Looking ahead to the rumble in the rotunda

With Iran firmly in the pocket of Barack Obama, media attention shifts Tuesday to the next beast the American president will have to vanquish on his way to a landmark nuclear deal: Congress.

American politics are famously set up with a system of checks and balances between the three main branches of government, but the way the Israeli media portrays the looming battle between Obama and Congress, the checks will be more akin to something out of a hockey game, and the fight over who has the final word over a deal with Iran will bring out the lances in balances.

The main headline in Israel Hayom tells readers that “Obama is on a collision course with Congress,” and we all know how collision courses end.

The paper claims that the battle has moved from Obama-Netanyahu to Obama-Congress, citing an upcoming vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a bill that would force Congressional oversight over any Iranian deal. However, the tabloid also reports that Obama and Netanyahu are expected to meet on the issue after a new coalition is formed, and that the Israelis will continue pushing for their specific demands to be met as part of the deal.

Haaretz reports that Israel’s plan of action against the deal will be two pronged — to lobby in Congress for legislation that could stymie the bill; and to hold contacts with the White House in the hopes of pushing American negotiators toward a settlement that is more palatable to Jerusalem.

“There’s a political struggle in Congress over Iran,” a senior Israeli official is quoted telling Haaretz. “Congress can make a decision that it’s a treaty and not an agreement. Those issues are being debated, so why don’t we make the most of it?”

In Israel Hayom, Boaz Bismuth comments that Obama doesn’t have to choose the path of clashing with his posse.

“Two options stand before the American president — choosing a collision course with his partners in the service of a deal with Iran; or alternatively a second option, that would commit him to softening up those opposed to the deal in Washington, Jerusalem, Cairo and Riyadh, in order to achieve what seems impossible today: both a deal with Iran in June and a softening of the big skeptics camp. Mission impossible? It could well be, but it seems that Obama has decided to try,” he writes.

However in Haaretz, Chemi Shalev takes the opposite stance, that Obama is dead set on reaching a deal with Iran and will steamroll anyone in his way.

“His message, nonetheless, is unequivocal: Obama intends to use this ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ to try to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran by June 30 that will be based on the framework achieved last week in Lausanne — and he will fight off any attempt to sabotage his efforts. He knows he will have to do battle with Netanyahu ‘who is expressing the deep-seated concerns of the Israeli people,’ but does not want the argument to deteriorate to total rupture,” he writes.

While those two papers are focused on the future with the US and Iran, Yedioth Ahronoth takes a look back at the summer war with Gaza and its arguably deadliest incident, when seven soldiers were killed in an attack on an under-armored personnel carrier that was hit with an anti-tank missile.

The paper reports on new testimony from the incident from junior officers who watched it happen, as the Israel Defense Forces wraps up its investigation into the attack. The report offers up little new to what is already known about the incident, but still provides a stark account of the deadly clash.

“Suddenly I saw something like a shooting star that flew at and hit the APC,” one of the soldiers is quoted saying. “Right after that, they opened up heavy Kalashnikov fire on us.”

Throw the book at him

Israelis are still thoroughly enraptured by the soap-opera like story of Niv Asraf, who was let out of jail Monday after being arrested in the wake of his false West Bank kidnapping report last week.

Speaking to the press, Asraf turned the table on the cops, saying that he hid out near Hebron to escape some gangland debts after the police refused to help him. His friend who reported him missing to the police says he never claimed he was kidnapped and that the fuzz blew up the claim themselves.

Not surprisingly, Israel Hayom is having none of it, with two commentators calling to throw the book at him for scaring the bejeezus out of the country and forcing a massive deployment of troops and others right before the Passover holiday.

“It’s possible that the kid, who served in the area where he hid and knew of the sensitivities of the area, is truly sorry for tricking the whole country,” Itzik Saban writes. “What’s not possible is that after all of this, he or his lawyer think they have one peep to say against the police. His irresponsible action is no different than any boneheaded move and he should face prosecution.”

In Haaretz, Nehemia Shtrasler eyes the coalition negotiations and places his hopes for a more free Israeli economy squarely on the shoulders of Moshe Kahlon, the man who would be finance minister. Deriding previous treasury chief Yair Lapid, Shtrasler calls for Kahlon to work to open up a laundry list of industries as well as push through a number of changes, and all in his first year in office.

“Kahlon will enter the Finance Ministry as Mr. Reform. He can only keep this title if he cooperates with the Budget Department and carries out reforms that Lapid was afraid to implement because he didn’t want to fight the army, the settlers, the farmers, the Histadrut labor union and the big unions,” he writes. “Kahlon has already spoken out about the need to increase competition in banking. But we have to increase competition in other industries such as electricity, the ports, the Egged and Dan bus cooperatives, Israel Railways, sheep and goat cheese, eggs and fish.”