Is Israel willing to freeze East Jerusalem construction?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Ilene Prusher - April 22, 2010 - 12:00am

US Middle East Peace Envoy George Mitchell arrived here late Thursday for talks with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in an attempt to get the two to agree to terms for so-called proximity talks. Mr. Mitchell's trip comes despite recent indications from President Barack Obama that his administration is losing patience with the two parties in the conflict.

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Obama offered Netanyahu a gentlemen's agreement on Jerusalem
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - April 22, 2010 - 12:00am

If the Independence Day speeches delivered this week by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin were any indication, Jerusalem Day came early this year. As they took the podium to vow that "united Jerusalem" would never be divided, both were no doubt aware that President Barack Obama's adviser, Dan Shapiro, was making his way to the region.

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Protest rally against ‘settler provocation’ in Jaffa
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Benjamin L. Hartman - April 22, 2010 - 12:00am

Dozens of activists and residents held a rally in Jaffa’s Ajami neighborhood on Wednesday, to protest what organizers called “a series of provocations from settlers active in Jaffa,” following the alleged attack of an elderly neighborhood woman by settlers three days earlier. Wednesday’s rally, which was held in front of the house organizers say was infiltrated by a group of settlers on Sunday, included speeches by Islamic Movement leader Sheikh Raed Salah and a number of community organizers from Jaffa.

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Obama, don't forget Jerusalem
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Richard Cohen - (Opinion) April 20, 2010 - 12:00am

These have been busy days for Jewish bloggers when it comes to Israel. One of them, the formidable Ed Koch, has virtually incinerated President Obama for his Israeli policy. The Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel has taken out full-page ads in major newspapers to tell Obama, in effect, to lay off Jerusalem, and Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, wrote the president to say how concerned he was about the administration's Israel policy. In short, it stinks.

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Violence will only end up harming the Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Murad Bustami - (Opinion) April 20, 2010 - 12:00am

Covered faces, stones and tear gas: This was the scene on the streets of East Jerusalem in the “day of rage” last month, which was declared in response to the opening of a synagogue in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter next to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

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Israel's Barak concerned by rift with U.S.
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Jeffrey Heller - April 19, 2010 - 12:00am

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak voiced concern on Monday over a deep rift with the United States over settlement policy and said Israel should do more to try to achieve peace with the Palestinians. "The alienation that is developing with the United States is not good for Israel," said Barak, head of the centre-left Labour Party in right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition.

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PNA denies report on possible control of East Jerusalem suburb
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
April 19, 2010 - 12:00am

The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) on Sunday denied reports that Israel was going to hand areas in East Jerusalem to the PNA. "We don't have any information about these reports and there is nothing on the ground indicating that the PNA" was going to impose its control on Abu Dies town, said Saeb Erekat, the chief peace negotiator.

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Israeli actions are turning Jerusalem into a settlement
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Zeev Sternhell - (Opinion) April 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Thanks to an attempted settler takeover of the Sheikh Jarrah quarter, that quiet neighborhood of East Jerusalem has turned into a kind of microcosm of the illnesses that are poisoning relations between Jews and Arabs. The worst of these is the refusal to recognize the finality of the situation that was created at the end of the War of Independence. It is possible to understand the settler right, whose existential aim is the continued conquest of the land. But how is it possible that state institutions will lend a hand to an act that destroys the very land under our feet?

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Clinton: Israel must do more for peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
April 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Israel must do more to pursue peace with the Palestinians and to strengthen their institutions or risk empowering militant groups such as Hamas, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday. US President Barack Obama's efforts to revive peace talks have been stymied by a disagreement over Jewish settlement construction that has strained ties between Washington and its close ally Israel and by divisions among the Palestinians.

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Pupils in east Jerusalem get half funding of those in west
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Ronen Medzini - April 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Does the city of Jerusalem discriminate between educational institutions and students in the east of the city and the west? Absolutely yes, at least according to a professional opinion written by Jerusalem's municipal legal advisor Attorney Yossi Havilio.

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