Fear and loathing in Tel Aviv

The Interwebs may have moved past The Case of the Escaped State’s Witness, but the pages of Israel’s Hebrew-language papers, frozen in time from midnight, are still giddy over his capture, like out-of-touch parents still calling things “wack” and “da bomb.”

All four papers give front page real estate to the story. Yedioth Ahronoth, leading off with it, offers readers an hour-by-hour accounting of the time on the lam for the witness, whose name and face are still under wraps. The paper follows his journey step by step, from his learning his handlers’ patterns to find a moment to escape, to his journey to Haifa and then back to his Tel Aviv apartment, where police were hiding, funnily enough, in the closet, to capture him.

Maariv, meanwhile, reports that the state is still interested in keeping its plea bargain deal with the state’s witness, even after the man escaped and made clear that he’s no longer comfortable with the whole arrangement. Columnist Avi Ashkenazi tends to agree with the 5-oh, saying that the little escapade was no more than a blip in the road to prosecution. “The way the state’s witness has been utilized up until now hasn’t hurt the police,” he writes. “In interviews after his escape, he spoke of an internal crisis, but did not go back on what he told investigators.”

Israel Hayom, though, says that the whole shebang has had a detrimental effect on police and heads will certainly roll, sussing the story out of “hints” from top cop Yohanan Danino. “The disappearance of the state’s witness from the apartment didn’t need to happen, and we’ll take the appropriate conclusions from that,” Danino said Saturday night after the witness was captured. The story also makes sure to connect this hot mess with the last police pickle in the case from last week, when the cops accidentally released names still under gag order. Perhaps Barney Fife could clean this force up.

Haaretz farms out the top half of its page 1, leading off with a story about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s interview with The Washington Post in which he says he’s willing to sit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas until they reach an agreement (something he has pretty much said a million times before.) Across the street (the street being a Brazilian avenida filled with protesters and photographed by AFP) is a column from the Economist in which the venerable British magazine handicaps the chances of Iran’s nuclear program halting, and comes up with a big fat goose egg.

“The inconvenient truth is that while the talks seem destined to continue, Iran is close to what is known as ‘critical capability’—the point at which it could make a dash to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one or more bombs before the IAEA or Western intelligence agencies would even know it had done so. Despite the severe economic pain that the tightening of sanctions has inflicted on Iran’s people and their evident desire for change, Iran’s strategic calculus has not shifted. The nuclear programme is worth almost any sacrifice because it guarantees the regime’s survival against external threats, as America’s differing policies towards Libya and North Korea illustrate.”

Gimme shelter

You can never go home again, they say. But Maariv reports that the Prime Minister’s Office is looking into the possibility of letting Syrian Druze rejoin their families on the Israeli side of the border, to protect them from the civil war raging in Assad’s country. The paper reports that the request came from Druze leaders, who met with PMO chief Harel Locker in the Golan on Thursday. “Locker’s visit and his warm reception warranted an emphasis on the serious change happening here,” a Druze leader told the paper. “It seems the Israeli government is intelligently identifying the historic opportunity opened up by the Syrian civil war. We remember that after the law that annexed the Golan the Druze here burned the ID cards that the military government then gave them. But the gradual disconnection from Syria has created an opportunity to warm relations.”

Another group of people wishing they could cross back home are the Gush Katif evacuees, who will mark eight years since their evacuation from Gaza next month. New papers released Sunday, and reported on by Yedioth, show that while they certainly can’t go to their old home again, many of them can’t go to any home at all. Out of 8,600 people kicked out, only 736 are today living in real houses (i.e., not trailer homes.) and the whole operation, according to the papers, has cost the state nearly NIS 9.5 billion ($2.6 billion) to date.

“At a time when the economic reality is not simple and the deficit is in the billions, we are uncovering now the heavy cost of the evacuation, which cost the state billions,” MK Zvulun Kalfa (Jewoish Home party), himself an evacuee, tells the paper. “We’re talking about a stupid and expensive act by the state from every angle – the security of Israel that was damaged, society that was torn, and now it seems the country’s economy was also damaged.”

On the other end of the political spectrum, Haaretz’s Gideon Levy pulls an old bait and switch, asking readers in the headline whether Israel is a legitimate state, and then using the first line to explain that “the provocative (and challenging ) question in this headline is irrelevant.”

Yet he goes on to vituperate at the right for scaring everybody by claiming the rest of the world wants to delegitimize Israel. “The fear-mongering of delegitimization is aimed at obscuring reality and allowing Israel to ignore responsibility for its actions, which is the source of the Israeli regime’s lack of legitimacy. Precious few seriously discuss destroying Israel, and in any case, no one has the power to do so. Israel’s critics and haters — and unfortunately there many of these — question Israel’s regime and policies, not Israel’s existence.”

Monday Night Bloodbath

In Israel Hayom, former ambassador to the US Zalman Shoval writes about what he knows best, Egyptian-Ethiopian saber-rattling over the Nile. But, he says, this is more serious that some simple sword shaking, plotting the sides’ chances like an analyst for Monday Night Football: “The plot of Verdi’s opera ‘Aida’ deals with a war between Egypt and Ethiopia, and the Egyptians come out winners. Right now it seems Egypt’s military might is greater, though the Ethiopians fight strong and tough, and one should remember that in two wars between them and the Italians, one they won and one they only lost after the Italians used gas.”
Final score prediction: 21-13