Peres, Abbas and peace prospects at center stage

President Shimon Peres’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Jordan scores the front page of Israeli papers — except for Yedioth Ahronoth — as the prospect of renewed peace talks with the Palestinians suddenly reemerges from behind years of clouds.

Maariv’s top story’s headline quotes Peres’s determination that “We can and should make the breakthrough” for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, however, lacked the same optimism. The paper quotes him “blaming Israel for the [peace] process’s deadlock.”

“Ongoing settlement building, the Judaization of Jerusalem, and arrests will close the window for the two-state solution,” Abbas is quoted saying. “The new generation is losing confidence in the idea of the co-existence of two states.”

The paper also notes that Peres dismissed charges by members of the Likud government that he was assuming the mantle of government spokesperson and overstepping his bounds. Before the elder statesman even took the podium on Sunday, International Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz snapped that policy decisions were the exclusive authority of the government, and Interior Minister Naftali Bennett said Peres had no right to speak about ’67 lines at all.

Peres responded saying his speech at the conference was prearranged with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Haaretz, too, has a fairly pessimistic view on Abbas’s statements. Its headline quotes the Palestinian leader saying that his people wouldn’t accept a state with “temporary borders.” That quote is followed up by Abbas’s statement that Palestinian youths are losing hope in the viability of a two-state solution. The paper writes that Abbas was rebutting statements made by Finance Minister Yair Lapid that suggested that Israel pull out of remote settlements and that a Palestinian state be founded with temporary borders.

Speaking of settlement expansion, Haaretz reports that in 2012 alone, the IDF expanded West Bank settlements large and small by a total of nearly 2,000 acres — equivalent to the size of the city of Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv.

“Even though these lands were not inhabited by Palestinians, enlarging the area of jurisdiction [of these settlements] paves the way for submitting new construction plans for expanding existing settlements,” it reports.

Surprisingly, everyone else’s top story about the prospect of renewed peace talks doesn’t cause much of a stir in the Sheldon Adelson camp. Israel Hayom features a few brief paragraphs on Page 9, and columnist Dan Margalit writes that “Abbas demanded nothing less than the 1967 borders and said he was not open to interim deals.”

Margalit argues that in recent years “there has been a growing impression that Abbas is comfortable with the continuation of the existing situation. He has sought diplomatic achievements at the UN and has pushed for strengthening boycotts of Israel, but he has shown no will for real discussions.”

Surprisingly, popular tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth has no coverage of the World Economic Forum whatsoever. Instead it leads off with the demise of the Better Place electric car company, which it calls “the end of an Israeli dream.”

Instead the paper mourns the loss of the Better Place electric car company, which filed for bankruptcy on Sunday after five years of trying to hack it in the gasoline-driven economy. According to Yedioth, the company sold a mere 940 cars in Israel, a far cry from what “was supposed to change the face of the car industry and revolutionize the electric car to more popular than gasoline.”

It reports that the Renault dealership that sells Better Place vehicles in Haifa refused to take orders for the electric cars. “We received a notice not to sell any more [electric] cars,” one of the salesmen told Yedioth. “It won’t change unless we receive further notice.” Just outside the dealership, it notes, is a brand new charging station with a closed gate.

Israel Hayom quotes Better Place’s letter to the court explaining that because of its inability to enlist more financial support (teh company burned through $800 million in five years) “it requests the help of the court in order to ensure the substantiation of the rights of workers, the clients and creditors,” the paper reports.

The broke company doesn’t know how exactly it will reimburse the hundreds of Better Place car owners, says Israel Hayom. “We will immediately do everything in our power in order to serve all the customers and to operate the [battery charging] network until the decision is made by the liquidator,” CEO Dan Cohen said. “The customers are very close to us, they adopted us and they were very satisfied.”

The paper features a brief article from a Better Place customer who recently purchased a vehicle from the moribund company. “In conversations with salespeople it was clarified to me that hundreds of cars were sold at these discounts and that the company’s status had never been better, and I got carried away by this euphoria,” he writes. “Now I feel a little naive, a little cheated and I want answers. We all want answers.”