Israeli Press
Israel's papers open the school year on Gaza, Ra'am and Ben Gvir
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
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What the Israeli front pages carried on Tuesday, the first day of the school year and eight weeks before the election.
Ynet#
The lead is Gaza: "Hamas's Shin Bet chief arrested in Gaza, brought wounded to Israel." The site reports that a special force went in, that the operation was exposed during an attempted seizure, and that the defence minister, Israel Katz, announced the arrest of a man who ran counter-intelligence and internal security for Hamas.
It notes that Gaza sources dispute the rank — "a more junior officer" — and that the Board of Peace is examining the incident after criticism of earlier strikes. A second Ynet piece counts more than eighteen air strikes and four dead on Palestinian accounts.
Maariv#
Politics, and the closing of the lists. "In Likud they are celebrating; this beats the conscription law" reads the paper's account of the pairing between Yoav Segalovitz and Mansour Abbas's Ra'am, which Netanyahu's campaign intends to run on to the wire.
The same page reports the prime minister demanding that only three parties run on the right and pressing an urgent match between Bezalel Smotrich and Moshe Feiglin, alongside a separate item in which Yesh Atid's Tomer Weiner tells 103FM that Segalovitz's move "does not make Ra'am legitimate."
The campaign trail#
Ynet's diary of 1 September has Netanyahu and the education minister received on a red carpet at the Ramle school named for his father, repaired after an Iranian missile hit it; Gadi Eisenkot touring Nahariya for Yashar; and Otzma Yehudit activists handing out Ben Gvir's children's book at school gates around the country after Justice Noam Sohlberg rejected the petition against it.
Stickers calling the Knesset speaker, Amir Ohana, a collaborator went up near his children's school; Ohana called the campaign despicable.
Also carried#
Yair Golan is preparing a libel warning to Sara Netanyahu and Channel 14 over her broadcast remarks on 7 October, with AFP reporting that her claims echo recurring conspiracy theories. Gadi Yevarkan launched a new party, Beit Yisrael, with Tzomet, presenting itself as a third camp on the right.
And 2.6 million Israeli pupils went back to school — while dozens of Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem stayed shut, their teachers held on the West Bank side of the permit regime.
