Monday’s main event

Mr. Netanyahu heads to the United Nations, and the police are rocked by yet another high-level resignation ahead of the potentially explosive combination of Muslim and Jewish high holidays.

The Holot detention facility is still up and running and intaking illegal African migrants, days after the High Court of Justice ordered it be shut and put out of commission, Haaretz reports. Five days after the court ordered the facility be shut down within 90 days, and in spite of the judges’ ruling, “it would appear as if no changes have begun to the policy of the Population and Immigration Authority,” the paper reports. The authority’s officers on Sunday distributed orders to Sudanese and Eritrean nationals in south Tel Aviv to report to the Holot facility within 30 days or be taken into custody as per the law.

The Jerusalem District police chief’s snap resignation gets front page treatment from Yedioth Ahronoth. The paper reports that Yossi Pariente “dropped a bomb” by announcing he wouldn’t contend to be Israel’s top cop, but insisted that his decision to step down so close to the top was not because he had “skeletons in the closet.” The paper says that Pariente was one of the leading candidates to replace Commissioner Yohanan Danino as Israel’s chief of police, and that his resignation leaves few options among the top brass to replace Danino. He was the third senior police official to resign this year — the second in recent weeks — and a senior police source told Yedioth Ahronoth that the race to replace Danino “will just be a joke.”

Yedioth and Haaretz both report on the upcoming coincidence of Yom Kippur and the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, a festival marked by sacrificing and barbecuing animals. Such a dangerous combination of fasting and feasting leads both papers to believe that it could be an incendiary combination for mixed cities across the country. Yedioth Ahronoth notes that the last time the two holidays overlapped was 33 years ago. The Israel Police is dispatching additional officers to Acre, Jaffa and Jerusalem. Haaretz reports that the police will take “unprecedented” steps to keep worshipers from the two religions apart.

But the biggest story of them all is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s glorious departure to the United States to defend Israel valiantly in the United Nations and “refute lies” put forth on the world stage by his arch-nemesis, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Israel Hayom makes Netanyahu’s hackneyed quote, “the IDF — the most moral army in the world” the front page headline, and dedicates two pages to a speech (which it quotes him calling “sharp as a razor”) that has yet to be delivered.

The speech will focus on Iran and the Palestinians, the paper says, and the decision to do so “was based on the speeches delivered at the UN by PA President Abbas and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani” — as if Netanyahu has spoken about anything else on the world stage since he took office in 2009.

Haaretz reports that after Netanyahu landed in New York City he met with US Secretary of State John Kerry and voiced outrage to him over Abbas’s remarks to the UN on Friday. Abbas accused Israel of “genocide” against the Palestinians this summer during Operation Protective Edge. Curiously, the “razor sharp” quote attributed to Netanyahu himself in Israel Hayom is ascribed to a “senior Israeli official” in Haaretz. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, who is also in town for the UN General Assembly, also lodged protests over Abbas’s speech with the delegates from the Czech Republic, Austria, Greece and Rwanda.

Yedioth Ahronoth asks what Netanyahu’s gimmick will be at this UN General Assembly, recalling his 2012 bomb prop, his 2011 “let’s talk dugri” — to the point — remark to Abbas, or his 2009 Auschwitz map.

The political cartoonists in Israel also delve into the Abbas-Netanyahu issue. Haaretz’s Amos Biderman shows the two leaders driving the car (of peace?) off the cliff a la Thelma and Louise. It’s not entirely clear what the horse at the bottom of the canyon is meant to symbolize, however.

Like Netanyahu, Yedioth Ahronoth’s Guy Mored goes after Abbas for his genocide remark, and shows the Palestinian leader tinkering on the Wikipedia article for the term genocide.

“This could use the hand of a professional editor,” Abbas says.

Israel Hayom avoids the issue altogether, and instead demonstrates how, as Netanyahu put it, the IDF is “the most moral army in the world.” It shows an Islamic State fighter shouting at a US Air Force plane that just bombed his building.

“Hey, what about the ‘knock on the roof’ policy first?” he shouts, referring to Israel’s procedure of firing a warning shot at a building so civilians can get out before it’s leveled.