Deri’s derring-do

Twin failures — of Shas party leaders to keep leader Aryeh Deri on board and of the Palestinians to pass a Security Council statehood resolution — vie for space on Israeli front pages Thursday, with papers unsure how much of the stories are just ham-handed political shows and how much they may actually portend big changes down the road.

Of the two, Deri’s resignation from the Knesset, essentially doubling down on his vow to leave Shas in the dust in the wake of tapes showing the party’s spiritual leader dishing dirt on him, was the more surprising.

While some analysts see Deri’s resignation — which was followed by a mass formal request to resign by all of Shas’s Knesset members — as a symbolic move and not actually indicative of plans for him to leave political life, the man himself is quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth assuring readers that his departure is not a political maneuver.

“Whoever wants to do spin wouldn’t write the letter with his own hand or open himself up freely to a polygraph test,” he is quoted telling the paper. “You read the resignation letter. I resigned from the Knesset, what more do you need?”

The paper still leaves open the possibility that Deri will return to the fold of the party, but calls his move, and the tape, the “hardest moment in the history of Shas,” and predicts it may spell the end for the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox powerhouse.

“It’s widely estimated that should Deri stick to his demand to leave political life, the move could definitely mean the end of the road for the Shas party,” the paper writes.

Israel Hayom goes further, calling Shas a “party with a question mark” in its headline. The paper’s Dan Margalit, in a scathing commentary riddled with mixed metaphors, is not convinced Deri is really on his way out, but if he is, he writes, “good riddance.”

“In the last two days, Deri has initiated an unprecedented political combustion, which came to its climax with the resignation of his whole faction. He wants to return in a big way, with heaven’s blessing and no enemies at home,” he pens. “But it’s possible he trotted too far and the bridle has fallen from his grip, and he may have dragged with him all his followers into the political abyss.”

Haaretz is the sole paper to lead off with the Palestinian Security Council vote, which failed to get even the requisite nine votes needed for the US to exercise its veto. The broadsheet, noting that the timing of the vote was earlier than previously thought, reports that a Palestinian source said they rushed through the resolution to keep council members from having to undergo additional pressure from lobbyists trying to sway their vote.

The paper also makes hay out of the fact that Israel’s UN mission was missing its two top dogs during the vote, who had flown to Jerusalem for a diplomatic conference. “It’s total incompetence,” the paper quotes one unnamed senior official saying.

Yedioth notes however that most of the anger in Jerusalem was directed not at envoy Ron Prosor, but at France and Luxembourg, which both voted yes on the measure. The US, which voted no and also actively lobbied against the measure, got much praise from Jerusalem, but in the paper’s op-ed page, Eitan Haber opines that “big brother is getting tired” of having to do Israel’s dirty work at the UN.

“The US would indeed use its veto on a resolution like this, but if ties between Washington and Jerusalem continue to deteriorate, we could one day be standing across from an American president who decides not to follow the opinion of [Benjamin] Netanyahu, [Naftali] Bennett and Orit Strock. You say: It can’t happen. C’mon, really, how many times in our history did we say it couldn’t happen and it did?”

The Likud primaries happening Wednesday also garner headlines in all three major dailies. Haaretz makes the less than bold prediction that the party will move to the right with its Knesset slate. The leadership, though, will remain in Netanyahu’s hands against a challenge by Danny Danon from the right, even if he holds on by a smaller margin than he hoped for.

On Israel Hayom’s op-ed page, Gabi Avital writes an unabashed paean to the leading party, which he undemocratically calls “the movement of the nation – despite it all,” and then goes on to sing the praises of Likud, one of the few to hold a primary, as a bulwark of democracy.

“The prime minister steers between unclear global processes and the squall of the Middle East, between constantly hardening positions from the Palestinian leaders and untenable pressures at home calling to continue making concessions as if nothing happened. The Likud party celebrates its democratic holiday and is fit, at least to me, to be the party leading us through the stormy sea.”

Finally, while the papers make little ado over the impending start to 2015, Haaretz plays up the end of the year with a package looking at some of the year’s biggest stories. For reporter Anshel Pfeffer, Russian President Vladimir Putin was one of 2014’s main events, with the leader going from managing the world’s biggest Olympiad ever to bringing the world back to the edge of the Cold War.

“The year which began with ski and ice-skating competitions ends with an official return to East-West confrontation. It could all turn around in 2015. Drastic cuts in social budgets and pensions, mass layoffs, especially in industrial towns reliant on producing weapons systems for the reequipping of the Russian armed forces, could yet bring the masses out to the streets, but for now Putin doesn’t seem overly concerned,” he writes. “2015 will not be an easy year for the Russian people. But for now they seem prepared to accept economic pain for Russia’s return to equal competition for global hegemony. Putin has convinced them that there’s no choice, and as things look now, there is nothing that will stop him from being there in three and a half years as the host of the 2018 World Cup.”