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E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: OPRC KMDR IS
 
SUBJECT: ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION 
 
-------------------------------- 
SUBJECTS COVERED IN THIS REPORT: 
-------------------------------- 
 
President Obama to Mideast 
 
------------------------- 
Key stories in the media: 
------------------------- 
 
All media led with issues related to President ObamaQs visit to 
Riyadh and his speech in Cairo, slated for the early afternoon.  The 
media cited JerusalemQs tension ahead of the address.   Yediot 
headlines: QObama in Mideast: the Arab Embrace, the Israeli 
Concern.Q  HaQaretz expects Obama to call on Israel and the Arab 
states to change their approach to the Middle East peace process. 
HaQaretz quoted a U.S. source as saying that the President will 
encourage the Arab world to change its attitude toward Israel and 
embark on "normalization."  HaQaretz believes that Obama will stress 
that Israel needs to change its attitude toward the Palestinians and 
cease construction in the West Bank settlements to enable a 
two-state solution.  The Jerusalem Post quoted the President as 
saying in an interview with The New York Times: QThere are a lot of 
Arab countries more concerned about Iran developing a nuclear weapon 
than the QthreatQ from Israel, but wonQt admit it. 
 
Maariv bannered a statement attributed to Special Envoy for Middle 
East Peace Sen. George Mitchell QThe Israelis lied to us all these 
years.  ItQs over.Q  Mitchell reportedly used the statement to 
summarize US policy in a recent meeting with a prominent Jewish 
leader in New York. 
 
HaQaretz and other media quoted DM Ehud Barak as saying yesterday 
that he "does not share the assessments" that Obama seeks to topple 
PM Benjamin Netanyahu's government through extraordinary pressure, 
as some pundits have claimed.  Barak added that after a series of 
meetings in Washington, "I am more optimistic -- certainly more 
optimistic than the way things have been presented in the media." 
Media also quoted him as saying, regarding the American demand for 
the freezing of all settlement activity: "There needs to be rational 
conduct that is connected to real life; you can't just expect 
irrational things to happen." 
 
Israel Radio cited an article by President Shimon Peres in todayQs 
London Times, in which he wrote: QPresident Obama's journey to Saudi 
Arabia and Egypt could be an opportunity.  It reflects both the need 
for an historic change in the Middle East and a unique chance of 
achieving it.Q  The radio reported that Peres coordinated the op-ed 
piece with Netanyahu. 
 
Major media reported that Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) 
announced yesterday that he will respond to ObamaQs outreach to the 
Arabs by expanding West Bank settlements. 
 
Leading media quoted FM Avigdor Lieberman as saying yesterday in 
Moscow that Israel does not intend to bomb Iran. 
 
HaQaretz and The Jerusalem Post reported that 130 to 200 protesters 
gathered yesterday afternoon in front of the U.S. Consulate-General 
in Jerusalem to rally against the PresidentQs Middle East tour. 
Observed by more than a dozen local and international journalists, 
the protestors chanted "No, You Can't," waved posters saying "20 new 
settlements by 2010 -- Yes We Can!" National Union MKs Arieh Eldad 
and Michael Ben Ari addressed the crowd, largely made up of native 
English speakers.  Yediot and Israel Radio reported that several 
Democratic Congress members have criticized the PresidentQs approach 
to Israel, saying that he Qhas gone too far. 
 
Media cited Israeli officialsQ complaints that the U.S. has not 
informed PM Netanyahu of the contents of the PresidentQs speech. 
HaQaretz reported that the White House specifically asked Egyptian 
authorities to invite IsraelQs Ambassador to Egypt Shalom Cohen to 
the PresidentQs speech.  Media noted that 10 members of the Muslim 
Brotherhood party will be in the hall, as well as official Iranian 
representatives. 
 
Yediot cited that in a special report to be published soon, the IAEA 
is slated to report that there are at least three more nuclear sites 
in Syria. 
 
The media reported that Interior Minister Eli Yishai has ordered 
Shas MK David Azoulay to submit a controversial bill according to 
which the interior minister would have the power to revoke 
citizenships without the authorization of the attorney-general or 
the court.  Currently, Citizenship Law stipulates that revoking 
citizenship requires the attorney-general's authorization and the 
court's consent.  The media reported that the citizenship and state 
pension of self-exiled former MK Azmi Bishara could be revoked. 
 
HaQaretz reported that an educational kit on the Palestinian Nakba 
is being disseminated among teachers throughout the country. 
Developed by Zochrot, a left-wing non-government organization, the 
kit is meant to serve the Jewish educational system for pupils aged 
15 and above, and includes history plus literary and personal views 
on the Nakba, as well as discussion of the ways the issue has been 
sidelined in public discourse.  Some teachers have reportedly been 
using of the kit, even though it has not been approved by the 
Education Ministry. 
 
HaQaretz quoted Palestinian sources as saying that Hamas political 
leader Khaled Mashal recently relieved two brigade commanders in 
Gaza on Iranian recommendations. 
 
Maariv reported that former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul 
Volcker, QObamaQs economic adviser,Q secretly visited Israel last 
month and met with Netanyahu and Bank of Israel Governor Prof. 
Stanley Fischer to discuss ObamaQs economic policy with Netanyahu. 
 
Maariv reported that Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Dan Harel 
has asked Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi to release him from 
the army.  The newspaper cited IDF assessments that O/C Northern 
Command Gadi Eisenkot will succeed Harel. 
 
HaQaretz reported that John Gunther Dean, a former U.S. ambassador 
to Lebanon, claims in a memoir released last week that Israeli 
intelligence agents attempted to assassinate him in 1980.  The 
newspaper infers from the alleged case that former senior Mossad 
operative Haggai HadasQs experience is not necessarily an advantage 
in the talks he will conduct over Gilad ShalitQs release, as Maariv 
assesses that the talks will resume within a week. 
 
The Jerusalem Post reported that the state will ask the U.S., in 
accordance with a law providing for mutual legal assistance, to 
provide all information gathered in an American investigation of 
Morris Talansky that might be relevant to the Talansky Affair in 
Israel involving former PM Ehud Olmert. 
 
HaQaretz and Maariv reported that a study of the world's most 
peaceful countries released yesterday ranks Israel as fourth to last 
among the 144 countries ranked -- Iran is ranked as 99th.  According 
to the Global Peace Index, an annual ranking of the world's nations 
on the basis of how peaceful they are, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq 
are the only countries more dangerous than Israel. 
 
--------------------------- 
President Obama to Mideast: 
--------------------------- 
 
Block Quotes: 
------------- 
 
¶I.  "ObamaQs Credibility Test" 
 
Diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn wrote in the independent, 
left-leaning Ha'aretz (6/4): QThe repetition of statements by Obama 
and senior administration officials, calling for complete cessation 
of settlement activity, have placed the President in a position from 
which he will find it difficult to pull back.  Henceforth, every 
approval of a construction plan in a settlement will be regarded as 
a personal challenge to the President, just about equivalent to the 
North Korean nuclear tests.... A freeze on settlements is his gift 
to his Saudi and Egyptian hosts.  Enforcing the freeze will be his 
test of credibility.  The overt dispute with Israel is meant to 
bolster his image in Arab eyes.  If Netanyahu would have agreed 
immediately to his demand, Obama would have lost points.  He wants 
to come to Cairo after being seen as having hit Israel's right-wing 
Prime Minister on the head. Netanyahu will do everything to avoid 
this confrontation and will therefore have to give up his many years 
of opposition to the idea of a Palestinian state.  He will then hope 
that Arab refusals will bog the entire process down and will save 
him the trouble of having to discuss really difficult issues like 
evacuating settlements, Jerusalem and the refugees. 
 
 
II.  "He Has Come to Conquer" 
 
Senior columnist Nahum Barnea wrote on page one of the 
mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot Aharonot (6/4): QThe main 
responsibility for drawing up the American plan for resolving the 
Israeli-Arab conflict has been assigned to special envoy George 
Mitchell and his advisers.  In essence, it is a plan of land in 
exchange for normalization.  It is too soon to know whether this 
will crystallize into a detailed plan.... The region that Obama 
wishes to redeem from its agony is a paradise for pessimists. 
Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, who currently serves 
as a consultant to [Special Envoy George] Mitchell, wrote in his 
book Innocent Abroad, which was published this week under the title 
An American Peace, about the special talent of Middle East leaders 
to thwart any idea that harms their interests.  Obama will have to 
overcome not only conflicting interests, but also skepticism and 
cynicism, derived from bitter and long experience.  Obama will soon 
learn that it is no less difficult to bring the Arabs to 
normalization than it is to take Israel out of the territories. 
QNormalization,Q an Egyptian government official says to us, Qis 
when Egypt and Saudi Arabia sit by quietly while you kill 
Palestinians in Gaza.  What more do you want?Q.... For better and 
for worse, the Bush era is over.  Israel has to find a way to make 
the most of the initiative launched by Obama.  The train is moving 
forward.  It is doubtful whether it will reach its destination, but 
one thing is certain: Whoever remains on the platform will not get 
anywhere. 
 
III.  "Sea of Frustration" 
 
Diplomatic correspondent Ben Caspit wrote on page one of the 
popular, pluralist Maariv (6/4): QOne gets the impression that the 
Americans intend to go with this to the end.  They are forceful and 
arrogant, and when they decide to run somebody over, he is run over. 
 Last time, George Bush did it to Yasser Arafat.  He erased him, and 
that was it.  Now, not to compare the two, we are in the gun sights. 
  True, not as strongly as it was done then, and not in order to 
kill, but in order to teach us a lesson -- to bring the rebellious 
state that is known as Israel into line.  Is there no way out? 
Three scenarios: keep our heads down, say no, get into a 
confrontation with the U.S. administration and hope that it will 
pass within a year.  Obama will start to plan for the Senate and 
House elections in 2010 and he will be fed up.  The other scenario 
is to give in.  To flow with Obama, hope that the coalition will 
last and if not, then change it.  The third scenario, the one that 
Netanyahu will choose, will be to try to create, somehow, a kind of 
compromise.... But all this is small change.  NetanyahuQs real 
nightmare is what will happen next month, when the American deadline 
expires. Behind closed doors, Bibi says that during the summer, the 
Americans will present a peace plan whose main component is a return 
to the 1967 borders.  They will convene a large international 
committee, with the entire world and his wife, in which everything 
will be sewn up between Israel and the Arab world.  Israel will be 
dragged there by his hair.  The question is whether it will also 
come back from there. 
 
IV.  "WeQll Yield in the End" 
 
Channel 2-TV commentator Amnon Abramovitch wrote in Yediot Aharonot 
(6/4): QNetanyahu may be forced to dilute his stock, or dilute his 
extremist stockholders.  For example, to turn to Tzipi Livni and 
Kadima and make them an offer that they will find difficult to 
refuse, if they hold dear the stateQs interests and the greater 
good.  The Obama administration is asking Israel to freeze the 
settlements.  That is not a lot.  It is not impossible.... Netanyahu 
may be the prime minister in whose term Iran will complete its 
nuclear program and missile array, while Israel is estranged from 
the United States, more exposed and lonely than ever.  An American 
president has the power to say QGoodbye, friendQ [in Hebrew: Shalom, 
Haver], in the political sense, not the physical sense, of course. 
What is more worrying is that the president also has the power to 
say QGoodbye, Israel. 
 
¶V.  QNo, He Doesn't Understand 
 
Middle East affairs commentator Dr. Guy Bechor, a lecturer at the 
Interdisciplinary Center, wrote in Yediot Aharonot (6/4): QWhen it 
became known that President Obama would call for normalization 
between the Arab world and Israel in the first stages of his Qpeace 
plan,Q I shrugged.  But when I read that he intended to resettle 
Palestinian refugees in the Arab states where they are already 
residing, along with monetary compensation, I was already amused. 
These are pipe dreams, like his predecessor's vision of QArab 
democracy,Q which collapsed in great noise and brought disaster to 
the region.  This is an unripe plan devised by novices, who believe 
that the Israeli-Arab conflict can be resolved with an arrogant 
stroke of the pen.  Clearly, they do not have much understanding: 
Not of history or of demography, and mainly not of the fears of the 
region.  The Arab states will never waive their demand to return the 
Palestinian refugees to Palestine, i.e. to the State of Israel, and 
some, perhaps, to the Palestinian Authority.  Why?  Because these 
are sacred matters.... And what does Barack Obama propose to [the 
Arabs] and us?  Instant solutions intended to promote his personal 
agenda, along with ignorance, disregard of the fears of the region, 
blindness, and pretension.  As in the [1916 British-French] 
Sykes-Picot agreement, in which lines were drawn with a ruler in the 
Middle East irrespective of peoples, tribes and religions, the same 
may happen this time too.  The bitter outcome will be paid by the 
Middle East, as usual, in the blood of its inhabitants. 
 
VI.  "Time to Play the Game" 
 
Columnist Ari Shavit wrote in HaQaretz (6/4): QThe U.S. President's 
behavior is not entirely fair.  Obama knows the urgent problem in 
the Middle East is not natural growth in the settlements, and that 
there is no Palestinian partner at the moment for real peace.... But 
the world is not a fair place.... There is only one way for Bibi to 
save himself: initiative -- an Israeli initiative now.  And there is 
only one initiative that Netanyahu can offer: a long-term plan to 
build up the Palestinian nation.  Not a failed Annapolis a la Olmert 
and Bush.  Not the wise rhetoric of two states now, a la Livni and 
Rice.  Rather, a realistic plan to build Palestine, stage by 
stage. 
 
VII.  "A Domestic Ignition Issue" 
 
Very liberal columnist Gideon Levy wrote in Ha'aretz (6/4): QThe 
future of the Middle East is a domestic American issue.  Since Henry 
Kissinger determined that foreign policy is merely an extension of 
domestic policy, his maxim has never had such tremendous potential 
impact. If Obama succeeds in dealing with GM, he will also win 
public support in dealing with [radical] Yitzhar and other 
settlements like it.  If he can convince American supporters of 
Israel that relations with the Jewish state have become dishonest, 
the sky's the limit.  Americans must understand that without 
changing relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds, the world itself 
will become a more dangerous place, and that improving relations 
with those people need not be at Israel's expense, but to its 
benefit.  Time is short but the keys are in the ignition, President 
Obama.  Drive on to peace. 
 
 
 
 
VIII.  QNo One Is More  Zionist than He" 
 
Meretz Party Chairman Haim Oron wrote in Maariv (6/4): QBenjamin 
Netanyahu and his government are not just gearing up for a clash 
with the leader of the free world, Barack Obama. An identity crisis 
lies at the heart of the matter. What did we want to be and what 
have we become? As someone who grew up in the home of a highly 
regarded historian, Netanyahu knows that his path clashes with the 
Zionist vision, with all its thinkers and versions. It is not this 
reality, these sights and  horrors that have become routine here 
that the giants, thinkers and visionaries dreamed of. Could it be 
that Obama's vision is closer to Zionism, to those who generated and 
laid its ideological foundations, than the vision of the State of 
Israel's current captains of state?.... For some time now the Arab 
League initiative, whose main  point is an unprecedented turnabout 
in the general Arab position on the question of peace with Israel, 
has been placed on our doorstep.  The rare linkage between an 
existing serious plan and an assertive American president who wants 
it to take on flesh, creates an opportunity that we must not miss. 
This is in our existential interest.  We must say yes to Obama. 
 
IX.  "Arabs Expect an Obama Apology" 
 
Former ambassador to Egypt and Sweden, conservative contributor Zvi 
Mazel, wrote in the conservative, independent Jerusalem Post (6/4): 
QObama would like nothing better than to come out of this speech 
with one, an Arab coalition -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the 
Gulf countries -- in order to confront Iran; two, satisfying the 
Arab masses in their quest for democracy and economic development; 
and three, some sort of formula to solve the conflict with the 
Palestinians.  That seems as likely as President Mahmoud 
Ahmadinejad, Osama bin Ladin or the Muslim Brotherhood changing 
their beliefs about Islam and the West. 
 
CUNNINGHAM