Main headlines
Syria on the agenda
Maariv (front page) : newly revised IDF Intelligence Branch assesment about the probability of war with Syria. Ben Caspit reports that a number of senior IDF Intelligence Branch officers are under the impression that Syrian Bashar Assad and his top cadre have recently begun seriously to examine the viability of either going to war with Israel or launching a limited military operation against it. According to Caspit, this constitues an abrupt departure from past Syrian behavioral patterns and has resulted in a revision of military intelligence’s official assesment about the probability of war erupting with Syria which is no longer defined as low
Maariv : Olmert hinted that ministers calling for talks with Syria will be punished. For the first time Olmert warned that he would take steps against ministers who contradict government policy by calling for negotiations with Syria
Yedioth Ahronot : If Hafez Assad, predecessor and father of Syrian President Bashar Assad, had come to Camp David with Egyptian President Anwar Sadaat, “the Golan Heights would have already been in his hands,” Vice Premier Shimon Peres purported Wednesday night at a conference of Jewish organizations in London. “The Syrians are refusers of peace,” Peres said. According to Peres, the current Syrian president is hosting in his home a known terrorist - Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal. He added that Mashaal was preventing diplomatic advances between Israel and the Palestinians and was blocking the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit - which even the Hamas government had agreed to. Peres said that Sadat had called Assad, Sr., to join him in Camp David, and it is too bad he did not acquiesce to the invitation, because “I can promise you he would have gotten all of the Golan Heights.”
Israel complains to UN over Qassams
Haaretz : Israel is calling on United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to take immediate action to stop the Qassam rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
In an unusual step, government officials decided to submit a formal complaint with the UN Security Council against the Palestinian Authority over the rocket fire of the past 10 days.
The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, wrote a letter to the Security Council president in which he demanded that Annan take action to stop the rocket fire.
"We decided to hit the Palestinians in their home court, and submit a formal protest against them," said a political official in Jerusalem. "Security Council Resolution 1701 ruled that the activities of Hezbollah are not legitimate, and they are not any different from the Palestinians’ Qassam fire." France, meanwhile, is initiating a resolution that will focus on enforcing the embargo on supplying arms to Hezbollah.
Diskin : Egypt allowing arms smuggling
Yedioth Ahronot :Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin reported Wednesday to the cabinet meeting that since the disengagement, some 19 tons of standard explosives have been smuggled from Egypt to the Gaza Strip. "What the Egyptians are doing isn’t even a drop in the sea on the issue of smuggling," said Diskin. According to the Shin Bet chief, "The Egyptians know who the smugglers are and aren’t taking care of them. They even received intelligence from us on the matter. Since last August, four tons of standard explosives, hundreds of rifles, thousand of bullets and other kinds of weaponry and munitions that I don’t want to detail have been smuggled from Egypt." State President Moshe Katsav will swear in Justice Eliezer Rivlin as deputy president of the Supreme Court in a ceremony at the President’s Residence this afternoon.
Katsav to swear in deputy Supreme Court president
All the dailies : Katsav, who returned to Israel yesterday, decided that he would conduct Rivlin’s swearing-in ceremony and would not ask the Knesset to declare him "temporarily incapacitated" on account of the criminal investigation against him, as he did when Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch was installed.
Rivlin, who had planned to begin a vacation in the United States in a few days and be sworn in after he returned, was instead notified yesterday that he would be sworn in today.
Sources in the President’s Residence said that Katsav declared himself "temporarily incapacitated" during Beinisch’s inauguration because the installation of a Supreme Court president is a rare and special event, and Katsav did not want to divert public and media attention from the incoming chief justice.
However, the sources said, Katsav intends to fulfill all his presidential duties as long as he is president, and he remains innocent until proven guilty. Among other things, Katsav plans to attend the opening of the Knesset’s winter session and continue handling pardons. Rivlin, 64, married and a father of four, is a seventh-generation Israeli. After graduating from Hebrew University with a bachelor’s degree in law, he worked as a lawyer in Be’er Sheva.
Thirty years ago, he was appointed a traffic court judge. He later served as a magistrate’s court judge in Kiryat Gat, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Dimona and Be’er Sheva, then moved up to the district courts, and in 1999 was appointed a Supreme Court justice. He has a master’s degree in law from Tel Aviv University and specializes in torts, constitutional law, economic law and freedom of expression.
Other headlines
Haaretz : People who get severe headaches brought on by fasting no longer need to fear Yom Kippur, according to Dr. Michael Drescher, associate chief of emergency medicine at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut. Drescher has discovered - based on research conducted at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, during Yom Kippur 2004 - that taking 50 milligrams of rofecoxib or similar medication is likely to make that headache go away. Rofecoxib is found in the prescription pain-killer Arcoxia. "Medical studies carried out over the last few decades - in the medical school at Tel Aviv University, in India and in Saudi Arabia - found that fasts stemming from a religious commandment, on Yom Kippur or during Ramadan, are accompanied by headaches for those who tend to suffer from them," Drescher said.
Indeed, the medical world has come to recognize the "Yom Kippur headache," he said. Sitting down for long periods can contribute to the headaches, as can hunger and caffeine withdrawal, he noted. Drescher recommends that those who drink a lot of coffee and are planning to fast on Yom Kippur gradually reduce their caffeine intake as the fast approaches.
Yom Kippur begins on Sunday night.
All the dailies : Major General Gadi Eisenkot will be the next GOC Northern Command, the defense minister and chief of staff announced last night. Eisenkot will be replacing Major General Udi Adam, who announced two weeks ago that he was resigning from the Israel Defense Forces, in the wake of the Lebanon war.
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Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz reached their decision during their fifth meeting on the matter this week and their second meeting yesterday.
A replacement for Eisenkot as head of the operations division in the General Staff has yet to be chosen. One possible candidate is Major General Meir Klifi, the deputy commander of the ground forces. Another possibility is that a brigadier general - such as Tal Russo, former armored division commander, or Aviv Kochavi, former Gaza division commander - could be promoted to the position.
Over the past week, Halutz and Peretz have been deliberating primarily between Eisenkot, who Halutz initially favored, and GOC Southern Command Yoav Gallant, who Peretz supported. It was important for Peretz to take a stance on the appointment so as not to seem like a rubber stamp for Halutz’s recommendations.
Yedioth Ahronot :Some 34 percent of Israelis believe Britain is the most friendly European country to Israel, a new poll conducted by the British embassy in Israel has found. Germany reached second place, with 19 percent of Israelis saying it is the most friendly among European states. The poll was conducted by the Teleseker Institute, and 625 Israelis took part. 18 percent of Israelis, on the other hand, said no European country was a friend to Israel. The poll found that 63 percent of Israelis think that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a true friend of Israel. The pollsters also asked respondents what was the first thing they saw when they read the word "Britain." 24 percent said the British royal family, castles, and servants. 15 percent cited soccer games, 12 percent listed tourist sites in England such as the Big Ben, and 10 percent of those asked spoke of the British mandate and the War of Independence in 1948.