The Murder Midrash
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Kamoun Ben-Shimon - September 19, 2010 - 12:00am

ON A DAY IN LATE AUGUST, Rabbi Ya'akov Meidan, head of the Gush Etzion Yeshiva in Alon Shvut, a settlement south of Bethlehem in the West Bank, the most prestigious yeshiva of the moderate Zionist religious movement, began his daily lecture with a different lesson than the usual one on Jewish law. He held up a copy of “Torat Hamelekh” (“The King’s Torah”), a book with a marblepatterned cover and embossed gilt letters, to his students. “This is a challenging book, written by learned men,” he said to the assembly of students.

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Palestinians Make Strides In West Bank Security
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from National Public Radio (NPR)
by Deborah Amos - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Israeli and Palestinian leaders are back at the table negotiating for peace, and a key factor in getting them there was improved security in the West Bank. The Palestinians have taken a larger role, forming police and security forces that have helped restore order in the disputed territory. It’s considered a success, but a new report says it’s hard to sustain.

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PA official: We won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
September 8, 2010 - 12:00am

The Palestinian Authority will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state, even though the PA acknowledges there is a Jewish majority in Israel, senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said at a press conference in Ramallah on Wednesday. According to Shaath, the Palestinian negotiating team turned down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's request to discuss the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state during the upcoming round of peace talks in Sharm el-Sheikh next week.

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Pressing Netanyahu is the key to success in Mideast peace talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Ahmad Tibi - (Opinion) September 3, 2010 - 12:00am

It is unfortunate that the direct Palestinian-Israeli peace talks that got underway this week are saddled with an Israeli prime minister who has made clear his unwillingness to reach an equitable two-state solution.

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Panic
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Yossi Alpher - August 30, 2010 - 12:00am

he idea of a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemingly never ceases to surprise and even entertain. It used to be official PLO policy, before the PNC adopted the two-state solution over 20 years ago. In recent years, with the two-state solution going nowhere, there has been a revival of interest in the one-state idea in Palestinian intellectual circles and even among some Palestinian citizens of Israel.

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Facing jail, the unarmed activist who dared to take on Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
by Donald MacIntyre - August 26, 2010 - 12:00am

Baroness Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, yesterday issued an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel over a military court's conviction of a Palestinian activist prominent in unarmed protests against the West Bank separation barrier. Lady Ashton said she was "deeply concerned" that Abdallah Abu Rahma was facing a possible jail sentence "to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the separation barriers in a non-violent manner".

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Courts grant Palestinians married to Israelis right to stay
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Dan Izenberg - August 25, 2010 - 12:00am

Two courts in separate cases rejected the state's refusal to allow Palestinians to continue living in Israel with their spouses and participate in the gradual procedure for obtaining permanent residential status. In the first case, on Tuesday, Deputy Supreme Court President Eliezer Rivlin rejected an appeal by the state to hold another hearing before an expanded court, after a panel of three Supreme Court justices had decided to allow Balal Daka to continue living in the country.

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A Test of Wills Over a Patch of Desert
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - August 25, 2010 - 12:00am

The two women crouched on the floor of a tent in this windblown Bedouin encampment in the Negev Desert, hurriedly preparing the evening meal as dusk approached. They had been fasting since sunrise in observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Now they were cooking furiously, spicing okra in tomato sauce and stuffing hollowed-out zucchini, against a backdrop of piles of rubble, the remains of their homes recently demolished by the Israeli authorities.

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Dismal lack of classrooms in East Jerusalem
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
August 24, 2010 - 12:00am

The education of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem is subject to "ongoing neglect," a joint report issued by two Israeli rights group said Tuesday. The Association of Civil Rights in Israel and Jerusalem-based NGO Ir Amim say the education system in East Jerusalem remains short of 1,000 classrooms for Palestinian students. According to the report, only 39 schools were built for Palestinians over the past year despite promises made in court to build 644 by 2011.

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Activists created 'fictitious' graves in Mamilla cemetery, say Israeli authorities
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

A political battle over a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem that began with charges of insensitivity levelled at plans for building on the site has spread into a more curious fight about whether hundreds of nearby tombstones are even real. The Mamilla cemetery had its peace disturbed this month by Israeli bulldozers demolishing gravestones in the middle of the night and by Muslim protests. The once sleepy plot of Muslim gravestones in Jewish west Jerusalem has become a flash point for rival claims to the holy city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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