Today's Situation

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER, October 03, 2007

On the eve of another Jewish festival - the last in the series of High Holidays that marks the New Year - the Israeli press is united only in it its inability to agree on what the major story of the day is.

While Maariv leads with the deaths of another three people - a father and his two children - in the latest horrifying traffic accident, Yedioth Ahronoth carries a banner headline with a quote from U.S. presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who promises 'When I am president, I won't let Iran go nuclear.'

Haaretz, on the other hand, focuses on the likely postponement of the planned Middle East summit at the Annapolis Naval Base. Reporting from Washington, the paper's diplomatic correspondent, Aluf Benn, says that the Bush administration may be forced to delay the conference, to give Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas more time to formulate a joint declaration. The paper adds that the two leaders are due to meet in Jerusalem today - and for the first time, their negotiating teams will also be present, marking the start of the official negotiating process.

According to Benn's U.S. sources, 'there are significant gaps between the two sides' starting positions, and a particularly bitter dispute revolves around the essence and substance of the joint declaration … Olmert is now rejecting titles such as 'declaration of principles' or 'agreement of principles.' Instead, he is proposing a general 'declaration of interests' - a term that did not exist in previous negotiations - that would serve as a starting point for detailed negotiations to begin following the summit.'

Yedioth Ahronoth describes Wednesday's meeting between Olmert and Abbas as the start of he race to draft the joint Israeli-Palestinian declaration of principles. At the meeting, the paper says, the sides will start drawing up a one- or two-page document summarizing the agreements reached over the past six meetings between Olmert and Abbas regarding Jerusalem, permanent borders, the right of return and security issues.

According to The Jerusalem Post, however, there are words of warning from both sides ahead of the meeting: Israel defense officials expressed skepticism that Olmert's negotiating team could agree with the Palestinians on fundamental final-status issues ahead of the conference, while Fateh official warned that a failure in the upcoming conference would have more dangerous repercussions than the botched Camp David summit in 2000.

The only other issue which is on the front pages of all of Wednesday's papers is the partial lifting of the military censor's reporting restrictions what is now confirmed as an Israel air strike on a Syrian target in the early hours of September 6. Israeli news outlets are now entitled to refer to the attack without qualifying their reports with the phrase 'according to foreign sources.' Chief military censor, Sima Vaknin-Gill, said that it was an insult to the intelligence to insist on using that phrase- especially after the Syrian president mentioned the attack in a BBC interview on Monday. But that, in fact, is all that the media is allowed to report, while details of the attack, the target and the level of success remain a closely guarded secret.

Maariv's take on the move is that the prime minister is now furious with the military censor for not coordinating its decision with him.

Finally, in a holiday interview on Israel Radio, Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said Wednesday that the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza had been a mistake. Israel should not make unilateral moves in the future, he said.

Ben-Eliezer said he reached the conclusion that the disengagement had been a mistake shortly after the withdrawal finished. When he saw that Palestinian terrorists continued their rocket attacks with no adequate Israeli response, he said, he stopped supporting unilateral withdrawals. Israel should only withdraw from territories if there is an appropriate partner for negotiations who is capable of controlling the territory in question, he added.

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