A new era of diplomacy and a locked up lawmaker

A diplomatic frenzy at the United Nations generates dramatic headlines in the Hebrew papers Friday morning, after Israel temporarily managed to stave off a Security Council resolution against settlements in which the Americans appeared set to abstain. On the home front, the interrogation and arrest of an Arab Knesset member after he was caught passing cellphones to Palestinian security prisoners and waived his parliamentary immunity gets its fair share of coverage.

On the diplomatic front, the manner in which the characters in the drama are introduced varies radically between the leftist Haaretz and Benjamin Netanyahu-loving Israel Hayom. The former states in its passive voice headline that “at the last moment, a move at the UN against settlements was halted,” whereas the latter proclaims that “Netanyahu and Trump pressured, and the vote against Israel was delayed.” Curiously, Yedioth Ahronoth‘s credit to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi finds no mention in the other papers, nor does the story make the front page whatsoever.

The gist of the issue is that Egypt agreed to withdraw the resolution after Sissi was sent messages by President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, after efforts by Netanyahu to get the Obama administration to veto the motion failed.

Why was the resolution so bad for Israel? Israel Hayom explains that it would have “turned Israel effectively into a criminal state and exposed it to prosecution at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The resolution would have compared Israel to South Africa during Apartheid, which could have led to suits against Israelis who built over the Green Line.” The paper ignores the fact that in the eyes of most of the international community — though not, hitherto, the US — Israel’s settlements are already illegal.

Israeli ministers were told at the security cabinet meeting last night that “the crisis was still at its peak, and that the possibility that a vote would take place on the issue in the coming days isn’t off the table,” Haaretz says. Israel Hayom says that “it’s not clear whether the proposal will be buried, or whether it’s just a temporary delay.”

Unsurprisingly, Israel Hayom’s Haim Shine hails the “right policy in a new reality” by Trump that saved Israel ignominy at the United Nations. US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry “apparently planned a little revenge against the Israeli government and its prime minister a moment before they left for Christmas vacation,” by intending to abstain in the Security Council, he writes. He says the Obama administration, “cooperating with the Palestinians and the Israeli left,” attempted to pass the motion at the Security Council in an attempt “to isolate the State of Israel.”

“The man who contributed a lot to the success of the Israeli maneuver is President-elect Donald Trump,” Shine fawns. “It appears that the statements he made before the elections carry weight afterwards as well.”

To Israeli politicians and pundits who were disappointed by Trump’s election, he says “it’s worthwhile they quickly internalize that there’s a new reality, which gives hope to the whole region, and they should stop inciting the world against the Israeli government’s policy.”

In Yedioth Ahronoth, the credit goes to Sissi, not Trump. Smadar Peri writes that the Egyptian president’s decision wasn’t a surprise move, but rather “it was created by security and intelligence cooperation between Israel and Egypt that has turned into warm relations.” It’s not just a shared enemy, it’s Sissi’s struggle to survive and remain in power that has brought him close to Netanyahu.

Sissi’s decision to spike the resolution, writes Amira Hass in Haaretz, “broke the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations.”

“More than any Palestinian political official, the delegation in New York expected that the United States wouldn’t use its veto, but would abstain from the vote, and thus mark another positive mark for it and for Palestinian diplomacy.” Israel’s diplomatic coup “strengthens Palestinian despair concerning the position of Arab states and encourages the feeling of orphanhood.”

Balad party MK Basel Ghattas’s arrest by police on suspicion of smuggling cell phones to Palestinians in Israeli prison convicted of security crimes dominates the front page in Yedioth Ahronoth, and gets equal treatment in Haaretz and Israel Hayom. After waiving his parliamentary immunity, he was questioned for several hours by police. Israeli authorities arrested Ghattas out of fear he would flee the country, Haaretz reports. The charges he faces are conspiracy to commit a crime, fraud, breach of trust and violating prison regulations.

Yedioth Ahronoth points out on its front page that it is the first time since the founding of the state that a serving member of Knesset is behind bars, which is enough for the paper to brand the Arab lawmaker as guilty and suggest he was going to flee the country, “like former MK Azmi Bashara, who fled from Israel after various suspicions were raised against him.”

Haaretz and Israel Hayom, by contrast, are far less sensationalist in their perspective on a now-impossible moonlight flit.