The French rejection

Some readers of the Israeli press might not be aware, but there are truly two sides to every story or at least two ways of looking at it. Thus one newspaper’s threat is another paper’s peace proposal. One paper’s minor tragedy is another’s story of bravery.

Take the French idea (is that term neutral enough?) for a peace summit, with Paris saying it will recognize the State of Palestine should talks fail, which is regarded as an “initiative” in broadsheet Haaretz, but called a “threat” in Yedioth Ahronoth, and a lot worse in Israel Hayom.

Haaretz reports that Israel was quick to reject the proposal, but just as quick to backpedal from its blanket rejection.

“’This is not how to deal with negotiations and not how you bring about peace,’ said a senior official, yet in the same breath Jerusalem clarified that if and when Israel gets an official invitation from France to take part in the international peace conference, it will study it and make a decision,” the paper writes.

Not that an unnamed Israeli official is really needed to telegraph unhappiness in Jerusalem. Yedioth quotes politicians from Likud to Zionist Union raking the dumbkopf idea over the coals.

“They won’t drag us with threats to the negotiating table. Reasonable countries won’t accept this,” Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid is quoted saying, one example of many rejecting the threatposal.

With Israeli officials doing all the heavy lifting, one might think Israel Hayom would call it a day and sip a mojito while watching the fireworks. But columnists Dan Margalit and Boaz Bismuth do no such thing, giving Paris a whuppin’ the likes of which it hasn’t seen since the US Congress changed the name of French fries to freedom fries.

“[French Foreign Minister Laurent] Fabius can save his confab ideas, invitations to attendees and planning for the festival, though it’s always fun to visit the Eiffel,” Bismuth writes, trying a little reverse psychology on for size. “It would better for the foreign minister to recognize the Palestinian state today and save us all the pro forma song and frustrating dance. The Swedes already did it in 2014, like 70 percent of UN countries. It’s unfortunate, Monsieur Fabius, but even a dramatic step like this is not original.”

Haaretz’s Barak Ravid takes a less snide shot at Fabius, whom he remarks is neither stupid nor naïve.

“The feeling is that the foreign minister brought up the initiative just so it will fail and open the door for him to try different avenues,” he writes, noting that it will likely result in French recognition of Palestine. “If that happens, the final accord of Fabius’s term will turn into his ticket into the annals of French diplomatic history.”

With the French apparently off making pastries and unintelligible films instead of pursuing diplomacy until now, peace has in fact remained elusive, as evidenced by yet another stabbing attack on Saturday, this time of a recent American immigrant to Israel.

Haaretz makes no mention of the teen’s recent arrival to the country, while Yedioth plays up the sad story of the stabbing as a unique way of welcoming him to the country, after a month and a half here. “I’m never afraid and God willing I want to join up the the IDF’s [elite] Sayeret Matkal [unit],” he’s quoted saying.

That quote turns him into the hero of the year in Israel Hayom, where his bandaged back is splayed across the front page, as if none of us was trying to enjoy our Fruity Pebbles here.

“They stabbed me – and now I will join up and give everything to the IDF” screams the front page headline in the tabloid, a quote from the unnamed dreamboat.

“The youth, an ardent Zionist and highly motivated, who a month ago finished immigrating to Israel from New York to join the IDF draft, was stabbed in the attack after finishing prayers at the Western Wall with his brother and friends,” the paper gushes in a two-page spread.

Subterranean blues

The tabloid and others give a preview on what types of battles the whippersnapper will face once he dons an IDF uniform, where Hamas’s tunnel-digging shovels may replace knives as his adversary.

“For hours, I hear nonstop noise. I look around and don’t see anyone building or tearing down a house, and it’s at night, and it makes no sense that while it’s dark out someone should be jackhammering,” one resident living near the Gaza border tells Israel Hayom, which reports that the Defense Ministry says it is doing much to thwart the underground tunneling.

In Haaretz, Amos Harel writes that a deadly tunnel collapse in Gaza last week shows that the terror group may be trying to speed up its subterranean work.

“The large number of accidents and problems Hamas has run into underground could show that someone in Hamas is in a rush to prepare their offensive tools ahead of a possible decision on an attack. On the Israeli side, last week we saw pictures of intensive efforts to locate such tunnels east of the border with Gaza,” he writes. “It would appear the two sides are in a race against time: Hamas is in a hurry to finish its preparations, while Israel wants to locate the attack tunnels that Hamas may use in the not-so-distant future.”

Yedioth is more concerned about what’s happening high in the sky than underground, following up its reporting on a spy scandal showing the US and UK hacked into Israeli drone feeds with a new report claiming that the allies grabbed data from Black Sparrow missiles, which are used as ballistic rocket stand-ins during missile tests.

Commentating on the whole affair he is reporting on, Ronen Bergman notes that a reckoning is in place, but the IDF’s excuse that there is no stopping the intelligence gathering of the US and UK, which can grab what they want, is not the way to go about it.

“Firstly, Israel has an interest in keeping even nations close to it from knowing about certain operations,” he writes. “But secondly, one cannot discount the ability of certain actors like Hezbollah, or even Iran and Russia.”