Paper round

SEVEN DAYS LATER…

2008-02-19T12:46:00.001+02:00

Seven days after he was killed in an explosion in Damascus, 'Imad Mughniyeh, the Hizbollah arch-terrorist behind attacks that claimed hundreds of lives form the Middle East to South America, continues to vie for column inches on the front pages of Israel's newspaper.

Alongside ubiquitous front-page photographs of wintry scenes and warnings of the storm to come, Yedioth Ahronoth and The Jerusalem Post both have prominent coverage of the post-assassination tempest.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the Shin Bet – concerned that Hizbollah will attempt to avenge Mughniyeh's death by assassinating an Israeli politician – has decided that government ministers will be accompanied by security guards during their private vacations abroad. The new instructions have already been relayed to security officers at the various government offices, according to the report.

Haaretz, meanwhile, reports that the IDF has deployed Patriot missile batteries near Haifa, after experts raised concerns that Hizbollah terrorists will try to spark off a third Lebanon war. It was the first time the Patriot missiles have been deployed since the beginning of the Second Lebanon War in June, 2006. They previously were used in the Iraqi Scud missiles attacks in the Gulf War in 1991.

The Jerusalem Post also looks toward Lebanon in its lead story – a claim that Hizbollah has repeatedly attacked United Nations Interim Forces (UNIFIL) and that Spain is considering quitting the multinational force. According to an unnamed military official, quoted by The Post, the government is concerned that other countries will reduce the number of their soldiers in UNIFIL, which was enlarged following the 2006 ceasefire resolution.

The paper adds that last week's assassination in Damascus has heightened fears of more attacks and the resumption of a civil war in Lebanon, further endangering UN soldiers.

Haaretz and Maariv lead, however, with Jerusalem. On the day that the fifth annual Jerusalem Conference opens in the capital and the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is due to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Haaretz claims in its lead story that Olmert and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have agreed to defer talks on Jerusalem to the final stage of negotiations with the PA. This will not go down very well with Abbas, who insisted in an interview with a Jordanian newspaper on Monday that discussions on the status of the city must not be postponed.

According to Haaretz, a senior Jerusalem source said Olmert and Rice had talked on the telephone about a week and a half ago, and that Rice accepted Olmert's position that discussing Jerusalem at the very beginning could jam the negotiations and obstruct them.

An adviser to Abbas, Nimer Hammad, said Abbas had not agreed to delay negotiations on the city. He said 'the issue of Jerusalem is fundamental and cannot be postponed.' Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said all final-status issues, including Jerusalem and refugees, will be discussed in today's summit.

Olmert and Abbas' meeting in Jerusalem – weather permitting – is part of their regularly scheduled meetings, which, so far, have been accompanied by conflicting statements from the two leaders' respective aides regarding the talks about Jerusalem.

The prime minister, facing a threat by coalition partner Shas to bolt the government and possibly lead to its fall, stated early this week that Abbas agreed not to discuss the proposal that Israel cede East Jerusalem. In what Reuters called an 'effort to mollify' the Shas party, Housing Minister Zev Boim said Tuesday that there are plans to build another 1,000 units in the Har Homa neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Arutz 7 reports that Israeli leaders sparred among themselves over the status of Jerusalem, as they appeared Monday before visiting U.S. Jewish leaders holding their annual mission in Israel of the Presidents Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Olmert defended his record on building up the city but opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the prime minister's policies will mean concessions and a withdrawal to the 1967 lines.

At the Jerusalem Conference, meanwhile, Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger turned to the foreign minister his address and urged her to use her role as 'chief negotiator with our enemies' to prevent Jerusalem from being divided.

On more mundane matters, the rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip continued on Tuesday, with two rockets landing in Israel. One of the Qassams exploded near Ashkelon, while the other fell in Sderot. No damage or injuries were reported, although a woman was lightly wounded by shrapnel on Monday night.

According to Army Radio – which counts this sort of thing – Sderot has been hit with 6,616 rockets in the past seven years.

Elsewhere in Gaza, IDF soldiers killed an Arab terrorist early Tuesday morning after he opened fire at troops patrolling near the Gaza separation barrier. None of the soldiers was injured.

Finally, back to the weather. Arutz 7 says that forecasters are scratching their heads following the non-appearance of what was expected to be the second big snowstorm of winter. While snow fell occasionally in the early hours of the morning in the capital and surrounding areas, most of it melted immediately, leaving a just thin covering.

KEEPING MUM

2008-02-19T01:16:00.003+02:00

The dust seems to have settled – for the time being – on the Imad Mugniyah assassination, leaving the Israeli press free to focus again on issues closer to home. The only mention of the assassination in Monday morning's news broadcasts was in connection to a shooting attack on an Israeli bus near Nablus, for which a Fateh faction calling itself the Imad Mugniyah cell claimed responsibility. There were no injuries in the shooting.

Meanwhile, all the websites report on a story in a Kuwaiti newspaper, which claims that Hizbollah is not in a hurry to attack Israel, which it blames for the assassination of senior terrorist Imad Mugniyah, and instead is planning to target a senior Israeli military or intelligence officer. According to A-Raee, Mugniyah had prepared a target list of Israelis following the government's threat, after the Second Lebanon War, to attack Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

In their Monday editions, both Yedioth Ahronoth and The Jerusalem Post lead with stories related to the Gaza Strip and to the continued Qassam attacks on Sderot and other Israeli communities in the western Negev.

In its lead headline, Yedioth Ahronoth tells the story of 'A commando in the heart of Gaza' – a reference to the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal) officer who was seriously wounded during an operation in the southern Gaza Strip, when troops backed by aircraft and tanks swept into the southern part of the Strip near the former Dahaniyeh Airport and clashed with gunmen firing mortars and machine guns. Three gunmen were killed and more than 20 others were wounded, including several gunmen and a 45year-old civilian.

According to the report, special forces have been drafted in to help the regular IDF troops in their arrest missions inside Gaza.

The Jerusalem Post, meanwhile, says that Israel 'is considering a large-scale incursion into the Gaza Strip, during which it would present an ultimatum to the international community for the deployment of a multinational force as the only condition under which it would withdraw.'

Although it leads with the Kosovarian declaration of independence on Sunday (Israel is playing a wait-and-see game, incidentally, before deciding whether to recognize the new state or nor), Haaretz finds room on its front page for a report that Israel has agreed to reopen the Sufa checkpoint. According to the report, Defense Minister Ehud Barak agreed to a request by visiting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to ease some of the economic sanctions imposed on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the continued Qassam rocket attacks on Israeli communities bordering the Strip and authorized a transfer of cement for the restoration of the sewage system in the northern Gaza Strip – a project being promoted by Quartet envoy to the Middle East Tony Blair.

On the issue of Qassam attacks against Israel, Israel Radio reports that the director-general of Israel Military Industries, Avi Gelder, says they are prepared to work round-the-clock to provide roof protection for the public buildings, factories, educational institutions and homes in Sderot and communities in the Gaza area.

His comments come after the cabinet on Sunday approved a plan to protect 3,600 homes in the western Negev. The plan was originally to protect all homes within a 4.5-kilometer radius of the Gaza Strip, since the Iron Dome missile protection system that is being developed is not effective in ranges of less than 4.5 kilometers. According to Haaretz, which first reported the plan on Sunday, 'instead of providing complete fortification for 8,000 homes in the area, it was decided that the available budget of NIS 350 million would cover only partial safety measures for that number of homes. Instead, it was decided to begin by fully fortifying 3,600 homes over the next two years.'

On the diplomatic front, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's speech to the visiting Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem on Sunday provided all the newspaper with various headlines, some contradictory and none the same. According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the headline of the speech was that Olmert is not optimistic that a deal for the release of captured Israeli soldiers Gilad Shalit is imminent; Haaretz highlights the prime minister's comment that he and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have agreed to leave the thorny issue of the future of Jerusalem to end of the negotiation process; Maariv says that Olmert has redefined his medium-term goals, saying that he hopes was to reach an understanding on the basic principles for a Palestinian state in 2008 rather than a full-fledged peace accord; and The Jerusalem Post headlines his comments – contradicting reports to the contrary – that he is not about to declare that two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbollah in 2006 are dead.

On the last issue, Army Radio reports that Israel and Hamas have agreed on the identities of 230 Palestinian prisoners who would be released in exchange for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Ministers recently voted to change the definition of 'blood on the hands' in order to allow the release of prisoners who planned fatal attacks but did not personally carry them out. The change in definition led to the agreement regarding 230 of the prisoners.