Sentences and sensibility

Israel’s tabloids focus on Wednesday’s unprecedented 30-year jail sentence for the man convicted of raping a woman after forcing her and her boyfriend to have sex at knifepoint in a central Tel Aviv parking lot last summer. The rest of the Hebrew press is more focused on the issue of renewed peace talks.

Israel Hayom reports that the judge found Ahmed Jaber guilty of multiple counts of violent rape, attempted rape, violent indecent acts, theft, entering Israel illegally, and illegal impersonation of another. In addition to the prison sentence, Jaber must pay each victim NIS 258,000.

The judges wrote in their decision that Jaber’s deeds were “sadistic” and “unparalleled,” and that he had used the victim “like a puppet on a string… for his deviant sexual needs.”

The female victim is quoted by the paper as saying she “was very disappointed by the state prosecution” for not digging deeper into the motive behind the brutal attack.

“The prosecution obscured from me the fact that the attacker learned in an Islamic education system and comes from a very religious background and learned to throw rocks at IDF soldiers. Until last week [they] hid from me the fact that the rapist was already convicted by a military court of throwing rocks at IDF soldiers and served an 11-month prison sentence,” she said.

According to the paper, her lawyers seek their client’s recognition by the Defense Ministry as a victim of terror.

Yedioth Ahronoth quotes the woman saying (through her lawyer) “At last this nightmare is over.” Its headline calls Jaber “the monster from the City Garden [parking lot].”

Columnist Merav Batito writes that the public’s surprise at a 30-year sentence for Jaber was proof that “we are not accustomed to such rulings. We’ve turned apathetic to weak punishments that weakly herald that rape is not the horrible crime we thought it was.”

She charges that the Israeli court system is “not doing its work as necessary regarding punishing sex criminals.”

“We must pray for the day when every accused rapist in Israel will earn the same justice that was [meted out on Wednesday] in the Tel Aviv District Court,” she concludes.

Ahead of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s arrival in Israel for the fifth time since his appointment this year, Maariv leads off with former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman’s comment that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is not serious about peace talks. The paper paraphrases Liberman predicting that Abbas would scuttle the talks shortly after they begin, blame Israel for the collapse of negotiations, then go to the UN Security Council in September and ask to recognize Palestine as a state.

“It’s clear that the actions Abbas is preparing are not peace negotiations, but rather an additional process of provocation and incitement against the State of Israel,” Liberman says.

On the Israeli side of the table, however, Haaretz quotes a senior Likud official as saying that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be willing to “withdraw from the majority of the West Bank” and even evacuate settlements in exchange for security arrangements with the Palestinians.

“Netanyahu knows that for a peace deal we need to withdraw from over 90 percent of the West Bank and evacuate more than a few settlements,” the minister says. “He knows that’s one of the things they’re going to talk about” with Kerry. He adds that the key issue for Netanyahu is security arrangements, but notes that should those be met, the prime minister would be willing to make serious territorial concessions.

Israel Hayom cites Jerusalem diplomatic sources as saying that no meeting between Netanyahu and Abbas has been arranged as of yet, and the odds are slim that they’ll meet this week at all.

Maariv runs a story about Netayahu, speaking to troops on the Syrian border, saying that they should instill a fear of death in the hearts of their enemies. The fearless leader told the troops in the Golan that “our determination, the will to win and the ability to break the enemy, and instill in him in the decisive moment the fear of death” is Israel’s greatest asset.

Yedioth Ahronoth runs a retort by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who said, “You don’t need to threaten. You want to act? Do it.” According to the paper the former spy chief even channeled Eli Wallach’s character from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” and said, “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”