Editoriais de quinta, 4 de maio *

The Jerusalem Post writes: "Israel's strategic goal since Hamas's election win has been to force it to change its extremist stripes or to impede its ability to govern and thereby hasten its downfall. Israel has successfully convinced significant elements of the international community to follow suit based on first principles: A regime which sustains and justifies terrorism should be isolated. Talks with the chairman of the PA, if poorly handled, could break this policy either by giving the PA as a whole international credibility and thereby decreasing pressure on Hamas, or by adding a nuance to the isolation approach: that it's OK to make distinctions between particular elements of the PA, dealing with some of them while ignoring Hamas. These are all consequences that Olmert has himself made plain he is determined to avoid."

Haaretz comments: "If Olmert does attribute great importance to the existence of independent public broadcasting, as he claims, perhaps there is one last opportunity to make improvements instead of abolishing Channel One. It does not really matter which reform plan is implemented, as long as it includes a normative change that will lead to a complete absence of interference by politicians in the channel. The structural separation must be absolute, and its management must be put into the hands of professionals, appointed and overseen by a public (nonpolitical) committee. The IBA plenum, to which parties appointed their favorites, must pass from this world... We should aspire to highly professional programs that are neither guided solely by ratings nor driven by political or commercial ends, while retaining successful and popular IBA assets such as Israel Radio, Radio 88, the Voice of Music and the remaining outstanding professional personnel who are currently not being utilized by the authority."

Yediot Aharonot comments on the new government and believes that, "In its current format it can surprise only for good." However, the editors still wish it well.

Hatzofeh suggests that IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz is reluctant to support a major IDF ground action in the Gaza Strip to eliminate Kassam rocket fire because of his air force background: "Even if the Defense Ministry will have a minister who doesn't know his right hand from his left on security matters, there are increasing voices today that it was a mistake to appoint an air force man as chief of General Staff, because he will naturally hesitate to support wide-ranging ground actions that he never trained for."

Yediot Aharonot, in its second editorial, calls on the IDF and Defense Ministry authorities to reconsider the ease with which fashion models may obtain exemptions from IDF service.