Rally in Tel Aviv, rain in Jerusalem

Looking at the weekend’s events, Yedioth Ahronoth’s front page features a large photo of a rally held on Saturday night in Tel Aviv to mark the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. “Already 19 years,” reads the headline. According to police estimates,12,000 people showed up for the rally, notably including former president Shimon Peres.

Peres told the crowd: “Whoever gives up on peace is delusional. He who surrenders and stops searching for peace – he is not patriotic.” But he wasn’t done there, needling some politicians. “There are all sorts of wise men who say that instead of peace they speak of ‘managing the conflict’ in Jerusalem and Gaza. Manage the conflict? The conflict is managing us.”

Haaretz chose to lead with next week’s nuclear summit to take place in Oman, which has a history of hosting back channel talks between Iran and the US. The US, EU and Iran will meet in the Gulf state to attempt to reach a breakthrough before the self-imposed deadline of November 24 for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. The summit will be held on November 9-10.

At Israel Hayom, the main story is Israel Hayom. The paper takes the front page and the first two pages to tell its readers why a bill in the Knesset that would shutter the paper is bad. The coverage comes as government ministers are set to discuss the bill on Sunday. “How to pass a law that is unlawful?” asks Gonen Ginat in an op-ed. Ginat writes that Israel Hayom employs 2,000 Israelis, some of whom have disabilities. “Those who support the law are eager to see them unemployed, living on Social Security — people whose only sin is that they make a successful communication tool, the newspaper Israelis like best,” he adds.

People are angry about the bill and at Eitan Cabel, the MK who sponsored it. As Haaretz reports, after Israel Hayom published Cabel’s phone number so readers could call and complain, Cabel forwarded them to the Prime Minister’s Office, flooding it with calls from angry Israel Hayom readers. The Prime Minister’s Office ordered Knesset technicians to go in to Cabel’s office and disconnect the service, but failed and had to call in an outside company. Cabel is furious at what he calls “overreach” by the Prime Minister’s Office and asked Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein to investigate.

Jerusalem of calm?

Going into the weekend all eyes were on Jerusalem, but as Yedioth Ahronoth reports, it was relatively quiet. The paper says the increased police presence — and the restrictions on men over 50 from entering the Temple Mount — played a role in keeping the city quiet. The paper gives the wintry, wet weather as the most significant reason for the calm. It also reports that police are looking into the possibility that Mu’taz Hijazi, who is suspected of shooting Yehudah Glick, was responsible for a shooting attack in July, during Operation Protective Edge. A police source said, “The two incidents are almost identical.”

Haaretz reports that the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, believes that Hijazi did not act alone in shooting Glick. They suspect that while Hijazi was the shooter, another person could have been waiting outside of the Begin Center where Glick was shot. The paper reports that Glick is still in serious condition with gunshot wounds to his chest and stomach.

Israel Hayom also writes on the situation in Jerusalem, citing the government’s expected approval of harsher penalties against stone throwers. The government is set to approve a measure that would make parents of children under 14 responsible if their child is charged with stone throwing. Currently, the law cannot act against minors under 14, and authorities feel this is the only way to stop the stone throwers. Minister of Interior Security Yitzhak Aharonovitch said, “Only economic harm to the parents will restrain children.”

Tell us what you really think

In Haaretz’s opinion pages, Gideon Levy writes about his distaste for Jerusalem, calling the city ugly. He says an occupied city is always ugly, and while a city doesn’t have to be beautiful to be loved, he cannot love Jerusalem. “You cannot love a city that’s immoral,” he writes and lambastes the campaign to transform Jerusalem into a symbol that it isn’t. “In truth, no country recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It has been destroyed by the occupation.”

Israel Hayom’s Dan Margalit writes about the upcoming nuclear talks between the West and Iran. As the talks are set to begin again, he writes that although Obama promised that Iran would not get the bomb, his strategy is odd. While Netanyahu and Obama disagree on the details of the deal, he writes, “American behavior has followed a strange formula which amounts to, approximately, wherever the parties reached an impasse, Americans turn a cold shoulder toward Netanyahu.” While Margalit notes the mid-term elections will weaken Obama, there is one thing that has been a constant during the negotiations with Iran: the Iranian centrifuges are continually spinning.