Palestinians struggle to build in West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Tom Perry - December 9, 2009 - 1:00am

In the occupied West Bank, a bedouin community whose school is made out of car tires and mud faces the same problem as a developer planning a whole new Palestinian town: building controls imposed by Israel. As Israel enforces a partial, temporary freeze on building in its West Bank settlements, Palestinians and their government are struggling to develop their communities in large areas of the territory that fall under full Israeli jurisdiction.

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The Pragmatist
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Tablet Magazine
by Michael Weiss - December 8, 2009 - 1:00am

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, was sharing his vision for the future. “The key requirement for a Palestinian state,” he began, speaking on a cellular telephone from his office in Ramallah. Then the line went dead, a dropped call. “You’ll have to excuse,” he said when he rang back. “We have a lot of competing cellular networks here, and sometimes our signals get crossed.”

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The Pragmatist
Media Mention of Hussein Ibish In Tablet Magazine - December 8, 2009 - 1:00am

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, was sharing his vision for the future. “The key requirement for a Palestinian state,” he began, speaking on a cellular telephone from his office in Ramallah. Then the line went dead, a dropped call. “You’ll have to excuse,” he said when he rang back. “We have a lot of competing cellular networks here, and sometimes our signals get crossed.”

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The Fayyad plan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
(Editorial) December 7, 2009 - 1:00am

ISRAELI PRIME Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took office in March after a campaign in which he refused to support Palestinian statehood, promised an expansion of Jewish settlement in the West Bank and hinted at a new military campaign to "topple" Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Eight months later, the Israeli leader is on record as accepting a Palestinian state, is deep in negotiations with Hamas over a possible prisoner swap, and -- most remarkably of all -- has dispatched inspectors and security forces to the West Bank to enforce a 10-month suspension in Jewish housing construction.

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Israeli resentment grows on trees
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Seth Freedman - (Opinion) December 7, 2009 - 1:00am

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is no stranger to controversy, its sectarian approach to charity work having fomented tension for decades in Israel and abroad. The JNF is once again embroiled in a row, though this time the tables have turned, with the fund's administrators finding themselves cast as pantomime villains by diehard supporters of the Jewish state.

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Magazine names Fayyad one of 100 top global thinkers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
December 2, 2009 - 1:00am

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was ranked 61 on the American magazine Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers list published this week. Fayyad earned his spot, the report said, "for showing how to govern effectively in the middle of a conflict." Summing up his contribution to global leadership, the magazine wrote:

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Public building in W. Bank down 60%
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from CBS News
December 2, 2009 - 1:00am

Public building starts in the West Bank have dropped some 60 percent since Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took office, according to Central Bureau of Statistics figures quoted in an Israel Radio report Wednesday. The data showed that between the months of April and September 2009, only 132 housing units were approved, compared to 330 in the same period last year, during former prime minister Ehud Olmert's term in office. Between April and September 2007, the figure was 370.

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Bethlehem traders still waiting for Christmas cheer
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Erika Soloman - December 1, 2009 - 1:00am

The lights are going up and carols are ringing from Manger Square, but Christmas cheer hasn't spread to all of Bethlehem's residents. While calm has returned to the Biblical birthplace of Jesus, scene of heavy fighting during the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, in the early years of this decade, big-spending foreign tourists have mostly not, say the shopkeepers and restaurant owners who depend on them for their livelihood.

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Islamic Movement gathers steam in Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Dina Kraft - November 30, 2009 - 1:00am

It's time for noon prayers in this Israeli Arab city, and a jumble of sneakers piles up outside the doors of a mosque on the top floor of a private high school for the sciences. Inside, the boys, led in prayer by a math teacher, stand in two rows on a soft green-and-beige carpet and then kneel in unison. The $5.8 million tab to construct the high school, considered one of the top Arab schools in Israel with its state-of-the art physics and chemistry labs, was picked up by the Islamic Movement.

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Planned City “Rawabi” Draws on Palestinian Enterprise and Israeli Experience
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line
by Felice Friedson - November 29, 2009 - 1:00am

Just six miles north of Ramallah, Palestinians have begun planting thousands of evergreen tree saplings as part of a major greening project to grow a forest to hug the edges of what will be the first planned Palestinian city. The city is already named Rawabi, Arabic for “hills”. For Palestinians it presents a new kind of urbanism, which aims to draw middle-class professionals away from smoggy towns and villages towards a better way of life.

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