Gaza rights groups question police use of force
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
February 6, 2013 - 1:00am

Human rights groups in the Gaza Strip are calling for authorities to investigate police use of force against civilians after the death of a suspected drug trafficker last week. Atiya Suleiman Qishta, 41, was killed on Saturday after he was shot in the back by an anti-drug unit of the Gaza police force. Police sources told the Palestinian Center for Human Rights that eight officers laid an ambush for the car as part of an attempted drug bust, but when Qishta stepped out of the vehicle he refused police orders to stop and attempted to flee.

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PA security man found dead in Ramallah
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Khaled Abu Toameh - February 6, 2013 - 1:00am

The body of a Palestinian security officer was discovered on Tuesday in his apartment in Ramallah. The officer, Hassan Jalayta, 40, from Jericho, had been summoned for questioning by his commanders. Jalayta left his family home in Jericho on Tuesday morning and was supposed to report for questioning, but did not show up, a Palestinian Authority security source said. The source did not say why the officer, who worked for the Preventive Security Service, had been summoned for questioning in Ramallah.

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Doctor: Palestinian inmates sneak sperm to wives
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Mohammed Daraghmeh - February 6, 2013 - 1:00am

A Palestinian fertility doctor claimed Wednesday that he has used prisoners' sperm smuggled out of Israeli jails to help their wives have babies, and that five women have become pregnant so far. Despite unlikely odds and difficult conditions, a fertility expert said the claims could be plausible. There are about 4,500 Palestinians in Israeli jails, serving sentences for offenses ranging from stone throwing to killing Israeli civilians.

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The Death of Cinema in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor
by Asmaa Al-Ghoul - February 6, 2013 - 1:00am

Heavy slabs of concrete seal the doors of al-Nasr Cinema in Gaza City. Not one aperture exists through which you can see the interior of the building, which has been abandoned for decades. Its towering walls loom over the street, stained black from the old fire. In the 1980s, these walls housed one of the largest cinemas in the Middle East, but now new generations in the Gaza Strip grow old having never been inside a cinema. Memories of better times

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Herzog, Fayyad meet, warn of PA collapse
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
February 5, 2013 - 1:00am

Labor MK Isaac Herzog met with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah on Monday and warned that the collapse of the PA would be "catastrophic" for Israel. Fayyad told Herzog that Israel's continual withholding of tax revenues to the PA and the failure of donor states to transfer promised aid to the West Bank had the Palestinian Authority  on the brink of collapse.

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Mashaal says his reported 'two-state' comments are false
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
February 5, 2013 - 1:00am

Hamas chief Khalid Mashaal told Jordanian state TV on Saturday that media reports suggesting he accepts the two-state solution are false. Last week, the Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq reported that Mashaal asked Jordan's King Abdullah to inform US President Barack Obama that Hamas will accept two states for Israel and Palestine. But Mashaal tried to dampen the comments in a TV interview, saying the movement would not "all of a sudden accept a Palestinian state with interim borders."

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Finance minister: PA budget $3.6 billion for 2013
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
February 5, 2013 - 1:00am

The Palestinian Authority government is working on a draft budget of $3.6 billion for 2013, set for approval by the end of the month, the PA finance minister said Tuesday. The budget contains a number of measures to try and reduce the budget deficit and increase revenues, Nabil Qassis told Ma'an. “We decided to adopt a united taxation system in attempt to limit tax evasion. In addition, we raised taxes on car imports and purchase, and these procedures are expected to yield $50 million a year,” he said.

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Dissenters on Panel Blast Study Claiming Palestinian Textbooks Don't Vilify Jews
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Nathan Jeffay - February 4, 2013 - 1:00am

Controversy quickly engulfed a new study that said Palestinian textbooks do not incite hatred for Jews with Israel blasting the report — with some members of the report’s advisory panel claiming they were blindsided by its release.

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The Vision of Rawabi Nears Fruition
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line
by Felice Friedson - February 4, 2013 - 1:00am

The American businessmen and women appeared transfixed as they listened to the man behind the first Palestinian planned city depict his journey from vision to reality.

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Need for textbook examples of peace in Israeli-Palestinian conflict
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
(Editorial) February 4, 2013 - 1:00am

When two peoples are in conflict, one path to peace is to write textbooks that don’t further hate of the other. For today’s school-age Palestinians and Israeli Jews, there’s now some hope of that becoming true. On Monday, a group of scholars released a three-year analysis of 94 Palestinian and 74 Israeli textbooks that found few characterizations that demonize or dehumanize the other side. And most of the schoolbooks were factually accurate. This is encouraging.

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