Abbas: Talks, not terror, is way to Palestinian state
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
August 17, 2009 - 12:00am

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday negotiation was the only path to statehood, espousing non-violence after his Fatah party backed an option of "resistance" against Israeli occupation. "We are peace seekers," the Western-backed leader said at a cabinet meeting in Ramallah of the Palestinian Authority. "The main and the only path is the path of peace and negotiations. We don't have any other path and we do not wish to use any other path."

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Israeli wins Fatah top body seat
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
August 16, 2009 - 12:00am

A Jewish-born Israeli has been elected to the governing body of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party. Uri Davis, 66, an academic who is married to a Palestinian, is an outspoken critic of what he calls Israel's "apartheid policies". As the only Israeli member of the Revolutionary Council he says he wants to represent non-Arab people who support the Palestinian cause. He called for an international campaign to boycott Israel to be toughened up. Dr Davis said his Israeli citizenship made no difference to his election.

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Following election triumph, Fatah sets out to 'liberate' Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - August 14, 2009 - 12:00am

At the start of the week, a member of Iz al-Din al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, died in the Palestinian Authority's Juneid Prison, in Nablus. The circumstances of Fadi Hamadneh's death are unclear, with PA officials claiming he committed suicide, and Hamas claiming he was tortured to death by PA security operatives. In response to the charges, the spokesman of the Palestinian security services, Adnan Damiri, said that Hamas, which has executed hundreds of people in the Gaza Strip, has no right to talk about torture or the violation of human rights.

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Listen to the women of Palestine
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Hannah Wright - (Opinion) August 14, 2009 - 12:00am

As Fatah delegates meeting in Bethlehem elected their new leadership, one could not help but feel that despite the reshuffling of senior figures, the same old faces kept reappearing. Despite talk of reinvention and bringing in "new blood", patrimony and nepotism maintain the same tight grip over the Palestinian leadership – a nephew here, a PLO grandee there, outsiders not welcome. One thing that unites them all, even the newer faces, is that they are all middle-aged or older (even those described as "young"), and they are all male.

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Perpetual and collective failures
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Rami Khouri - (Opinion) August 14, 2009 - 12:00am

Two opposing trends were affirmed in Israel and Palestine this week, and one of them must disappear. The Fateh congress in Bethlehem reaffirmed the strategic decision among a majority of Palestinians to seek a negotiated peace with Israel, while a string of senior Israeli officials said that they would continue expanding settlements in East Jerusalem and would not repeat the “mistake” of withdrawing from Gaza.

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A Fateh facelift?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by George S. Hishmeh - (Opinion) August 14, 2009 - 12:00am

If one chooses to be charitable, last week’s meeting of the most significant Palestinian nationalist movement in Israeli-besieged Palestine for the first time since its founding in the early 1960s could be considered an achievement, certainly historic. If nothing else, it allowed over 2,000 members of the Palestinian Liberation Movement, or Fateh, to assemble in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, and begin the process of rejuvenating what has been described as “a bloated gerontocracy” which has not met for 20 years.

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Qureia hints Fatah elections unclean
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Ali Waked - August 13, 2009 - 12:00am

"The forgeries in Iran were much smaller than what we had in Palestine," said former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Qureia, who was not elected for the Fatah movement's Central Committee in elections this week. The results were published Wednesday, and in response, Qureia said large question marks hovered over the election process and the counting of the votes.

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New singers, but Fatah needs a new song too
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
(Editorial) August 13, 2009 - 12:00am

After a week of contentious, sometimes raucous deliberations, Fatah, the foremost Palestinian nationalist movement, has managed to elect a new leadership committee. This is no small feat for an organisation that most Palestinians see as fractious, corrupt and without compass. Indeed, the Sixth General Congress was mired in controversy and infighting that threatened to erode further the credibility of a party arguably on the wane.

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Closer to becoming a political party
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Daoud Kuttab - (Opinion) August 13, 2009 - 12:00am

Fateh, the key Palestinian guerilla movement within the Palestine Liberation Organisation, moved one step closer to becoming a political party. Having held its sixth congress for the first time in the occupied territories, it would be hard to continue pretending to be a liberation movement. Officially, however, the over 2,000 delegates, representing former Fateh fedayyin (guerillas) and Intifada activists, voted to continue the resistance and the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Resistance, however, was explained in a much wider perspective than the military struggle.

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The Generation of "Palestine First"!
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by Zuheir Kseibati - (Opinion) August 13, 2009 - 12:00am

Fatah has revived its youth, and clung to armed resistance as a tool of struggle to establish the Palestinian State, akin to the tool of diplomacy and negotiations. But this is not enough, as Hamas has appointed itself as sole custodian over the issue of the conflict with Israel. Thus, it is waiting for a new test for the "patriotism" of Fatah after its sixth conference.

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