February 4th, 2013

Activists: Regime shelling kills 2 in Damascus Palestinian camp ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency February 4, 2013 - 1:00am Two men were killed and more than 20 injured when Syrian government forces shelled a Palestinian refugee neighborhood in Damascus, activists said. A group based in the al-Yarmouk camp, the Yarmouk committees -- Syrian revolution, said regime troops fired mortars at Al-Waseem mosque, causing the casualties. The shelling took place after hundreds of people returned to the camp, having fled in late 2012 as fighting intensified in the area, the group said. » Read more

Window is closing ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews by Dov Weissglas - (Opinion) February 2, 2013 - 1:00am As soon as the election results were announced, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he hoped the next government would be as broad as possible and deal mainly with the issues of equal share of the burden, the economic prosperity of the middle class and housing prices. He did not mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the escalating crisis between Israel and the international community, which is a direct result of the conflict. As far as he is concerned, there is no problem at all. » Read more

News Analysis: Palestinian despair grows after Israeli elections ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua by Saud Abu Ramadan - (Analysis) February 3, 2013 - 1:00am   Two weeks after the Israeli elections, the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank feel a solution to their conflict with Israel is further away with incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likely to stay. Although his Likud party shrank from 42 to 31 seats in the parliament after the vote, Netanyahu has been charged with forming the new government after the right wing parties in total won 61 seats, two more than the seats won by the centrist and left-wing parties combined. » Read more

PLO official rejects Israeli PM's call for resuming peace talks ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua February 3, 2013 - 1:00am   The Palestinian leadership on Sunday rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's call to resume peace talks without preconditions. "Netanyahu's call is not serious as long as it does not respect the Palestinians requirement for restarting the peace process," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a member of the Executive Committee of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). » Read more

In rejecting Arab MK, Yair Lapid also rejects Jewish values ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Dmitry Shumsky - (Opinion) February 3, 2013 - 1:00am It is probably a coincidence that last Friday, two articles about Yair Lapid, the big winner in Israel's last elections, ran on the same page of Haaretz. One article reported that Lapid had distanced himself publicly from the possibility of creating a bloc including representatives of the Arab-Palestinian minority in the Knesset – whom he referred to as “Zuabis” – in an effort to replace the prime minister. » Read more

New U.S. Secretary of State to visit Israel: official ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua February 3, 2013 - 1:00am   John Kerry, the new U.S. Secretary of State, will start his tenure with a visit to Israel in two weeks, CNN news reported citing a U.S. official. Kerry, who replaced former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday, is set to visit the Middle East including a stop in Egypt in mid-February. » Read more

Israel arrests 20 Hamas members in West Bank ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press by Mohammed Daraghmeh - February 4, 2013 - 1:00am   Israeli forces arrested 20 members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, including three lawmakers, in a raid early Monday in the West Bank, Hamas officials said. The Israeli military confirmed arrests were made but would not elaborate further. » Read more

Fayyad Welcomes the International Report on School Books, Calls on Israel to Cease Attempts to Detract from the Report’s Professionalism ATFP World Press Roundup Article from by Salam Fayyad - (Blog) February 4, 2013 - 1:00am   Prime Minister Salam Fayyad expresses his satisfaction with a main finding of a study initiated by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land in 2009, that confirms that Palestinian textbooks do not contain any form of blatant incitement, which is based on contempt towards the ‘other’. » Read more

THE INVISIBILITY OF PALESTINIANS ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Roger Cohen - (Opinion) February 4, 2013 - 1:00am I was sitting the other day at a cafe called English Cake in a shopping center at the heart of this cluster of settlements near Jerusalem. Israeli settlers — many would not like the term — were sipping Turkish coffee, flirting over pastries and enjoying the afternoon sun. The scene was relaxed, as life generally is these days. The conflict, at least in the West Bank, is present but not pressing. » Read more

Israelis unhappy with study of their textbooks and Palestinians’ ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Joel Greenberg - February 4, 2013 - 1:00am   A State Department-funded study released Monday on the contentious issue of how Israelis and Palestinians depict each other in textbooks says both are locked into narratives that portray the other side as the enemy and erase it from maps, yet do not dehumanize each other. » Read more