Falling on the sword, awaiting a clash

An IDF general’s who resigned after his army laptop was stolen from his home rules the front pages in the Hebrew papers on Thursday, but in the background is the anticipated standoff between the military and supporters of the West Bank settlement of Amona that’s expected to be evacuated in the coming days.

Tensions are building as the clock ticks down for the Amona settlement. After a late night council, Amona residents voted against a deal to leave their homes peacefully, citing uncertainty in establishing a permanent new town for them. Opponents to the deal put before them by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Naftali Bennett said the compromise would likely encounter legal snags, leading to major delays in founding the new town, the papers report. In the end the residents voted 59 (or 58, depending whom you ask) to 20 against a compromise that would see them peacefully leave their homes.

The headlines predict chaos, with Yedioth Ahronoth saying “Forceful eviction anticipated in the coming days if there isn’t a last minute solution or additional delay by the High Court of Justice.” “Concern for a violent evacuation,” Israel Hayom says, which anticipates a “forceful and painful eviction in a matter of days” as “the police and army are prepared and training urgently for evacuating in the coming days.”

Unlike the tabloids, Haaretz doesn’t lend much ink to the Amona issue, but it does run a report on Page 7 in which it interviews the Palestinian owners of the land on which Amona was built illegally. Maryam Hamad of neighboring Silwad is signatory on the land, but hasn’t been able to visit her property since 1998, she tells the paper. Ibrahim Yakoub, another property holder on the plot where the outpost stands, says that maybe the IDF will allow them to access the land on December 26, a day after the eviction, “but my land will be far from me and I won’t be able to use it, and this means that I can’t take my land back.”

But while the anticipated standoff in Amona generates a buzz, it’s IDF Manpower Directorate chief Major General Hagai Topolanski’s resignation that steals the spotlight. By and large the coverage is sympathetic to Topolanski, giving him kudos for taking responsibility for his actions and resigning, even though an initial investigation found that there was no classified material on his computer. Haaretz calls Topolanski’s resignation “an expected, if very unfortunate, development” in light of his breaking IDF regulations by bringing his laptop home and not properly securing it.

Like the press, “senior officials in the General Staff praised Topolanski’s conduct… taking responsibility for his actions immediately,” Yedioth Ahronoth reports. At the same time, the career officer’s resignation is called “an earthquake” for the IDF by Yedioth Ahronoth and “a great drama” by Israel Hayom after the whole matter was gagged by the military censor for several days.

Yoav Limor in Yedioth Ahronoth gets behind Topolanski, writing in a Page 3 column that Topolanski’s resignation will be a major loss for IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot in his efforts to reform the military, “to return the IDF to its correct place as the army of the people.”

“From that perspective, the resignation of the head of manpower is a major loss for the public of a man and commander,” he says. But at the same time, he lauds him for “true responsibility, for actions and not words, that which is necessary for those holding senior positions.”

While the tabloids play up Topolanski falling on his sword, Haaretz’s main headline is on Iranian militias reportedly preventing civilians in formerly rebel-held Aleppo from leaving areas being bombarded by President Bashar Assad’s government forces and their allies. All Israel Hayom has is a tiny headline at the bottom of the front page referring readers to Page 9, where it quotes Assad telling reporters that “war is like a video game.” Yedioth Ahronoth dispenses with reporting on the nearly six-year slaughter on its front page, opting instead to feature an interview with soccer player Eran Zahavi, who says that he’s a legend in China, and that Israel shouldn’t look down on the Chinese because compared to them we’re “a crumb on the globe.” The paper gets around to Syria on Page 6, highlighting a group of women who chose suicide over “falling victim to gang rape by the militias.”

“And the world is silent,” reads the paper’s graphic, apparently ignoring the fact that it put the fate of 100,000 starving civilians in Aleppo beneath the homes of 40 families on a mountaintop in the West Bank.