Gaza atrocities
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
(Editorial) February 4, 2010 - 1:00am

Shells containing phosphorus, which when exposed to air burns through anything with which it comes into contact, are OK in international law provided that they are not fired at civilians. During its bombardment of the Gaza ghetto, Israel repeatedly denied that it had used shells containing this horrific chemical. In the wake of the incontrovertible UN findings that phosphorus shells were deployed against Gaza’s heavily built up areas, the Israelis changed their tune.

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At Burlesconi meeting, Abbas says peace plans in works
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
February 4, 2010 - 1:00am

While Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi displayed mixed political messages during his visit to Israel and the West Bank on Wednesday, host President Mahmoud Abbas announced his determination to move forward with peace talks. Palestinian leaders must move ahead with the peace process, Abbas told reporters at a news conference with Berlusconi, noting steps were being made with "Arab brothers and friends." He told the conference Palestinians should expect an official announcement in the coming weeks.

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Israel's Uncivil War
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line
by Benjamin Joffe-Walt - (Analysis) February 3, 2010 - 1:00am

It all began with enough reports to fill the average Ph.D. candidate's reading list for weeks. In the months following the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, governments, civil society groups and human rights organizations issued dozens of reports, some of them well over 100 pages long, on the legality, operation and effects of the war.

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Michael Sfard: Laws of conflict do not allow for killing civilians in this way
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
by Michael Sfard - (Opinion) February 3, 2010 - 1:00am

If this commander's quote represents the rules of engagement as they were applied during Operation Cast Lead, then it is a smoking gun because it proves the case that Israel was charged with. It proves the main revelations in the Breaking the Silence report. When I read the testimonies in that report – some of which were difficult to read – what was common to them was a change to rules of engagement so that either there were no rules, or they allowed soldiers to shoot anything that moved in the vicinity.

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Netanyahu risks Muslim wrath over Jerusalem holy site
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - February 2, 2010 - 1:00am

Will Netanyahu use a court decision to forgo a plan to alter the Mughrabi Gate? King Abdullah of Jordan is distancing himself from Israel's prime minister because of the violation of the status quo in East Jerusalem. The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is waiting in the corner for the slightest provocation against Islamic holy places by the Israeli government. The only trouble Benjamin Netanyahu is still missing is that of the Mughrabi Gate, at the entrance to the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary compound.

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Israel admission on white phosphorus doesn't settle larger debate
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Ilene Prusher - February 1, 2010 - 1:00am

The revelation by Israel that two senior military officers have been reprimanded for using white phosphorus in last year’s Gaza war has been met with both criticism and measured applause; Haaretz columnist Amos Harel welcomed it under the headline, “At Last, A Real Response.”

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Iran blames Israel for Hamas commander killing
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Fredrik Dahl, Reza Derakhshi - February 1, 2010 - 1:00am

Iran blamed Israel on Tuesday for the killing of a Hamas commander in Dubai last month. Israel's government has declined official comment on the Jan. 20 death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, which the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Friday announced as an assassination. But Israeli security sources linked him to rockets and other arms that reach Gaza from Iran. "This is another indication of the existence of state terrorism by the Zionist regime (Israel)," Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a news conference.

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Jordan criticized for stripping Palestinian rights
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
by Dale Gavlak - February 1, 2010 - 1:00am

A U.S.-based human rights group criticized Jordan Monday for stripping the citizenship of nearly 3,000 Jordanians of Palestinian origin in recent years. Nearly half the kingdom's 6 million people are of Palestinian origin and Jordan fears that if Palestinians become the majority, it will disrupt the delicate demographic balance. Those concerns have been heightened by some Israeli hard-liners who argue that neighboring Jordan should become the Palestinian state and that more West Bank Palestinians should be pushed into Jordan.

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Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Gideon Levy - (Opinion) January 28, 2010 - 1:00am

Israel's bigwigs attacked at dawn on a wide front. The president in Germany, the prime minister with a giant entourage in Poland, the foreign minister in Hungary, his deputy in Slovakia, the culture minister in France, the information minister at the United Nations, and even the Likud party's Druze Knesset member, Ayoob Kara, in Italy. They were all out there to make florid speeches about the Holocaust.

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Why Hamas is denying it targeted civilians in Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Erin Cunningham - January 28, 2010 - 1:00am

Ahead of a looming deadline for Israel and Hamas to respond to war crimes charges in the UN-sponsored Goldstone report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) hit back today at a claim made by Hamas earlier this week that its fighters did not commit war crimes in its three-week war with Israel last winter. Instead, said Hamas, its fighters struck civilian areas in Israel “by mistake” when launching rockets at the country’s military installations.

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