Netanyahu warns world powers not to let Iran 'push them around'

PM hardens stance on eve of nuclear talks; says Israel's position 'has not changed and will no.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday warned the world powers against letting Iran "push them around," toughening his stance in a last-ditch effort to head off a nuclear agreement between the world powers and Iran at talks slated to start Wednesday in Baghdad.

The prime minister restated his desired outcome from the talks between Iran and the six world powers: that Iran to stop all uranium enrichment, get rid of all enriched uranium already produced, and dismantle the underground enrichment facility at Fordo.

"Only that way can we be sure that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. That is Israel's stance. It has not changed, and it will not change," Netanyahu said at a Civil Service Commission ceremonyImplying that the U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany were acting naively in the face of Iranian deceit, he said: "During the last few weeks I've heard those who would doubt Iranian intentions. They say that when Iran's leaders declare their desire to wipe Israel off the map, the comments actually mean something else in Farsi."

He added: "It would be interesting to hear what they have to say about comments made by the chief of staff of Iran's military just yesterday, that Iran must destroy Israel."

The prime minister said Iran's objective is to destroy Israel, and that the Islamic Republic is developing nuclear weapons toward that end. "Iran threatens Israel and world peace in general. The world's leading powers must be steadfast in the face of these evil intentions. They need not make concessions to Iran, but rather make unequivocal demands," he said.

While Netanyahu's comments were phrased diplomatically, those issuing from other senior Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity were much sharper. "The West is already caving in to Iran," said one official.The prime minister's comments reflect a fear in Jerusalem that the talks between the six powers and Iran will result in an intermediate agreement that would not satisfy Israel on the one hand, and lead to the talks' continuation for many months on the other. In that event, an Israeli military option against Iranian nuclear facilities would be off the table.

Netanyahu's remarks contrasted sharply with the more optimistic statements coming from Washington, Paris, Berlin, and London that have raised the possibility of a breakthrough in talks with Iran.

The outline of a possible intermediate agreement would allow Iran to enrich uranium to the level of 20%, a potential transition stage to weapons-grade fuel. Such an agreement would also end enrichment activities at the fortified underground Fordo complex, and require Iran to give up the 100 kilograms of 20%-enriched uranium it has now.

In return, the world powers would agree to suspend some of the sanctions that have been leveled against the Islamic Republic. An EU oil embargo, as well as U.S. sanctions against Iran's central bank, are set to go into effect July 1, but no new sanctions would be introduced. Iran would also receive a supply of nuclear fuel rods to power its research reactors.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned against complacency and naivete by the U.S. and other world powers. Barak said he told officials during a visit to Washington last week that Iran will try to present a false front of progress, meant to relieve some of the pressure from the world powers, before asking the West not to level any more sanctions.

"Unfortunately, despite the worldwide declarations, it is unclear to us that the world is willing to bring Iran to a crossroads, at which it will have to decide to continue its nuclear program or not," said Barak.

Meanwhile, talks between UN nuclear chief Yukiya Amano concluded on Monday without any breakthroughs on supervision of Iran's nuclear facilities, which are suspected of being used to produce nuclear weapons. Amano said the talks "were effective and held in a 'good atmosphere,' and they will have a positive impact on negotiations between Iran and [the six powers]," but did not specify what agreements, if any, were made.

Report: Assad's inner circle plans defection if Syria unrest boils over

Senior regime officials have reportedly established contact with opposition groups and Western governments, while secretly moving funds into foreign bank accounts.

Senior Syrian government officials are quietly preparing plans to defect to the country's opposition in the event that a 15-month uprising in the country manages to destabilize the regime of President Bashar Assad, the British newspaper Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday.

“We are seeing members of Bashar Assad’s inner circle make plans to leave,” an unnamed senior U.S. official told the newspaper.

According to the report, members of the regime have also established contact with representatives of Western governments and begun moving large sums of money into foreign bank accounts in Lebanon and China.

The report also quoted a senior member of the Syrian opposition, also unnamed, who confirmed that opposition groups were seeking American assistance in encouraging the defection of members of the regime.

“I know for sure there are some high-ranking officers who are waiting for the right chance to defect," said the opposition member. “We have names of people in the presidential palace. There are rumors that there is one who is really close to the president and we are expecting to see him out of the country soon.”

On Thursday, a colonel in the Syrian air force, Hassan Merei al-Hamade, defected to Jordan. The colonel, a pilot, was sent on a mission to attack the southern Syrian city of Daraa, but instead landed his MiG 21 fighter jet in Jordan, where he was granted political asylum.

According to the Telegraph, three other pilots on the mission also considered defecting, but ultimately decided against it, fearing that they would be turned away by Jordanian authorities.

The Syrian air force is considered particularly loyal to the Assad regime, and defections from within its ranks could indicate that cracks are emerging within the military.

State demands prison sentences for officers who left Palestinian to die by side of road

Demand comes a month after Baruch Peretz and Assaf Yakutiel were charged for negligent homicide after they threw Omar Abu Jariban out of a police vehicle, leaving him to die of dehydration.

Assaf Yakutieli, one of the two officers suspected of negligent homicide of a Palestinian man, in a Jerusalem court.

The state demanded two policemen serve active prison sentences after they were convicted of negligent homicide after they dumped an injured Palestinian man on the side of the road, leaving him to die.

The decision comes a month after Judge Haim Liran rejected the testimony by Inspector Baruch Peretz, who was the officer on duty at the Rehovot police station on June 12, 2008, when he ordered a low-ranking policeman, Assaf Yakutieli, to throw Omar Abu Jariban out of a police vehicle, on the side of the road. Abu Jariban died of dehydration some time later.

On Tuesday, State Representative Batia Kolitz told the Jerusalem Magistrate Court the court that the officers “were so dense that they did not see the human that stood in front of them.”

“There is no room in Israeli society for an attitude that says ‘it will be okay, he’ll find a ride by standing on the side of the rode.’ The officers harmed the image of the police and of the uniform,” Kolitz said.

Kolitz wrapped up her statements by saying that a fitting punishment should include prison sentences.

Peretz asked the judge not to sentence him to prison, saying that since the incident his life “has been in ruins.”

“I feel hurt and betrayed,” Peretz said. “There have been times in the past when I have admitted I was wrong or I failed. In this case I did neither. I believed that justice would prove that.”

Yakutieli expressed regret over the incident. “I honestly was trying to fix a situation which was out of our hands. The result was tragic, and I am sorry. This is something I think about every day, and I am ashamed of what happened.”

Prior to the incident, Jariban was seriously injured in a car accident on May 28, 2008, while driving a stolen car on Route 6, near the Soreq interchange. He had been in Israel illegally. He was hospitalized at the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer where he remained for two weeks before he was released into the custody of Rehovot police officers. He still required medical care and rehabilitation, and was apparently in a state of confusion.

Police, who did not know the identity of the patient-suspect, ultimately decided to admit him to the Israel Prison Service's medical facility. But it turned out there was no room for him there. So officers from the Rehovot station, which had assumed responsibility for investigating the accident and the car theft, drove Jariban to the West Bank. They eventually left him, late at night, at the side of road 45 near the Ofer military base. His body was discovered two days later.

Peres: Israel can't make Mideast peace with open eyes, we must forget the past

At Presidential Conference, president says lesson of past failures shows sides need to close their eyes to the past, saying: You cannot make love and you cannot make peace with open eyes.

Israel can't make peace with "open eyes," President Shimon Peres said at the fourth Israeli Presidential Conference on Thursday, adding that sides must forget about the past and focus on the future to end the years-long conflict.

Speaking at the “Learning from Mistakes on the Way to Tomorrow,” the president said that his "own conclusion of how not to make mistakes is close your eyes a little. You cannot make love and you cannot make peace with open eyes."

"The past is dead. You can't correct it. Can you correct something that is dead? Can you correct the past? Focus on the future. You have to take risks," he added, saying: "You have to choose between two sorts of mistakes. You do nothing and that is a mistake, or you do something that could cause the mistakes."

"It's better to try, do something and maybe you will have a success. If you don’t try, you won’t make a mistake, but you won't have a success," he added.

Addressing the conference's participants, the president said that the "first mistake I have learned from my life is don’t look for perfection. You will make mistakes. You need to be satisfied with allowing people to live together. Perfection can be a desire, but we can’t achieve it in the foreseeable future."

"People set their goals too high. There is the story of the man who looked for the ideal women. When he found her, found she was looking for the ideal man, so she wouldn’t marry him," he added.

Peres said that the "ultimate difficulty with peace is not your enemy, but your own people. I am asked 'why are you paying so much? Why do you trust them so much?' Who can measure how much you can trust them? The greatest problem is couples. They want to have a perfect life, and if they try to keep life perfect they will get a divorce."

The president even went far as saying that avoiding early negotiations with the PLO was one of his mistakes, saying: "They killed our people. We said, 'how can we speak with murderers.' It was a mistake. By not talking, they would continue to shoot. But talking, maybe they would have stopped."

When the topic of the opening panel of the conference was chosen: “Learning from Mistakes on the Way to Tomorrow,” there was no way of knowing that while it was taking place, all of Israel would be engaged in discussion of mistake-making in the case of the Carmel fire disaster.

As television journalist Dana Weiss pointed out earlier in the session, it might be helpful to send a transcript of the panel directly to the offices of government ministers.

Nobel laureate Professor Daniel Kahneman said that the whole concept of learning from mistakes was generally based on flawed assumptions. “To really learn from mistakes we need stable circumstances where there are rules.”

Under these conditions, he said real expertise can develop. "This is how chess masters develop their expertise in the game. Every game is the same, the rules are fixed, and therefore they can learn from mistakes over and over again until they don’t make mistakes."

"But the world isn’t like that, it’s an uncertain place, and therefore 'decisions are gambles.' What that means is that the best possible decision can have bad outcomes and a bad decision can have good outcomes,” he added.

Kahneman also said that in "the military there are generals who are willing to take more risks than others, even risks that are that are unacceptable, but it is possible for them to gamble several times and be successful. When a general gambles and is successful, that he was a military genius, and those who told him not to take those risks were cowardly.”

“In the financial crisis, there are people who say they knew the crisis would happen. But really, they thought the crisis was going to happen and at the same time there were people with just as much knowledge and expertise who thought the opposite,” he said.

“The world in general makes too much sense to us. We do not admit the level of uncertainty.” Essentially, most of these decisions are just ‘going with our gut.’

So what is the alternative? Kahneman suggests that to lessen mistakes we shouldn’t focus on outcomes, we should focus on the process of decision-making.

"There is an absence of quality control, and on-going critiques of decision-making. We don’t have it and we should. It is in fact possible.... We should keep track of the considerations, of the deliberations. This is very difficult to achieve in organization. Organizations resist examining their decision-making process. When you look for mistakes in real time, there is a feeling that someone is looking over their shoulders and they will be blamed," he said.

Kahneman even added that "leaders should have coaches."

"A tennis coach doesn’t play better than the player, but he can look objectively at the athlete and help him.... I have known some organizations where leaders have taken someone they trust who can critique the quality of the decision-making while it was going on and not just relying on the outcome to determine whether the decision made was the right one," he added.

Another panel speaker, Dr. James Sebenius, an international expert on negotiations, says that common mistakes made is focusing on the other sides’ statements and demands rather than probing on what the other side wants. "Often," he said, "if you take the time to probe behind incompatible positions and find interests that can both be met."

Carmel fire report exposes Israel's unpreparedness for potential Iran war

The decision-making problems revealed by the state comptroller's report on the 2010 disaster are particularly relevant in light of the failure of talks between Tehran and the West.

The problems revealed by the state comptroller's report on the 2010 Carmel forest disaster regarding the executive branch's lack of preparedness and the decision-making process among Israeli officials should come as no surprise - especially in light of last week’s comptroller report on the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident.

One issue addressed by the Carmel report is the home front’s preparedness for the possibility of an emergency situation - security-related or otherwise. The Fire and Rescue Services, whose failures were exposed in the report, are a significant part of the forces used during any emergency scenario. The firefighters’ skills and level of preparedness are critical, whether during a deadly forest fire or during a barrage of rockets from Lebanon or Iran.

Now, in light of the failure of the talks between Tehran and the West in Moscow, and due to the growing fears of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites, this issue is as relevant as ever.

There are experts who tell us that the threat of missiles on the home front is not as serious as it seems - that following the Home Front Command's instructions, alongside improved deterrence, will reduce the likely damages from an attack. But defending the home front is dependent on how well the various rescue services function, especially in light of the fact that they work independently of one another.

The report shows that a lack of training materials and drills for firefighters, a low operational level and a gap in equipment - all of these were known to the decision-makers before the disaster. Many more problems occurred among officers in the police and senior firefighters during the fire, including arriving at the scene, the lack of ability to put together credible situation reports and a lack of control over forces.

A year and a half after the Carmel disaster, the gaps in the home front’s preparation can still be felt: public bomb shelters are still in bad condition, millions of shekels are lacking for defensive measures (while huge amounts are being budgeted in order to prepare for offensive aspects), and the lack of preparation kits for more than a third of the population is even more worrisome in light of the prospect of chemical weapons trickling out of Assad’s Syria.

There is no doubt that much is being done in the home front in the wake of the failures exposed after the Second Lebanon War and later the Carmel fire. It is doubtful, however, if enough has been done since then to fix the oversights. “I have a hard time believing that Netanyahu and Barak don’t understand the ramifications of a possible Iranian attack on the Israeli home front. It is impossible that they are knowingly ready to fail,” said a former senior official, who currently serves as an advisor to the Israeli leadership.

Alongside the politicians’ evasions, the attacks which have since become routine on State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss and the blame game among all those involved were the explanations given Tuesday over the ways in which Israel’s firefighting services have dramatically improved since the disaster. The discussion, like the one over the home front preparedness, is reminiscent of the ongoing disagreement over the fitness of military reserves. The IDF has put more of an emphasis on equipping and training reserve units after the trauma of 2006.

But Lindenstrauss’ monitoring reports still reveal many worrying gaps. On Tuesday, a Knesset Committee held a discussion on the issue. Reserve officers told MKs hair-raising stories from their personal experiences. In contrast, IDF representatives explained that the situation has never been better.

Now try a thought experiment: Based on life experience in Israel, which stance is more believable? The worries of civilians and the revelations of the comptroller's report or the soothing words of the authorities?