May 18th

PNA to start boycotting campaign on settlement products ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua May 18, 2010 - 12:00am A senior Palestinian National Authority (PNA) official on Monday announced that the PNA would start soon a new activity of boycotting products made at Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Hassan Abu Lebda, the PNA minister of economy, told the weekly media program "Face the Press" organized by the Information Ministry, that the new activity of boycotting the products is called "from home to home." "The campaign will be launched on Tuesday, The campaign's representatives will move from one house to another to explain how important the boycott of settlements products is," said Abu Lebda. » Read more

Gaza's Hamas rulers execute 3 convicted killers ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Statesman by Rizek Abdel Jawad - May 18, 2010 - 12:00am Gaza's Hamas rulers executed three convicted killers and dropped off their bullet-riddled bodies at a hospital Tuesday, despite appeals by human rights activists to halt the practice. The U.N.'s top human rights official has said fair trials demanded under international law before the death penalty can be imposed are virtually impossible in Gaza. The Islamic militant group seized the Palestinian territory by force in 2007 and has established a regime that allows little dissent. » Read more

Palestinian girls win award for sensor cane at Intel fair ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency May 18, 2010 - 12:00am Three Palestinian teenagers from the UNWRA school in the Askar refugee camp in Nablus were the first Palestinians to win an award on Monday at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose in California. Aseel Abu Aleil, Noor Alarada and Aseel Alshaar picked up a special award in applied electronics, having competed against 15,000 finalists from around the world, a statement read. » Read more

A Beer for Palestine ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Roger Cohen - (Opinion) May 17, 2010 - 12:00am Few people vacation on the West Bank, but if they did they might head for Taybeh, a hilltop village clustered around a church whose charm trumps the Israeli checkpoints that have to be negotiated to get there. The air is good, the stones smooth, the light brilliant — and the beer excellent. » Read more

Israel Roiled After Chomsky Barred From West Bank ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Ethan Bronner - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am A fierce debate broke out in Israel on Monday amid finger pointing and hand wringing over the country’s refusal to permit the linguist Noam Chomsky, an icon of the American left, to enter the occupied West Bank from Jordan. Majed Jaber/Reuters Front-page coverage and heated morning radio discussions asked how Professor Chomsky, an 81-year-old professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, could pose a risk to Israel and how a country that frequently asserts its status as a robust democracy could keep out people whose views it found offensive. » Read more

PA launches door-to-door settlement good boycott ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency May 18, 2010 - 12:00am Ramallah – Ma'an – The Palestinian Authority will officially launch its settlement goods boycott campaign, entitled House to House, on Tuesday at 10am across the West Bank, aimed at encouraging residents to opt for Palestinian produce instead. The campaign, which will see over 3,000 volunteers go door-to-door to distribute the first part of a settlement produce guide, is the first leg of the PA's attempts to encourage West Bank residents to implement a wide-ranging boycott of goods made on illegal settlements. » Read more

May 17th

Archaic Israeli convictions and bad faith ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News by Adel Safty - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am One of the fundamental tenets of political Zionism has been the so-called redemption of the land for the purpose of founding a Jewish state where all the Jews of the world are supposed to gather and find a safe haven from persecution. The early Zionist leaders recognised the difficulty they faced: the land to be redeemed was Palestine and it was inhabited by another people who could not be expected to peacefully acquiesce to the transformation of their country into a Jewish state. » Read more

Israel's apartheid road ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian by Rachel Shabi - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am If you didn't have peripheral vision, it would probably be fine. If you didn't glance to the sides of Israel's highway 443 between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, then it wouldn't smack you in the face that the road is – how shall we put it? – segregated. As it is, you can't help but notice that when the 443 passes by the Israeli town of Modi'in and heads east into the occupied West Bank, some of its side-routes are blocked. Concrete boulders, metal barriers, rubble and heaps of rubbish halt roads from Palestinian villages such as Beit Sira and Beit Ur al-Fuka. » Read more

'IDF to blame for price-tag atmosphere' ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Tovah Lazaroff - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am The head of the soon-to-be-demolished Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement has blamed the IDF for creating an atmosphere in which some Jews were executed a "price-tag" policy of retribution against Palestinians for the IDF demolition of settler homes in Judea and Samaria. "A price tag policy is anarchy and they [the IDF] are the anarchists," said Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira on Sunday night at a solidarity event at the yeshiva. "A person who does things that can not be accepted by any sane person, is an anarchist." » Read more

Report: Egypt cutting Hamas off ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews by Roee Nahmias - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am New record in Hamas-Egypt tensions? Cairo has decided to cut all contact with heads of the Hamas movement, both in the Palestinian territories, and abroad, "high-ranking Egyptian officials were quoted as saying. In Monday's edition, independent paper al-Mesryoon, which is affiliated with the Egyptian opposition, reported that Cairo has decided to reject any requests by Hamas officials for entry visas to Egypt in the near future, and to freeze all channels of diplomatic and security communications with the movement. » Read more