June 10th

Did Kissinger Urge Egypt to Attack Israel? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by R.M. Schneiderman - (Book Review) June 9, 2011 - 12:00am Whether it’s the expansion of settlements or the status of Jerusalem, the past has always held a central role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So as Palestinian protests continued to roil the Jewish state on Sunday, a new book by a former CIA agent in Amman and a trusted adviser to the Jordanian king offers some eye-opening claims about the history of the conflict. » Read more

I'm Either an Illegal Citizen of One State, or an Inferior Citizen in Another ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Salem News by Jalal Abukhater - (Opinion) June 10, 2011 - 12:00am (RAMALLAH) - I am considered under the Israeli law to be an illegal citizen of the Palestinian West Bank and I am supposed to avoid it as an area of danger while Jewish settlers are allowed to come from all over the world and settle legally (under Israeli law) in the Palestinian West Bank. » Read more

The Language Bibi and Bam Used ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Forward by Philologos - (Opinion) June 8, 2011 - 12:00am “On the Same Page?” asked a front-page caption of the June 3 edition of the Forward, beneath which were parallel excerpts from President Barack Obama’s May 19 speech on U.S. policy in the Middle East and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s May 24 Congressional address. The second pair of matching quotes had the U.S. » Read more

Low-profile, influential Hamas founder Shama dies ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press by Ibrahim Barzak - June 10, 2011 - 12:00am A founder of Hamas in the Gaza Strip died Friday of a stroke after decades as an influential yet little-known figure at the helm of the Palestinian militant organization. He was 76. Muhammad Hassan Shama, revered by Hamas loyalists but nearly anonymous outside Gaza, was one of the eight founders of the Islamist group in the 1980s. After his death, Hamas publicly announced Friday for the first time that Shama had been the leader of the secretive Shura Council, its top governing body. » Read more

Don't think about September ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Economist (Editorial) June 8, 2011 - 12:00am UNARMED Palestinian refugees clambering across the Syria-Israel border and getting shot by Israeli troops may provide a useful diversion both for Syria’s beleaguered president, Bashar Assad, and for Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. The Palestinians, all of them apparently from camps in Syria, made their first attempt at breaching the fence on May 15th, the anniversary of Israel’s founding, known to Palestinians as the naqba, or catastrophe. Hundreds crossed the line near the Druze village of Majdal Shams, on the Golan Heights, which were annexed by Israel after the war of 1967. » Read more

September is here ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Amos Harel, Avi Issacharoff - (Analysis) June 10, 2011 - 12:00am On Sunday morning, soldiers manning an Israeli army lookout positioned south of the "Shouting Hill," in the Golan Heights, reported sighting an unfamiliar flag. The protesters across the Syrian border had raised something resembling the flag of Switzerland - red with a white shape in the middle. The deputy-commander of the 36th Division, Col. Nadav Padan, raised his binoculars and surveyed the protesters, who were trying to cross the anti-tank ditch the Israel Defense Forces had dug between the fence and Majdal Shams. » Read more

Abbas and Fayyad disagree on unilateral declaration of Palestinian state at UN ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ahram Online by Saleh Al-Naami - June 9, 2011 - 12:00am The Hebrew website of the Israeli daily Haartez revealed Thursday a disagreement between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad regarding seeking state recognition from the United Nations in September. » Read more

Abbas and Fayyad disagree on unilateral declaration of Palestinian state at UN ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ahram Online by Saleh Al-Naami - June 9, 2011 - 12:00am The Hebrew website of the Israeli daily Haartez revealed Thursday a disagreement between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad regarding seeking state recognition from the United Nations in September. » Read more

What have Obama and Netanyahu wrought? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Policy by Henry Siegman - (Opinion) June 8, 2011 - 12:00am What conclusions are to be drawn about the state of Middle East peacemaking from the extraordinary spectacle of the adversarial encounter between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their several major adversarial addresses in the second half of May? » Read more

Memories of Six Day War see violence return to Golan Heights ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News by Kevin Connolly - (Analysis) June 9, 2011 - 12:00am When the early sun burns away the last of the misty night in Majdal Shams it leaves a landscape that looks a little like model railway scenery - all evenly-shaped pale hillsides and symmetrical thickets of darker green trees and patches of grey rock. When the noise of gunfire dies away in such a place, the silence that follows has an air of unreality. It feels too still and too deep. It must have felt this way in 1967 when the guns fell silent at the end of the Six Day War leaving Israel in possession of the rich farmland and spectacular mountains of the Golan Heights. » Read more