Today's Situation

MESSAGE TO DAMASCUS, June 12, 2007

Today's election of a new Labor Party chairman dominates the front pages of the main newspapers, with Yedioth Ahronoth, Maariv and The Jerusalem Post all leading their Tuesday editions with the Ehud Barak-Ami Ayalon contest.

Only Haaretz leads with a report that - for the second time in two months - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has sent a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad. According to the paper, the message, which was apparently delivered to Assad by Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis, includes important new nuances. The exact content of the message is not known, Haaretz states. The paper also reports that Olmert convened a meeting of his newly formed 'Syria cabinet' on Monday. The 11 members of the forum heard intelligence briefings about Syria, its relations in the Arab world, its strategy, its military deployment on the Golan Heights, and the domestic and regional standing of Bashar Assad.

Israel Radio carried denials of the report from both the Greek Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office.

On Monday evening, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, in an interview Radio Darom, openly invited Assad to visit Jerusalem and address the Knesset. Peretz said that a visit to Jerusalem would prove that Assad is serious about peace, much as then Egyptian President Anwar Sadat initiated peace talks by visiting Jerusalem in 1977.

Elsewhere, the renewed violence in the Gaza Strip gets prominent coverage in most of the paper, which report that at least 11 people were killed in violence clashes Monday - including Jamal Abu al-Jediyan, the most senior Fateh official in northern Gaza.

The violence continued on Tuesday, with at least another six people are reported to have been killed. According to Israel Radio, the home or office of both Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh were both targeted by militants on Tuesday. Neither leader was at home at the time of the attack.

Early Tuesday, three women and a child were killed when Hamas militants attacked the home of a senior Fateh security official. Security officials said the gunmen seized Hassan Abu Rabi and killed his 14-year-old son and three women in the house. Fateh gunmen, meanwhile, stormed the house of a Hamas lawmaker and burned it to the ground. There were also reports of the execution-style shooting of a relative of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the Hamas leader assassinated by Israel in 2004.

Appeals for calm by both Abbas and Haniyeh went unheeded. Nabil Abu Rudeina, an aide to Abbas, said no end was in sight. Repeated attempts at a ceasefire by Egyptian mediators have also failed.

The IAF attacked open areas in the northern Gaza Strip where Palestinians launched Qassam rockets towards Israel earlier Tuesday, according to the Haaretz website. One rocket struck a factory located in the Sha'ar Hanegev industrial zone, said the report, adding a worker sustained light injuries from shrapnel and was evacuated to the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.  The rocket was the second to hit the Negev on Tuesday. Earlier in the day, a Qassam hit the Sderot area, causing neither injuries nor property damage.

Islamic Jihad's armed wing, the al-Quds Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack, said Ynet..

Meanwhile, Labor Party members began voting in run-off primary at 8:30 A.M., with opinion polls claiming that the outcome is too close to call. The only media outlet to claim that either candidate had his nose out in front was Channel 10, which said that support for Ayalon among kibbutz members had collapsed, leaving Barak with an 8 percent lead over his rival.

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