NEWS: A rocket fired from Sinai lands in southern Israel. Despite some settler evictions, Israel is pushing forward strongly with settlement expansion. Israel's mayor in Jerusalem sees vast potential for tourism. Palestinian officials condemn new Israeli settlement plans. Palestinian journalists say conditions are deteriorating for a woman being detained for insulting Pres. Abbas. German author Grass says Israel endangers world peace. Israel asks for another $700 million in US military aid. PM Netanyahu is seeking to recognize three additional “unauthorized” settlement outposts. Reports suggest that Khalid Mishal may be the sole candidate for the president of the Hamas political bureau in upcoming closed-door elections. The ICC chief prosecutor says a Palestinian non-member UN observer state could become a member of the Assembly of Parties. Palestinians say settlers are taking over more water sources in the occupied West Bank. COMMENTARY: Ha'aretz says Netanyahu did the right thing in evicting Hebron settlers who seized a Palestinian home. Natasha Mozgovaya interviews Norman Finkelstein. Jonathan Rosen says Israel must decide what kind of country it wants to be irrespective of Palestinians or anybody else. Douglas Bloomfield says Netanyahu may be undercutting his own arguments on Iran by invoking the Holocaust. Noam Marans says churches should not divest from Israel. Yehudah Mirsky says Netanyahu governs by constant ambiguity. Omri Meniv says Kadima is in its death throes. Robert Wright says a two-state solution is quickly becoming impossible. Tom Segev says Grass' poem is more pathetic than anti-Semitic.

Gunter Grass' poem is more pathetic than anti-Semitic
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Tom Segev - (Opinion) April 5, 2012 - 12:00am

"What Must Be Said" was the title Gunter Grass gave his controversial poem in which he labeled Israel a threat to world peace because of its nuclear arsenal. This was his first mistake: It did not have to be said because it has already been said by many others, in Israel as well.

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The Two-State Solution on Its Deathbed
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Atlantic
by Robert Wright - (Opinion) April 5, 2012 - 12:00am

Peter Beinart's book The Crisis of Zionism has started debates about various things, including whether it's too late for a two-state solution. Beinart's view is that it's not quite too late but is so close to that as to warrant drastic measures--like a boycott of products made in West Bank settlements (or "Zionist BDS," as distinguished from full-on BDS). My view is if anything more pessimistic. But apparently I should cheer up: After I last expressed that pessimism, fellow Atlantic contributor Zvika Krieger explained that it rests on confusion.

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Kadima Is in Death Throes And On Way to Irrelevance
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'ariv
by Omri Meniv - (Opinion) March 28, 2012 - 12:00am

Good morning to the elected leader of Kadima, and congratulations on the impressive victory — notwithstanding your party bieng in its death-throes and irrelevant, a party that should never have risen at all, a party that must die as soon as possible and maybe will do so after the coming national elections.

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The "Sort of" Leader
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast
by Yehudah Mirsky - (Opinion) April 4, 2012 - 12:00am

Last week Tzipi Livni proved of one of my pet theories of Middle Eastern politics— the more attractive and familiar a public figure is to foreign elites, the thinner their support back home. One of Newsweek's 150 most powerful women in the world was just trounced in Kadima's primaries by Shaul Mofaz, a gray, inarticulate, lifelong soldier (whose media advisors are now working to reshape him into a smiling crusader for social justice). Now it's his turn to try and snag the crucial centrist bloc, one quarter of the Israeli electorate, that wanders from one party to another, looking for a home.

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Oppose church divestment from Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Noam E. Marans - (Opinion) April 3, 2012 - 12:00am

NEW YORK (JTA) -- As Christians and Jews gather during their respective Easter and Passover holidays, we should recall all that Jews and liberal Protestants in America share and have accomplished together. But pride in the past should not blind us to the danger that this relationship could be derailed by pernicious responses to the Arab-Israeli conflict within certain churches.

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Playing the Holocaust card
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Douglas Bloomfield - (Opinion) April 4, 2012 - 12:00am

When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu waved copies of the 1944 exchange of letters between the World Jewish Congress and the Roosevelt State Department and said the United States rejected Jewish pleas to bomb Auschwitz, he was drawing a parallel between the Islamists who rule Iran and the Nazis who controlled Germany seven decades ago. He wanted to leave no doubt about his willingness to attack Iranian nuclear facilities because he is convinced that country is building weapons to carry out its threat to wipe the Jewish state off the map, and he doesn’t care what anyone says.

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Of bondage and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Jonathan Rosen - (Opinion) April 4, 2012 - 12:00am

After 130 years of Zionist activism, 64 years of statehood, 45 years of occupation, more than 20 years of failed negotiations with the PLO and seven years of disengagement; after seven wars, two intifadas, the rise of Hamas and the specter of anti-Semitic Islamist sentiment sweeping the region, many Israelis have come to the conclusion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simply intractable.

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Norman Finkelstein bids farewell to Israel bashing
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Natasha Mozgovaya - (Interview) April 5, 2012 - 12:00am

In June, Norman Finkelstein will mark 30 years of criticizing Israel. He remembers the exact day - the beginning of the Lebanon war, which ended his indifference to the Middle East's troubles. He'll have a new book coming out - "Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End" - that focuses on Jewish public figures who represent, in his view, the narrative of beautiful Israel that's coming to an end. He is sure to make a lot of people mad again.

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Netanyahu did the right thing by clearing Hebron outpost
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) April 5, 2012 - 12:00am

Another attempt by the settlers to bend the law in the West Bank to their extremist ideology failed on Wednesday, with the evacuation of the so-called Machpela House. The eviction came after Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that delaying the execution of the Civil Administration's eviction order could ignite the area, in addition to constituting contempt of court and undermining the authority of the military commander and the defense minister. This was an important reminder that the West Bank is not the settlers' state.

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