Jordan an arena for Hamas?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Hassan Barari - September 15, 2009 - 12:00am

Bickering within Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood has come to the fore as never before. The divisions in the movement and their dubious relationship with Hamas have posed serious questions about the scope, if any, this movement is penetrated by Hamas.

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Exclusive: Senior Fatah official concerned over Egyptian election plan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
September 11, 2009 - 12:00am

Senior Fatah member and head of the party's parliamentary bloc Azzam Al-Ahmad echoed other members sentiments in his reservations over the Egyptian conciliation plan's treatment of the elections issue, he said in an interview Friday.

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Seized Israeli Writes of Deep Depression
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
September 10, 2009 - 12:00am

An Israeli soldier seized by Palestinian fighters more than three years ago described his captivity as an "intolerable and inhumane nightmare" in a 2006 letter to his parents that was made public Wednesday. In carefully printed script, Sgt. Gilad Shalit reported deteriorating health and deep depression, making an anguished appeal to the Israeli government to release him from his "closed and solitary prison." Shalit, now 23, wrote the 14-line letter three months after gunmen affiliated with the Gaza Strip's Islamist Hamas rulers captured him in a cross-border raid.

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Abbas receives Egypt's vision of reconciliation, response in 2 days
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
September 10, 2009 - 12:00am

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas received Egypt’s conciliation plan and is currently reviewing it, Presidential Spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Wednesday. In a statement published on the official government news website WAFA, Abu Rudeineh said it was expected Abbas would take two days to prepare an official response to the submitted plan, or “vision,” as the statement called it.

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Hamas, Fatah set to reconcile by 2010
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Khaled Abu Toameh - September 9, 2009 - 12:00am

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal's recent visit to Egypt has brought the Islamist movement and Fatah closer to ending their differences, sources close to Hamas in the Gaza Strip revealed on Tuesday. In another sign of rapprochement between the two parties, Hamas has welcomed plans by senior Fatah officials to visit the Gaza Strip for talks aimed at resolving the crisis. The Fatah officials who are expected to visit the Strip include Nabil Sha'ath, Jibril Rajoub, Mahmoud al-Aloul and Fakhri Bsaiso.

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Media war rages over Gaza conflict
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Seth Freedman - (Opinion) September 9, 2009 - 12:00am

Gone are the days when history was written solely by the victors. In today's democratised climate of instantly disseminated words and images, those on either side of a battlefield have the potential to feed facts and figures to media outlets around the world, or to pass on video footage and photographs that their opponents might prefer never saw the light of day.

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Hamas said ready to sign Shalit deal this weekend
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - September 4, 2009 - 12:00am

Hamas leader in exile Khaled Meshal is planning to finalize a prisoner swap deal for the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit during a rare visit to Cairo this weekend, senior Palestinian sources told the Saudi daily Al-Watan on Friday. Hamas spokesman Taher A-Nunu confirmed that Meshal was traveling to Cairo on Saturday for a round of talks with Egyptian officials, attended by the organization's top-brass from Gaza and Damascus.

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Hamas Objects to Possible Lessons on Holocaust in U.N.-Run Schools in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Howard Schneider - September 2, 2009 - 12:00am

The prospect of United Nations-run schools in the Gaza Strip teaching children about the Holocaust has sparked fierce resistance this week from leaders of the Palestinian Hamas movement and forced international officials to confront a situation fraught with political risk. U.N. officials, who say they are only discussing changes to a school program on human rights, have not commented directly on whether any new curriculum will reference the Holocaust. But Hamas leaders, saying any such reference would "contradict" their culture, are moving quickly to head off the possibility.

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Hamas: Israel won't get better deal on Shalit
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Ali Waked - September 2, 2009 - 12:00am

Just hours after Defense Minister Ehud Barak told a group of students that Gilad Shalit's release won't be "at any price", a Hamas official told Ynet that Israel is trying to make talks on the kidnapped soldier's release more difficult. "The Shalit family is paying the price of the negotiation ploys that their government is trying to carry out in a bid to present a better deal than its predecessor," said the Hamas official. According to him, Israel is trying to bide time by presenting new versions of the deal.

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A promise to keep with Gaza’s people
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
September 2, 2009 - 12:00am

Six months after the world’s top diplomats met at Sharm el Sheikh to pledge massive amounts of assistance to war-torn Gaza, there is little on the ground to show that their commitment has had any effect. The magnitude of the devastation that descended upon the Gazan people earlier this year is difficult to overstate. The UN estimates that as many as 14,000 homes and 240 schools have been destroyed and too little has been done to alleviate the suffering of the nearly 1.5 million Palestinians who overcrowd the tiny strip of territory.

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