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DE RUEHTV #1421/01 1851022
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 031022Z JUL 08
FM AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV
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RUEHLB/AMEMBASSY BEIRUT PRIORITY 4089
RUEHEG/AMEMBASSY CAIRO PRIORITY 2386
RUEHDM/AMEMBASSY DAMASCUS PRIORITY 4839
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON PRIORITY 1703
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UNCLAS TEL AVIV 001421 
 
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: 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶1.  Mideast 
 
¶2.  Iran 
 
------------------------- 
Key stories in the media: 
------------------------- 
 
All media led with yesterday's bulldozer rampage in Jerusalem.  The 
media reported that three were killed and 80 injured.  The media 
highlighted the fate of a baby whose mother was crushed to death 
while saving her child.  The perpetrator was Husam Taysir Dwayat (or 
Duwiyat), a resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur 
Bahir, who appears to have acted on his own.   Dwayat served jail 
time following a conviction of rape, and also committed drug 
offenses.  However, The Jerusalem Post reported that three groups 
claimed responsibility for the attack -- Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs 
Brigades; the Galilee Freedom Battalion, which is suspected of being 
affiliated with Hizbullah; and the PFLP.  Media reported that the PA 
condemned the attack, saying that such methods harm the interests of 
the Palestinian people.  The Jerusalem Post reported that Hamas 
praised Dwayat's act.  Major media reported that PM Ehud Olmert and 
Defense Minister Ehud Barak are seriously considering pulling down 
Dwayat's home.  Israel Radio reported that UN Secretary-General Ban 
Ki-moon denounced the attack, and that the Israeli delegation at the 
UN has asked the UN Security Council to condemn the attack 
unequivocally and unconditionally. 
 
All media quoted Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah as saying through 
a video link in a press conference yesterday in Beirut that the 
prisoner exchange with Israel will take place on or around July 15. 
Nasrallah also says a written report that Hizbullah will submit to 
the German mediator on missing IAF navigator Ron Arad contains a 
"definite conclusion based on ... witness accounts [gathered] on the 
ground."  He described the effort made in investigating Arad's fate 
as unprecedented, but he did not give details.  Nasrallah was quoted 
as saying that his men have been investigating Arad's fate since 
2004, and that they have reached a "firm conclusion" on what 
happened to him.  In the past, Nasrallah has said he believed Arad 
was dead but did not know the location of his remains.  Regarding 
the welfare of abducted Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud 
Goldwasser, Nasrallah was quoted as saying that "so far Hizbullah 
has not handed over any information about the fate of the two 
soldiers. Anything said in Israel is mere speculation. We have 
provided no information." 
 
Leading media reported that yesterday Palestinians angry over not 
being allowed to enter Egypt from Gaza stormed the Rafah border 
crossing. 
 
Ha'aretz reported that in defiance of commitments to the U.S. to 
freeze construction in the settlements, Defense Minister Barak has 
authorized the erection of a boarding school in a yeshiva in 
Hebron's Jewish quarter. 
 
Leading media reported that a few hours after the terrorist attack 
on Jaffa Road, the Knesset plenum approved in their preliminary 
reading a number of bills aimed at stripping terrorists' families 
and relatives of their Israeli citizenship or their residency status 
in Israel, and prohibiting erection of mourning shelters or public 
expression of mourning for a person who has committed an act of 
terrorism. 
 
Israel Radio and The Jerusalem Post's web site reported that French 
President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed support for Israel in its 
struggle to free Gilad Shalit, a dual Israeli-French citizen. 
Speaking of yesterday's release of Ingrid Betancourt, who had been 
held hostage by Columbian rebels, Sarkozy ended his address with a 
"message to Gilad Shalit and his parents."   "We have not 
forgotten," he was quoted as saying, "France is always ready to 
enlist in the battle for a man held unjustly."   The Jerusalem Post 
quoted Egyptian sources as saying yesterday that Olmert's emissary 
on the prisoner issue, Ofer Dekel, and Hamas representatives are 
expected to begin intensive indirect negotiations for Shalit's 
release within a week to 10 days.  Before that time, the 
diplomatic-security cabinet is expected to convene and discuss 
changing the criteria governing which Palestinians can be released, 
to allow Dekel more flexibility in the negotiations. 
 
Media reported that at an economic meeting in Tokyo, top Israeli, 
Palestinian, and Jordanian cabinet ministers heard Japanese FM 
Masahiko Komura reaffirm his country's commitment to an 
agro-industrial project in Jericho. 
 
Upon the occasion of the Fourth of July, six media figures and Alon 
Pinkas, former consul-general in New York, write in Maariv about 
their perceptions of America.  Ilana Dayan of Channel 2-TV hopes 
that Obama's election will bring social change; Pinkas sees 2008 as 
the "year of democracy"; Yehonatan Gefen, a part-time resident of 
New York, says that he has seen racism and ignorance swamp America 
in the nineties and this decade; Ron Maiberg affirms that the U.S., 
where all consumer goods are made in China and unemployment is rife, 
is an "empty label." 
 
------------ 
¶1.  Mideast: 
------------ 
 
Summary: 
-------- 
 
Military correspondent Amir Rappaport wrote in the popular, 
pluralist Maariv: "The tahdiya [truce] in Gaza increases the chances 
that in the coming weeks there will be more terror attacks coming 
from Judea and Samaria [i.e. the West Bank] or East Jerusalem." 
 
The conservative, independent Jerusalem Post editorialized: "We 
must, at the very least, acknowledge that ... the relationship 
between Jerusalem's Arabs and Jews, and its security ramifications, 
which has applied since 1967 needs reevaluation." 
 
Middle East affairs commentator Dr. Guy Bechor, a lecturer at the 
Interdisciplinary Center, wrote in the mass-circulation, pluralist 
Yediot Aharonot: "With wise and consistent Israeli policy, we will 
sit on the sidelines and observe how the Palestinians and the 
Egyptians fight each other, and not the other way around." 
 
 
Block Quotes: 
------------- 
 
¶I.  "The Law of Connected Vessels" 
 
Military correspondent Amir Rappaport wrote in the popular, 
pluralist Maariv (7/3): "The law of connected vessels also works in 
terror: the tahdiya [truce] in Gaza increases the chances that in 
the coming weeks there will be more terror attacks coming from Judea 
and Samaria [i.e. the West Bank] or East Jerusalem.  Many parties 
have an interest in this summer being awash in blood.... It is 
important to remember that [one of those], Islamic Jihad, is very 
closely connected to Iran, which has no compunctions about 
encouraging terror in Israeli territory.  Although the Palestinian 
organizations have a clear interest in committing terror attacks, 
the greatest danger this summer is, in fact, to northern Israel, 
from Hizbullah.  The signs are accumulating that even though the 
matter of Imad MughniyahQs assassination, attributed to Israel, has 
dropped from the headlines, preparations are in fact increasing for 
carrying out such a terror attack or even a series of terror 
attacks.  These terror attacks would occur so that the fingerprints 
of the organization that commits them would be unverifiable.  The 
greatest danger is to Israeli and Jewish institutions overseas, but 
Hizbullah has already proven in the past that it is also capable of 
getting terror attacks perpetrated inside the Green Line.... In any 
case, even if some organization was behind yesterday's terror 
attack, and even if it was a 'private initiative' by an individual, 
we can assume, unfortunately, that this will not be the last terror 
attack. " 
 
II.  "Terror in Jerusalem" 
 
The conservative, independent Jerusalem Post editorialized (7/3): 
"The people of Jerusalem have been badly traumatized.  There is a 
gnawing sense that the tranquility residents have enjoyed for some 
years now, since the unofficial end of the second Intifada, may be 
over -- and that the biggest danger emanates from within the 
boundaries of the city itself.... The Arab neighborhoods that dot 
metropolitan Jerusalem -- not just east, but north and south as well 
-- were absorbed into the capital's boundaries after the 1967 Six 
Day War and its Arab residents issued blue [Israeli] ID cards. 
Eligible to apply for full Israeli citizenship, they overwhelmingly 
chose not to do so, in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.  The 
dichotomy under which these Arabs live seems to be growing ever more 
strained.  They may work for Jews; they may receive health and 
social benefits from the Zionist state, but culturally and 
politically they are inseparable from the surrounding Arab milieu. 
They watch the same satellite TV stations and hear preachers 
espousing the same radical messages as their compatriots in the West 
Bank and Gaza.  We must, at the very least, acknowledge that this 
framework -- the relationship between Jerusalem's Arabs and Jews, 
and its security ramifications -- which has applied since 1967 needs 
reevaluation.  To do otherwise would leave us in denial." 
 
III.  "Gaza Fell on Them" 
 
Middle East affairs commentator Dr. Guy Bechor, a lecturer at the 
Interdisciplinary Center, wrote in the mass-circulation, pluralist 
Yediot Aharonot (7/3): "Yesterday, dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of 
young Palestinians began to gather on the Palestinian side of the 
Rafah crossing and to throw stones at the Egyptian security forces, 
which used water canons against them.  These pictures seemed to be 
 
taken from 'our' Intifada.  It turns out that if Egypt won't control 
Gaza, Gaza will control Egypt.... Just as Egypt knew how to play the 
Palestinian card against us, Hamas is using it against Egypt.... And 
why does Gaza need the Egyptians so much?  Egypt is HamasQs only 
path to the world, since only (for now) humanitarian cases enter 
through Israel and the Hamas leadership cannot pass.  Egypt is 
viewed as HamasQs strategic home front, since Hamas's hope is that 
now that it has taken control of Gaza, its mother movement, the 
Muslim Brotherhood, will one day control all of Egypt.  Furthermore, 
Hamas wants legitimacy, and Egypt can give it to it.  If its border 
with Egypt is open, this is almost recognition as a state.  Sit 
quietly, Israel, don't interfere.  With wise and consistent Israeli 
policy, we will sit on the sidelines and observe how the 
Palestinians and the Egyptians fight each other, and not the other 
way around." 
 
--------- 
¶2.  Iran: 
--------- 
 
Summary: 
-------- 
 
Columnist Ari Shavit wrote in the independent, left-leaning 
Ha'aretz: "It is far from certain and far from likely that the 
coming winter will be an Iranian winter.  But Israel must treat this 
summer as though the possibility of an Iranian winter were not a 
distant one.... After two years of spin, it is time for action." 
 
Editor-in-Chief Amnon Lord wrote in the editorial of the 
nationalist, Orthodox Makor Rishon-Hatzofe: "Those who throughout 
the current decade invested all diplomatic and military resources in 
the disengagement plan ... now discover that the handling of the 
existential problem has been forsaken -- certainly so on the 
diplomatic level." 
 
Block Quotes: 
------------- 
 
¶I.  "Facing an Iranian Winter" 
 
Columnist Ari Shavit wrote in the independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz 
(7/3): "Here is the wild scenario: In November, after Senator Barack 
Obama becomes the president-elect of the United States, outgoing 
President George W. Bush will launch a strike at Iran.  The strike 
might be a naval siege, a military show of muscle or a comprehensive 
aerial assault on the Iranian nuclear program.  In reasonable times, 
reasonable people would dismiss this wild scenario out of hand.... 
But the times are not reasonable ones, and the men involved are not 
reasonable men.  The logic that guides Bush and Dick Cheney is one 
that Western public opinion and its shapers cannot always 
understand.... In any case, the Iran of the ayatollahs is a 
sophisticated and strong religious power.  If it is backed into a 
corner, Iran, too, will prefer to go out with a bang and not a 
whimper.  No one today knows for sure what the nature and impact of 
such a bang would be.  A serious state must regard seriously any 
scenario liable to shape its future, for better or worse.... It is 
far from certain and far from likely that the coming winter will be 
an Iranian winter.  But Israel must treat this summer as though the 
possibility of an Iranian winter were not a distant one.... After 
two years of spin, it is time for action.  After two years of bile, 
it is time to extinguish hatreds and bandage wounds.  Israel is not 
as hollow and degenerate as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believes.  But to 
face Ahmadinejad, Israel must come to its senses." 
 
II.  "Israel's Leaders Woke Up Too Late" 
 
Editor-in-Chief Amnon Lord wrote in the editorial of the 
nationalist, Orthodox Makor Rishon-Hatzofe (7/3): "The continued 
verbal barrage about the Iranian nuclear program includes the claim 
that Israel has lost precious time in its preparation for the 
critical and that it is now late.  If this description, which 
appeared in yesterday's Maariv, is true, it reflects 
shortsightedness unexpected from Israeli leaders.  Many highly 
negative things have been said about Israel's leaders.  But one 
cannot believe that over the past decade one of them could have been 
lenient regarding the threat emanating from Iran.... Those who, in 
2000 and 2005, didn't see the connection between the incipient 
threat from Iran and the dangers that accumulated at Israel's 
doorstep were myopic, almost blind.  The conclusion from the gloomy 
Lebanese and Gazan affairs is that the public cannot rule out the 
fact that the Israeli  leadership woke up a little too late to the 
issue of Iran's nuclearization.  Those who throughout the current 
decade invested all diplomatic and military resources in the 
disengagement plan and in a desperate attempt to neutralize the 
Palestinian issue, now discover that the handling of the existential 
problem has been forsaken -- certainly so on the diplomatic level." 
 
JONES