9. Phone news

ARUTZ7 1/11/99: "The Communications Ministry has announced several elements of its policy to open Israel's telecommunications market: A new number system for the entire telephone network is in the works, to meet growing consumer demands and to expand the range of services.

This will also enable number mobility, thus that consumers can change their service providers without having to replace their telephone numbers. Other developments in the wide band telecommunications market include the granting of a license to Partner/Orange Ltd. to operate a third cellular radio-phone system, opening international communications to competition, and ongoing negotiations to grant new licenses for satellite and cable television broadcasting.

Preparations to open Israel's internal communications market to competition are also being made, and the Bezek company's present monopoly over telephone services will be ended. Bezek will be further privatized, reducing the government's share from 54% to 40%, enabling it to compete in an open market and enter new areas of activities.

The Ministry will shortly offer tenders for nation-wide land telephone services using the Local Multipoint Distribution Services, as well as tenders for wireless access networks at various Gigahertz frequencies, once solutions for the allocation of bandwidths are found."

10. Election economics

HA'ARETZ 1/12/99: "Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday took advantage of his dual status as prime minister and finance minister to launch a campaign of election economics in the Knesset yesterday, something he had previously pledged he would not do. Finance Ministry officials assailed him for "robbing the public till."

"Call it election economics - I don't care," Netanyahu told legislators and reporters as he threw his support behind a law to extend free public education to children aged three and four.

The Knesset voted 49-0 to sign the bill into law. Senior treasury officials, who insisted on anonymity, said, "The people of Israel have in recent days witnessed the robbing of the public till in broad daylight by the Prime Minister's Office and the Knesset and its committees.

The meter is running and the till is being emptied with every passing hour." The officials said the country's citizens would pay the price for the election economics, starting on May 18, the day after the Knesset elections.

"Does anyone harbor any illusions as to what the next government's first economic decisions will be?" the treasury officials added. Netanyahu, along with then Finance Minister Yaakov Ne'eman and senior treasury officials, invested considerable effort last summer in trying to get the cabinet to approve his relatively austere budget and enabling legislation.

The bills did not include the educational allocations approved yesterday, which various MKs have been trying to pass for some 14 years...The treasury estimates the new law would cost between NIS 750 million and NIS 1 billion per year to implement fully..."

11. Livnat stays in Likud

HA'ARETZ 1/12/99: "Communication Minister Limor Livnat put an end to her deliberations yesterday announcing her decision to stay in the Likud "and help Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu win the May 17 election.

"In a Jerusalem press conference, Livnat admitted that she had had doubts as to her political future in the party, which she joined 28 years ago. "I had criticisms of the working methods in the Likud and the government, and I could not overlook the disagreements I had with the prime minister."

Explaining her decision to stay in the Likud, the only woman in the government said that she came to the conclusion that there were profound ideological differences between the Likud and the new emerging centrist parties.

"I see myself as part of the nationalist camp. The Likud must lead the negotiations on the permanent arrangement with the Palestinians, and the right man to do this is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," Livnat said, adding: "Netanyahu has the best chances of beating Barak, and for now, I will support him."

Livnat confirmed that in recent weeks she had been approached by associates of the prime minister's to discuss the possibility of giving her the finance portfolio.

"I am not asking for anything for myself, and this was not the reason for my staying in the Likud. My decision was not dependent on any proposal and I received no guarantees," Livnat insisted, noting however that the finance portfolio was "interesting."

Livnat called on Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, still weighing his political future, not to leave the Likud, and called on those who had already bolted the party to consider returning, saying that precisely because several members had left the party she understood how important it was to revive the Likud..."

12. Court rules on religious council: Convenee, please

HA'ARETZ 1/12/99: "The High Court of Justice ruled yesterday that the Haifa religious council must convene within a week - with its newly-seated Reform and Conservative members on board. Justices Mishael Cheshin, Yitzchak Zamir and Dorit Beinisch overruled an order that Shas Religious Affairs Minister Eli Suissa gave the council's Orthodox chairman to avoid convening the council, so as to spare its Orthodox rabbis having to work with their Conservative and Reform counterparts.

The ruling came in response to an appeal from the Israel Religious Action Center's Uri Regev, who is both an attorney and a Reform rabbi. The justices ordered the Religious Affairs Ministry to pay NIS 30,000 to cover the Center's legal costs. The three-justice panel rejected Regev's demand that the Haifa council be convened within 48 hours - "That sounds like an ultimatum," Cheshin said.

But Cheshin said Suissa's order amounted to a flagrant flouting of the law. The Haifa council was scheduled to convene last Wednesday, but the meeting was scrapped at Suissa's behest. United Torah Judaism MK Avraham Ravitz accused Cheshin of embarking on a personal crusade against religious life in Israel.

Ravitz said the Knesset had better hurry up with the Religious Councils bill to neutralize the High Court's rulings. Regev yesterday asked Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein to order the convening of integrated councils in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Arad and Kiryat Tivon."

13. IC sale

HA'ARETZ 1/12/99: "The Knesset Finance Committee says it will begin to debate the pending sale of the Israel Corporation and its Israel Chemicals subsidiary to a Canadian firm, the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, after it finishes dealing with the national budget.

An apparent majority of committee members have already announced that they oppose selling ICL to a foreign entity. By law the sale requires the approval of the government, not the Finance Committee. The opposition coordinator on the Finance Committee, MK Avraham (Beiga) Shochat (Labor), said the sale should be examined extremely carefully, adding that the good of the state should be the decisive factor.

But in any case, Shochat demands that before any sale takes place, 1,000 dunams of land worked by DSW should be allocated to two nearby settlements, Neot Hakikar and Ein Tamar, to answer their future expansion needs..."

14. Mordechai wooed

HA'ARETZ 1/11/99: "In a "can't lose" offer to Yitzhak Mordechai, the defense minister has been assured by centrist candidate Amnon Lipkin-Shahak that he will be able to retain his current portfolio even if Shahak loses the election but joins the next coalition. Shahak told Mordechai that he will "step aside" in favor of Mordechai, who would be the senior candidate of the centrist party, even ahead of Shahak himself.

Mordechai, who has been pondering his political future for weeks, is also mulling over an offer from Labor Party leader MK Ehud Barak to join the top ranks of the "One Israel" list he is planning to form. MK Dan Meridor, who has announced that he is also a candidate for prime minister at the head of a nascent centrist party amid plans to hook up with Shahak, refused to comment on Shahak's idea. "It is very important to expand the circle.

I will be delighted if Yitzhak Mordechai joins," he said in reply to a question. Meanwhile, the ongoing dispute between Shahak and Meridor over how the number-one candidate of the centrist list will be chosen remained unresolved. Senior figures in Shahak's movement said yesterday that if the two campaign staffs - Shahak's and Meridor's - are not united by the end of January at the latest, "serious damage, which probably cannot be rectified, will be done to the centrist movement."

The sources said that Meridor must agree on a method to have the centrist candidate for prime minister within three weeks - at the latest immediately after the Likud chooses its candidate in primaries scheduled for January 25.

They said it would be disastrous if the Likud, Labor and even the right-wing party had candidates for prime minister, while the centrist party remained split between Shahak and Meridor. Retorting, senior figures in Meridor's campaign headquarters said the two staffs could be merged immediately, as Meridor had proposed 10 days ago, but there was no urgency in choosing the top candidate in conjunction with the Likud.

One way or the other, the sources added, the decision will be made by mid-February at the latest. Yet another retired major general yesterday intimated that he, too, will soon leap into the political waters. Matan Vilnai, who was passed over last year for chief of staff, said yesterday he is "seriously" considering entering politics, though he has not yet decided whether he will join Labor or the Likud..."

15. Why Wye?

HA'ARETZ 1/11/99: "The public relations war over which side is violating the Wye agreement is starting to heat up. Last Thursday in New York, Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon spent more than three hours urging Israeli diplomats in North America to stem the tide of opinion charging that Israel is to blame for the fact that the Wye accord is not being implemented.

According to government sources, Sharon called for a "public relations offensive" aimed at the administration, Congress, the American media and Jewish organizations. "We have to sharpen our message", government sources quoted Sharon as saying.

The Palestinian Authority yesterday published charts showing all the Wye commitments it has fulfilled marked "DONE" and Israel's unfulfilled commitments labeled "NOT DONE."

A day earlier, top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the PA has sent messages to 96 world leaders and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan explaining that Israel is to blame for the Wye impasse. Last week, the Foreign Ministry issued a series of papers blaming the Palestinians for the impasse...

The PR war is claiming its victims. When ambassador to Washington Zalman Shoval used the Foreign Ministry press release points in an op-ed he published in the Washington Times last week, the Clinton administration made its displeasure publicly known.

It believes Israel is being disingenuous about portraying itself as adhering to Wye and claiming that the Palestinians are not...Netanyahu confirmed yesterday that Egypt is pressuring PA Chairman Yasser Arafat not to declare a Palestinian state unilaterally before the May 17 elections in Israel.

"There are circles in Egypt that understand that an action of that kind will encounter solid opposition in Israel," Netanyahu said. The communique issued following yesterday's weekly cabinet meeting asserted that "Israel reserves the right to extend Israeli law to the territories under its control if Arafat and the Palestinians violate the agreements they have signed and unilaterally declare the establishment of a Palestinian state."...

16. Meretz chooses

HA'ARETZ 1/11/99: "The Meretz party yesterday approved a three-part decision to choose its candidates for the Knesset elections on May 17, but 70 percent of the top 10 places will be "reserved" for "new faces" and others.

The party's 3,000-member convention approved the recommendation of the Meretz executive to abolish the primaries system and instead, the Meretz Council will meet at the end of January to choose a "panel" of 27 Knesset candidates...