February 3 Headlines
Sunday
HA’ARETZ
1. EGYPT TO HAMAS: WE WILL CONSIDER TRANSFERRING FUEL AND ELECTRICITY TO GAZA, INSTEAD OF ISRAEL. JERUSALEM: FINE BY US.
2. OLMERT TO DETERMINE SOON WHETHER TO RELEASE PRISONERS IN ORDER TO ADVANCE SHALIT DEAL.
Gesture to be first step in deal to release kidnapped soldier. Dekel supports, Diskin opposes.
MA’ARIV
1. AYALON: AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED, BARAK CAN STAY IN GOVERNMENT.
When Barak competed for Labor leadership, he promised: I will quit coalition after Winograd. Now his primaries' opponent states: He is free from his commitment.
YEDIOT AHRONOT
1. APPARENTLY: BARAK WILL NOT BOLT.
Labor Chairman's advisers: He intends to criticize Olmert and announce that he will work to bring forward elections but will not hold to particular date.
2. WINOGRAD COMMITTEE CONFIDANTS: POLITICIANS DID NOT COMPREHEND SERIOUSNESS OF REPORT."
Winograd Committee member, Prof. Yehezkel Dror, to Yediot Ahronot: Essential to read entire report.
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SUMMARY OF EDITORIALS FROM THE HEBREW PRESS
Two articles suggest that the Winograd Committee erred in not assigning personal responsibility for the various failings of the Second Lebanon War:
Yediot Ahronot believes that, "In the absence of the clear assignment of responsibility by the Committee, everyone touched by the affair is free to 'acquit' himself and 'convict' others as he sees fit." The editors suggest that, "The Committee report, therefore, misses the point – determining facts, responsibility and the responsible parties – and spends too much time on the unnecessary. The result: A very perplexed and angry public that does not know who bears the responsibility and who to get angry at."
Haaretz asks "Who will rebuild the IDF?" in light of the recently published Winograd report, which diagnosed a wide array of flaws and breakdowns in the military force that was at the state's disposal in the summer of 2006. The editor answers by stating that in order to rehabilitate and rebuild the IDF and prepare it for future tests, Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi - with encouragement from the defense minister, the government and Israel's entire society - must learn to unload old baggage and put together the most professional and ethically minded team possible, comprised of generals who were discharged from the service before their time in recent years.
The Jerusalem Post discusses PM Olmert's apparent turnabout regarding residential building in Jerusalem, on land held by Israel since 1967. The editor claims that it is plain that this government, like all its predecessors, has failed to come up with a blueprint for vital settlement construction, follow it, and explain the logic to the international community. With settlement, as with so many other areas of policy, the government's only aspiration seems to be survival. And if survival means capitulating to American pressure one day, and pressure from the champions of the illegal outposts the next, so be it. The terrible consequence, of course, is the sacrificing of crucial Israeli interests along the way.
Ma'ariv asserts that, "The Committee itself is a symptom of flight from responsibility. Instead of revealing responsibility and drawing personal conclusions, the Committee threw its (confusing and contradictory) conclusions to the public…What it says – or not – will serve the politicians. Therefore, in order to faithfully discharge its position, it should have issued rulings, not a report."
[Dov Weisglass and Ran Beretz wrote today’s articles in Yediot Ahronotand Ma'ariv, respectively.]
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