A Peace Legacy for Netanyahu’s Hard-Line Dad? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bloomberg by Jeffrey Goldberg - (Opinion) April 30, 2012 - 12:00am The historian Benzion Netanyahu, who died today at 102, was sometimes asked to explain the miracle of Jewish survival through millenniums of persecution. Netanyahu -- the father of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin -- would answer the question in a way his interlocutors did not at all expect. » Read more

A Few Good Lawyers ATFP World Press Roundup Article from International Herald Tribune by Rajah Shehadeh - (Blog) April 27, 2012 - 12:00am BILIN, West Bank — Earlier this month, I finally watched “The Law in These Parts,” a documentary by the Israeli film director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, at the 7th International Conference for Popular Resistance. The film describes the legal system that Israel has applied in the Palestinian Occupied Territories since 1967, and it does so exclusively through interviews with members of the Israeli military legal corps who wrote and implemented the system. » Read more

Response to Rashid Khalidi ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by Gil Troy - (Opinion) April 30, 2012 - 12:00am Professor Khalidi is anxious to bar me from the debate about the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem’s building site that adjoins an ancient Moslem graveyard by questioning my credentials. And I guess he is right.  » Read more

Confession of an incorrigible optimist ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News by Uri Avnery - (Opinion) April 30, 2012 - 12:00am No ifs. No buts. No perhapses. Maybe it’s genetic. My father was an optimist. Even when, at the age of 45, he had to flee his native Germany to a primitive little country in the Middle East, his spirits remained high. Though he had to adapt to a new country, a hot climate, hard physical labor and grinding poverty, he was happy. At least he had saved his wife and four children, the youngest of whom was I. Now, on Israel’s 64th birthday (according to the Hebrew calendar), I am still an optimist. » Read more

Israel is no safe place for Christians ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times by Kamel S. Abu Jaber - (Opinion) April 30, 2012 - 12:00am It has been a long time since I have written anything about Israel or the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I told myself I should distance myself a little and think in a cool, dispassionate manner about our Semitic cousins who obviously have made up their mind to play down their, perhaps in their mind, racial relationship with us Arabs. » Read more

1967 All Over Again? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Tablet Magazine by Benny Morris - (Opinion) May 9, 2012 - 12:00am One thing’s certain: Tuesday’s sudden and dramatic expansion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government—he now has the support of 94 Knesset members in the 120-seat house—considerably strengthens Netanyahu’s mandate to take what commentators insist on calling “historic steps.” But it is unclear whether the cooption of Shaul Mofaz and his Kadima faction makes an Israeli preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities more likely or more remote. » Read more

Netanyahu's Globalists ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by Bernard Avishai - (Opinion) May 8, 2012 - 12:00am I know I should be appalled by Shaul Mofaz's opportunism and Benjamin Netanyahu's grin, but I confess to being just a little relieved. » Read more

Israel Faces Challenges From Boycott Campaign ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor by Barbara Slavin - (Opinion) May 7, 2012 - 12:00am As he consolidates his power with a new coalition, incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to continue his unremitting focus on Iran as an existential threat. However, a bigger challenge to Israel over the long run may be the international campaign to deny the country’s status as a Jewish-governed polity that rules a growing and disenfranchised Palestinian population in the West Bank. » Read more

Temporary deal ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times (Editorial) May 8, 2012 - 12:00am Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have succeeded in pulling a rabbit from his hat when he struck a deal, in the wee hours of Tuesday, with Shaul Mofaz, leader of the main opposition party Kadima, forging a national unity government and thus averting the need to hold snap elections. » Read more

Toward confederation ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Ronald Tiersky - (Opinion) May 8, 2012 - 12:00am Israel’s strategic problem in historical terms is, ultimately, how to win a war well. The Palestinian problem is to avoid losing this war in the most drawn-out, worst possible way. Palestinians (including any realistic Hamas leaders), know approximately what they will have to accept. Finding the least bad solution consonant with defeat is their unenviable task. Yet neither is Israel completely free, because victory can be dangerous. Israel needs a strategy that isn’t in the end self-defeating. » Read more