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P 031058Z AUG 09
FM AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV
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UNCLAS TEL AVIV 001710 
 
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.  Iran 
 
¶2.  Mideast 
 
------------------------- 
Key stories in the media: 
------------------------- 
 
Yesterday all media reported that on Friday Saudi Arabia sharply 
rejected American calls for gestures toward Israel.  The Jerusalem 
Post noted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who appeared 
alongside Saudi FM Prince Saud al-Faisal at a press conference in 
Washington, downplayed his comments and the extent to which the 
attitude damages the United StatesQ Arab-Israeli peace program. 
 
Over the weekend leading media cited a proposed draft of an updated 
political platform to be discussed at FatahQs general conference 
starting tomorrow in Bethlehem: no recognition of Israel as a Jewish 
state; strategic dialogue with Iran; and settlement freeze as 
precondition to renewing talks.  HaQaretz reported that Israel has 
prevented a number of senior Fatah representatives from Lebanon from 
participating in the conference. 
 
Israel Radio reported that Western intelligence sources have told 
the British daily The Times that Iran has perfected the technology 
to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and that it is merely 
awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 
to produce its first bomb. 
 
Leading media reported that the police recommended on Sunday that 
the state indict FM Avigdor Lieberman, saying that evidence exists 
to back suspicions that he had taken bribes, fraudulently received 
goods, violated his public office, obstructed justice, harassed 
witnesses, and laundered million of shekels using a host of shell 
companies and bank accounts.  HaQaretz and Maariv reported that 
Lieberman allegedly illegally pocketed more than 10 million shekels 
(around $2.5 million).  The media quoted Lieberman as saying that, 
as with other cases against public figures, these charges will be 
dropped. 
 
HaQaretz and Israel Radio reported that the U.S. and the U.N. 
sharply condemned the eviction of two Palestinian families from 
their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and 
their replacement with Jewish families yesterday.  HaQaretz reported 
that diplomats from the U.S. Embassy sent a protest letter to the 
Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, stressing the move went against the 
spirit of the Roadmap.  The diplomats said a high-level protest will 
be communicated to Israel later on Monday.   The move follows the 
High Court of JusticeQs decision to restore the property to Jewish 
ownership.  (The QCommittee of the Sephardic Community in Jerusalem 
had purchased it in the late 19th Century.)  Yesterday The Jerusalem 
Post reported that President Obama is pressing to halt U.S. Jews 
plans to buy land in East Jerusalem. 
 
Leading media reported that yesterday Israel opened a road from 
Hebron to the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba to Palestinian 
traffic for the first time in eight years. 
 
Yesterday Maariv cited IsraelQs anger over BritainQs financing of 
Palestinian construction in East Jerusalem. 
 
HaQaretz reported that on Thursday Israel asked the Spanish 
government to halt its funding for the human rights group Breaking 
the Silence, which had been critical of the IDF for its conduct 
during Operation Cast Lead. 
 
HaQaretz quoted Judge David Shoham of the Ramle MagistrateQs Court 
as saying last week that Israeli authority applies to disputed 
territory near Latrun. 
 
 
The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom reported that yesterday the IDF 
and Treasury were at loggerheads over the significance of a 
cost-saving plan that was approved over the weekend by IDF Chief of 
Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and that is meant to save the military 
over 100 million shekels (around $25 million) annually. 
 
HaQaretz reported that the IAF is considering buying T-50 Golden 
Eagle fighter jets from South Korea.  The planes, produced by Korean 
Airspace in partnership with Lockheed Martin, would be used by pilot 
school cadets in advanced stages of combat pilot training. 
 
Leading media reported that IsraelQs National Fraud Unit arrested 
seven Israelis and Americans on the morning of August 2on suspicion 
of a large-scale scam against U.S. tax authorities.  According to an 
initial probe, 62-year-old Jerusalem resident Marvin Berkowitz, who 
holds both Israeli and American citizenships, obtained the personal 
data of American prisoners, posed as them and appealed to the U.S. 
tax authorities for tax refunds due from the period prior to their 
incarceration.  The money, at times amounting to tens of thousands 
of dollars a case, was then deposited in Israeli bank accounts.  IDF 
Radio reported that Berkowitz is a convicted felon who immigrated to 
Israel in 2003. 
 
All mainstream media highlighted the murder of two young people and 
the wounding of fifteen others by an unknown assailant at Tel AvivQs 
gay and lesbian center on Saturday night. 
 
--------- 
¶1.  Iran: 
--------- 
 
Block Quotes: 
------------- 
 
"Opportunity for Sanctions" 
 
The independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz editorialized (8/2): QIn 
their talks in Jerusalem, [senior] U.S. officials proposed a middle 
way aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and at 
averting a regional war. The public statements by Benjamin 
Netanyahu indicate that the American message has been received in 
Jerusalem. The Prime Minister has softened his rhetoric on Iran.  He 
has stopped talking about a Qsecond HolocaustQ and has made it clear 
that he, like his predecessors, sees the Iranian threat as an 
international problem, not just an Israeli one.  This is a welcome 
development, and it is incumbent upon him to continue to coordinate 
with Washington on the issue. 
 
------------ 
¶2.  Mideast: 
------------ 
 
Block Quotes: 
------------- 
 
¶I.  "Back to Those Noes" 
 
Veteran journalist and television anchor Dan Margalit wrote in the 
independent Israel Hayom (8/2): QAt first Barack Obama bowed to the 
king of Saudi Arabia, and now Hillary Clinton has clashed with his 
foreign minister, but Riyadh is unwilling to make even the smallest 
symbolic gesture to Israel.  It is in favor of Israeli-Palestinian 
peace, and mainly is in favor of reining in Iran on its way to 
producing nuclear weapons, but not at any price that the desert 
kingdom might have to pay.  Then came the August 1 proposed draft 
platform for the Fatah congress, which included opposition to 
recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. 
Palestine will be only for the Palestinians, but the Jewish people 
has no right to self-determination.  These are the moderate 
Palestinians, the supposed peace-seekers who flood the Israeli media 
with fictions as if Nablus is almost New York. To the above we need 
to add Bashar Assad's statement that there would be no negotiations 
without Israeli consent in advance to a complete withdrawal from the 
Golan Heights.  If that is the case, what then is going to have to 
be negotiated?  That is the yield that we have harvested from the 
moderate Arab world, which declares its desire for peace, in the 
space of just a single weekend.  It demonstrates that the 
fundamental American belief in unconditional cooperation with the 
Palestinians and the Saudis was a mistaken course of action.  Senior 
officials in the Obama administration have begun to realize that 
Benjamin Netanyahu's slogan, Qif they give-they'll get,Q ought to be 
translated into English and Arabic.  When Washington gives 
unilaterally, Riyadh and Ramallah take what they get free of charge. 
 That is no way to build confidence.  That is no way to build peace. 
That is only the way to build walls.  A few days after the Six-Day 
War, Israel voiced its willingness to make far-reaching compromises 
with its Arab neighbors.  As if it hadn't defeated them in an 
overtly defensive war. The Arab leaders convened in Khartoum, Sudan, 
and rejoined with their three famous noes to Israel-no to peace, no 
to recognition and no to negotiations.  It takes a great deal of 
optimism to continue to hope that 2009 is not the same as 1967. 
 
II.  "Netanyahu Is Fleeing the Challenge" 
 
Senior op-ed writer Akiva Eldar commented in the independent, 
left-leaning Ha'aretz (8/3): QThe Saudis announced Saturday that 
they will not open their skies to let our backpackers make their way 
to India, and unless there is some last-minute hiccup, the Fatah 
conference will announce that it is in no way willing to recognize 
Israel as the state of the Jewish people.  The Arabs are thus paying 
back the leader of the rightist camp who has taken his political 
life in his own hands and gained Qbroad national support for a 
Palestinian stateQ.... Avoiding the challenge to his new stance 
(even though he claims it is an old one) on solving the conflict 
raises the suspicion that the Prime Minister is counting on the 
Arabs' refusal to pay the cost of the entry ticket to the 
negotiating arena. Instead of paying the political price for the 
changes in the government's positions, he is passing the burden of 
proof onto the Arab side and is demanding that they alter their 
position.  When terrorism is at a low, they raise the issue of a 
Jewish state; when the Americans demand that the Jews cease 
construction in the settlements, he demands that the Arabs embark on 
normalization. 
 
III.  "Better Late than Never versus Too Little, Too Late" 
 
The Director of the Interdisciplinary Center's Global Research in 
International Affairs Center, columnist Barry Rubin, wrote in the 
conservative, independent Jerusalem Post (8/3): Q No one seems to 
realize, and it is better to avoid saying so in public, that Israel 
has won a tremendous diplomatic victory.  Obama who, before running 
for office, was arguably hostile to Israel and who began his term as 
an incredibly popular new president by confidently issuing an 
ultimatum demanding Israel concede on the construction issue, has 
now for all practical purposes backed down.  Of course, as always, 
much of the QcreditQ is due to a Palestinian leadership which made 
crystal-clear its intransigence on making peace, along with Arab 
regimes who told the Obama administration they wouldn't help.  And 
of course as best-supporting actors, Iran and Syria also treated 
Obama with contempt and showed they weren't at all interested in any 
real compromise with the U.S.  Indeed, the administration itself 
helped sabotage its own policy.  By coming out of the starting-gate 
so critical of Israel, it unintentionally signaled to Arabs to sit 
back and enjoy a U.S.-Israel confrontation.  And since the new U.S. 
government made its desire to avoid friction with Arabs or Muslims 
clear, they knew there would be no cost for defying Obama. In their 
basic course, Arab regimes and Iran, Israel and the Palestinians are 
not about to make huge changes.  And so U.S. policy is the only 
aspect of the region that really shifts much. 
 
IV.  "The Other Abu Mazen" 
 
Former Mossad Director Ephraim Halevy wrote in the mass-circulation, 
pluralist Yediot Aharonot (8/2): QThese days, the Foreign Ministry 
is circulating a well-prepared document to all its delegations that 
refutes the claims that people are trying to make against Israel, 
the IDF and its commanding officers about the action taken in the 
Gaza Strip over the past eight years.... On the other hand, Israel 
is currently investing a good deal of hard work in its effort to 
assist, in every way possible, the Fatah movement to hold its 
congress in one of the West Bank cities.... But regrettably, 
forgetfulness and the ability to make others forget are not the 
exclusive province of Fatah leaders.  Dealing with the threat of 
Israel and its officials in and out of uniform being dragged into 
international court has been imposed on it by Abu Mazen and those 
who obey him.... Only if its international diplomatic status is 
recognized as a political entity will [the Palestinian AuthorityQs] 
intentions be able to be realized.  This is what Abu Mazen and his 
justice minister are working for.  How will the directors of the 
security establishment explain to their underlings the meaning of 
the political echelon's longing to smear Abu Mazen while he works to 
fulfill the dream of having IDF officers sit on the defendants' 
bench in The Hague?  When the Goldstone Report is published, every 
officer in the IDF will know that the major defendant is none other 
than Mahmoud Abbas.  Can anyone explain to us the meaning of our 
policy in light of the reality that is taking shape? 
 
¶V.  QThatQs No Way to Make Peace 
 
Shlomo Avineri, Hebrew University Professor of Political Science and 
former director-general of the Foreign Ministry, wrote in Ha'aretz 
(8/2): QThe [Geneva Initiative] document is not a peace initiative, 
but rather a draft for an armed armistice that would make life in 
Israel and the Palestinian state one of mutual siege, full of 
suspicion and threats.... In short, this is an ineffective and 
unpractical militarization of peace arrangements. An early alert and 
security mechanism would have to be part of any arrangement, but a 
cumbersome, multidimensional and force-oriented system such as this 
is a recipe not for peace, but for friction and misunderstanding. 
It would make the people of Israel and Palestine the subjects of 
countless competing military, local and international authorities. 
Let's hope the U.S. administration realizes this, in case this 
bizarre program is ever presented to it. 
 
MORENO