With hiring of AJC veteran, David Project consolidates its mainstream status ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) by Ron Kampeas - July 20, 2010 - 12:00am WASHINGTON (JTA) -- In a continuing bid to transition from campus rabble rousers to more mainstream educators, The David Project has hired a Jewish establishment veteran to guide the pro-Israel campus organization. In recent years The David Project has expanded from its original mission -- confronting what it identified as radically anti-Israel groups on campus -- to educating Jewish students on Israel. Now the hiring of David Bernstein, 43, a 13-year veteran of the American Jewish Committee, as executive director signals a major growing-up for the organization. » Read more

Why Israel keeps moving to the right ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian by Carlo Strenger - July 20, 2010 - 12:00am Israel has been sliding into ever greater isolation in the few last years and this process has accelerated since Binyamin Netanyahu came to power in 2009. The international community is put off by his tactics: whenever the question of Israel's settlement policy comes up, he diverts attention to the Iranian nuclear threat. He argues that the world is facing a situation similar to 1938, and that its reaction is that of Neville Chamberlain, trying to appease Adolf Hitler. » Read more

EU envoy urges Israel to open Gaza borders ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News July 20, 2010 - 12:00am Lady Ashton urged the international community to pressure Israel to end the blockade. She is the most senior Western official to go to Gaza since Israel partly eased curbs on goods entering the territory. Israel tightened its blockade in 2007 after the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of Gaza. Lady Ashton did not have any official meetings with Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza. Its authority is not recognised by the EU, Israel or the US, who describe it as a terrorist organisation. » Read more

Gaza’s First Development Project in Years ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line by Benjamin Joffe-Walt - July 20, 2010 - 12:00am A group of Palestinian IT entrepreneurs have launched the first internationally funded economic development project in the Gaza Strip since Hamas took over the coastal strip. The project, “EnTeG_: Enable Technology sector Growth in Gaza”, aims to help Gazan software developers use the Internet to get around Israeli export restrictions. The French Development Agency will grant 500,000 euros to the Palestinian Information Technology Association of Companies (PITA) to create the Gaza Strip’s first private sector development project in years. PITA announced receipt of the grant on Monday. » Read more

When is a border not a border? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by David Newman - (Opinion) July 20, 2010 - 12:00am When is a border not a border? When it is a security barrier. Or so, our politicians will tell us as they continue to live in a state of denial that the heavily fortified and electrified security fence/wall which has been constructed during the past six years around much of the West Bank is no more than an antiterror prevention device and that it has little, or no, significance for the eventual demarcation of borders between sovereign and independent Israeli and Palestinian states. » Read more

Settlements and anti-Zionists ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Gershon Baskin - July 20, 2010 - 12:00am November 6, 2012 – that’s the date when Barack Obama will stand for election for a second term. By November 2011 he will already be deeply involved in campaigning and most of his attention will be focused on Middle America and not the Middle East. On November 2, midterm elections will be held in the US in which members of Congress (including all 435 in the House of Representatives and 34 of the 100 in the Senate) stand before the electorate.The US political calendar is a map of the window of opportunity which might exist for advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace. » Read more

Silwan children live in fear ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews by Ronen Medzini - July 20, 2010 - 12:00am Jewish and Arab residents of the east Jerusalem neighborhood described life in the shadow of clashes in the area during a hearing in the Knesset Committee for the Rights of the Child on Monday. The Arab parents told of arrests of children in the middle of the night, that their kids live in fear. Should they want to play in a nearby playground, the parents said, the children have to take a taxi to get there. On the other hand, Jewish parents complained that their children must travel in armored vehicles out of fear that rocks will be thrown at them. » Read more

Israel denies presenting Egypt with map of Palestinian state ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Jack Khoury, Barak Ravid - July 20, 2010 - 12:00am Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bureau on Tuesday firmly denied reports that the Israeli leader had presented Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak with a map delineating the borders of a future Palestinian state during their meeting in Cairo earlier this week. The London-based A-Sharq al-Awsat quoted an Israeli source as saying that the Egyptian president rejected the proposal as out of hand, and it did not meet the Arab League's demands for a state based on 1967 borders with negligible amendments. » Read more

Next two weeks decisive as Palestinians mull over direct talks with Israel: analysts ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua by Omer Othmani, Osama Radi - July 20, 2010 - 12:00am RAMALLAH, July 19 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming two weeks would be decisive as the Palestinian leadership would hold a series of meetings to study the U.S. call for moving from the four-month proximity talks to direct talks with Israel, analysts said. Palestinian observers also expect that the U.S. would increase its pressure on the Palestinians and the Arab states to promote the peace process. » Read more

Israel nabs Hamas cell accused of deadly shooting ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press by Matti Friedman - July 20, 2010 - 12:00am JERUSALEM — Israel has arrested five Palestinians accused of being members of a Hamas cell responsible for killing an Israeli policeman in the West Bank, the Shin Bet security service said Monday. It said the men, all in their 20s, confessed to killing the policeman near the West Bank town of Hebron on June 14 and handed over three Kalashnikov rifles they used. The arrests were carried out a week after the attack, which wounded two other policemen, but were only made public Monday in a statement released to the media. » Read more