May 10th

Settler group patrols West Bank for demolition targets
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
by Charlotte Alfred - May 10, 2012 - 12:00am


BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A tiny village of Palestinian families in the southern West Bank has had an unwelcome visitor in recent months. “He comes with small weapons and his camera, sometimes with armed forces, sometimes with settlers,” Susiya resident Nasser Nawaja says. The armed visitor is Ovad Arad, the Judea and Samaria Director of Regavim, an Israeli non-governmental organization.


UN's Ban urges Israel to charge prisoners or free them
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
May 10, 2012 - 12:00am


BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged Israel to either charge or release Palestinian detainees "without delay." Ban expressed concern for Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in protest over their detention without charge and stressed "the importance of averting any further deterioration in their condition," in a statement issued through his spokesman Martin Nesirky.


Palestinian leadership expects Egyptian efforts to resolve hunger strike
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
May 10, 2012 - 12:00am


RAMALLAH, May 10 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian leadership expects that the Egyptian efforts will soon succeed in reaching a settlement between Israel and hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, a Palestinian official said Thursday. "We have positive signs that the results of these efforts will be seen by Saturday," said Ziad Abu Ein of the Palestinian Prisoners' Affairs Ministry. He refused to elaborate.


Model West Bank City Loses a Crime Fighter
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Jodi Rudoren - May 9, 2012 - 12:00am


JENIN, West Bank — Relaxing in their rooftop salon one recent night, Amal Qadoura headed to fetch ice cream for herself and her husband when the shooting began. First, she recalled, two bullets were fired at one side of the glass-enclosed porch, followed by a barrage from a hilltop on the other side.


May 9th

NEWS: Israel says its inclusion on a UN list of human rights violators is “absurd.” Israel renews its "administrative detention" order against a senior Hamas figure. Four Palestinian protesters are injured by occupation forces at a protest near Ramallah. A new poll shows most Palestinians blame both Hamas and Fatah for the impasse in national unity talks. International Muslim organizations are donating $65 million to the health sector in Gaza. Abbas says he still sees PM Netanyahu as a peace partner. Israeli occupation forces order Palestinians to uproot 1,000 olive trees. A new poll confirms that Jewish Americans vastly prefer Pres. Obama over Mitt Romney. A major European supermarket group decides to boycott all products coming from Israeli settlements. Jewish and Muslim student groups are forging new links on some American campuses. COMMENTARY: Moshe Arens says even if it's ordered by the Supreme Court, evicting settlers from outposts is immoral. Akiva Eldar says Obama didn't need former Shin Bet chief Diskin to inform him that Netanyahu is not interested in peace. Bernard Avishai says Diskin's remarks may be the beginning of a stirring of the Israeli majority against present government policies. Kamel Abu Jaber says Israel isn't a safe place for Arab Christians. Uri Avnery says he's still an optimist and the two-state solution is the only way to end the conflict. Gil Troy and Rashid Khalidi continue their debate about the “Museum of Tolerance” being built on the site of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. Raja Shehadeh says Israeli courts have at times softened the harshness of the occupation but this may have counterintuitively led to its perpetuation. Jeffrey Goldberg says that the hard-line positions of his recently deceased father uniquely position Netanyahu to deliver majority Israeli and Jewish opinion for a peace agreement.

A Peace Legacy for Netanyahu’s Hard-Line Dad?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bloomberg
by Jeffrey Goldberg - (Opinion) April 30, 2012 - 12:00am


The historian Benzion Netanyahu, who died today at 102, was sometimes asked to explain the miracle of Jewish survival through millenniums of persecution. Netanyahu -- the father of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin -- would answer the question in a way his interlocutors did not at all expect.


A Few Good Lawyers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from International Herald Tribune
by Rajah Shehadeh - (Blog) April 27, 2012 - 12:00am


BILIN, West Bank — Earlier this month, I finally watched “The Law in These Parts,” a documentary by the Israeli film director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, at the 7th International Conference for Popular Resistance. The film describes the legal system that Israel has applied in the Palestinian Occupied Territories since 1967, and it does so exclusively through interviews with members of the Israeli military legal corps who wrote and implemented the system.


Response to Rashid Khalidi
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast
by Gil Troy - (Opinion) April 30, 2012 - 12:00am


Professor Khalidi is anxious to bar me from the debate about the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem’s building site that adjoins an ancient Moslem graveyard by questioning my credentials. And I guess he is right. 


Confession of an incorrigible optimist
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Uri Avnery - (Opinion) April 30, 2012 - 12:00am


No ifs. No buts. No perhapses. Maybe it’s genetic. My father was an optimist. Even when, at the age of 45, he had to flee his native Germany to a primitive little country in the Middle East, his spirits remained high. Though he had to adapt to a new country, a hot climate, hard physical labor and grinding poverty, he was happy. At least he had saved his wife and four children, the youngest of whom was I. Now, on Israel’s 64th birthday (according to the Hebrew calendar), I am still an optimist.


Israel is no safe place for Christians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Kamel S. Abu Jaber - (Opinion) April 30, 2012 - 12:00am


It has been a long time since I have written anything about Israel or the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I told myself I should distance myself a little and think in a cool, dispassionate manner about our Semitic cousins who obviously have made up their mind to play down their, perhaps in their mind, racial relationship with us Arabs.



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