July 2nd

Palestinians detain dozens in weapons crackdown
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
by Karin Laub - July 2, 2012 - 12:00am

The Palestinian self-rule government has detained some 200 people, including security officers, in recent weeks in the biggest crackdown on illegal weapons in the West Bank in five years, a spokesman said Monday. Officials say the campaign is unusual because it targets include alleged vigilante gunmen linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement. Previously, security forces went mainly after armed supporters of rival groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

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Is the PA afraid of a third intifada?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - (Opinion) July 2, 2012 - 12:00am

The light was still too dim to penetrate the cracks in the shutters when the rooster crowed. For a fraction of a second it felt like a village. But it was the Jenin refugee camp, circa two weeks ago. There, as in other refugee camps, the rooster's wake-up call is something more: nutrition for the unemployed, as well as the longing and the desire to maintain continuity, if only symbolic, with the village that once was, and has since been destroyed.

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Palestinians in Syria Are Reluctantly Drawn Into Vortex of Uprising
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Dalal Mawad, Rod Nordland - June 30, 2012 - 12:00am

The body of a Hamas official was found in his home on Wednesday night, bearing marks of torture. A colonel in the Palestine Liberation Army was sprawled in his car on Tuesday, fatally shot near his home. Three Palestinians were shot down in the alleyways of a refugee camp late last Sunday by a group of unidentified gunmen.

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Ten Questions + One for the One-Staters
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Huffington Post
by Ziad Asali - (Blog) June 29, 2012 - 12:00am

The supporters of the two-state solution are often told that this vision is unrealistic and has become unachievable. Young, idealistic seekers of justice and equality are increasingly offering what they claim is a more "realistic" solution: a single state for all Israelis and Palestinians, including refugees.

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June 29th

NEWS: UNESCO votes to add Bethlehem holy sites to world heritage list. The evacuation of the “unauthorized” settler outpost of "Ulpana” is completed without incident. Palestinian citizens of Israel express concern about new plans regarding mandatory National Service. Hamas airs videos of confessions of accused Israeli collaborators. Another 25 Palestinian prisoners are going on hunger strike in Israeli jails. Women in Palestinian society with disabilities face double discrimination. Palestinians say the upcoming meeting between Pres. Abbas and Deputy PM Mofaz is not a resumption of negotiations. Israeli police are reportedly told to specifically target any Palestinian citizens of Israel joining “social justice” protests. Israel reportedly suspends plans to relocate Bedouins to a site near a garbage dump. A Palestinian activist in the occupied West Bank says the US is supporting “an apartheid system that is suffocating us.” COMMENTARY: Tania Hary talks about supporting human rights in Gaza. Mira Sucharov says the only way for Israelis to forget about the occupation in the long run is to end it. Jay Bushinsky says that since Israel is effectively annexing the occupied Palestinian territories, ways should be found to integrate the Palestinian population better into Israeli society. Ami Kaufman says it would be foolish to combine Israeli social justice protests with the issue of the occupation. Jessica Montell says PM Netanyahu is playing a shell game with settlements in the occupied West Bank. Donald MacIntyre says Israel must see that mistreatment of Palestinian children in detention will come with a heavy international cost. Dan Ephron says moderate Israeli settlers are afraid to speak out against extremists among them. The Economist says frustration is bubbling up in the occupied West Bank and another intifada is indeed possible. Stuart Eizenstat evaluates the views of his former boss, Pres. Carter, on Israel and the occupation. David Shulman looks at the threatened Palestinian West Bank village of Susya, slated for demolition by Israeli occupation authorities.

‘I Am an Illegal Alien on My Own Land’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Review Of Books
by David Shulman - (Opinion) June 28, 2012 - 12:00am

In 1949, shortly after Israel’s War of Independence, S. Yizhar—the doyen of modern Hebrew prose writers—published a story that became an instant classic. “Khirbet Khizeh” is a fictionalized account of the destruction of a Palestinian village and the expulsion of all its inhabitants by Israeli soldiers in the course of the war. The narrator, a soldier in the unit that carries out the order, is sickened by what is being done to the innocent villagers.

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Palestinian: US supports 'an apartheid system that is suffocating us'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from MSNBC
by Yara Borgal - June 28, 2012 - 12:00am

BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK – At the Aida Refugee Camp, a few blocks from Israel’s separation wall, is the Al Rowwad Cultural and Theater Center founded by Dr. Abdelfattah Abusrour in 1998 with the philosophy of “beautiful resistance” against the Israeli power over their land. Abusrour is part of the first generation of children born to refugee parents in the Aida Refugee Camp, which was established in 1950 between the towns of Bethlehem and Beit Jala. It is now home to around 5,000 inhabitants all descendants from the 1948 expulsion from Palestine.

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Carter compares conflict to U.S. civil rights movement, not apartheid, says former adviser
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Mordechai Twersky - (Opinion) June 29, 2012 - 12:00am

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter views Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as similar to that of the "African Americans of the 1950s and '60s," a former Carter adviser told Haaretz during a recent trip to Israel. According to Stuart E. Eizenstat, who served as Carter's chief White House domestic policy adviser from 1977 to 1981, Carter "looks at the conflict through the lens of the Civil Rights movement, as a Southerner who witnessed discrimination against African Americans, who he equates with the Palestinians."

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Hamas says the Mossad killed its senior figure
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Harriet Sherwood - June 28, 2012 - 12:00am

A senior Hamas figure has been killed at his home in Damascus, in an operation that the Islamist organisation swiftly attributed to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad. Kamel Ranaja, who died on Wednesday night, was reported to be a deputy to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed in a Dubai hotel in 2010.

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Experts: Israel didn't kill Hamas man in Damascus
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Yaakov Lappin - June 28, 2012 - 12:00am

Israel was most likely not behind the assassination of Hamas operative Kamal Ranaja in Damascus, Israeli security experts told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

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