Gaza walls and missile defense squalls

After weeks of absence from the headlines, the Gaza Strip is back. Orlando? Paris? The issues that gripped the Israeli press for the past few days have slipped into relative oblivion, with a gator attack in Disney World the only mention of Florida on the front pages.

The three main daily papers report on a briefing by a “senior Defense Ministry official” (whom everyone knows is Liberman simply based on the nature of the remarks) in three starkly different ways.

Liberman stepped up as defense minister just a few weeks ago and one of the first things announced by his ministry is a plan for Gaza that’s Trumpesque in its approach to combating terror tunnels, Yedioth Ahronoth reports. How does Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump plan to stop illegal immigration across the US-Mexico border? Build a wall! Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the Defense Ministry plans to build a subterranean walls several dozen meters deep and also aboveground along the length of the border.

The cost: a cool NIS 2.2 billion ($568 million). It’s reasonable to assume that Gaza will be paying for it as well. The question not posed by Yedioth Ahronoth is the inverse of that pointed at the Great Wall of Trump: what’s to stop the tunnel diggers from going a bit lower?

Israel Hayom prefers to lead with the bombastic statement made by the unnamed senior defense official that “the next conflict in Gaza is inevitable and it needs to be Hamas’s last.” The often-jingoistic tabloid outdoes itself in its coverage. The article is accompanied by an image of the devastation wrought upon the Gaza Strip in 2014, a harbinger, no doubt, for how Gaza will fare in the next conflict. It also quotes the head of IDF intelligence saying the next war with Hezbollah will leave Lebanon a “country of refugees.”

The only amusing part is the somersaults performed by the paper to hint at the fact that it was Liberman without saying so. “According to the source, who spoke with reporters in the context of Avigdor Liberman’s entry to his position as defense minister,” the paper’s reporter writes.

Haaretz, on the other hand, highlights the “inevitable” aspect rather than the eliminating Hamas part. Unlike in the tabloids, the defense official’s remarks are shunted from the front page to Page 4 , where it notes that the official said that at the same time, Israel isn’t rushing into combat anytime soon.

What does make the front page in Haaretz is the Knesset’s approval of a bill to significantly broaden the state’s authority to combat terrorism. Opponents of the bill, the paper reports, claim that it’s too broad and harms basic rights. Nonetheless, the parliament approved the final reading with 57 lawmakers in favor and 16 against. Among other things, it increases the punishment for terror and aiding terror, doubling some maximum sentences to up to 30 years in prison and putting a seven-year sentence on threatening to carry out a crime that’s punishable with a life sentence.

Considering the coup for the coalition, it’s surprising that the news of passing this law only gets mentioned on Page 13 in Israel Hayom. “In the United States they deliberate, in Israel they act,” the paper’s sub-headline touts, saying the bill will allow Israel “to contend with global terrorism.” Among the tidbits in the law it approves of is the criminal offense of digging a tunnel.

The battle of the budgets in Washington, and its effect on military aid to Israel, understandably gets prominence in the papers after the White House said it opposed extra funding to a missile defense program with earmarks for Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by downplaying any tension with Washington, insisting there would be no cuts to aid. His head of negotiations with the US said that Israel was “determined” to lock in a deal by the end of Obama’s term, but not at any cost.

Commenting on what Yedioth Ahronoth calls the “Missile crisis,” Shimon Shiffer writes that “as of now, the deal doesn’t appear to be on the horizon” after seven months of negotiations, “but they continue to say: Don’t panic.”

He reminds readers that senior defense officials in Israel warn that waiting for the next president — whoever that might be — could be a error in judgment. “Trump, remember, may turn the tables and even reduce the aid,” he says.

Israel’s security chiefs think that a deal could have already been reached “if only the prime minister stopped his arrogant and confrontational behavior with the White House,” Shiffer writes. “The prime minister is now learning in the negotiations over military aid an important lesson in the limitations of power. What’s unfortunate is that the State of Israel is the one who’ll pay the price for it.”

In Israel Hayom, Avraham Ben Tzvi contends that the conflict between the White House and Congress over missile defense funding isn’t a toughening of Washington’s stance vis-a-vis Israel, but “a technical and specific argument.”

After weaving a convoluted explanation of the circumstances like only an academic can, the esteemed professor gives the bottom line: “We have a hint to Israel that it had better wrap up the negotiations with the [Obama] administration officials on the issue of [military] aid before the end of Obama’s term.”

Haaretz’s cartoon sums it up best. Netanyahu’s at Obama’s cash machine, which is currently out of order.