Today's Situation

ANNAPOLIS LOOMS, October 05, 2007

The end of the holiday season - and the feel-good reporting that dominated the press for weeks - is reflected in the front pages of Friday's Hebrew press, with attention now turning to more serious matters.

While Haaretz and Maariv both lead on civilian matters - a new plan for combating human trafficking and a threatened teachers' strike respectively -Yedioth Ahronoth carries extensive coverage of what it describes as the exposure of Israel's most sensitive military installations on the Internet. According to the report, an upgrade to the popular Google Earth program now provides detailed images of military installations and other sensitive locations. The images have been marked with surfers' comments such as 'Mossad HQ' and 'secret missile base.' To drive the point home, the front-page image of the paper shows the Dimona nuclear reactor, a Jericho missile base and the complex used by the Mossad as its headquarters.

Google upgraded its satellite images of Israel, almost doubling their resolution, in the past days, Yedioth said, adding the new images consist of one pixel per two square meters, compared to previous ones which consisted of one pixel representing only 10-20 square meters on earth.

The main issue that all the papers cover, of course, is the upcoming Middle East summit at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. According to Haaretz, Israel sources say that the summit will be held on November 26, although U.S. officials have yet to confirm this date.

In the meantime, it is far from clear who will be attending the summit and what sort of statement the Israeli and Palestinian sides can formulate in advance. Following the meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday in Jerusalem, teams from both sides began the work of drafting such a document. Even at this early stage, however, it is clear that there are significant differences in the expectations of each side.

According to the latest reports, Olmert Abbas agreed in their meeting Wednesday that negotiations regarding permanent status would not be limited by a timetable.

According to Haaretz, the joint statement may include references to the core issues of the final-status agreement, but such references would be non-committal, and the statement will deal only with issues that enjoy clear agreement. The paper quotes unnamed Israeli sources as saying the statement would be 'significant enough but general enough to avoid a blow-up and a crisis.'

On Thursday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki reiterated statements by Abbas that participants at the Annapolis summit would need to set a timetable to implement the agreement, and that within six months the Palestinians want to see formulation of the agreement completed.

Army Radio carries a quote from Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On, who called on the prime minister to withdraw from the Annapolis summit. 'Since the goal of the conference amounts to a declaration of interests only and doesn't deal with the core issues it will be pointless,' Gal-On was quoted as saying. 'Olmert is not the leader who can reach an agreement with the Palestinians when (Israel Beiteinu chairman Avigdor) Lieberman and (Shas chairman Eli)Yishai sit in his government,' she added.

In the meantime, Maariv reports that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will return to the region next week, to lay the groundwork for the U.S.-sponsored peace summit. Rice will visit Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ramallah for discussions on the establishment of a Palestinian state and then to Egypt and Jordan for meetings with leaders in each country in support of the peace process, according to a State Department official.

Meanwhile, Ashraf al-Ajrami, the Palestinian Authority minister for prisoners affairs, told Army Radio on Friday that he met this week with Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and demanded that all Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails be freed in the coming months. Ajrami said that imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences for the murder of four Israelis and a Greek monk, was to be included in this demand. Senior Israeli politicians, among them Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, have said recently that they would consider releasing Barghouti, whom they see as a potential moderate leader of the Palestinian people.

According to Israel Radio, Dichter denied Thursday even meeting with Ajrami.

The Jerusalem Post, meanwhile, reports that Hamas has accused Fateh of launching an 'insurgency' against it in the Gaza Strip - having failed to lead a popular uprising. The paper says that one senior Hamas official told it that Fateh is behind a recent spate of bombings against Hamas targets, while another claimed that Fateh was behind at least 14 attacks against Hamas figures and institutions in the Gaza Strip over the past month.

Finally, Ynet carries a note of warning from 'senior IDF sources,' who say that 'the motivation of terror organizations in Gaza is undiminished despite their lack of success.' The sources add that 'the [IDF's] system is working well, starting with the identification [of the enemy], through the forces' readiness and, of course, at the end phase - striving for contact and assault. Still, we need to keep our eyes open at all times here,' they added.

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