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

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 09 TEL AVIV 006367 
 
SIPDIS 
 
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 
USCINCCENT MACDILL AFB FL FOR POLAD/USIA ADVISOR 
COMSOCEUR VAIHINGEN GE FOR PAO/POLAD 
COMSIXTHFLT FOR 019 
 
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 
 
 
-------------------------------- 
SUBJECTS COVERED IN THIS REPORT: 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶1.  Mideast 
 
¶2.  Paris Riots 
 
------------------------- 
Key stories in the media: 
------------------------- 
 
Israel Radio quoted PM Sharon as saying before the 
Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee this 
morning that Hamas members will not be able to walk 
free in the streets of Palestinian cities during 
elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council.  The 
Jerusalem Post reported that, just three days after 
Mofaz said that Israel would not interfere with the 
upcoming Palestinian elections, Sharon told the cabinet 
on Sunday that Israel rejects Hamas's participation in 
the elections.  The newspaper also quoted Sharon as 
saying that the election would not prove that the PA 
was democratic. 
 
Israel Radio reported that the Palestinians are not 
prepared to hand over to Israel closed-circuit 
television pictures from the Rafah crossing between 
Egypt and the Gaza Strip in real time, but only 24 or 
48 hours later. 
 
The political situation dominates the headlines: Sharon 
is slated to present three ministers -- Ehud Olmert as 
permanent finance minister, as well as Zeev Boim and 
Roni Bar-On -- for the Knesset's approval today, in 
what Ha'aretz says "is proving a crucial test of 
Sharon's ability to control his own faction."  Ha'aretz 
quoted Sharon associates as saying that if the 
appointments are defeated, "it will not pass without a 
response."  However, the newspaper writes that they 
declined to day what that response might be. 
 
Leading media reported that on Sunday, Minister-Without- 
Portfolio Matan Vilnai withdrew from the race for Labor 
Party chairmanship, and that party chairman Shimon 
Peres offered him the position of number 2 in the 
party, which could theoretically grant him the defense 
portfolio in the government. 
 
On Sunday, Maariv reported that the GOI has authorized 
the PA's procurement of ammunition through Egypt -- 
with U.S. funding.  Ha'aretz and The Jerusalem Post 
quoted EU officials as saying Sunday that the EU plans 
to announce the launch of a three-year mission today to 
help the PA build a credible police force.  The 
officials were quoted as saying that the decision by 
the EU foreign ministers will not mean European police 
officers patrolling the streets of Palestinian cities. 
Instead, the EU plans to provide 33 law-enforcement 
experts to advise the PA on police matters. 
 
This morning, Israel Radio quoted Nigel Roberts, World 
Bank Country Director for the West Bank and Gaza, as 
saying on the radio's Arabic-language service that 
Israel must prevent the situation in the PA from 
deteriorating. 
 
The Jerusalem Post reported that, in a leaflet 
distributed in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, the armed 
group of Fatah, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, voiced 
full support for Iranian President Mahmoud 
Ahmadinejad's statements in which he said that Israel 
"must be wiped off the map."  The newspaper writes that 
PA officials condemned the leaflet and told The 
Jerusalem Post it did not reflect the stance of the PA 
or its chairman, Mahmoud Abbas.  Yediot, Maariv and 
Israel Radio quoted Defense Ministry Shaul Mofaz as 
saying in an interview with Newsweek that Israel would 
not act militarily against Iran, but that the situation 
might change as Iran support terror against Israel and 
tries to procure nuclear weapons.  Israel Radio quoted 
Mofaz as saying in the interview that Iran was behind 
the Palestinian weapons ship Karine-A that was seized 
by the Israel Navy, in exchange for which Mofaz said 
that Yasser Arafat promised his support for terror 
groups that Iran would dispatch to the area. 
 
Ha'aretz cited an AP story that reported that the 
Italian Foreign Ministry stated on Sunday that Iran was 
isolating itself with its call for the destruction of 
Israel.  On Sunday, Ha'aretz cited a report in the 
German weekly Focus, according to which Syria and Iran 
are getting German technology through middlemen posing 
as representatives legitimate Russian industrial 
companies who send to both countries equipment 
initially being legally exported to Moscow. 
 
On Sunday, all media cited a report on Dutch television 
as saying that a Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin 
arrested last month allegedly hoped to shoot down an El 
Al airliner at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. 
 
During the weekend, Ha'aretz and other media cited 
several European newspapers as saying that Israel is to 
give the Vatican control over the Room of the Last 
Supper (the Cenacle) on Mount Zion.  In exchange, 
Israel would gain control of a 12th-century synagogue 
in Toledo, Spain, which became the Santa Maria la 
Blanca Church.  Ha'aretz reported that the Foreign 
Ministry has dismissed the reports as "nonsense," but 
that they have already aroused stormy reactions from 
religious factions warning against a change in the 
fragile status quo in relations among Christians, Jews, 
and Muslims.  Ha'aretz reported that GOI government 
sources called the Catholic proposal "insulting and 
unreasonable" and that they said an Israeli 
investigation indicated that the Vatican does not even 
own the Toledo church. 
 
On Sunday, all media cited a U.S. announcement that 
Israel has been reinstated to the group of countries 
taking part in the program to develop the next- 
generation combat plane, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. 
The newspapers wrote that the reversal followed a 
meeting in Washington between Mofaz and U.S. Defense 
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. 
 
SIPDIS 
 
The Jerusalem Post reported that Mofaz has pledged to 
demolish by January 2006 nine new permanent homes in 
the 30-family unauthorized outpost of Arnona in Judea 
(southern West Bank).  The newspaper writes that his 
decision is in response to a High Court of Justice 
filed in July by Peace Now. 
 
On Sunday, the media (banner in The Jerusalem Post) 
reported that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan canceled 
his scheduled trip to Tehran following Iranian 
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments calling for 
the annihilation of Israel. 
 
The Jerusalem Post cited the French daily Le Monde as 
reporting that Abbas has apparently asked French 
President Jacques Chirac to intervene in the 
construction of the Jerusalem light rail project 
because the route includes the "conquered territories" 
of Pisgat Zeev and French Hill.  The Jerusalem Post 
says that according to Le Monde, Chirac said he would 
look into the matter, but that according to the French 
Foreign Ministry, CGEA-Connex and Alsthom, the two 
companies building the project, are private companies 
and that the French government is not involved in the 
project in any way. 
 
On Sunday, major media reported that a mosaic and the 
remains of a building uncovered on the Megiddo prison 
grounds may belong to the earliest church in the world, 
according to preliminary excavation by the Israel 
Antiquities Authority. 
 
All media reported that the family of Ahmed al-Khatib 
from Jenin, a 12-year-boy fatally shot last week by IDF 
troops who mistook his toy gun for a real rifle, has 
donated his organs "for the sake of peace between 
peoples." 
 
Leading media reported that Genia Polis has died of her 
wounds from the October 26 Hadera suicide bombing, 
raising the death toll to six. 
 
On Sunday, Ha'aretz reported that Israel's Ambassador 
to the U.S., Danny Ayalon, will be forced to resign his 
post shortly, according to GOI officials who have 
looked over the Civil Service Commission's report on 
his affairs. 
 
On Sunday, The Jerusalem Post printed a Jewish 
Telegraphic Agency story, according to which Saudi- 
backed textbooks in the U.S. teach anti-Israel, anti- 
Jewish bias.  The report says that most U.S. taxpayers 
do not know they are funding those materials. 
 
During the weekend, all media reported on the 
continuation of the riots in France.  Leading media 
cited the State Department's warden message telling 
Americans to avoid those areas where violence may 
occur.  Maariv's banner on Sunday read: "The French 
Intifada." 
 
Ha'aretz reported that on Sunday, a U.S. citizen who is 
wanted by the FBI was arrested in Eilat by the 
Immigration Police.  The newspaper writes that the 47- 
year-old man, whose name was withheld by the police at 
the FBI's request, is suspected of serious sex crimes 
against several relatives, including his granddaughter. 
The man arrived in Israel in 1997. 
 
The Jerusalem Post printed the results of a survey 
conducted by the right-wing National Union, which show 
that a possible merger between the National Religious 
Party and the National Union into a joint religious 
Zionist list would create the second-largest party in 
the Knesset.  According to the poll, if Sharon leaves 
the Likud to form a new centrist party, such a new bloc 
would win 21 seats; alternatively, should Sharon stay 
on as Likud leader, it would win as many as 26 seats. 
 
------------ 
¶1.  Mideast: 
------------ 
 
                       Summary: 
                       -------- 
 
Senior op-ed writer Akiva Eldar opined in left-leaning, 
independent Ha'aretz: "Nothing could be further from 
Yitzhak Rabin's worldview than the substitution of 
dictates for dialogue." 
 
Liberal op-ed writer Ofer Shelach opined in the 
editorial of mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot 
Aharonot: "Shaming Hamas brings domestic praise, but 
only harms the real scene of events." 
 
Gerald M. Steinberg, the director of the Program on 
Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University and the 
Editor of "NGO Monitor," wrote in the conservative, 
independent Jerusalem Post: "The Palestinians now know 
that despite all of the constraints, Israel was able to 
defeat Arafat's war.... Another full-scale Palestinian 
terror campaign is unlikely." 
 
Zuhair Andrawus, Editor-in-Chief of the Arabic-language 
newspaper Kul Al-Arab, wrote in Yediot Aharonot: "If 
Israeli Arabs participate in the armed struggle they 
will lose their legitimacy in Israeli eyes.  Therefore 
we must not under any circumstances become part of that 
struggle." 
 
                     Block Quotes: 
                     ------------- 
¶I.  "Who Needs Abu Mazen" 
 
Senior op-ed writer Akiva Eldar opined in left-leaning, 
independent Ha'aretz (November 7): "If anyone should 
have been upset by Deputy Prime Minister and Acting 
Finance Minister Ehud Olmert's statement that the Oslo 
Accords helped to 'sober up the public,' which in turn 
paved the way for the disengagement from the Gaza 
Strip, it was not the 'Likud rebels,' who opposed the 
unilateral withdrawal.  Olmert's words should have 
outraged the leaders of the Labor Party, who claim to 
be following in the footsteps of the prime minister who 
paid with his life for seeking a peace agreement with 
the Palestinians.  Nothing could be further from 
Yitzhak Rabin's worldview than the substitution of 
dictates for dialogue.  Even in the darkest days of the 
suicide bombings, he viewed slamming the door in Yasser 
Arafat's face as giving in to terror." 
 
II.  "Cheap Words Exert a High Price" 
 
Liberal op-ed writer Ofer Shelach opined in the 
editorial of mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot 
Aharonot (November 7): "No emotion is more popular in 
Israel than hatred for Hamas.... All the experts on the 
subject say that the rise of Hamas stems from 
Palestinian desperation, the corruption and impotence 
of the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas's status as a 
clean organization, which sacrificed the largest number 
of casualties in the war with Israel.... Should Israel 
want to fight Hamas in a political war -- and it must 
do so -- it should ask itself how it can create hope 
and insert it in the Palestinian consciousness, in Abu 
Mazen, and in its own diplomatic course.  Shaming Hamas 
brings domestic praise, but only harms the real scene 
of events." 
 
III.  "The Yasser Arafat War Is Over" 
 
Gerald M. Steinberg, the director of the Program on 
Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University and the 
Editor of "NGO Monitor," wrote in the conservative, 
independent Jerusalem Post (November 6): "The four-plus 
years of Palestinian terror were planned and 
implemented under conditions that no longer exist.... 
Whatever comes next will be quite different, and 
requires appropriate policies.  One key difference is 
leadership, and, in particular, the end of the Arafat 
era.... [Mahmoud] Abbas also lacks the power to unite a 
divided and disheartened Palestinian population, as 
required in order to start another long and painful 
confrontation with Israel.  And if Abbas is replaced by 
someone else, the result will be similar. The age of 
all-powerful Arab dictators -- such as Saddam, Assad 
and Arafat - is over.  In addition, the broad 
international support that the Palestinians enjoyed for 
five years and was necessary for the terror campaign, 
has been seriously eroded.... Finally, the Palestinians 
now know that despite all of the constraints, Israel 
was able to defeat Arafat's war.... For all of these 
reasons, another full-scale Palestinian terror campaign 
is unlikely.  This does not mean that periodic 
carefully planned attacks will end -- these have been 
endemic to the Palestinian rejectionist ideology for 
decades.  Until this core rejectionism and incitement 
is finally abandoned, the accompanying violence will 
also continue, but this is not the same as the waves of 
mass terror during Arafat's war.  This may be of little 
comfort, but the threat should not be exaggerated 
unnecessarily." 
 
 
 
IV.  "Not Brothers in Arms" 
 
Zuhair Andrawus, Editor-in-Chief of the Arabic-language 
newspaper Kul Al-Arab, wrote in Yediot Aharonot 
(November 7): "All of us [Israeli Arabs] agree that 
successive Israeli governments intentionally 
discriminated against the Israeli Arabs and treated 
them as a foreign body, which perhaps explains the 
bleak situation to which we have come.  It is no 
accident that 50 percent of Israeli Arabs live below 
the poverty line (according to data of the [Israeli 
government's] Central Bureau of Statistics).  If 
Israeli Arabs participate in the armed struggle they 
will lose their legitimacy in Israeli eyes.  Therefore 
we must not under any circumstances become part of that 
struggle.  Our special situation as citizens who do not 
enjoy full equality in this country makes it imperative 
to avoid such acts.  Our struggle on behalf of our 
brothers, the Palestinians, must be conducted strictly 
in accordance with Israeli law. Any departure from this 
rule will provide a pretext for right-wing elements in 
Israel to demand our expulsion from our homeland.... 
Leaders of the Arab public in Israel are under an 
obligation to show responsibility and leadership and to 
declare that if an Israeli Arab joins one of the 
Palestinian organizations, this is an evil act which 
will bring nothing but trouble to the Arabs in this 
country.  Remaining silent on this issue is by far even 
worse." 
 
---------------- 
¶2.  Paris Riots: 
---------------- 
 
                       Summary: 
                       -------- 
 
Chief Economic Editor Sever Plotker opined in the 
editorial of mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot 
Aharonot: "Will the vision of a united democratic 
Europe succeed in incorporating the Islam of the 
immigrants and their children?  It is highly doubtful." 
 
 
 
 
 
                     Block Quotes: 
                     ------------- 
 
"Intifada in Paris" 
 
Chief Economic Editor Sever Plotker opined in the 
editorial of mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot 
Aharonot (November 6): "Muslim neighborhoods in the 
large European cities -- London, Hamburg, Madrid, Rome, 
Amsterdam, Paris -- serve today as incubators for 
fanaticism and terrorism, fertile ground for jihad and 
planning attacks against Israel.  The old-time 
community leadership, which advocated assimilation, has 
lost its authority and been replaced by various kinds 
of extremist religious preachers.... Fanatic Islam, 
wrote theorist Prof. Francis Fukuyama in 'The Wall 
Street Journal' this weekend, tells the children of the 
immigrants who they are: they are honored members of 
the nation of Islam, despite the fact that they live 
among the heretics.  Will the vision of a united 
democratic Europe succeed in incorporating the Islam of 
the immigrants and their children?  It is highly 
doubtful.  The existence of a militant Muslim minority 
was not taken into account in its planning.   Prof. 
Fukuyama states: European democracy, which is currently 
one of the main battlefields against Islamic terrorism, 
can therefore be expected to meet great trouble in the 
near future.  But it is already in trouble: the 
terrorism in London, the terrorist cells in Amsterdam 
and the Intifada in the suburbs of Paris are only the 
beginning, not the end." 
 
JONES