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1967 All Over Again?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Tablet Magazine by Benny Morris - (Opinion) May 9, 2012 - 12:00am One thing’s certain: Tuesday’s sudden and dramatic expansion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government—he now has the support of 94 Knesset members in the 120-seat house—considerably strengthens Netanyahu’s mandate to take what commentators insist on calling “historic steps.” But it is unclear whether the cooption of Shaul Mofaz and his Kadima faction makes an Israeli preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities more likely or more remote. |
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Netanyahu's Globalists
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by Bernard Avishai - (Opinion) May 8, 2012 - 12:00am I know I should be appalled by Shaul Mofaz's opportunism and Benjamin Netanyahu's grin, but I confess to being just a little relieved. |
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Israel Faces Challenges From Boycott Campaign
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor by Barbara Slavin - (Opinion) May 7, 2012 - 12:00am As he consolidates his power with a new coalition, incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to continue his unremitting focus on Iran as an existential threat. However, a bigger challenge to Israel over the long run may be the international campaign to deny the country’s status as a Jewish-governed polity that rules a growing and disenfranchised Palestinian population in the West Bank. |
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Temporary deal
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times (Editorial) May 8, 2012 - 12:00am Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have succeeded in pulling a rabbit from his hat when he struck a deal, in the wee hours of Tuesday, with Shaul Mofaz, leader of the main opposition party Kadima, forging a national unity government and thus averting the need to hold snap elections. |
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Toward confederation
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Ronald Tiersky - (Opinion) May 8, 2012 - 12:00am Israel’s strategic problem in historical terms is, ultimately, how to win a war well. The Palestinian problem is to avoid losing this war in the most drawn-out, worst possible way. Palestinians (including any realistic Hamas leaders), know approximately what they will have to accept. Finding the least bad solution consonant with defeat is their unenviable task. Yet neither is Israel completely free, because victory can be dangerous. Israel needs a strategy that isn’t in the end self-defeating. |
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National freedom demands a two-state solution
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Uriel Epshtein - (Opinion) May 8, 2012 - 12:00am The one-state solution has suddenly reappeared in the discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Harvard recently hosted an entire conference promoting this solution and the former Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, came out on Saturday in support of it. Though Qurei may have been pressed by political expediency, not only is this position completely unfeasible in practice, but it also represents a denial of the very purpose for Israel’s creation and a misunderstanding of the philosophy behind national movements. |
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Netanyahu’s and Abbas’ moments of truth
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Carlo Strenger - (Opinion) May 9, 2012 - 12:00am Yesterday’s political bombshell, for obvious reasons, has left both citizens and commentators dumbfounded. It has been pointed out that Netanyahu is now the undisputed king of Israeli politics: basically no single coalition party has any real power over him; each and every one of them now knows that Netanyahu can live without them. |
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Netanyahu-Mofaz unity deal provides a great opportunity for Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz (Editorial) May 9, 2012 - 12:00am Kadima's entry into the government puts Benjamin Netanyahu at the head of a broad coalition of 94 Knesset members. That gives him almost complete freedom of action over the remaining year and a half of the 18th Knesset's term. The parliamentary opposition has been dwarfed and neutralized, while coalition factions will have trouble threatening to topple the prime minister from power. |
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Coalition of the Willing
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from International Herald Tribune by Shmuel Rosner - (Opinion) May 9, 2012 - 12:00am JERUSALEM — Monday morning I was on the phone with Doron Avital, a smart if quirky Knesset back-bencher from the Kadima Party. The announcement that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party was forming a grand coalition with Kadima was still a day away. |