Israel needs a shock: Positive or negative
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Uri Avnery - (Opinion) October 16, 2011 - 12:00am

On Yom Kippur eve last week, when real Jews were praying for their lives, I sat on the seashore of Tel Aviv, thinking about the State of Israel. Will it endure? Will it be here in another 100 years? Or is it a passing episode, a historic fluke?

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Hamas and Israel realize cooperation is mutually beneficial
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Hugh Naylor - (Analysis) October 14, 2011 - 12:00am

The deal between Hamas and Israel for the release of 1,027 Palestinian detainees and one captured Israeli soldier is the most dramatic but not the only sign of cooperation between the two enemies. Hamas has virtually halted rocket fire at Israel from the Gaza Strip and Israel is spending millions of dollars to expand a commercial crossing into the territory while it loosens its blockade of the coastal enclave and its 1.5 million residents.

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Palestinian success at UN serves Israeli and US interests
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Ilan Baruch - (Opinion) October 13, 2011 - 12:00am

Palestine knows, Israel knows, the US knows, and the entire world knows what the end result of any attempt to end the conflict in the Middle East must be. Like so many others in Israel and Palestine, I, too, sat transfixed in front of the television screen as I listened to the speeches at the UN by US President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. All three of them addressed the representatives of the countries around the world but spoke to their peoples at home. And I was amazed.

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Israel does not stand alone
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Michael B. Oren - (Opinion) October 13, 2011 - 12:00am

The claim of Israel’s isolation, echoed by Democratic and Republican leaders alike, is gaining status as fact. “Israel finds itself increasingly isolated, beleaguered, and besieged,” John Heilemann wrote recently in New York magazine. The Economist reported that “Israel’s isolation has .?.?. been underlined by the deterioration of its relations with Turkey and Egypt.” New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “isolating his country,” while Thomas Friedman described Israel as “adrift at sea alone.”

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Hamas and Netanyahu share spoils of swap deal
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Vita Bekker, Hugh Naylor - (Analysis) October 13, 2011 - 12:00am

Hamas and the Israeli government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are both likely to score political points from the deal to swap 1,027 Palestinian detainees for a captured Israeli soldier. Under the pact brokered by Egyptian and German mediators after five years of fruitless talks, Israel will free the detainees in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the 25-year-old soldier seized by Gaza militants during an attack on an Israeli army post on the Gaza border in 2006.

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Freeing Gilad Shalit: The Cost to Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
by David Makovsky - October 13, 2011 - 12:00am

On Tuesday, Israel and Hamas announced a two-phase prisoner exchange that would secure the release of Sgt. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier kidnapped in 2006 and held for more than five years in Gaza. In return, Israel would release 1,027 prisoners, including 280 who are serving life sentences for their involvement in terrorist acts. The deal was initially mediated by Gerhard Conrad, a senior German official with expertise in the Middle East who has overseen prisoner swaps between Israel and Hizballah since the 1990s. But it was Egyptian intelligence chief Maj. Gen.

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Jubilation over planned Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swap dampens
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Edmund Sanders - October 13, 2011 - 12:00am

Initial jubilation over the impending prisoner swap between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas began to dampen Wednesday as people on both sides expressed concerns that their leaders may have given away too much at the negotiating table.

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Inside Israeli desert, standoff over land
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Statesman
by Amy Teibel - October 13, 2011 - 12:00am

Decades of fraught relations between the Israeli government and Bedouin Arabs living in the hardscrabble Negev desert are coming to a head over a state plan that would expel 30,000 of the nomads from unauthorized tent encampments and shantytowns and move them into some of the country's most destitute towns. The Israeli Cabinet recently approved the plan, reflecting growing anxiety that Bedouin are taking over more of the Negev, an inverted triangle in the country's south crisscrossed with rocky mountains and dry riverbeds and covering more than half of Israel's land mass.

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Israeli settlers attack Palestinian school amid fears for more violence
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
October 13, 2011 - 12:00am

Jewish settlers attacked on Thursday a Palestinian school, raising fears that conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians may increase when the U.N. Security Council was debating on a Palestinian bid for statehood, witnesses and security sources said. The witnesses said that several Jewish settlers threw stones and empty bottles at Kortoba females school in the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

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U.S.: Israel move to legalize West Bank outposts 'unhelpful to peace efforts'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
October 13, 2011 - 12:00am

The U.S. State Department criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's newly launched attempt to legalize West Bank outposts on Wednesday, saying the move was "unhelpful" to Mideast peace efforts. On Tuesday, Netanyahu's office announced instructed Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman to set up a task force to explore ways to legalize houses in the settlements that were built on private Palestinian land.

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