Much ado Abbas nothing

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday ruffled some feathers in Israel by saying the Palestinians were no longer bound by the 1993 Oslo Accords. But the manner in which the story, and the subsequent responses by Israeli officials, was reported in the Hebrew press is nothing short of political theater.

Haaretz justifiably puts the dramatic statement across the top of its front page, as does Yedioth Ahronoth. But the perennially pro-Netanyahu paper Israel Hayom shunts the story below the fold, leads with responses from Israeli politicians calling his speech “deceitful,” and boots the report to Page 7. Abbas threatened to cancel the Palestinian Authority’s agreements with Israel, saying “Our patience has come to an end.”

How Israel Hayom expects its readers, who ostensibly don’t know what Abbas said in his speech, to know what Jerusalem is fuming about is beyond this writer’s reckoning. But don’t worry, the paper prominently reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will set the record straight in his address to world leaders on Thursday and “attack the lies of the PA president.”

But how to interpret Abbas’s annual cry against Israel and his call for the dissolution of the administration set up as part of the Oslo Accords?

Israel Hayom’s op-ed by Dror Eydar simmers with disgust for what he calls Abbas’s “symbolic text written with the narrative of regional Arabs (he deigns not to use the word ‘Palestinians’) in the last hundred years” — which, he says, lays all blame on the Jews and takes no responsibility for anything.

Addressing Abbas, he tows the government line and denies the Muslim claim to the Temple Mount while declaring Judaism’s claim to the site, knocks the PA’s treatment of Christians, then asks: “Are you sure that you’d last a full minute without Israel protecting you and your subjects from Hamas and the Islamic State?”

Yedioth Ahronoth’s angle is a bit more nuanced, with Alon Pinkas saying one could — like Israel Hayom — “mock the speech as lacking substance” and merely as another threat to dismantle the PA. Or, he writes, “the second way is to understand that his weakness and inaction are essentially the strength of the Palestinians in the international arena.”

While Israel may dismiss the speech, foreign governments might back him and take his threat to dissolve the Palestinian Authority more seriously.

“As far as he’s concerned, the lack of mention of the peace process in [US President Barack] Obama’s speech is a blessing and helps the general assumptions he’s trying to sell,” Pinkas writes.

But hang on a moment, Barak Ravid writes in Haaretz. While Abbas has dropped a bomb, “he hasn’t yet pressed the switch to operate it.

“He’ll wait a while more in order to see what impact his words will have,” Ravid continues.

Jack Khoury writes in Haaretz that Abbas, as expected, didn’t announce the dissolution of the PA, nor his resignation, but merely noncommitment to the accords. “Abbas and his partners in the Palestinian leadership understand that they can’t make unilateral actions, civil or defense-related, without agreement from the Israelis, or alternatively full international support.”

Since he has neither the full support of the Arab world, nor the backing of the US, “all that remains for the Palestinian president is to try to gain a bit more time with increasing the pressure on Israel, in the hope that it will bring a shift in the public opinion which, in the end, will drive the peace process,” Khoury says.

Continuing the bomb analogy, Ravid asks whether Abbas’s bombshell statement will be set off immediately and send out a shock wave, or sit as an unexploded ordnance that could blow up at any minute or turn out to be a dud. He says the Prime Minister’s Office doesn’t fully comprehend the implications of much of Abbas’s speech, and therefore didn’t address it directly in its response.

Far more important — as far as Israel Hayom is concerned — is Russia’s foray into the Syrian civil war and the airstrikes it carried out against targets that, according to American officials, were moderate rebel groups — and not Islamic State fighters, as the Kremlin claimed. The paper posits that the Russians’ aim is “to protect the area between Damascus and Latakia, which are considered strongholds of the regime and authority of the Syrian [government] — and particularly the strategic highway running from Damascus north.”

Haaretz might not lead with the development, but in its front-page story it headlines the fact that Russia notified Israel of the airstrikes in advance. Israeli officials tell Haaretz that Russian government officials notified Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Yossi Cohen, about an hour before the air force carried out its first airstrikes on Wednesday afternoon. The paper cites the report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that one of the Russian airstrikes killed as many as 27 Syrian civilians

Behind the ball on Israel’s early-morning airstrikes on the Gaza Strip — in response to a rocket fired at the southern city of Ashdod — Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the Israel Defense Forces’ retaliatory bombings targeted non-targets. The paper reports that Israeli intelligence is aware that a rebellious Salafist group, and not Hamas, has been responsible for the recent sporadic rocket attacks on southern Israel. For the sake of keeping up appearances, the IDF struck neglected Hamas infrastructure — a rusty electricity tower and an empty warehouse — early Wednesday, the paper says.