  But an event like the suicide bomber [caught] at 
Erez Checkpoint on Monday distances this."   James 
Wolfensohn, the Quartet's envoy on the disengagement, 
was quoted as saying in an interview with Ha'aretz 
Wednesday that over the past two weeks, there has been 
significant progress in Israel-Palestinian talks on 
economic and civil aspects of the disengagement, which 
had previously been stuck due to a dispute over the 
agenda.  Wolfensohn was also quoted as saying that 
trust between Israelis and Palestinians is at a 10-year 
low.   Ha'aretz and Israel Radio reported that U.S. 
officials visited the Gaza Strip last week to prepare 
Wolfensohn's visit in the Strip, despite the travel ban 
imposed by the U.S. administration since the October 
2003 attack on a U.S. embassy convoy. 
 
Ha'aretz reported that Israel and Egypt are close to 
agreeing on the deployment of 800 Egyptian policemen 
along the western side of the Philadelphi route on the 
Rafah border.  On the other hand, the newspaper 
believes that Israel is retracting for now the idea of 
expanding development in the border segment south of 
the Gaza Strip -- between Kerem Shalom in the north and 
Eilat in the south.  Israel Radio quoted a senior GOI 
official as saying that the forthcoming agreement does 
not constitute a change on the ground, does not modify 
the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, and does not 
constitute a military threat.  Israel Radio reported 
that several members of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs 
and Defense Committee, including chairman Yuval 
Steinitz, strongly objected to Egyptian troops being 
positioned along the border. 
 
Jerusalem Post quoted FM Silvan Shalom as saying on 
Wednesday that Israel would take control of areas in 
Gaza for a few days if there is going to be fire 
leading up to and during the Gaza withdrawal, even if 
it means harming innocent Palestinians.  Yediot and the 
ultra-Orthodox newspapers quoted Col. Brig. Gen. Eival 
Giladi, head of coordination and strategy at Sharon's 
bureau, as saying that Israel will use fighter jets if 
the Palestinians attack it during the disengagement. 
 
Based on international media reports citing a British 
announcement, Ha'aretz and Israel Radio reported that 
Quartet representatives -- Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, 
Russian FM Sergei Lavrov, and top EU foreign affairs 
official Javier Solana -- will meet in London today to 
discuss the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.  Ha'aretz 
also cited Reuters as saying that foreign ministers of 
the G8 group of industrialized nations will meet in 
London today to discuss the pullout. 
 
Israel Radio quoted senior Palestinian sources as 
saying that Palestinian PM Ahmed Qurei met in Nablus on 
Wednesday with representatives of militants wanted by 
Israel and negotiated their joining the PA's forces. 
Leading media reported that wanted members of Fatah 
opened fire on Qurei in Nablus's Balata refugee camp. 
 
All media cited the belief of senior Labor Party 
officials that the party's primaries will be postponed 
because of suspected fraudulent registration of voters. 
 
Yediot reported that Jomhury e-Islami, a conservative 
Iranian newspaper associated with the regime, has 
accused Yediot's special envoy to Tehran Orly Azolai of 
having visited Iran in order to generate a conflict 
among the candidates in the presidential election. 
Yediot cited Iran's Culture Ministry as saying that 
Azolai never visited Iran. 
 
Jerusalem Post and other media reported that the IAF 
destroyed four Qassam rockets on the outskirts of the 
Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip early 
Wednesday meeting. 
 
Ha'aretz quoted Transportation Minister Meir Sheetrit 
at saying at the Knesset on Wednesday that Islamic 
Jihad is initiating, planning, and carrying out acts of 
terror in keeping with directives coming from Damascus. 
Maariv reported that this week, U.S. helicopters 
launched missiles at positions of Syria's border guard 
at the Syrian-Iraqi border.  Maariv also quoted the CEO 
of a Russian weapons firm as saying as saying that a 
new Russian-Syrian arms deal is in the making. 
Yediot cited a "secret document" drafted by the Foreign 
Ministry, according to which Libyan leader Muammar 
Qadhafi is interested in relations with Israel. 
 
Jerusalem Post notes that Secretary Rice's Cairo speech 
failed to impress intellectuals in the Arab world. 
 
Citing the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jerusalem Post 
cited a survey issued this week by The Israel Project, 
a Washington-based group seeking to strengthen Israel's 
image, which found an increasingly hostile attitude to 
Israel among graduate students at top U.S. 
universities. 
 
Ha'aretz reported that the Foreign Ministry's 
Appointments Committee, headed by FM Shalom, named 
Jeremy Issacharoff on Wednesday as political attache to 
Washington, the No. 2 post at the embassy. 
 
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Mideast: 
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                       Summary: 
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Independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz editorialized: "The 
arrogance broadcast by Israel's representative [Ariel 
Sharon] merely emphasized the weakness of his partner, 
[Mahmoud Abbas,] and served no purpose, even though the 
demand for an end to the terror is justified." 
 
Liberal op-ed writer Yael Paz-Melamed wrote in popular, 
pluralist Maariv: "Most of the value systems of the two 
camps [i.e. the Left and the Right] are substantively 
different, and this leads to a difference in patterns 
of behavior." 
 
Settler leader Israel Harel wrote in Ha'aretz: "Today 
... there [still] remains a sliver of hope that the 
evil decree [of disengagement] can be prevented." 
 
Middle East affairs commentator Guy Bechor, a lecturer 
at the Interdisciplinary Center, wrote in mass- 
circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot: "Israel, which 
established the Palestinian Authority in the framework 
of the Oslo Accords, now faces a political body that 
has no intention of reaching a political arrangement 
with it." 
                     Block Quotes: 
                     ------------- 
 
¶I.  "A Chill Wind at the Summit" 
 
Independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz editorialized (June 
23): "The meeting between Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud 
Abbas did indeed seem, as the Palestinians claim, like 
one between a senior commander and a junior officer who 
did not carry out his mission as expected, or like one 
between a landlord and a tenant who did not pay his 
rent on time.... Sharon could have skipped the 
humiliation and focused on his demands.  If he was 
trying to win the hearts of his voters, he did so at 
too high a cost.... The arrogance broadcast by Israel's 
representative merely emphasized the weakness of his 
partner, and served no purpose, even though the demand 
for an end to the terror is justified.  In the end, 
arrogance will not benefit the Israeli public, which 
would be better served by a strong and independent 
interlocutor.... It is doubtful Abbas will be capable 
of providing Israel with security, or even a promise of 
security, in the foreseeable future; and it is doubtful 
that Sharon is capable of promising the Palestinians a 
continuation of the diplomatic process after the 
withdrawal from Gaza.  His political situation does not 
enable him to make promises.  The hope is that the very 
fact of the withdrawal from Gaza will improve the 
atmosphere between the parties and set in motion the 
dynamic of the diplomatic process, and that a 
withdrawal successfully coordinated with the PA will 
open the door to a more optimistic next step." 
 
II.  "The War of the Orange and the Blue" 
 
Liberal op-ed writer Yael Paz-Melamed wrote in popular, 
pluralist Maariv (June 23): "The difference -- the 
ostensibly substantive difference -- between the 
rallying of the Right and the silence and apathetic 
reaction of the Left is not an indicator of how 
strongly the Left is committed to its ideology.  It is 
essentially an indicator of the ideology itself.  The 
worldview of the moderate Left, to which many people in 
the center of the political spectrum also subscribe, is 
one of commitment to life, even at the cost of land and 
walls [such as the Western wall].  Life is the supreme 
value.  It comes before the Greater Land of Israel, and 
long before violent and uncompromising conflicts over 
some buildings from illegal settlement outposts. 
Moreover, this camp feels a genuine revulsion for 
extremism in any form, for fanaticism arising mainly 
out of religious messianism.  Most of the value systems 
of the two camps are substantively different, and this 
leads to a difference in patterns of behavior.  The 
right-wing camp, and particularly the extreme Right, 
believes that almost anything is permissible for the 
sake of the Land of Israel -- to break laws, to disrupt 
normal life, to deprive another people of liberties, to 
humiliate them, to crush them into the dust.  For what 
does it matter?  The main thing is that they should 
understand that the Land of Israel is something 
sacred....  He who believes in life stays at home to 
live it.  He works hard to succeed in maintaining his 
priorities in life.  That is why you will see many more 
[anti-disengagement] orange ribbons on the roads.  That 
is why the Left ought not to have fallen into this 
trap, by trying to create a presence of [pro- 
disengagement] blue ribbons.  This is not the way of 
the Left." 
 
III.  "Still a Sliver of Hope" 
 
Settler leader Israel Harel wrote in Ha'aretz (June 
23): "Many of those who supported the disengagement 
yesterday are today voicing serious doubts as to Prime 
Minister Ariel Sharon's true motives and the prices -- 
strategic, ideological and human -- that we are going 
to pay.  With the terror continuing, coupled with 
threats that if Sharon is slow in implementing 
additional withdrawals, the terror of the past years 
will be just a preface to the true war of terror, it is 
natural for people to be changing their positions.... 
Blocking roads and other such 'dedicated' antics will 
not open the floodgates, which is the only thing at 
this late hour that can prevent the historic mistake of 
the uprooting.... Today, less than 60 days before the 
first policemen report to Gush Katif and begin to tear 
the settlers from their homes, their lands and their 
communities, there [still] remains a sliver of hope 
that the evil decree can be prevented." 
 
IV.  "Stop the Show" 
 
Middle East affairs commentator Guy Bechor, a lecturer 
at the Interdisciplinary Center, wrote in mass- 
circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot (June 23): 
"Israel, which established the Palestinian Authority in 
the framework of the Oslo Accords, now faces a 
political body that has no intention of reaching a 
political arrangement with it, but rather intends to 
continue to undermine Israel with temporary 'hudnas' 
[ceasefires] in order to prepare militarily....   Even 
the methods of action by the current top Palestinian 
leaders, Qurei and Abbas, very much resemble those of 
Yasser Arafat at the time: dissatisfaction as a 
strategic policy, zero self-responsibility, Israel is 
always to blame and outward weakness behind which lies 
an aspiration for power.  Help me, Abu Mazen asked the 
Prime Minister this week, as if he did not have 
thousands of troops under his authority.  In this too, 
Abbas continues his predecessor's policy of the 
powerful moaning over their fate.  The time has come to 
remove the veil enveloping our region, the time has 
come to declare that from now on there will be no more 
steps of  'coordination' with the PA or various 'relief 
measures,' and that Israel will carry out disengagement 
exactly as it planned from the outset: unilaterally, 
with no phony coordination.  If the PA wants to take 
control of the territory, that's its business and the 
business of its Arab sisters.  Disengaging from Gaza 
and northern Samaria [the northernmost part of West 
Bank] should therefore also be a disengagement from the 
PA, and from all the evils it has brought on Israel 
since the day of its establishment and until today." 
 
CRETZ