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Criticism of West Bank withdrawal growing in Kadima
Haaretz : Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday that the current wave of violence in Gaza would not prevent Israel’s planned withdrawal from most of the West Bank or the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. "I am absolutely determined to carry out the separation from the Palestinians, and establish secure borders," Olmert said. The prime minister wants to withdraw from most of the West Bank by 2010 to allow the Palestinians to gain independence and to secure a long-term Jewish majority for Israel. "We want to separate in a friendly manner and to live alongside each other... in a peaceful way," Olmert said. "If the terrorist organizations will impose a violent confrontation, both Israelis and Palestinians will have to bear the consequences. That can’t stop the inevitable process of separation of Israelis and Palestinians."
The prime minister’s comments came amid increasing disagreement among the leaders of his Kadima party over the feasibility of a unilateral withdrawal. "The chances of implementing the convergence plan at the moment are very slight," Housing and Construction Minister Meir Sheetrit told the Knesset television channel yesterday. "There are many doubts, my own among them. I do not believe in unilateral disengagement." Olmert’s bureau said it was "convinced that Minister Sheetrit will change his mind when the plan comes up for approval, and will honor government and faction discipline." But Sheetrit wasn’t the only Kadima official to urge caution.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who responded on behalf of the government yesterday to no-confidence motions, told the Knesset that Israel needs to protect its security interests during the convergence, and warned against a hasty unilateral move.
"If someone thought that convergence is a way of throwing the key over the fence and walking away, while thinking that everything will be alright - that is not my thinking, and the convergence will not be like that, because there are interests that we must take into account, primarily the security of the State of Israel," she said.
Indeed, Avi Dichter, a former Shin Bet chief and current current public security minister, told Haaretz over the weekend that the Israel Defense Forces must stay "everywhere" in the West Bank even after dismantling settlements there, "until a Palestinian entity is found that can take responsibility."
Security Officials Warn : Gazan Hunger Could Defeat IDF
Yediot Ahronot (Alex Fishman) : The entire Israeli military and diplomatic effort to deal with the kidnappers of Gilad Shalit is liable to be buried by none other than a sack of sugar, a sack of rice and a sack of flour. The most significant event on the 16th day since the kidnapping was not Khaled Mashal’s speech in Damascus, nor was it Olmert’s response in Tel Aviv. It wasn’t the IAF operation in Gaza either. What is liable to tip the scales of this crisis is the fact that there is just enough food and basic goods in the Gaza storerooms to last for a handful of days only.
If a solution is not found to inject the Gaza Strip in the coming number of days with large quantities of food and basic supplies, Israel will lose its ability to continue to use its levers of pressure against Hamas. The work week in Europe is only just beginning. A wave of protests about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza will begin very soon on the European street, and there are already early signs of that happening. The wave of protest will make its way onto television, from where it will affect public opinion and subsequently the statesmen.
Next Monday the leaders of the G8 are scheduled to meet in Russia. If this wave is not quelled before the Moscow conference is could lose its tail wind, the international legitimacy it had until now to handle its crisis with Hamas in a manner it saw fit. According to data that have been accumulated by the Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories and by other groups that deal with the Palestinians in Gaza demonstrate that the supply of products such as flour, sugar, oil and milk powder in the Gaza Strip will probably run out in another three days. In the best case scenario, that supply will last through the end of this week.
The defense minister and chief of staff last week ordered the Karni crossing opened. The border crossing was opened for three days until it was shut again in response to intelligence warnings. In those three days, a two-day supply of flour entered the Gaza Strip. No more than three containers of cooking oil-a pittance for Gaza, which is sold in under two hours. The water pumps are working at only partial capacity because of the power outages, and they are close to collapse because of disrepair. Once they collapse, disease will become rampant.
The supply of chicken feed, which comes from Israel, has all but run out. Fresh dairy products are nowhere to be found in Gaza. Dairy products cannot be stockpiled in Gaza. Israel needs to let fresh milk in every day or two. The supply of feed for cows and other animals has run out, and there are no natural grazing grounds in Gaza in the summer. The Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories has been seeking ways to get food into the Gaza Strip. But it is clear to everyone that the moment Israel tries to send food in, the terror organizations will try to generate a terror attack-and the border crossing will be closed.The militant groups in Gaza need the humanitarian crisis as a propaganda tool. Israel does not know how to get out of that trap. If food doesn’t arrive in Gaza-Hamas could actually end up winning this round.
Mashal accuses Israel of thwarting efforts to reach a deal
All the dailies : Khaled Mashal gave a press conference in Damascus yesterday in which he accused Israel of thwarting efforts to reach a fair, diplomatic resolution of what he referred to as the POW crisis. Mashal demanded that Israel, among other steps, had to release Palestinian security prisoners from its jails if it wanted to see its captured soldier returned safely home. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speaking in Jerusalem yesterday, reiterated that a prisoner release was not being contemplated, and that Israel would not negotiate with Khaled Mashal or others in Hamas over either the release of Gilad Shalit or an end to the Kassam rocket fire.
New allegations against Katzav
Maariv : Ma’ariv leads this morning with new allegations of sexual harassment against President Moshe Katzav. A second woman, who worked for Katzav when he was a cabinet minister, claims in a Ma’ariv exclusive to have been sexually harassed by Katzav. The woman, who is not identified by name, claims that after she rebuffed the minister’s sexual advances she was penalized at work and was ostracized. The president, meanwhile, denied that his relationship with the woman at the center of the current sexual harassment/extortion scandal had extended to anything beyond a courteous, professional relationship. See Part 2 for some coverage of this affair.
Other headlines
All the dailies : The report by the panel headed by Major General (res.) Giora Eiland on the attack at Kerem Shalom, which was submitted yesterday to Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, reveals a series of serious failings - from the General Staff down to the battalion level. However, Eiland refrained from recommending taking steps against the commanders involved, and cited the fact that more than 100 incidents of infiltrations and bomb planting have been foiled in that sector since the disengagement.In the June 25 Palestinian attack, two members of a tank crew, Lieutenant Hanan Barak and Staff Sergeant Pavel Slutzker, were killed, and Corporal Gilad Shalit was kidnapped.
All the dailies : Two months before retiring at the peak of his popularity, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who arrives in Israel this evening on an official visit, wishes to increase his country’s involvement in the Middle East. As the biggest donor to the Palestinian Authority after the European Union, Japan feels it is time to cash in on its investment by becoming a mediator between the two sides.
All the dailies : Items from a collection of about 1,400 letters that Albert Einstein wrote to his wives and children were made public yesterday for the first time by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
According to Barbara Wolff, an archivist at the university’s Einstein Archives, who read all 3,500 pages of correspondence, and Prof. Hanoch Gutfreund, who manages all matters relating to Einstein at the university, the collection sheds new light on the personal life - as husband, father and lover - of the person who is widely considered the greatest scientist of the twentieth century.
Einstein willed his entire archive to the Hebrew University. His stepdaughter, Margot Einstein, gave the personal correspondence to the university and stipulated the letters remain sealed for 20 years after her death to protect the privacy of the individuals mentioned therein ; she died on July 8, 1986.
Gutfreund was careful to emphasize that the material released yesterday shed no new light on Einstein’s science, but he said that it "added colors to the image we had of Einstein before."
The release of the material comes at a time of renewed interest in Einstein, including recent biographies, piqued by the marking in 2005 of the hundredth anniversary of his "Annus Mirabilis," in which he wrote the four papers that changed the way we think about the material world. Gutfreund said he expected the new material would encourage people to write new biographies, emphasizing different facets of Einstein’s life.