February 19th

Hunger Striker Samer Issawi Invisible to Israeli Society
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor
by Shlomi Eldar - (Opinion) February 17, 2013 - 1:00am

Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi from the village of Issawiya has been on hunger strike for more than 200 days now. “Two hundred days? How is he still alive?” I asked Khader Adnan. If anyone could give me a reliable answer to this question, it's Adnan. After all, he started the wave of hunger strikes in Israeli prisons about a year ago, and since his release he has emerged as one of the most prominent activists on behalf of Palestinian prisoners.

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Israel's Cover-ups
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed - (Opinion) February 16, 2013 - 1:00am

We are usually highly critical of Arab governments, accusing them of being outdated. We also blame them for their rigid commitment to policies of suppression and silence. But then we witness a country, such as Israel, displaying traits that are just as bad as those we have been criticizing. We typically assume Israel is a modern and strong country that can deal with everything in a transparent manner. It has larger universities, larger research centers and more advanced media institutes than us.

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Fitting Palestinian prisoners into the excitement of the Ben Zygier affair
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Yitzhak Laor - (Opinion) February 18, 2013 - 1:00am

Samer Issawi was sentenced by a military tribunal to nearly three decades in prison, freed after six years in the 2011 prisoner swap that secured the release of Gilad Shalit, and re-arrested in July and sent back to jail for another 20 years because he went from Jerusalem, where he lives, to A-Ram, on the other side of the road. Issawi has been on a saline drip to keep him alive since August.

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An inconvenient truth
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Robert Fattal - (Opinion) February 16, 2013 - 1:00am

On December 31, 2012 the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released a report on the demographics of Palestinians. Rather than going through the effort of talks with the Netanyahu government, Palestinians are now talking to all of Israel. Israelis can be forgiven for not paying much notice, given other issues like absorbing the consequences of the elections.

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NEWS: Palestinian officials urge Pres. Obama personally to kickstart the resumption of peace negotiations. (Ha'aretz) Palestinian protesters rally in solidarity of hunger striking prisoners. (Ma'an) Israel orders an emergency court hearing for hunger striking Palestinian prisoner Samer Al-Issawi. (Ahram Online) Palestinian officials say Israel is continuing to withhold their tax revenues. (Ma'an) Palestinians extend voter registration for two more days. (Xinhua) PM Netanyahu comes under criticism for his annual ice cream budget. (New York Times) Obama will become the first sitting US president to receive Israel's Presidential Medal of Distinction. (New York Times) An outcry erupts over a photo of a Palestinian child in the crosshairs of an Israeli soldier's rifle. (Reuters) A teenage girl in Nazareth is hospitalized after a middle-aged man threw acid in her face when she rejected his marriage proposal. (Jerusalem Post) An influx of cash from Qatar is helping to stabilize the situation in Gaza. (Jerusalem Post) Israelis are seeing a strong continuity between the policies of Pres. Morsi and his predecessor Mubarak. (Al Monitor) Many international NGOs won't work in Gaza because of Hamas' designation as a terrorist organization. (Al Monitor)

COMMENTARY: Head PLO mission in Washington Maen Areikat says the US must move to resolve the conflict, not manage it. (LA Times) Bradley Burston outlines the best and worst-case scenarios for peace from new Israeli governing coalitions. (Ha'aretz) Eric Yoffie says pro-settlement propaganda by the David Project only reinforces how dangerous the settlements really are. (Ha'aretz) Moshe Arens says Israel hopes for peace, but Pres. Abbas can't deliver it. (Ha'aretz) Amnon Shamosh says the release of Marwan Barghouti is crucial to saving the two-state solution. (YNet) David Newman says the push to recognize a university in the Israeli settlement of Ariel is a blow to Israeli higher education and efforts to prevent international boycotts. (Jerusalem Post) Aluf Benn says censorship in the Israeli media is widespread. (Gulf News) Akiva Eldar says the "temporary" Oslo agreements are the biggest obstacle to real permanent status agreements. (Al Monitor) Tom Dan says Israel is quickly losing support among young American Democrats. (Ha'aretz)

Ali Salem's long journey from Israel back to the Egyptian consensus
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Zvi Barel - (Interview) February 17, 2013 - 1:00am

“When I’m on my own, I still dream of our pushing Israel into the sea,” an Egyptian journalist told author and playwright Ali Salem during an interview for the Al-Ahram newspaper this week. “That’s because you want a crushing solution, in one blow,” replied the 77-year-old, best known in Egypt for visiting Israel in 1994 following the signing of the Oslo Accords.

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Good morning, Abbas-stan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Aluf Benn - (Opinion) February 17, 2013 - 1:00am

All indications are that the Palestinians are set to return to the top of Israel’s priority list, despite the evident boredom of the public and the politicians with what is euphemistically called in Hebrew “the diplomtic issue.” Here a muttered comment about peace by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there a demand during coalition negotiations for renewed negotiations; U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel is approaching, while in the background the calm of the status quo is weakening and a third intifada looms more threateningly than usual.

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Hezbollah Unmasked
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Thomas E. Donilon - (Opinion) February 17, 2013 - 1:00am

ON FEB. 5, after more than six months of investigations, the Bulgarian government announced that it believed Hezbollah was responsible for the attack last July that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver and injured dozens more in the resort town of Burgas. This report is significant because a European Union member state, Bulgaria, explicitly pointed a finger at Hezbollah and lifted the veil on the group’s continued terrorist activities. Europe can no longer ignore the threat that this group poses to the Continent and to the world.

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Campus today, Capitol Hill tomorrow: Israel is losing future Democratic leaders
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Tom Dan - (Opinion) February 19, 2013 - 1:00am

Will, an American Harvard student, looked up as we were eating dinner and said in a trembling voice, as if the 200-year-old ceiling would cave in the second he opened his mouth: “I cannot see one good reason we should continue supporting you guys over there.”

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Israel-Palestine Interim Agreements Block Final Deal
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor
by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) February 18, 2013 - 1:00am

The director of one of the top UN agencies operating in the West Bank told me about a fascinating conversation he had with a senior Israeli Defense Forces officer. “Do you know the difference between Areas A, B and C?” the officer asked. “Of course,” the UN director responded, citing published details of the 1995 Interim Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians (also known as Oslo II).

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