Israel Approves Settlement Growth
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bbc News
March 10, 2008 - 5:41pm

The project was first signed off in 1999, but stopped two years later after Palestinian labourers refused to go on. Israel's housing minister said the construction at Givat Zeev would address "the demographic needs of Jerusalem". But the decision provoked an angry reaction from Palestinian leaders. For the Palestinians there are few issues as contentious as the building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, says the BBC's Crispin Thorold in Jerusalem. Under the terms of the peace process settlement expansion is supposed to be frozen.

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Hamas Wages Iran’s Proxy War On Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Times
by Marie Colvin - March 10, 2008 - 5:37pm

The Hamas commander was in a hurry. Hunched forward in a navy-blue parka, with the wind-chapped skin and drawn eyes of someone who had been outdoors all night, he had just returned from the front line with Israel. The whine of drones overhead signalled that his enemy was hunting for blood. For someone who had survived the fiercest fighting between Israelis and Palestinians since 2000 and the deaths of scores of his fellow fighters, the commander, already a senior figure in his late twenties, appeared remarkably composed.

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Jerusalem Struggles To Maintain Its Balance
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
March 10, 2008 - 5:34pm

When an Arab from East Jerusalem killed eight people at a Jewish seminary, it endangered the fragile fabric of life in a city where people divided by distrust have nonetheless managed to get along. The shooting was a shock to many Jerusalemites, not only because it followed a long period of relative quiet, but also because even in the peak years of Palestinian suicide bombings, the Arabs of East Jerusalem were largely bystanders. In the aftermath, the city's Jews fear for their safety, while Arabs are wary of a backlash.

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Israel On Alert, Gaza Braces After Jerusalem Killings
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Agence France Presse (AFP)
March 7, 2008 - 6:30pm

Israel was on alert and Gaza braced for reprisals on Friday as crowds mourned eight teenagers killed by a Palestinian gunman at a Jewish religious school in an attack claimed by the Islamist Hamas. Residents of the impoverished Gaza Strip were bracing for punitive Israeli military strikes after the attack which shook the faltering peace talks and provoked strong condemnation from around the world.

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Jerusalem Braces After Gun Rampage
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Australian
by Martin Chulov - March 7, 2008 - 6:24pm

Tensions were heightened by the fact that the gunman, who killed eight students - most of them 15- and 16-year-olds - and wounded eight more in the library of the Jewish religious college on Thursday night local time, was an Israeli resident of east Jerusalem, with full access to the city.

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Seeking Alternatives
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Ghassan Khatib - (Opinion) March 4, 2008 - 6:31pm

Most Palestinians, from the general public to officials, have already concluded that the current negotiations, initiated at the Annapolis conference, have very little or no chance of success. For that reason, several debates have been held and initiatives offered to find an alternative strategy for the Palestinian leadership to pursue.

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Whose Jerusalem Is It, Anyway?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Slate
by Shmuel Rosner - (Opinion) February 28, 2008 - 4:41pm

"Arafat balked at not having sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount." That's former President Bill Clinton's version of the defining moment of the failed Camp David summit of 2000. "He turned the offer down." Clinton "called Arab leaders for support," but "most wouldn't say much." Not one of them was brave enough—or stupid enough—to take the credit and the blame for helping Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat give up, even if only symbolically, on Muslim control of the Temple Mount.

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Still Building
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Baltimore Sun
by Hagit Ofran - (Opinion) February 28, 2008 - 4:39pm

Every few days, Israel's prime minister repeats his commitment to freeze West Bank settlements and remove illegal outposts. Such commitments and statements from successive Israeli governments have been a part of our lives since the 1993 Oslo agreement.

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Un: Israel, Pa, Egypt Must Find New Strategy To End Gaza Crisis
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Deutsche Presse Agentur
February 26, 2008 - 6:54pm

The United Nations urged Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt on Tuesday to develop a new strategy aimed at ending the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza Strip. Quartet members and parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been told by the UN to actively pursue a "positive strategy" to end rocket firing and suicide attacks against Israel and meet Gazans' humanitarian needs, the UN special envoy for the Middle East peace process, Robert Serry, told the UN Security Council in a public meeting.

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Israel Extends Closure Of Palestinian Offices In East Jerusalem
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
February 22, 2008 - 4:22pm

Israel is keeping Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem shut tight, despite its pledge to reopen them under a recently revived peace blueprint, Palestinian officials said yesterday. This month, the officials said, Israel renewed its order to close the Orient House, the city ‘s Arab Chamber of Commerce and other heavily symbolic buildings that are a rallying point for the Palestinians’ claims to Jerusalem’s eastern sector as capital of a future state.

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