The VIPs' hush money
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - (Opinion) January 18, 2012 - 1:00am

Two people signed the entry permit into Israel that Mahmoud Abbas received from Israel's Civil Administration on January 1 (and which will be in force until March 1 ): 1st Lt. Noy Mitzrafi, commander of the permits office, and Lt. Col. Wissam Hamed, a department head in the Israel Defense Forces' operations directorate. It is this limited permit that Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and PLO chairman, complained of receiving instead of his normal VIP permit during a closed meeting of his Fatah faction.

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Israel Needs a Positive Approach to Hamas-Fatah Reconciliation
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Shlomo Brom - (Opinion) January 18, 2012 - 1:00am

The conventional wisdom in Israel holds that Hamas-Fateh reconciliation is detrimental to the peace process. The main argument is that Hamas is a spoiler of the negotiations process because it is a radical Islamic movement guided by a virulent anti-Israel ideology that preaches elimination of the state of Israel. Successful reconciliation would endow Hamas with veto power to block any attempt to achieve a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Hamas Leaders Evacuating Families From Syria
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
by Ibrahim Barzak - January 17, 2012 - 1:00am

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Hamas officials say senior members of their exiled leadership will evacuate their families from the group's headquarters in Syria. Hamas, a militant Islamist Palestinian group, rules the Gaza Strip. The officials, speaking from Damascus, said Tuesday that the evacuations are in response to the deteriorating security situation in Syria, where President Bashar Assad has been resisting a 10-month uprising.

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The Quieter Upheavals
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
(Editorial) January 17, 2012 - 1:00am

The narrative of last September from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide is strikingly similar. The high point in Israel came September 3, when nearly half a million people took to the streets in peaceful protest against an economic system that they argued betrayed the Zionist dream. A few weeks later, the Palestinian Authority president delivered his historic request for statehood to the United Nations.

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Palestinians need Arab help urgently
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
(Editorial) January 17, 2012 - 1:00am

The economic situation of the Palestinian Authority has grown so serious that it is affecting the basic needs of Palestinians. Help from the more prosperous Arab countries seems the most likely way to avert serious damage to the social structure of the already-stressed Occupied Territories. The PA raises little of its own revenue, and now Israel and foreign donors are strangling it, mainly through suspension of the remittance of US$100 million (Dh367mn) in taxes that Israel collects on behalf of the PA.

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Is Hamas Mellowing?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
by Nathan J. Brown - (Analysis) January 17, 2012 - 1:00am

Over the past few weeks, as Palestinian reconciliation efforts have inched forward, some of Hamas’s leaders have provoked interest by apparently staking out new positions. They have not only agreed to enter the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), thus participating in a body that signed the Oslo Accords with Israel, a pact the group has long opposed, but also committed themselves to “popular resistance,” an alternative to the armed activity through which the group gained international notoriety.

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Israel's negative campaign against Palestinians is on the backburner, for now
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Barak Ravid - (Opinion) January 16, 2012 - 1:00am

The Prime Minister’s Office, as well as senior officials in the Palestinian Authority have been reporting, rather laconically, on the positive atmosphere and the in-depth and serious discussions taking place in Jordan, despite the hidden bitterness and anger on the side of the Israelis. When the talks started, both sides committed to Jordan’s Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh that they would avoid leaking information, and make sure that the contents of the talks would remain within his office's hands.

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Israel Plays a Role
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Ghassan Khatib - (Analysis) January 16, 2012 - 1:00am

There has always been a very strong correlation between internal Palestinian issues and Palestinian-Israeli relations. This is true because Israel is a key player in all aspects of Palestinian life. Israel's troops are on the ground in the West Bank, and occupy the Gaza Strip by air and sea. But Israel's occupation was never an issue of military or security control alone; it has interfered with Palestinian economic and political development for the four decades of its existence.

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A Glimpse into the Life of an Israeli-Palestinian Couple
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - January 13, 2012 - 1:00am

The occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967 united, for the first time since 1948, the Palestinian community that remained within Israel. Families that were divided with the founding of the state came together, friends saw each other after 19 years, refugees in the West Bank and Gaza hastened to revisit their birthplaces (now destroyed, or resettled by Jews). Palestinians from both sides of the Green Line met at work, school and places of entertainment. This reunification naturally resulted in a number of marriages.

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PA Shares Israel's Nuclear Iran Fears
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Chronicle
by Stephen Pollard - January 12, 2012 - 1:00am

The Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, has attacked the behaviour of Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and said that he shares Western - and Israeli - concerns with the Iranians' nuclear project. Speaking in his Ramallah headquarters, Prime Minister Fayyad said that the Palestinians were "greatly harmed" by the Iranian leader's conduct. President Ahmadinejad, he said, should stop acting as a supposed spokesman for the Palestinians. The Iranian president was concerned only with increasing Iranian influence in the region.

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