Aviva Shalit: Netanyahu said decision would be made in coming hours
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Jack Khoury, Jonathan Lis, Barak Ravid - December 21, 2009 - 1:00am

The mother of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on Monday said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had told her that ministers would make a decision in the "coming hours" on a deal with Hamas for her son's release. "They hope the decision will be made this evening, and if not ? then tomorrow morning," Aviva Shalit told reporters in Jerusalem, where she was waiting in a protest tent opposite Netanyahu's office. Her comments came as top cabinet members met for a fifth meeting consecutive meeting on the proposed prisoner exchange with Hamas.

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Israel settlements: rabbis say soldiers' loyalty to God trumps army orders
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - December 18, 2009 - 1:00am

In Israel, a standoff is escalating between the Israeli defense establishment and religious nationalists over the possible evacuation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. On Thursday, a group of rabbis published a letter saying a soldiers' loyalty to the divine takes precedence over their commanders.

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Babylon & Beyond
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
December 17, 2009 - 1:00am

Religion is the opiate of the masses, Karl Marx said. That might be true in some places, but in Israel, this drug induces dangerous hyperactivity. Always a scratch-of-the-surface away, religion is an emotional factor in conflict -- between Israel and the Palestinians, between Israelis and themselves. Recent days have provided one reminder after another.

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Abbas now
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) December 17, 2009 - 1:00am

As could have been expected, the limited construction freeze in the settlements has not brought the Palestinian leaders back to the negotiating table. It is obvious that the decision to give incentives to residents of isolated settlements will not contribute to building trust between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu is continuing to walk a tightrope between his commitment to a two-state solution and his desire to placate the settlers and their representatives in Likud and the governing coalition.

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Civilising the debate
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Keith Kahn-Harris - (Opinion) December 16, 2009 - 1:00am

Last Sunday's Observer finally broke a story about which rumours had been circulating for a while: Professor David Newman, a British-Israeli geographer at Ben Gurion University, Israel, received an astonishing couple of emails from Michael Gross, a British-Jewish businessman, philanthropist and member of the university's board of governors, threatening to "use whatever influence I have at BGU to have you thrown out" and, even more extraordinarily, saying "I hope you perish" and "the sooner you are removed from BGU and the face of the earth, the better."

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Hamas: Deal for Shalit release still a long way off
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Jack Khoury - December 15, 2009 - 1:00am

Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha said Tuesday that a prisoner exchange deal for the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces solider Gilad Shalit was still a long way off. President Shimon Peres told IDF soldiers Monday that the release Shalit did not depend solely on Israel, but was being hampered by disagreements between Hamas' wing in the Gaza Strip and its overseas wing.

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Weighing Netanyahu as Peace Maker
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - December 15, 2009 - 1:00am

A month ago, Aluf Benn, a senior columnist at the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote an article that shocked many. He said he believed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, was seriously interested in making concessions to the Palestinians and coming to an agreement on a two-state solution. Long a foe of Palestinian statehood, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now says he backs the two-state idea.

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The slope of Masada
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

For decades the settlers have been stealing the helpless peasants' land and Israeli governments have been paving the settlers' roads. Every year during the olive harvest, Jewish malefactors raid olive groves in the West Bank, and the long arms of the security forces are too short to assist the Palestinians. In the rare cases when they do catch the culprits, a charitable judge "takes the circumstances into consideration."

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Cabinet approves national priority map
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Herb Keinon - December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

Over the objections of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the four other Labor Party ministers, the cabinet on Sunday overwhelmingly approved by a 21-5 vote the government's new national priority map that will include some 90 West Bank settlements. In a protracted cabinet debate over the map, numerous Likud ministers took Barak to task for saying that the settlements should not be granted the priority status as a "prize" at a time when a number of the settlements were the jumping off point for extremist actions such as Friday's torching of the mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf.

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New Israeli funds for West Bank settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

They are being designated as national priority zones, meaning they will qualify for grants, tax benefits, and other forms of aid. The move comes amid anger by Jewish settlers at a government-imposed curb on new building in settlements. The Labour Party leader warned some of the new money might go to extremists. On Friday a mosque in the West Bank was set on fire, and sprayed with Hebrew graffiti. Labour leader Ehud Barak said: "I don't think that we need to award them a prize in the form of including them in the national priority map."

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