NEWS: DM Barak says if negotiations with Palestinians fail, Israel will have to consider unilateral acts in the occupied West Bank and calls for more international action against Pres. Assad. An elaborate tunnel system and economy is the heart of life in Gaza. Israeli offshore natural gas discoveries offer potential windfalls but pose a challenge to its small navy. PM Netanyahu urges Palestinians to return to negotiations. Gaza journalist Asma al-Ghoul wins an international award for courage. Israel will return the bodies of 91 Palestinians buried in an Israeli cemetery. The PA is seeking UN recognition of a threatened West Bank village as a world heritage site. An Israeli MK says human rights activists should be put in prison camps. Israeli judges approve an extremely unusual plea bargain in the case of a Jewish terrorist found responsible for murdering Palestinians. Israeli prosecutors decide not to indict two rabbis who authored a book that provides religious justification for the killing of non-Jews. Palestinians say there has been a sharp increase in home demolitions by Israeli occupation authorities. COMMENTARY: Shlomo Ben-Ami, Thomas Schelling, Jerome Segal and Javier Solana call for the creation of a new UN Special Committee on Palestine. Zvi Bar'el says Iran is signaling a new willingness to engage in the West on its nuclear program. Aeyal Gross says security protection must apply to the Palestinians as well as Israelis. Controversy surrounds an Israeli production of the Merchant of Venice being staged at an international Shakespeare Festival in London. Nathan Guttman says Israeli politicians are increasingly looking for support from American donors. Ilan Baruch says nonviolent protests make sense for Palestinians, but they have to be careful about the counterproductive impact of sweeping boycotts. Rubik Rosenthal says Israel is still fundamentally a European country. Zvika Krieger says some right-wing Israelis think the “Arab Spring” is good for Israel.

The Right-Wing Israeli Case That the Arab Spring Is Good for Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Atlantic
by Zvika Krieger - (Opinion) May 30, 2012 - 12:00am

The conventional wisdom, both here in Israel and abroad, is that the popular movements sweeping across the Arab world are bad news for Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently described the Arab Spring as an "Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli, and anti-democratic wave," saying that "Israel is facing a period of instability and uncertainty in the region. This is certainly not the time to listen to those who say follow your heart."

»

Israel’s Identity Still European
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'ariv
by Rubik Rosenthal - (Opinion) May 21, 2012 - 12:00am

Europe is in one of its most painful periods of turmoil since the end of the Cold War. The crisis is mostly economic and financial, but it also unearths complex questions about nationalism and identity, and about the intersection between Europe on one hand, and Asia and Africa on the other, under threat by the latter’s waves of migrants who will change its identity.

»

How the Palestinian Boycotts Can Work
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor
by Ilan Baruch - (Opinion) May 24, 2012 - 12:00am

About a year ago I left the foreign ministry after 36 years of diplomatic work. I left for political reasons: I felt that I could no longer faithfully represent a government striving to achieve political ends that I viewed as unrealistic and immoral, a government intent on abandoning the goal of ending the occupation by coming to an arrangement based on “two states for two nations.”

»

Israeli Politicians Court American Donors
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Nathan Guttman - (Opinion) May 30, 2012 - 12:00am

For wealthy Americans these days, appeals for political contributions from candidates, party committees and now from super PACs seem never-ending. But for wealthy American Jews involved with Israel, there is, increasingly, yet one more hand outstretched, from abroad, seeking political largesse. Israeli candidates, vying for seats in the Knesset, the country’s parliament, have found a reliable funding base in American Jews willing to add their dollars to the pile of shekels fueling primary races in Israel’s major political parties.

»

The Merchant of Venice: A protest within a play
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
by Will Gompertz - (Theater Review) May 30, 2012 - 12:00am

An Israeli theatre company performing a Hebrew production of The Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare's troublesome play about anti-Semitism - arrived at London's Globe Theatre amid calls for and against a boycott. Cue action on and off stage. A festival consisting of all 37 of Shakespeare's plays performed in a short space of time is likely to induce some confusion into the mind of even the bard's most ardent fan. Richards can become muddled with Henrys, shipwreck locations misplaced.

»

Security for Israeli settlers, not for Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Eyal Gross - (Opinion) May 29, 2012 - 12:00am

When the High Court of Justice upheld the constitutionality (in 2006 and again in January ) of the Citizenship Law clause prohibiting residency permits in Israel for Palestinians from the territories, even if they have an Israeli domestic partner, it based its ruling on the state's justification for the clause. That justification ostensibly stems from security concerns: The state said that in 54 cases since 2001, Palestinians who where involved in terror, or their parents, were legal residents in Israel.

»

Iran gingerly signaling new willingness to engage with U.S.
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Zvi Barel - (Opinion) May 30, 2012 - 12:00am

"It was March 2004. Mohamed ElBaradei [then chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency] told me he wanted to come to Tehran, and he arrived quickly. I thought he had come to talk about nuclear issues, but he wanted to talk to me privately. He told me he had visited Washington a week earlier and had told President [George W.] Bush that the United States had to enter direct negotiations with Iran on nuclear issues.

»

Going Directly to Israelis and Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Shlomo Ben-Ami, Thomas C. Schelling, Jerome M. Segal, Javier Solana - (Opinion) May 30, 2012 - 12:00am

With no prospect of meaningful negotiations between the Palestinians and the Netanyahu government, a new approach to peace is needed, one that focuses on the Israeli and Palestinian people themselves. Though not a perfect analogy, let’s call it UNSCOP-2 because the work of UNSCOP, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, in 1947, is the closest precedent for what is needed today.

»

Palestinians see 'sharp increase' in demolitions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
by Jon Donnison - May 29, 2012 - 12:00am

"Wood-fired barbecue was our speciality. Delicious," says Ramzi Kasiyah as he picks his way gingerly over a pile of rubble and twisted metal. Broken glass crackles under his feet. "We had a beautiful terrace. Now I have nothing." Up until a few weeks ago Ramzi was the proud owner of the Palestinian Al Mukhrur restaurant just outside Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. Now he presides over what looks like a bomb site, a grey scar in a beautiful, small valley, still lush from the winter's rains.

»


American Task Force on Palestine - 1634 Eye St. NW, Suite 725, Washington DC 20006 - Telephone: 202-262-0017