Hilltop blues

Here’s a list of some inconsequential hills that became far more significant than one might have thought: Halfon Hill (Hill 24), the hill of evil council, Pork Chop Hill, Bunker Hill, Hillary Duff and now Givat Ulpana (Ulpana Hill). What was once thought of as just a hill of beans (those heady days when Migron was our biggest problem) has become a mountain of never-ending issues for the government, for the settlers living upon it and for the country as a whole.

The papers lead today with the fact that it’s becoming increasingly apparent the Knesset will not approve a court-busting law that would have allowed the five homes under contention to remain in place. And this comes a day after the attorney general made it clear that a plan to move the houses to another nearby hill, intended for military use, would not be so copacetic.

Israel Hayom lays it out plain and simple, with the headline “No majority for regularization bill; Residents: we won’t give up.”

Yedioth Ahronoth (headline “Settlers: The Likud ministers betrayed us”) details that a number of Likud politicians, who could have swung the vote toward passing the measure, pulled back their support after the prime minister made it clear that going around the court order could land them in hot water at the International Criminal Court at the Hague. “Busting the High Court decision is dangerous, very dangerous,” Benjamin Netanyahu told a Likud party meeting, according to the paper. “Not just from inside… Our enemies are hurting us through the settlements. I suggest we don’t get caught up in the International Court at The Hague.”

But Maariv and Yedioth want to make sure you don’t forget the human aspect of this whole story. Pages 2 and 3 of Yedioth are a spread with names (and doorplates) of all the families living in those five buildings slated for destruction, plus expanded bios and pictures of some of them. “We fear that Jews will hear about how the state is acting and this will cause them to be less Zionistic and not immigrate to Israel,” says either Baruch or Michal Kutai, two immigrants from Australia living in Ulpana and channeling their inner Peter Beinart.

Maariv features the first installment of a diary by one of the residents who is on hunger strike at a protest tent outside the High Court. “I came to sit with friends in a circle, to be, to be quiet even, and if needed, to not eat,” she writes.

Also in Maariv, Ofer Shelah has the crazy idea that leftists should be the ones in support of the outpost regularization bill. Why, you ask? Because it will finally show the world what Israel really is: A country that “takes Arab land, even private land, and hands it over to Jews.” Isn’t that how the world already thinks of Israel?

But fear not, brave settlers, for Haaretz reports that Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein will in fact find a solution for Netanyahu’s Ulpana problem. And even if moving onto a nearby hill isn’t quite the solution you are looking for, hey at least you won’t have to bunk up with Charles Taylor at the Hague. There’s always that.

Trading in black for olive

Israel Hayom is the only paper to leave the torching of an African migrant apartment in Jerusalem off its front page. But it, together with Maariv, plays up the news that Iran is reportedly building another enrichment facility.

Haaretz leads off with the news that three more religious units will be created in the Nahal Haredi brigade to absorb all the ultra-Orthodox expected to join up and become combat soldiers with the end of the Tal exemption law. According to the story, the brigade will take in some 2,000 more soldiers. The state is also hoping to push would-be yeshiva students into police work and prison guarding.

Maariv reports that new air force chief Amir Eshel, the son of a Holocaust survivor who is remembered for flying an Israeli jet over Auschwitz, has refused to accept a new car he was meant to get with his promotion because it is German. Eshel has decided to stick with his good ol’ Semite-friendly American Chevrolet instead of tootling around in one of Hitler’s Volkswagens, even if it does have superior suspension. “The decision came from his head, and also from his gut,” one of Eshel’s comrades told Maariv. “He knew he wouldn’t feel comfortable in a German car.”

Yedioth marks book week, which kicks off today, by featuring the beginning of classic Israeli books in a corner of nearly every page of the paper. The paper’s supplement features essays by many of Israel’s most famous authors and musicians on their favorite beginnings to books. Amos Oz writes about the beginning to S.Y. Agnon’s “Bidme Yameha” (“In the prime of her life”) that starts “My mother died in the prime of her life. Thirty years and a year was my mother when she died. Few and bad were the days of her life…”

“The love of Tirzah in the story reminds one of the fire of Heraclitus,” Oz writes. “Her victory is a defeat.”

Pullback fever

In Haaretz’s opinion pages, Moshe Arens strikes back at Ehud Barak for calling for unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank, saying Israel’s leaders suffer from unilateral withdrawal syndrome. “It may be typical of the military mindset: Get it over with! Finish the job! Do something! Do anything! Actually, on some occasions that may be the correct strategy. It usually comes under the heading of ‘Cutting your losses.’ But often it may be the wrong way to go.”

In Maariv, Gila Oshrat writes that the influx of ultra-Orthodox into the army hurts the standing of women in uniform, who will not be able to serve with the religious soldiers in a normal capacity. “Just after years which saw advances in the participation of women, we stand at the edge of a retreat that will damage the IDF’s place as an ‘army of the people.’”