February 4th

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

Textbook study faults Israelis and Palestinians ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press by Diaa Hadid - February 4, 2013 - 1:00am   Both Israeli and Palestinian schoolbooks largely present one-sided narratives of the conflict between the two peoples and tend to ignore the existence of the other side, but rarely resort to demonization, a U.S. State Department-funded study released Monday said. The study by Israeli, Palestinian and American researchers, billed as setting a new scientific standard, tackled a fraught issue — Israeli claims that Palestinians teach hatred of Israel and glorify violence in schoolbooks. » Read more

Academic Study Weakens Israeli Claim That Palestinian School Texts Teach Hate ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Isabel Kershner - February 3, 2013 - 1:00am An academic study of the contents of Israeli and Palestinian Authority textbooks, to be published Monday, finds that each side generally presents the other as the enemy, but it undermines recent assertions by the Israeli government that » Read more

February 1st

Official: Abbas to convene PLO reform summit ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency February 1, 2013 - 1:00am An independent politician said Thursday that President Abbas will convene a summit of the PLO reform committee next Friday in Cairo. The leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will participate in the summit along with other parties, Yasser al-Wadiyeh, head of a coalition of independents, he said. The committee to restructure the PLO was formed in the wake of a May 2011 reconciliation deal between Fatah and Hamas that was never implemented. » Read more

PA security official slams anti-corruption report as 'self-serving' ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency January 31, 2013 - 1:00am RAMALLAH (Ma’an) -- The spokesman of the Palestinian Authority security services Adnan Dmeiri on Thursday accused an international anti-corruption group of bias after it published a report on defense spending across the world. Transparency International issued the Government Defense Anti-Corruption Index this week, ranking Palestine in the third-highest band of risk of corruption, out of seven gradings. » Read more

Barak approves 346 new Gush Etzion housing units ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Tovah Lazaroff - (Analysis) February 1, 2013 - 1:00am   The Defense Ministry has advanced plans to build 346 housing units in the West Bank’s Gush Etzion region, area council head Davidi Perl reported on Thursday. » Read more