UN suspends food distribution in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Agence France Presse (AFP)
November 12, 2008 - 8:00pm

The United Nations announced it was suspending food distribution to half of Gaza's 1.5 million people on Thursday after Israel failed to allow emergency supplies into the Palestinian territory. Israel had said it would allow 30 trucks to deliver supplies to Gaza on Thursday after it sealed off the Gaza Strip on November 5, but later said rocket and mortar fire by Gaza militants made it impossible to do so. "They have told us the crossings are closed today. At the end of today we will suspend our food distribution," said UN Relief and Works Agency spokesman Chris Gunness.

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Gaza security costs girl her dream
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
by Donald MacIntyre - November 12, 2008 - 1:00am

An outstanding Palestinian student has lost her best chance of realising a burning ambition to study medicine in Britain because she was trapped in Gaza until it was just a day too late to take a crucial written exam in Jordan. Last week Diana Alsadi, 18, was supposed to take the Cambridge biomedical exam that is required by those who want to study at the top four UK medical schools.

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UN: Israel's border closures leave us with no food for Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - November 12, 2008 - 1:00am

The United Nations on Thursday warned its stocks had run so low that it would not be able to make its next delivery of food to 750,000 needy Gazans on Saturday. "We've been working here from hand to mouth for quite a long time, so these interruptions on the crossing points affect us immediately," said John Ging, director of UN Relief and Works Agency operations in Gaza.

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Deadly fighting on Gazan border
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC World News
November 11, 2008 - 8:00pm

Israeli troops have killed four Palestinian militants in a gunbattle on the Gaza border, Palestinians say. Witnesses in Hamas-controlled Gaza said the fighting broke out after Israeli armoured vehicles crossed into the territory near Khan Younis. The Israeli army said its soldiers were trying to stop militants attempting to plant a bomb near the security fence. Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas agreed a truce in Gaza five months ago but fierce fighting resumed last week.

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Obama urged to make peace top priority - Ban
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
November 11, 2008 - 1:00am

The main players in the Middle East peace process hope Barack Obama will make the issue a top priority when he takes over the US presidency in January, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday. Last weekend the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators - the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States - met in Egypt to keep alive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, even though political uncertainty in Israel has scotched hopes for a deal this year.

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Israeli police evict Palestinian couple from home of 52 years
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Rory McCarthy - November 10, 2008 - 8:00pm

Israeli police have evicted a disabled Palestinian man and his wife from the home where they had lived for 52 years, in a Palestinian district of east Jerusalem which is now surrounded by hardline Jewish settlers. The eviction came after years of litigation which culminated in an Israeli supreme court ruling in July ordering them out of the house. Several foreign governments, including the US and Britain, had tried to intervene on behalf of Muhammad and Fawzieh al-Kurd, but without success.

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UN: 130 West Bank Palestinians displaced by Israel in two days
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
October 30, 2008 - 8:00pm

Israeli military bulldozers destroyed houses in two West Bank communities on Wednesday and Thursday, leaving approximately 130 Palestinians homeless, United Nations (UN) sources told Ma'an. In the village of Umm Al-Kher, south of Hebron, Israeli bulldozers, accompanied by some 60 soldiers, destroyed Palestinian homes near the Karmel settlement. Workers employed by the Israeli military removed the furniture from the structures before the demolitions. As a result, 95 people were left homeless, including a woman who had recently given birth.

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Few Palestinians Expect to Form Own State
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Angus Reid Global Monitor
September 19, 2008 - 8:00pm

Few people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip expect to see the creation of a Palestinian state within the next five years, according to a poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. 27.5 per cent of respondents believe the chances for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state next to Israel are medium to high, while 69.2 per cent are more skeptical.

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Children Play with Death and Dispossession
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Inter Press Service (IPS)
by Mel Frykberg - September 17, 2008 - 8:00pm

Palestinian children continue to be victims of disproportionate and indiscriminate violence from the both the Israeli occupation and internal Palestinian infighting in the occupied Palestinian territories. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in its August report expressed concern for the inadequate protection afforded Palestinian children.

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The Issue of Five Million Palestinian Refugees
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed - September 15, 2008 - 8:00pm

Talking to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz last week, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas admitted that the refugees represent the main obstacle preventing a peace agreement with Israel. He said that matters are not yet clear; every issue has complicated details for those who would return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip and those whom Israel would agree to return to their land which is today's Israel.

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