NEWS: The Egyptian gas pipeline to Israel is again attacked. PA employees will get half pay this month. Israel continues home demolitions in the Jordan Valley. The latest Gaza flotilla is stalled. PM Netanyahu remains very popular in Israel in spite of stalled diplomacy. Israel is planning more West Bank settlements. Israeli and Palestinian security services are both preparing for possible violence in September. Clashes between Palestinians and settlers increase. Two Palestinians are killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza. US officials say Pres. Obama plans to visit Israel. Israel says it is determined to keep pressure on Hamas. Palestinian unity talks are stalled. COMMENTARY: Yitzhak Laor says the siege of Gaza is turning into a moral blockade of Israel and Ha'aretz says it must end. Zvi Bar'el says the US may move towards talks with Hamas. Gershon Baskin says leaders must change their messaging. David Newman says Palestinians and Israelis need to work to protect each other's human rights. Linda Gradstein says Israeli attitudes are still shaped by the Gaza redeployment. Eric Alterman says Israeli and Palestinian leaders are making a two-state solution impossible. Linda Heard says the flotilla was blocked by a conspiracy. Yossi Alpher says one of the reasons Palestinians are thinking about asking for UN membership is that they want progress on two states but Netanyahu does not. Ghassan Khatib says Palestinians are ready for freedom and independence.

Borderline Views: Preserving human rights of 'the other'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by David Newman - (Opinion) July 5, 2011 - 12:00am

The real challenge facing human rights groups is respecting and upholding the civil rights of those with whom we often disagree. How appropriate that in the week the Knesset launched a new attack on human rights movements, especially those funded by the European Union, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) received the Gruber International Justice Prize.

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Six years on, lessons of Gaza withdrawal resonate for West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Linda Gradstein - (Opinion) July 4, 2011 - 12:00am

SHILOH, West Bank (JTA) -- Yisrael Medad remembers when just eight families lived in the red-roofed homes in this Jewish settlement deep in the hills of the West Bank. Now some 2,500 Israelis live here, and Shiloh has playgrounds, schools and a yeshiva. The red-roofed homes sprawl over several hills, and new homes continue to be built. At the bottom of the hill is the archaeological excavation of the biblical Shiloh, where the tabernacle is believed to have been built.

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If... then...
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Gershon Baskin - (Opinion) July 5, 2011 - 12:00am

The Palestinian media are reporting that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has responded to President Barack Obama’s request for an answer on whether or not Israel agrees to the president’s parameters for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. According to the reports, Netanyahu demanded a letter of commitment from the US, patterned on the letter from former president George W.

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The U.S. may be heading toward talks with Hamas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Zvi Barel - (Opinion) July 3, 2011 - 12:00am

How would Israel respond if a "senior American official" were to declare that the United States was prepared to speak with Hamas leadership?

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The blockade is the problem
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) July 4, 2011 - 12:00am

All signs indicate that the government of Israel has taken steps to receive the present Gaza flotilla in a manner much more systematic than last year's actions. Instead of relying entirely on the use of force, diplomatic measures were taken this time, and friendly states, first and foremost Greece, mobilized to help Israel and hampered the flotilla's departure. This diplomatic action proved that there are alternatives less violent than Israel's predilection for discharging armed soldiers to suppress civilian protests.

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Siege of Gaza has become a moral blockade of Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Yitzhak Laor - (Opinion) July 5, 2011 - 12:00am

Israel is indeed connected to the centers of power in the world. The predictions of a tsunami at present seem to be exaggerated, but nevertheless, before the victory ball, it is worth remembering - the Israeli occupation is the longest military occupation of modern times.

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Fatah 'tiptoeing round accord with Hamas' in run-up to statehood bid
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Hugh Naylor - July 5, 2011 - 12:00am

After signing a reconciliation accord two months ago but agreeing on little since, the widely hailed rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah now resembles little more than a shaky truce. The festering differences between the two Palestinian political factions have been manifested publicly in bickering over whether to appoint Salaam Fayyad as prime minister in the yet-to-be-formed interim government of technocrats.

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Will the One-State Solution Become the Only Solution?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Eric Alterman - (Opinion) July 5, 2011 - 12:00am

Tony Judt’s deliberately provocative 2003 New York Review of Books essay, “Israel: the Alternative,” is a lesson in the limits of American Jewry’s allowable discourse when it comes to Israel. Writing explicitly in the tradition of thought experiment, rather than policy proposal, about what he called an “alternative future,” Judt suggests that Jews and Arabs alike might be better off as citizens of a secular democratic state that encompassed both Israel and Palestine, in which all citizens had equal rights regardless of religion or national origin.

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Israel Determined to Keep Pressure on Hamas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line
by Arieh O'Sullivan - July 5, 2011 - 12:00am

As it maintains its isolation of the Hamas rulers, Israel has been working to boost the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip by gradually supporting its projects there. “I believe our current policy to work with international organizations and support the Palestinian Authority’s projects in Gaza, plus our efforts to weaken Hamas, are the way to bring about the real change in Gaza,” said Maj.-Gen. Eitan Dangot, Israel’s government coordinator for activities in the West Bank and Gaza. But, he stressed: We have no desire to ever return to the Gaza Strip.”

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