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

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 AMMAN 001914 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA/ARN, NEA/PA, NEA/AIA, INR/NESA, R/MR, 
I/GNEA, B/BXN, B/BRN, NEA/PPD, NEA/IPA FOR ALTERMAN 
USAID/ANE/MEA 
LONDON FOR TSOU 
SIPDIC 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
 
TAGS: KMDR JO
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION ON IRAQ AND MIDDLE EAST 
 
                        Summary 
 
-- Lead story in all papers today, March 15, focuses 
on Israel's raid of the Jericho prison to capture PFLP 
leader Ahmad Sa'adat.  Reports include remarks made by 
Jordan's official spokesperson warning of the 
repercussions of the Jericho raid and asking Israel to 
immediately halt its operations. 
 
      Editorial Commentary on Jericho Prison Raid 
 
-- "Diplomacy of tanks" 
 
Center-left, influential Arabic daily Al-Dustour 
(03/15) editorializes:  "Exposing the barbaric 
mentality of the Israeli occupation forces, Israeli 
tanks and bulldozers stormed the Jericho prison in the 
West Bank to arrest Ahmad Sa'adat of the PFLP.  The 
operation came after American and British observers 
withdrew from the prison . suggesting collusion on the 
part of these observers!  Israel is exercising the 
diplomacy of tanks as part of the elections campaign 
for the Ehud Olmert's party, Kadima.  It is an 
innovative method of Israeli election campaigning, 
more than once depending on the blood and abuse of the 
Palestinians to gain popularity and votes.  Israel is 
a 'state' but it is really more of a gang.  It does 
not belong to the civilized world or to humanity.  How 
else do we understand getting to an imprisoned and 
unarmed person, like Ahmad Sa'adat, by destroying 
buildings and wall with tanks and bulldozers?  Is 
there not one single genuine person in this 
'civilized' world who would protest the infliction of 
ruin and harm to an entire people's dignity, pride and 
humanity, a people living in a huge prison, just like 
Ahmad Sa'adat?  Once again, Israel proves it does not 
bother with the international community or human 
values.  It is a rogue terrorist state that reproduces 
and reinvests the age of barbarism.  Nothing works 
with it except the language of force.  So from now on, 
no one can blame the victim if he chooses to defense 
his right to live!" 
 
-- "Is it not time for this international hypocrisy to 
end?" 
 
Daily Columnist Oraib Rantawi writes on the op-ed page 
of center-left, influential Arabic daily Al-Dustour 
(03/15):  "With its rude and provocative attack on 
Jericho prison . Olmert's government crosses whatever 
lines are left in its mad war against the Palestinian 
people, a war that has escalated significantly since 
the Palestinian elections and before the very eyes of 
the world and with the unfortunate collusion of the 
international community that is intent on pressuring 
Hamas to stop the violence..  The world is focused on 
demanding that Hamas recognize the agreements, as if 
Israel's attack on the Jericho prison is the best 
expression of abiding by agreements..  They ask Hamas 
to acknowledge Israel's right to exist, but they keep 
silent about Olmert's plan to demark the borders of 
his occupying entity unilaterally and without any 
concern for international accords and agreements.. 
Who should decry violence and respect agreements and 
acknowledge the other's right to exist?  Is it the 
Palestinians who are killed, rendered homeless and 
suffer from attacks and sieges, or are the Israelis 
who, with their barbaric practices, embody the concept 
of organized state terrorism in its dirtiest form?" 
 
             Editorial Commentary on Iraq 
 
-- "From democracy to civil war!" 
 
Columnist Jawad Bashiti writes on the op-ed page of 
independent, mass-appeal Arabic daily Al-Arab Al-Yawm 
(03/15):  "The United States will not stay militarily 
one day more after completing its mission in Iraq. 
This is the Bush Administration's permanent answer for 
the question 'when are you leaving?'.  The problem 
here lies in the mystery of the 'mission', since no 
one can even claim to know its nature or details.. 
Arriving in Iraq was for a reason the world did not 
believe, although the Bush Administration demonstrated 
unshakable faith.  The Saddam Hussein regime owns an 
arsenal of biological and chemical weapons of mass 
destruction, and thus toppling that regime by invading 
and occupying Iraq was a must, because this was the 
only way to capture those weapons.  Expectations then 
were that the United States would not stay one day 
more after completing its mission, namely the 
destruction of the weapons.  But the mission was never 
completed, because the search for the arsenal was in 
effect like searching for the phoenix.  The 
justification of the U.S. arrival in Iraq collapsed, 
and so staying there required a convincing reason. 
Enabling the Iraqis to build a democratic ruling 
regime to be the model of democracy on the Arab and 
regional levels became the new reason or the new 
mission, after which the U.S. military presence in 
Iraq will not stay one day more!  This reason soon 
collapsed, as the new Iraqi ruling regime and its 
fallout became the disaster that Arab people had to 
try to avoid..  Once the higher model of democracy, 
along with the climate of a 'nuclear conflict' between 
the United States and Iran, transformed into a civil 
war-inducing power between the Shiites and the Sunnis, 
another reason was devised to stay in Iraq. 
Preventing the civil war, and not spreading democracy, 
became the objective of the U.S. military presence in 
Iraq.  However, if the Iraqis insist on aborting the 
Bush administration's endeavor to stop the civil war 
as they had stopped its endeavor to bring them 
democracy, then it would keep its forces in Iraq but 
make it neutral, meaning that it would not be party to 
the imminent civil war!  Its army will walk out of the 
playing field and stand watching until the Iraqis 
exhaust themselves in a civil war, which the United 
States would use to fuel its battle with Iran and its 
battle to give Israel more reasons to be strategically 
superior.  Therefore, the Iraqi civil war is, as of 
now, the Bush administration's first choice for Iraq 
and the region." 
HALE