Hundreds of Palestinians declare hunger strike
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press by Dalia Nammari - April 16, 2012 - 12:00am RAMALLAH, West Bank — Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel launched a hunger strike on Tuesday, officials said, protesting their conditions and demanding an end to open-ended detentions without trial as the Palestinians marked their annual day of solidarity with the inmates. Some 3,500 prisoners refused meals on "Prisoners' Day," and 1,200 of them said they would continue with an open-ended hunger strike, according to Israeli prison service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman. |
Barak says Israel never ruled out attacking Iran
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press by Aron Heller - April 17, 2012 - 12:00am JERUSALEM — Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday his country has never promised the United States it would hold off from attacking Iran while nuclear talks were taking place. The comments, in which Barak said that a diplomatic push to reach a compromise with Iran was a waste of "precious time," further exposed a rift between Israel and the U.S. over how to deal with the Islamic Republic and its nuclear program. |
Can UN observers end the cycle of violence?
Interview with Hussein Ibish - Al-Jazeera English - April 14, 2012 - 12:00am As the UN security council debates a resolution to send 30 monitors into Syria to monitor the ceasefire between Syrian government forces and the opposition fighters, the shelling and gunfire continues. On the second day of the UN-backed ceasefire to end the 13-month uprising, protests continued. Both sides are believed to have breached the terms, with several deaths being reported. The violence now makes the UN's next move more important than ever. But as Ahmad Fawzi, Kofi Annan's spokesperson, points out, there is still a long way to go: |
Hussein Ibish Is Not a Zionist
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg - (Opinion) April 13, 2012 - 12:00am Hussein Ibish, of the American Task Force on Palestine, has written an extremely sensible piece about Middle East pragmatism, in which he takes on advocates of the so-called one-state solution, who argue, among other things, that any Arab who supports a two-state solution is an Uncle Tom, or worse, an actual Zionist: |
The Press on Trial
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward (Editorial) April 16, 2012 - 12:00am As investigative stories go, it doesn’t read like a blockbuster, hardly in the league of a Watergate scandal or the groundbreaking constitutional challenge ignited by the publication of the Pentagon Papers. The January 30 story appeared in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad, written by Yousef al-Shayeb, and it described the kind of government corruption that, frankly, many have come to expect the world over. |
Netanyahu’s offer for peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times by Musa Keilani - (Opinion) April 16, 2012 - 12:00am Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be drafting a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, detailing his offer of renewed peace negotiations in response to a Palestinian statement on their stand. Netanyahu’s letter, according to officials quoted in the Israeli news media, will contain nothing new except that it will not include a demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Netanyahu will restate his demand that Israel maintain control over the Jordan Valley and that any future Palestinian state be demilitarised, according to the reports. |
The three myths that distort every discussion of Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Barry Rubin - (Opinion) April 15, 2012 - 12:00am Whatever side you are, or aren’t, on, and whether you never think about these issues or are an impassioned activist, there are three fundamental issues about Israel, its enemies, and the Middle East that tie the narrative into knots. Each of these ideas, of course, has a strong basis in fact. Yet no matter how counter-intuitive you find the following points questioning the conventional wisdom, they are nonetheless accurate. You can’t understand events without grasping them. 1. Israel’s existence is jeopardized. |
Much ado about flytilla
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Jeff Barak - (Opinion) April 15, 2012 - 12:00am Making predictions in a newspaper column is a risky business, but anyway, here goes. At the time of writing over the weekend, Israel Police and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) are putting together the final pieces of their plan to block the planned “fly-in” of leftwing activists to Ben-Gurion Airport, from where the activists intend to travel to the West Bank to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinians. |
Let's talk about refugees
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews by Dan Calic - (Opinion) April 15, 2012 - 12:00am This month a meeting took place with little fanfare, addressing a subject that has sat on the sidelines throughout the peace process, having received only the slightest media attention. The topic of the meeting was about refugees. No, not Palestinian refugees; Jewish refugees. For many years the world has heard about the "right of return." This refers to Arabs who became displaced during the defensive war Israel was forced to fight when the surrounding Arab countries attacked it the day after declaring independence in 1948. |