Scott MacLeod defends Human Rights Watch against criticism that it's been unduly critical of Israel. A Reuters analysis argues that President Abbas is seeking to use Palestinian elections to reunite the West Bank and Gaza, and the President warns that Israel's measures are leading to potential violence and that Prime Minister Netanyahu "hasn't changed" since his first term in the 1990s. Special Envoy George Mitchell and Secretary of State Clinton are set to meet with Palestinian and Israeli leaders. Rabbi Eric Yoffie argues in Ha'aretz that settlements are antithetical to peace. The Independent highlights the exemplary plight of a student expelled by Israel from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip just before graduation. The National argues that Hamas opposition to Palestinian elections exposes its motivations and Daoud Kuttab says that elections are essential to the Palestinian people.

After nine months
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Rami Khouri - (Opinion) October 30, 2009 - 12:00am

A month after US President Barack Obama met in New York with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week gave him the progress report on Arab-Israeli peace making that he had requested. As expected, it said that very slight progress has been made and that the hard work of resuming meaningful peace negotiations remained ahead.

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Will elections help or hurt Palestinian reconciliation?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Daoud Kuttab - (Opinion) October 30, 2009 - 12:00am

The decree issued by Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has pushed the conflict between PLO’s main faction, Fateh, and the Islamic Hamas movement to yet another stage. While many consider this move very risky for the future of Palestine, others feel that it is the only democratic way out of the impasse.

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Hamas-Fatah Dispute "Pity" says Arab League SecGen
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Ali Ibrahim - October 29, 2009 - 12:00am

Secretary General, Amr Musa to London lasted just over 24 hours, a great part of which he spent communicating with Arab communities and organizations in Britain. He met with representatives of British Arab societies which are trying to be politically effective in British society, and he was a main speaker at the British Arab Economic Forum which was inaugurated on Tuesday. After that he went to the British House of Lords, within the framework of Arab League efforts to keep in touch with Arab communities around the world.

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Hamas gambles, and will lose
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
(Editorial) October 29, 2009 - 12:00am

The game of one-upmanship between Hamas and Fatah grows increasingly tiresome, and the latest row over elections in January is especially so. Hamas has responded to Fatah’s election call by banning them in Gaza. But in doing so, Hamas risks not only alienating itself abroad but lowering its stature even further in the eyes of the Palestinians.

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Clinton to meet Abbas in Abu Dhabi
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
October 30, 2009 - 12:00am

Abu Dhabi will host a meeting between the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as part of a weekend effort to push both Palestinian and Israeli leaders to resume peace talks, a US official said today. After her meetings in Abu Dhabi tomorrow, Mrs Clinton will travel to Israel to meet with the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She will be joined by the Obama administration’s special Middle East peace envoy, George Mitchell.

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Israel must break growing stranglehold of religion
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Stanley Gold, Uri Regev - (Opinion) October 28, 2009 - 12:00am

How does it happen that thousands of Israelis travel each year to Cyprus and Eastern Europe to get married? Is this an Israeli custom, to elope? Not at all. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens cannot marry in Israel due to state law, including numerous Russian olim, all non-Orthodox converts to Judaism and native-born Israeli Jews who want an egalitarian marriage ceremony. Israeli democracy is enlightened and progressive in most respects, but in the area of religious freedom it lags all Western democracies.

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Student expelled to Gaza Strip by force
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
by Ben Lynfield - October 30, 2009 - 12:00am

A Palestinian student has been handcuffed, blindfolded and forcibly expelled to the Gaza Strip by Israeli troops just two months before she was due to graduate from university. Berlanty Azzam, 21, who was studying for a business degree at Bethlehem University, said she was coming home in a shared taxi from a job interview in Ramallah on Wednesday when soldiers at the "Container" checkpoint took her identity card and that of another passenger with a Gaza address.

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'Waqf quietly pleased at Salah's arrest'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Khaled Abu Toameh - October 29, 2009 - 12:00am

Heads of the Waqf Department have quietly expressed their satisfaction with the Israeli authorities' recent measures against Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, and top Fatah operative Hatem Abdel Qader, a senior official with the Ministry for Internal Security said on Thursday. Salah and Abdel Qader have each been arrested by the Jerusalem Police for their role in instigating the latest wave of violent protests at the Temple Mount.

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No to settlements is yes to peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Eric Yoffie - (Opinion) October 30, 2009 - 12:00am

Too many American Jewish groups have their heads in the sand when it comes to the damage the settlement project has done to Israel. They embrace those on the American religious right who endorse settlement as a religious principle, without realizing that the influence of these groups is declining. They talk to each other or to themselves, but not to their own children on campus who must deal with this topic every day. Yet those of us who do the actual work of making Israel's case in local communities know full well the damage the settlement issue causes in grassroots America.

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