Rise in terror activities by Jewish extremists worries Israel's Shin Bet
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Vita Bekker - September 14, 2011 - 12:00am

Israel is growing concerned about a rise in terror activities by Jewish extremists against Palestinians and Israeli left-wing activists as it anticipates violence ahead of a possible United Nations recognition of Palestinian statehood.

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Keep the peace between Israel and Egypt
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Chuck Freilich - (Opinion) September 14, 2011 - 12:00am

My fingers burned with excitement. It was just weeks after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's dramatic trip to Israel in November 1977 and my boss had just returned from Egypt, the first Israel Defense Forces officer ever to visit that nation. I was a young officer, and the "present" he brought me — a standard tourist postcard — was the most precious one I could imagine. It was something from Egypt, and it was not going to explode. Until Sadat's trip, and the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty that followed, that sort of contact had been as tangible to Israelis as the moon.

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Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen tells Haaretz: We must stop Palestinians' ‘dangerous scheme’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Natasha Mozgovaya - (Blog) September 14, 2011 - 12:00am

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Representative for Florida and chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is one of the loudest voices in Congress opposing the Palestinian plan to secure United Nations recognition for statehood. A bill she introduced earlier this month would cut funding to any UN body that supports the Palestinian bid. The initiative was criticized by Obama administration officials and Ros-Lehtinen’s Democratic colleagues in Congress, but the Congresswoman made it clear on Tuesday that she has no intentions of backpedalling on the issue.

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Israel’s new problem with the Arab Street
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by David Ignatius - (Opinion) September 13, 2011 - 12:00am

The expanding confrontation between Israel and its neighbors has been described variously as a “train wreck,” a “lose-lose situation” and a “political tsunami.” It’s all those things and likely to get worse, for there’s no quick fix by Israel’s ally, the United States.

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Ten reasons Palestine is right to bring its case to the UN
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Bradley Burston - (Blog) September 13, 2011 - 12:00am

There's a certain implied danger in the idea of playing darts in the dark. Particularly when there are numerous players in a crowded room, and not one has a well-defined target. For Mahmoud Abbas' Palestine, for Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel, and no less, for the Obama administration, the effort to bring Palestinian statehood to the United Nations for endorsement has raised profound fears, prompting internal debates fully as bitter as they have been largely fruitless, with no dependably favorable outcome in sight – for anyone.

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Netanyahu, living by the sword does not cut it
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Nehemia Shtrasler - (Opinion) September 13, 2011 - 12:00am

This year, as always, the big battle is between the treasury and the Defense Ministry. In a normal year, the battle is over the size of the addition to the budget of the Israel Defense Forces. This year, as a result of the social protest movement, the arm wrestling contest is over the size of the reduction.

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Israel arrives at a tough diplomatic intersection
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - September 12, 2011 - 12:00am

Israel is expected to exercise "maximum restraint" as it faces a trio of regional challenges that threaten to further deepen its isolation, already more acute than the Jewish state has seen in decades. Powered by The sharp deterioration in ties with key partners Egypt and Turkey in recent days could pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to shift its approach to regional challenges – most immediately, the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations next week.

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‘Price tag’ – paying for our educational failures
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Rabbi Yosef Blau - (Opinion) September 12, 2011 - 12:00am

After the Israeli army destroyed homes in the illegal Migron outpost, the level of tag mechir (price tag) responses escalated. “Tag mechir” is a policy of making others, usually Arabs, pay the price when the government acts to close an unauthorized settlement. Following the home demolitions in Migron, two mosques were vandalized, as was, for the first time, an IDF base.

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In Israel, Cairo attack deepens sense of siege
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Joel Greenberg - September 11, 2011 - 12:00am

After a week in which Israel’s diplomats were forced out of Turkey and Egypt, for years its regional allies, and facing a possible United Nations vote recognizing a Palestinian state, the country is experiencing a deepening sense of siege. Televised scenes of Egyptian protesters storming the Israeli Embassy in Cairo on Friday, and dramatic media accounts of the threat faced by six security men who were trapped for hours inside, summoned up for many Israelis nightmare scenarios of a lynch by an Arab mob.

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Netanyahu must go, it's as simple as that
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Yoel Marcus - (Opinion) September 9, 2011 - 12:00am

The head of the Home Front Command, Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg, warns: The probability and danger of an all-out war have increased. "Israel has discovered new and dangerous weapons in Gaza," he says, summing up the poem by saying: We can expect a radical Islamic winter. On the other hand, Amos Gilad, who was once known as a doomsayer, says the opposite: Our situation has never been better.

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