NEWS: ATFP urges calm after Israeli occupation forces raid AQU, but questions what message Israel is sending. The stated Israeli reasons for the raids are hotly disputed Palestinians. The PA says seizing broadcast frequencies violates the Oslo agreements. Israel quietly recognizes a major “unauthorized” settlement outpost. A PA office in Gaza is ransacked by unknown assailants. PM Netanyahu's Washington trip will mainly focus on questions regarding Iran. Israeli officials say Syria's rebels want peace with Israel. The Pentagon says it has plans for a possible conflict with Iran. A Jewish Israeli Supreme Court justice says there is no need for Palestinian judges in Israel to sing the national anthem. The PA insists it is opposed to any new intifada. Jordan is slowly easing restrictions on work for Palestinians from Gaza. Democrats are pushing back against Republican efforts to monopolize Israel issues in the American campaign season. COMMENTARY: Amos Yadlin says Israel may feel forced to strike Iran on its own. Ari Shavit says if Netanyahu and Pres. Obama don't start working together on Iran, they may bring disaster on both their countries. Yonah Alexander and Milton Hoenig say there is still room for diplomacy with Iran on the nuclear issue. Gideon Levy says the silence of a judge who is a Palestinian citizen of Israel during the national anthem was a quiet protest. Avi Issacharoff says both Israeli and Palestinian leaders are setting the stage for another intifada. JJ Goldberg says Republican attacks on the church-state divide will not appeal to most Jewish Americans. The National says the ongoing controversy about Mohammed Al Dura shows the Israeli propaganda machine at work. Tariq Alhomayed says if Israel was doing what the Assad regime has been in Syria, the Arab outcry would be much more intense. Stuart Reigeluth and Julian Memetaj say Palestinians in Israel face systematic discrimination.

Israel, democracy and the Arabs
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Julian Memetaj, Stuart Reigeluth - (Opinion) March 1, 2012 - 1:00am

The prolongation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is all about the illegal occupation, expropriation, colonisation, and annexation of Arab territory by Israel. And beneath the armour of the Israeli military machine is the systematic exclusion of the Other — the Arabs. Jewish Israelis are xenophobic towards Arabs not so much because they fear them as an existential military threat, as Likud and Labour are prone to repeat, but rather because of the intrinsic demographic threat they present to the national identity of a Jewish State.

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Let us compare al-Assad to Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Tariq Alhomayed - (Opinion) March 1, 2012 - 1:00am

When considering much of what is being repeated in our region, on all levels about Syria, one is struck by confusion, for one party justifies what is happening, whilst another casts doubt, and a third attempts to be clever. Therefore you feel as if you are looking at a situation that is impossible to understand, namely an Arab case par excellence, which is a problem with no solutions, or in the desperate manner of Nabih Berri, a case where there is ‘no winners and no losers”, which is what I term a case of political fluidity.

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A boy's death exposes Israel's deliberate fiction
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
(Editorial) March 1, 2012 - 1:00am

In 2000, as the second intifada raged, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed Al Dura, was one of many children killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. Mohammed was shot as he and his father attempted to find cover and he died moments later in his father's lap. A Palestinian cameraman caught the incident on film, causing shock around the world. But not even that evidence was enough for some to condemn Israel's actions; 12 years later, there is still a debate in France about the authenticity of the report.

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Rick Santorum and the Jewish Vote
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by J.J. Goldberg - (Opinion) March 1, 2012 - 1:00am

Pennsylvania, it’s sometimes said, can best be understood as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh separated by Alabama. Geographically speaking it’s a big state in the heart of the liberal Northeast, home to great universities, Ben Franklin and the Liberty Bell, anchored by a great Eastern metropolis at one end and a once-booming Midwestern steel town at the other. Everything in between, though, is rural, gun-totin’, Bible-thumpin’ country.

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Israeli, Palestinian leaders hastening the next intifada
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - (Opinion) March 1, 2012 - 1:00am

At last Likud and the moderate right have found a formula to save the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No longer will they talk about "conflict resolution" - the phrase now is "conflict management." The explanations are many and they sound convincing - the split between Hamas and Fatah, the large gap between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority on the core issues, and the most common excuse of all: There's no partner on the other side.

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Arab justice's 'Hatikva' silence was a song of protest
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Gideon Levy - (Opinion) March 1, 2012 - 1:00am

It was so moving on Tuesday at the President's Residence and so stately; another celebration of Israeli democracy, which so loves to effusively praise itself. The honorable Supreme Court justices posing for a group photo; the retiring court president taking leave with tears in her eyes; the incoming court president making an emotional speech - everyone complimenting one another, praising one another and lauding our exalted democracy.

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Iran’s last diplomatic chance?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Yonah Alexander, Milton Hoenig - (Opinion) February 29, 2012 - 1:00am

As an ancient Persian proverb wisely reflects, “Even with the strength of an elephant and the paws of a lion, peace is better than war.” It is time for Iran to heed this thousand-year-old lesson and relinquish its nuclear ambitions before a doomsday scenario occurs.

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Jerusalem, Washington, and the Iranian bomb
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Ari Shavit - (Opinion) March 1, 2012 - 1:00am

The view from Washington: We went into an unnecessary, awful war in Iraq. We're in a complicated, depressing war in Afghanistan. Our economy is finally beginning to recover from the worst crisis it has known since World War II. In November we have elections. So we don't have the slightest intention of doing anything that could entangle us in a third war and a renewed economic recession. By no means will we attack Iran and we won't let Israel attack either. By no means will we impose a maritime blockade on Iran or collapse its central bank.

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Israel’s Last Chance to Strike Iran
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Amos Yadlin - (Opinion) February 29, 2012 - 1:00am

Tel Aviv ON July 7, 1981, I was one of eight Israeli fighter pilots who bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. As we sat in the briefing room listening to the army chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, before starting our planes’ engines, I recalled a conversation a week earlier when he’d asked us to voice any concerns about our mission.

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