The great Persian inversion

It’s Sunday and for the first time in recent memory, the front pages of Israel’s newspapers aren’t filled with sordid tales of murder, rape and mayhem. Yes, things are looking up, or at least not downright dystopian, on this fine Jerusalem Day. First up on the showcase showdown of non-scowl-inducing items this morning is a report in all four major papers that the US has hope for the next round of P5+1 talks with Iran, based largely on reporting by The New York Times.

The magicians at Yedioth Ahronoth are able to turn the gray lady’s subdued “The U.S. sees hope” into this happy dance extravaganza: “US AND IRAN ON THE WAY TO AN AGREEMENT ON NUKES.” Never mind the fact Iran’s stance on the whole issue is not addressed. Yippeee!

As The New York Times reports, based on unnamed officials, the US will offer Iran a raft of incentives, like a pullback of sanctions on the country’s airplane parts industry, and help in developing civilian reactors. And all the Islamic Republic has to do is keep its uranium enrichment down below 20%, get rid of the Qom reactors and let the IAEA check out Parchin. Easy like Sunday morning.

While many may be pleased by the news that Iran would back down from its program a bit (No war!), the paper is quick to note that not everybody is buying in (No, war!). Chief among them is Israel’s skeptic in chief Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Friday that Tehran is just playing games. As Ronen Bergman writes in Yedioth, the conditions the US is likely to set down in Baghdad are nowhere near the demands Israel has.

The other three papers aren’t nearly so forward with their headlines, instead writing that there has merely been progress in talks with Iran. Maariv and Haaretz note up top that IAEA chief Yukiya Amano will visit Iran in a sign that Tehran is becoming more open to UN nuclear inspections. In Israel Hayom, Boaz Bismuth writes, as with the last round, these talks will likely end with both sides cautiously optimistic. At the end of the day, Iran just wants to keep enriching and the West just wants to stop Israel from attacking them, he writes.

Abu Dis, Abu Dat

Next on the list of happy news: Jerusalem is still in Israel’s hands, 45 years after being [choose one: liberated, conquered, subjugated, reunified]. Speaking to Maariv, former Jerusalem mayor and former prime minister Ehud Olmert says if he were back in his old job as double-biller-in-chief (I kid, I kid) he would make some very “sad” decisions for the cause of peace, such as excising some of its less Jewish neighborhoods. “Jerusalem has never been unified in the way it’s talked about,” he says. “When was Issawiya a part of historical Jerusalem? What memories are there for the nation of Israel in Jabal Mukaber? When have we prayed to Abu Dis, which we have suddenly made holy?” As far as that bone of contention known as the Old City goes: “We need to make arrangements.” Truly groundbreaking words.

Yedioth celebrates Jerusalem Day with a large photo spread of pictures and words from some famous and not so famous Israelis about what to them is the essence of Jerusalem. Many of them are laudatory (Mayor Nir Barkat: “The historic paths of the Jewish people always surprise me.”) but Hadag Nahash frontman and city artistic booster Shanaan Street writes next to a picture of a snarl of buses next to the Mahane Yehuda outdoor market: “As if there weren’t enough real and metaphoric fences and walls that we bless and curse in our city, somebody decided to add one more, a wall of buses on Agrippas Street.”

A sketch by Israel’s doodler-in-chief Benjamin Netanyahu of the Tower of David, drawn during his flight back from Prague, also gets play in the media. Next to the drawing is written “Jerusalem forever.” It’s good to be king.

In Israel Hayom, Nadav Shragai writes some nice ad copy for the city, noting that while there are many groups who won’t celebrate the city’s reunification today, it is at least open to all. “There are parts of the city that are divided and parts unified, but above all there is a sort of normalization.”

Shelter skelter

Of course, the weekend wasn’t all not bad. A drowning in the Golan makes headlines, as does a fire truck that fell on a family’s car, injuring four. Yedioth has a story about some Israeli youths suspected of doing drugs while on a trip to Auschwitz, and the papers also cover the kerfuffle with South Africa over the labeling of products made in the settlements.

In the op-ed section, Gilad Sharon has a novel idea in Yedioth to stop African refugees from coming into Israel: Pay off the Bedouin smugglers not to take them through Sinai, and to make the punishment for getting caught much worse. “After all, what’s worse, not smuggling and getting paid, or trying to smuggle and getting caught?”

Haaretz, though, disagrees, writing in the paper’s editorial that the solution to asylum-seekers in south Tel Aviv is to allow them to get jobs, which will help them stay out of trouble: “By continuing to ignore the influx of labor migrants, the government faces a complex challenge that requires a courageous decision and a coordinated approach. The completion of the fence on the Sinai border won’t resolve the plight of some 60,000 labor migrants who are already here, and the solution isn’t in the hands of lawmakers or law enforcement officials. Despair and idleness will drag more and more migrants into crime.… Instead of dangerous incitement, which only worsens the problem, the interior minister should give migrants permits to work at the jobs for which he approves visas for foreign workers.”