Mo Amona, mo a’moaning

Sometimes a single word can tell a whole story. That’s the case in Israel’s print press Monday morning as three front pages describing the same issue – the government’s initial okay for a controversial bill that will retroactively legalize West Bank outposts – use three different words to paint three wholly different pictures of the legislation and the political storm brewing around it.

“Ministers approve whitewashing of outposts on private Palestinian land,” reads the headline in Haaretz. The use of the Hebrew word “halbana,” a freighted word often used to describe illegal activity, instead of the more neutral “hachshara” — literally koshering, or in this case legalization — leaves no doubt in readers’ minds where the left-leaning broadsheet stands on the issue.

On Yedioth Ahronoth’s front page, the headline “Amona imbroglio” (Hebrew: plunter) zooms out to give a wider view of the issue and how it is tangling up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, renegade coalition partner Jewish Home and the attorney general.

And finally Israel Hayom, walking the same tightrope as Netanyahu, opts for seeming neutrality on the issue, with the headline “After a stormy day: Regulation bill passes.”

Israel Hayom is also the only paper to lead off with actual news on the issue and not a conclave of analysis/opinion pieces as the other two papers do.

“After a dramatic day accompanied by no small amount of tension between coalition members, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation okayed the regulation bill, which is intended to help prevent the evacuation of Amona and other outposts,” the paper reports matter-of-factly.

The paper is still Netanyahu’s, though, and so in an accompanying backgrounder piece, Moti Tochfeld describes rival Naftali Bennett as a petulant child for pushing the legislation despite what he says were Netanyahu’s pleas to wait until the High Court rules on a stay for Amona, and defends the prime minister for not using his veto to torpedo the measure.

“The prime minister has the right to veto the committee. He decided not to despite the pressure put on him by other party heads,” he writes. “Netanyahu wasn’t against the bill, he was just for waiting until the High Court rules.”

Things are just as black and white in Haaretz, but they go the other way, with writers Yossi Verter and Barak Ravid both agreeing on the absolute injustice the bill creates, albeit diverging with separate takes on the ramifications for domestic politics and internationally.

Verter, in his column, declares Bennett the victor over Netanyahu.
“As far as Bennett is concerned it’s a win-win situation – if Netanyahu gives in and promotes the bill, he will collect all the credit from his voters for pushing the prime minister to legislate. And if Netanyahu torpedoes the bill, Bennett can portray him as an enemy of the settlement movement,” he writes, in a column replete with the most hyperbole ever.

Taking a more grounded approach, Ravid warns that with the Amona gambit, Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked are leading Israel toward diplomatic doom.

“The bill is unprecedented in that it permits the theft of private Palestinian land in the West Bank. Any way you look at it, there is nothing about this bill that is consistent with the rule of law,” Ravid writes. “But beyond the serious legal ramifications and the injustice that such a law would create, the move being pushed by Shaked and Bennett is a diplomatic folly, particularly at this time. Even from the Israeli right’s perspective, there’s no sense in passing a law like this before incumbent US President Barack Obama leaves the White House on January 20. This bill crosses all red lines as far as the international community is concerned and would essentially force Obama to make a move against the settlements in the UN Security Council, which he has consistently refrained from doing since taking office in 2009.”

Yedioth’s news story focuses on the state of play the Amona bill has created, essentially a Mexican standoff with everyone against everyone and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit stuck in the middle.

Highlighting the whirlwind of shifting allegiances, reporter Tova Tzimuki writes of the strange position Mandelblit, supposedly a darling of the right, found himself in, along with other politicos.

“Ironically, it was the prime minister who came to his defense, in order to kill the regularization bill. But his support was short-lived,” she writes. “A few minutes later, Netanyahu, against Mandelblit’s stance, agreed to convene a vote on the bill to muzzle mosque muezzins.”

Lost in all the political brouhaha are the 40 families whose future on that West Bank hilltop are at stake. Yedioth columnist Yifat Ehrlich mounts a rare defense of them, writing that it’s not fair on the residents, who were initially allowed by the state to live on someone else’s land, though she admits that was a mistake.

“But a mistake is not fixed with another mistake. Destroying homes in Amona, or Ofra or Netiv Ha’avot is a serious mistake,” she writes. “The residents, who in most cases didn’t know they were moving onto private property, shouldn’t have to pay for the state’s mistake.”

But fellow columnist Nahum Barnea takes the opposite view, describing the Amonaites as enjoying the best of the state’s largess while everyone else suffers, and also counseling them not to rely on a more friendly US administration.

“Firstly, [Donald] Trump still isn’t there. And secondly, nobody, including Trump himself, knows what his plans are,” he writes.

Indeed, while Trump finally slinks away from being the top news for the first time since Americans went to the polls last week, his specter still hangs over the pages of these august papers.

That includes Trump’s appointment Sunday of RNC chief Reince Preibus to be his chief of staff and former Breitbart head Steve Bannon, accused of being a member of the anti-Semitic alt-right, as the just-as-powerful chief strategist. Or rather, what’s most telling is what’s not in the papers.

While both Haaretz and Yedioth leave Bannon out altogether, likely due to their papers’ midnight bedtimes, pro-Trump Israel Hayom includes it, but conveniently leaves out any of those icky facts about accusations about Bannon.

“As campaign CEO, Bannon directed Trump in a more aggressive direction against Hillary Clinton” is all the paper can muster about him, adding that it’s establishment man Preibus who is likely to inspire protests by Trump’s more extremist supporters.

In Yedioth, Orly Azulay sees Trump’s interview with “60 Minutes,” along with his appointment of Preibus, as efforts to “calm the country,” though she also notes his promise to deport 2-3 million immigrants as something that can may have the opposite effect.

On Haaretz’s op-ed page, Odeh Bisharat writes that it doesn’t matter much what Trump says or who he appoints, since the damage has already been done.

“To restore calm, there are those saying that Trump is really a pragmatist. But the issue is bigger than Trump. The future of America right now is a hostage to the genie Trump let out of the bottle – blatant racism, burning hatred, ugly machismo, the degradation of women,” he writes. “Instead of an atmosphere of solidarity that draws people into the action, there is now a poisoned atmosphere that excludes people from all walks of life.”