Today's Situation

BAKER, MIXED MESSAGES AND THE BIBI BLOG, December 06, 2006

Just hours before the publication of a report by the bipartisan U.S. panel on Iraq, headed by former secretary of state James Baker, both Haaretz and Maariv claim that the report will emphasize the need for a comprehensive Middle East peace.

According to reports, the Iraq Study Group is set to recommend that the U.S. enter into talks with both Syria and Iran and that, as The Washington Post puts it, 'the report urges Bush to aggressively tackle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to reduce the broader regional tensions fueling the Iraq conflict.'

Any attempt to link the broader regional problems - the insurgency in Iraq and the Iranian nuclear program - with the conflict between Israel and its neighbors is likely to meet with tough criticism in Jerusalem, which claims that the Arab world uses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a pretext for all anti-Israeli sentiment in the Middle East.

The Washington Post, quoting a source familiar with the report, says that Baker made a personal point of including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the report and 'laying out the importance of why it needs to be dealt with and a strategy to deal with.'

Closer to home, there have been conflicting comments from leading members of the Kadima government, with Shimon Peres calling Palestinian unity talks 'a fa?ade' and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni insisting that pressure by the international community on Hamas is bearing fruit.

Quoted Wednesday by the Haaretz website, Peres said that any unity government in the PA would be a sham because the Hamas militants it would represent are not interested in peace. Hamas would use such a government in an effort to restore international funding that dried up after it took power, Peres said. 'Hamas doesn't want peace, even if we give them '67 borders,' Peres said. 'Hamas wants to use Fatah as a facade to get money.'

At the start of her two-day visit to Paris, meanwhile, Livni said that, 'Almost a year after the arrival of Hamas [in the Palestinian government], we are beginning to see signs of change, which is in part due to pressure by the international community.'

A Hamas spokesman, meanwhile, said Wednesday that the group is waiting for an Israeli response to its offer on a deal for the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit. The spokesman added that Hamas political bureau head Khaled Meshal has provided Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman with several suggestions regarding Shalit's release.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz, meanwhile, told Army Radio on Wednesday that Israel must examine the significance of a statement made by U.S. Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates on the Iranian threat. Gates said Tuesday during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing that 'if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, no one can promise that it would not use them against Israel.'

The fallout from Education Minister Yuli Tamir's edict that all textbooks used in Israeli schools must from now on show the Green Line continued to reverberate around the Israeli media on Wednesday - with Israel Radio even reporting that one group of rabbis had issued a religious ruling barring use of any such textbook.

Two former directors-generals of the Education Ministry, from two different political parties, each had harsh criticism for Tamir. Orlev and Ronit Tirosh.

Zevulun Orlev, who is chairman of the National Union-National Religious Party, accused the education minister of imposing her Peace Now ideology on the ministry. Orlev called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to 'put the brakes on the Peace Now policy in the Education Ministry blatantly dictated by Minister Tamir,' according to Arutz 7.

Meanwhile, Kadima Knesset member Ronit Tirosh accused Tamir of 'overstepping her authority. The education minister is not permitted to interfere with the content of textbooks and should have consulted with the other members of the Knesset before making such changes,' she told Yedioth Ahronoth.

The Likud faction charged Tamir with changing the national curriculum to fit her own political agenda, adding that she had ignored both the Jerusalem Law and the Golan Heights Law in order to make the changes. The faction also introduced a no-confidence motion over the proposal.

Two former Education Ministers also weighed in with comments about the new plan.

Former Meretz leader Yossi Sarid said, 'Israeli students must know that Israel's borders both in the north and the east are not final, and will be determined by negotiations.'

National Union Knesset member Rabbi Yitzchak Levy, who served as education minister from 1989 to1998 added his voice to the chorus of dissent, saying he did not approve of Tamir's stance on placing all of Judea and Samaria up for grabs in keeping with Arab and Palestinian Authority demands to turn the entire area into an independent Arab state.

'Tamir is trying to force her political opinions upon the students of Israel,' Levy said. 'Previous education ministers kept the ministry free of political decisions of this nature.'

Elsewhere, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has joined the list of Israeli and international public figures running internet blogs, according to Ynet. This list even includes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to the report, 'the blog was launched Tuesday night, and it's main purpose is to get Netanyahu's message directly across to the public, since the media has not been giving him sufficient airtime, he's now found a way around them.'

The above text was written and compiled by Simon Spungin using newpaper, radio and wire reports, in English and Hebrew.

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