You snooze, you lose

Anything about the Iranian negotiations in the Israeli press was out of date by the time the papers hit the stands Sunday morning, as world powers and Iran reached an agreement early in the morning in Geneva. Haaretz reports that efforts ran late into the night, and that “Israel is striving to improve the deal with Iran,” while Maariv features a blaring headline quoting the defense minister’s warning that a nuclear Iran could lead to dirty bombs against the West.

Taking a look at some of the other coverage, Maariv reports on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “invitation” to come speak at the Knesset. Abbas is quoted telling Voice of Russia that he is willing to come speak before the Israeli parliament if he has free rein to say what he wants.

“Netanyahu is interested in my saying such and such and lay out preconditions. I don’t accept preconditions, I am prepare to go there and say what I want, not what he wants,” Abbas said. The Palestinian leader said that he would seek greater Russian support for international recognition of Palestinian independence.

MK Ahmad Tibi (Ta’al) remarked in response to Abbas’s statement that “there’s no chance that the president of the Palestinian Authority will come address the Knesset.”

“Unfortunately this won’t happen. When Sadat came to speak at the Knesset he came with the guarantee that Egyptian lands in Sinai would be returned to the last millimeter. [Abbas] won’t come so long as there is no agreement  and so long as Netanyahu demands he recognize a Jewish state; therefore there’s point in the invitation and it’s not practical,” he said.

Turning to local politics, Haaretz reports that newly elected Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog said he will not join Netanyahu’s government in its present form. He said in a Channel 2 interview after his victory over Shelly Yachimovich that “I don’t recommend that the prime minister sleep with one eye open expecting a call from me. There is no point in joining the Netanyahu government in its current composition.”

Yedioth Ahronoth eulogizes the late Israeli entrepreneur and activist Dov Lautman, who died this weekend at the age of 77, with two lengthy op-eds in his memory by Sima Kadmon and Eitan Haber. The paper reports that Lautman, an MIT grad and long-time friend of assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, helped launch Israel’s nascent manufacturing sector in founding Delta, an undergarment company, and a slew of other companies.

“He founded and operated many social foundations which dealt with the issues of education, peace, and equal opportunity,” it writes.

Kadmon writes that “no eulogy written or said in the coming days will succeed in illuminating the man as he truly was,” saying that with his death “a star was extinguished. A sea dried up. A nature preserve gone extinct.”

“He was a Tel Avivian like only Tel Avivians can be,” Haber writes. “He was an Israeli like only sabras planted in this land can be. He was a Zionist who competed with Herzl for success.”

In the defense sector, Israel Hayom reports on a deal between the US and Israel to sell the IDF V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met in Halifax, Canada, and Ya’alon thanked his counterpart for the equipment that “will provide Israel in the near future… further strength to the IDF.”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman hopped back on the “I <3 USA” soapbox and said “Israel can’t manage in the modern world without the coordination and help of the United States, who is Israel’s most important and essential strategic partner.”

Haaretz also reports that, in response to Ankara’s downgrade of relations with Cairo, Egypt reciprocated and declared Turkey’s envoy persona non grata. The Foreign Ministry in Cairo noted that “the Egyptian government always maintained good relations with the Turkish people, but the recent declarations by Turkish Prime Minister [Recep Tayyip Erdogan] didn’t leave room for relations such as these,” the paper reports. The Egyptian government said it respects the Turkish people and that it holds its government responsible for the deterioration of relations.

Maariv reports that the Ministerial Committee for Legislation is set to vote on raising the minimum wage for IDF combat soldiers to NIS 2,100 and NIS 700 for noncombat soldiers. MK Miri Regev (Likud) called the proposal “the correct and just solution to the problem of soldiers’ salaries.” The paper quotes senior officers in the Human Resources Department of the IDF saying that many soldiers require financial assistance during their service, especially those who don’t receive support from home.