Yediot Aharonot believes that "Egypt will certainly not abrogate the peace agreement. It has many good reasons not to do so. The fear is over a ‘compromise’ that will be achieved on this issue between the extremist minority and the concerned majority that will find expression in a more aggressive Egyptian involvement on the Israeli-Palestinian track based on the direct or indirect condition that the continued existence of the peace in its current format depends on progress in the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic process." The author recommends that Israel "hasten to resume the negotiations with the Palestinians on the basis of the well-known proposals and ideas in order to pre-empt the formation of any hostile political bloc in Egypt." The paper asserts that "Mubarak is gone," and wonders, "When will the Government of Israel understand that time is no longer working in its favor?"
Haaretz comments on the recommendations of the Neeman committee regarding wages paid to senior officials at publicly traded companies. The committee "says the process of setting executive salaries must be more transparent, better regulated and subject to numerous restrictions. The exaggerated salaries earned by top executives have serious social ramifications: The yawning gulf between their paychecks and those of ordinary citizens divides society, undermines its strength and reduces the motivation of middle-class workers. But that doesn’t mean we should support extremist legislation of the sort some Knesset members have proposed. They want the Knesset itself to determine the formula governing how much executives at publicly traded companies should be paid. That is a lousy, populist idea."
Ma’ariv suggests that US President Barack Obama might consider visiting Israel during President Shimon Peres’s upcoming June conference. The author believes that "As long as Obama does not come to Israel, there is a problem: Every visit by a senior Republican increases Israel’s identification with a hawkish policy and a right-wing agenda. This certainly gnaws away at the support of Democratic voters, including most American Jews, who look askance at expressions of warmth from the evangelical Huckabee and the southern Barbour, whom they suspect of racism." The author cites sources within the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations who suggest that Israel do what it can to rectify the foregoing by doing more to persuade high-ranking Democrats to visit the country.
Yisrael Hayom refers to the J Street conference now taking place in Washington DC and contends that the organization "was established in order to lobby the [US] administration to pressure Israel into making unilateral concessions." The author acknowledges that, "Every person and every Jew has the right to express opinions for and against Israel," but says, "The problem with J Street lays in its insistence that it is a pro-Israeli organization. Could a pro-Israeli organization support the Goldstone Report, which attempts to undermine Israel’s right to defend itself after being hit by thousands of rockets fired by Hamas?"
The Jerusalem Post comments: "J Street’s growth in the three years since its establishment is impressive. Its "Giving Voice to Our Values" conference this weekend in Washington, has drawn over 2,000 attendees. In theory, all lovers of democracy and diversity of opinion should welcome J Street’s rise, as a mark of its success in fostering a fundamentally pro-Israel stance even among younger American Jews who might feel alienated from more mainstream organizations’ perceived "Israel right or wrong" position. In practice, however, the concern is that J Street has been stretching too thin its "big tent" of opinions, to incorporate elements of the extreme Left, risking in the process leaving out in the cold American Jews with an unabashedly pro-Zionist sensibility."
[Dov Weisglass, Shmuel Rosner and Isi Leibler wrote today’s articles in Yediot Aharonot, Ma’ariv and Yisrael Hayom, respectively.]
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