August 23rd

Palestinians set their crosshairs on educational reform
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Hussein Ibish - August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

In an important new move, the Palestinian Authority has recently begun highlighting education as one of the main centerpieces in the next phase of the state and institution building program. Under the leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas, the PA understands that an effective and progressive educational system is essential for economic and social development, building a functional state, and laying the groundwork for peace with Israel.

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Mideast talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
August 22, 2010 - 12:00am

When Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu come face to face for dinner and talks in Washington, we know where they’re coming from. They will meet a decade after the last real final-status talks, 20 months after the last direct talks and after around three months of largely futile indirect negotiations.

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Peace talks are doomed before they even begin
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

In theory, the premise of the direct talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis is almost utopian. According to the brief, released by the Quartet — the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — the negotiations would last for one year and are supposed to "resolve all final status issues".

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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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Israeli army's female recruits denounce treatment of Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Harriet Sherwood - August 22, 2010 - 12:00am

It was a single word scrawled on a wall at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that unlocked something deep inside Inbar Michelzon, two years after she had completed compulsory military service in the Israeli Defence Force. The word was "occupation". "I really felt like someone was speaking the unspoken," she recalled last week in a Tel Aviv cafe. "It was really shocking to me. There was graffiti saying, 'end the occupation'. And I felt like, OK, now I can talk about what I saw."

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US gambles on new Middle East talks with no clear plan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
by Kim Ghattas - August 20, 2010 - 12:00am

This time, scepticism is at an all-time high and expectations are low, including for the near term, let alone the ambitious goal set out by Hillary Clinton of resolving all key issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict within a year. The statement by the secretary of state and her special envoy, George Mitchell, was high in aspirations, low on details.

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Editorial: Trying again
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

It has taken Herculean efforts by the Obama administration to bring Israel and the Palestinian Authority together for direct talks, including a diplomatic sleight of hand. Indeed, Israelis and Palestinians are entering the talks next month based on different working assumptions.

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Those noisy barbarians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Noam Ben Ze'ev - August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, head of the rabbinical committee in the territories and a power broker in the halls of government, is this country's real prime minister, writer Sefi Rachlevsky said in an op-ed in Haaretz's Hebrew edition last week.

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What West Bank road renovations say about the occupation
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

Whenever I am driving uphill, I nearly always think of Abu Mazen, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. To be more precise, of two sentences he uttered during the sixth Fatah conference a year ago.

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August 20th

Sec. Clinton is expected today to announce direct negotiations to begin in Washington on Sept. 2, and the Quartet to issue a statement saying they can be completed within one year. The UN criticizes Israeli restrictions on Gaza. Israel restricts Palestinian access to Jerusalem during Ramadan. The PLO defends Pres. Abbas' statements recognizing Jewish rights in Israel. The ex-Israeli soldier who posed with Palestinian prisoners says she would gladly kill and slaughter Arabs. Homeless Gazans seize a Hamas building. Anshel Pfeffer says a whole generation of Israelis have grown up seeing the Palestinians as nonhuman. Arab states are not to meeting their pledges to the PA. Mohamad Alasmar says "price tag" settler violence is tolerated by the Israeli authorities. A survey suggests 56% of Jewish Israelis believe "the world is against us." Ron Prosser says Israel will deal with Hamas only when it is not violent. Jesse Rosenfeld says different groups of Palestinians should show more solidarity with each other. Ben White looks at Israel's demand Palestinians recognize it as a "Jewish state." Time looks at the easing of restrictions on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

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