Israel Matzav

The Wikileaks Israel file

As I am sure some of you have noticed, I've published summaries of some cables from Wikileaks dealing with Israel this week. This is because Wikileaks has turned over at least part of its 'Israel file' to Haaretz (who else?) for publication. Here are some more Wikileaks stories. This time, I took them from Maan.

The cables show Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu criticizing President Mahmoud Abbas in November 2009 for “sulking”, remarking in conversation with a group of US lawmakers that sulking “is not a good policy,” according to Israel's Haaretz daily.

The meeting report continued: “The premier also accused the Palestinians of exploiting ‘the stereotype that Netanyahu is a peace obstructionist,’ even though he had moved considerably toward them.”

Netanyahu complained that he had endorsed the two-state solution, removed West Bank movement restrictions, and tamed settlement construction with little in response, according to the documents.

“What have they [the Palestinians] done?” the prime minister laments, retorting, “Precondition upon precondition.”

Nothing earth-shattering there. The problem is that former Prime Minister Ehud K. Olmert had set his successor up for trouble.

Just before Netanyahu assumed office in March 2009, then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave a different evaluation of Palestinian leaders, also in a meeting with US congressmen.

Abbas is not like Arafat, the cable quotes him saying: Arafat was a killer but Abbas is a “pleasant guy.”

Abbas and the Israeli premier spent many hours “in wonderful talks,” Olmert said.

Abbas’ electoral majority in 2005 gave him authority, but he did not use it, in Olmert’s opinion.

Caretaker Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, however, “was a good manager but not a politician,” according to Olmert.

Asked what advice Olmert would give his successor, the prime minister said he did not want to embarrass Netanyahu, noting his successor would give his ideas to Abbas but the president might tell him “to go to hell.”

Leave it to the mendacious Olmert to describe the Holocaust-denying Munich massacre financier as a 'pleasant guy.'

Here's another one that I haven't shown you yet.

The latest cables to be released, detailed in Haaretz, show Israel’s internal security chief telling a US diplomat in May 2008 that Palestinians in Israel "have taken their rights too far."

The Shin Bet is a "voice for assisting Arab-Israelis constructively," the agency’s director Yuval Diskin said before continuing to outline the threat posed by Palestinian members of the Israeli parliament and Palestinians entering Israel via family unification.

The reunification of West Bank- and Gaza-born family members of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship or residency has been in effect halted since 2003.

Diskin said prior allowances for reunification had been "foolish," as Palestinians in Israel have family connections with "bad people on the other side doing bad things," and such relatives "brought their bad ideas with them."

The security chief also alluded to race-based concerns about maintaining a Jewish minority. He said that "The Bedouin have brought women with them from the Gaza Strip and Jenin, and now have many children."

"We need to manage this immigration in a controlled way," he continued.

Diskin criticized the role of Palestinian members of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, saying that "these people don’t spread Israel's democratic values and principles, and abuse their diplomatic immunity."

They are "flirting with the enemy," he alleged, "co-opted by people like [Syrian President] Bashar Assad."

He accused Palestinian Knesset members of trying to take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a new direction and give it a new “national color."

"Thankfully, they are not succeeding, and their efforts are not filtering down to the general public, which is more concerned with daily life."

On Friday Palestinian MKs reacted angrily to the leaked remarks.

"With this statement Diskin has defined us as enemies and not citizens," MK Hanin Zoabi of the predominantly Palestinian party Balad told Ynet, an Israeli news site.

"We know what Diskin means when he says we bring negative ideas with us. He wants to shut us up," she said.

"We don't care what people say about our participation in Palestinian conferences together with people from all over the world. What Diskin fears is what we say about Israeli democracy and the new laws."

MK Taleb El-Sana, United Arab List-Ta'al, called for an investigation, Ynet reported.

Diskin "has gone too far," he said.

Zoabi has had her special privileges as an MK listed due to her participation in the IHH's Mavi Marmara last May. Among other things, she was filmed trying to prevent the IDF from evacuating wounded passengers. Both Zoabi and a-Sana accepted an invitation to visit and visited Muammar Gadhafi in Libya. A-Sana has also been to Syria on more than one occasion. A-Sana also lost his diplomatic passport five times before it occurred to anyone that maybe they shouldn't issue him another one.

Does anyone think Diskin's assessment was wrong? I didn't think so.

Labels: Abu Mazen, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud K. Olmert, Hanin Zoabi, Taleb a-Sana, Wikileaks, Yuval Diskin

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:29 PM