Netanyahu in the crosshairs

With just a little over a week until elections, the Likud party and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remain in the crosshairs in the Hebrew media, with the focus on the future of the two-state solution.

Netanyahu’s rollback on support for a two-state solution makes the front page of Haaretz, but not the other two major dailies. The Likud party issued a statement on Sunday which indicated that Netanyahu’s speech in 2009 supporting the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state which recognizes Israel as a Jewish state was “no longer relevant in light of the current situation in the Middle East,” the paper reports.

Haaretz notes that the Likud party later issued a statement clarifying that Netanyahu was not negating the remarks he made six years ago.

Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the Likud party “zigzagged” on the issue of the 2009 Bar Ilan University speech and Netanyahu’s support for a two-state solution in a small article buried on Page 6.

This apparent shift in policy makes no waves in Israel Hayom, which instead publishes an article quoting senior Likud party officials lambasting Yedioth Ahronoth for leaking a document detailing concessions Netanyahu was reportedly willing to make in negotiations with the Palestinians. The paper quotes Benny Begin, a former Likud minister, saying that the leak was “a disgrace to journalism” and that the reporter behind it, Nahum Barnea, was “the father of a lie.”

Begin, son of the Likud party’s founder, former prime minister Menachem Begin, said that whatever Barnea publishes serves some ulterior purpose.

“Barnea’s false report from [Friday] served Yedioth Ahronoth and serves the Zionist Union led by Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog. One hand washes the other. Money, a newspaper and chasing after the government,” he said.

The paper publishes an extensive hit piece in which it says that the election is not really a battle between Netanyahu and Herzog, but is really about Noni Mozes’s “unchecked aspiration” to return to power and be the prime minister from a back room.

Yedioth Ahronoth runs a piece detailing a Channel 10 report about Israeli ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer also agreeing in principle to a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 lines. The report, Yedioth Ahronoth notes, came out just days after one of its own about Netanyahu’s backchannel talks agreeing to such an arrangement.

A Likud party ad that compared Hamas fighters and Israeli workers still riles the editors at Yedioth Ahronoth, dockworkers and employees of the Israel Broadcasting Authority. In a front page report, paper says that “it would appear that all of the workers in Israel were harmed” by the video touting Netanyahu’s crackdown on cushy jobs at the ports and on the Gaza-based terrorist group. The paper reports that the dockworkers are now protesting against Netanyahu.

“I fight in Paratroopers, I took part in the Second Lebanon War, [Operation] Cast Lead and in Protective Edge,” Alon Shemesh, an 11-year employee at the Haifa port, tells the paper. “Last summer I served in the war room of the Paratroopers battalion command, but now I find that according to Likud I’m a Hamasnik.” He says that even though he and his family were staunch Likud supporters, he won’t give Netanyahu his vote next week.

Haaretz also reports that, contrary to Netanyahu’s remarks before Congress, a nuclear deal which would halt Iranian uranium enrichment would not expire after 10 years. The senior US official who spoke to Haaretz says that the world powers “are not rushing to any place” for the sake of making a deal before the end of the month. The nuclear talks are set to expire on March 31, but the American official says that “we want to reach a proper deal and not act under the pressure of time.”