NEWS: Israel's governing coalition breaks up over the issue of military service. FM Lieberman predicts early elections. Israel recognizes a college in a West Bank settlement as the first officially recognized Israeli “university” in the occupied Palestinian territories. Hamas takes over UN summer camps for children in Gaza after agencies run out of money. Israeli police arrest a suspect for writing threatening graffiti at the home of Peace Now's Settlement Watch Director. The Arab League says it will create a committee to investigate the death of the late Pres. Arafat. The VOA looks at the controversy about claims Arafat was poisoned. The PA expresses outrage over remarks by Israel's attorney general that the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem is integral to Israeli territory. Pres. Abbas meets Pres. Morsy. Palestinians at a refugee camp near Damascus are sheltering 2,000 displaced Syrians. Israel's high court will hear a petition regarding the death of a Palestinian woman at a West Bank protest. The Israeli government says it's not going to oppose a petition by settlers to remain in an area ordered evacuated by the Israeli High Court. An extremist Israeli MK publicly tears up a copy of the New Testament. COMMENTARY: Former Israeli ambassador to South Africa Liel supports a settlement goods boycott. Amira Hass says Israeli human rights activists face an anti-Semitism that goes unidentified and unpunished. Salman Masalha says the debate about rights and responsibilities in Israel is doing an injustice to the Druze community. Gil Hoffman says Kadima faces a tough future outside the Netanyahu coalition, but Akiva Eldar says Netanyahu also faces more difficulties. Yossi Beilin agrees that PM Netanyahu can be defeated. Ian Black says the Arab uprisings, especially in Syria, are threatening old Israeli certainties. Peter Beinart says the root cause of the widely perceived failure of the Obama administration on Middle East peace is an unwillingness to pressure Israel. Marilyn Katz says settlements threaten Middle East peace.

West Bank settlements threaten peace in the Middle East
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Chicago Tribune
by Marilyn Katz - (Opinion) July 18, 2012 - 12:00am

For most Americans, the word "settlement" conjures up images of the Old West, of a small outpost with a post office, general store and a saloon. A dot on the map. A threat to no one.

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No Space
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast
by Peter Beinart - (Opinion) July 17, 2012 - 12:00am

The Washington Post just published a long story by Scott Wilson about Barack Obama’s failure to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

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Israel's old certainties crumble in Arab spring fallout
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Ian Black - (Opinion) July 17, 2012 - 12:00am

On a ridge high above the Golan plateau, the telltale antennae and golfball radomes of an Israeli surveillance station point north-east towards Damascus. In the valley below, minefields, barbed wire fences and a blue UN flag mark the frontline between the two most powerful armies in the Middle East. Behind it is a country in the throes of civil war.

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Bibi in a Corner
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Policy
by Yossi Beilin - (Opinion) July 17, 2012 - 12:00am

The short marriage between Israel's ruling Likud Party and Kadima, the largest party in the Knesset, is ending as these lines are written. The official reason for the coalition's collapse -- a disagreement over a bill that would ensure the conscription of ultra-Orthodox youth -- is not the main reason it has come apart. The Likud-Kadima split was primarily the result of fear: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fear of losing his original coalition partners, and Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz's fear of a looming political disaster.

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Is There More Trouble Ahead for Benjamin Netanyahu?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor
by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) July 17, 2012 - 12:00am

The next Israeli elections, which will take place no later than late October 2013, will determine whether the right-wing coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will keep running the government with hardly any parliamentary opposition, or if his Likud party and its potential right-wing and Orthodox partners will face a center-left bloc which either eliminates or, at least, decreases Netanyahu's political power. It will determine whether the peace process will remain in a deadlock, or will get a fair, if not a last chance. 

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Analysis: The bigger they are, the softer they fall
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Gil Hoffman - (Analysis) July 17, 2012 - 12:00am

Since George Berkeley in 1710, philosophers have pondered whether a tree makes a sound when it falls in a forest in the middle of the night and no one is there to see it. And now modern day philosophers and political analysts can debate whether a sound was made when the largest Knesset faction entered the government in the middle of the night and left 71 days later. At least the tree made an imprint. Some branches inevitably fell down. It might even have injured an unperceptive animal.

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The lie about rights and duties in Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Salman Masalha - (Analysis) July 18, 2012 - 12:00am

We are not going to discuss how to get the desert to bloom here but rather how the public discourse in Israel is made devoid of content. Many people with bad intentions take part in the attempt to cover our eyes and block our ears. Because after all, there is no greater lie than that sold by populist politicians, the cynical and "engaged" media, and those who tell all kinds of stories. Anyone who draws a link between granting civil rights and fulfilling duties will no doubt be surprised to read what will follow here.

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The anti-Semitism that goes unreported
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - (Opinion) July 18, 2012 - 12:00am

Here's a statistic that you won't see in research on anti-Semitism, no matter how meticulous the study is. In the first six months of the year, 154 anti-Semitic assaults have been recorded, 45 of them around one village alone. Some fear that last year's record high of 411 attacks - significantly more than the 312 attacks in 2010 and 168 in 2009 - could be broken this year.

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Ex-Israeli diplomat: Boycott my country
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - (Opinion) July 17, 2012 - 12:00am

Alon Liel is a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa and former director general of the Israeli foreign ministry. But when his former office harshly criticized South Africa for enabling a consumer boycott of exports from West Bank settlements in May, Mr. Liel's response sharply diverged from the party line.

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