Minister: Israel rejects UN Gaza war probe call
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Statesman
by Amy Teibel - January 26, 2010 - 1:00am

Israel will not set up a special panel to investigate last winter's Gaza offensive, a Cabinet minister said Tuesday, rejecting a key demand of a U.N. report that accused the military of war crimes. Information Minister Yuli Edelstein said Israel would submit a document to the U.N. later this week that deals only with Israel's own investigations of its conduct during the three-week war. Those investigations have been conducted by the military, which has exonerated itself of any systematic wrongdoing.

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Middle East needs bridges, not walls
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Linda S. Heard - (Opinion) January 26, 2010 - 1:00am

Middle East peace has rarely seemed as remote as it does now. Instead of coming up with solutions, those involved are hurling accusations, erecting fences or throwing up their hands in despair. The longer this dangerous impasse continues the more the cauldron of violence threatens to boil over. None of the parties are immune from criticism, although some are more to blame than others.

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UN warns Israeli blockade puts Gazans' health at risk
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
January 20, 2010 - 1:00am

The blockade of the Gaza Strip is putting residents' health at risk, the UN and aid groups have warned. Medical facilities and equipment are in disrepair, many damaged in Israel's military operation a year ago have not been rebuilt, they said. Some 27 patients died last year waiting to be referred out of Gaza, they said. Israel and Egypt deny entry to all but basic humanitarian supplies, in order to prevent Gaza's Hamas rulers firing rockets at Israel, they say.

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Call for Palestinians to investigate Gaza 'crimes'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
January 18, 2010 - 1:00am

Palestinian human rights activists have called on authorities in the West Bank and Gaza to investigate allegations of war crimes carried out by their forces. The accusations come from a United Nations report into the Israel's Cast Lead offensive in Gaza last year. Palestinian militants are accused of attacking Israeli civilians, as well as torturing and executing suspected Palestinian informers. The internal investigations must be launched by February, the groups said.

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So who is Israel’s one true friend? Clue: it isn’t the US
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Tony Karon - (Opinion) January 16, 2010 - 1:00am

Friends don’t let friends drive drunk, an old American slogan says. By that measure the US has hardly been a real friend to Israel over the past decade. It has enabled a pattern of Israeli behaviour so reckless as to endanger Israel’s prospects of ever achieving peaceful coexistence with the states and peoples around it. An aggressive drunk often reserves his most toxic invective for those of his friends who tell him the truth: that his behaviour is intolerable, is dangerous to himself and others, and can’t be allowed to continue.

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Israel Loses Its Temper
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by Hassan Haidar - (Opinion) January 14, 2010 - 1:00am

It seems that Israel is unable to comprehend the transformation that took place in Turkey. Or rather, it did comprehend it but lost its temper because it refuses to believe that it is about to lose a key ally in the region in the blink of an eye. Turkey seems confident, firmly implementing the new course of its foreign policy without clamor or awkward positions like those of Iran. Instead, it deals in its capacity as a regional superpower that relies on its history and present, and seeks to contain the junior players in the region, including Israel.

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Jews raise voices for brutalised Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Linda S. Heard - January 5, 2010 - 1:00am

Last week in Cairo, Hedy Epstein, a frail 85-year-old American woman, embarked on a hunger strike for the first time in her life to protest the ongoing blockade of Gaza. She has no idea how her body will hold up, she says, but that isn't her priority. She is one of more than 1,300 international participants from 42 countries who flew to Cairo with the aim of participating in the Gaza Freedom March, initially planned to coincide with the first anniversary of Israel's Operation Cast Lead.

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Hundreds Demonstrate on Border With Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - December 31, 2009 - 1:00am

JERUSALEM — Hundreds of demonstrators gathered on both sides of the Israeli-Gazan border on Thursday to mark a year since Israel’s three-week war in Gaza, and to call for an end to the blockade of the area imposed by Israel and Egypt. About 85 of the several hundred demonstrators inside Gaza were foreigners, part of a group of more than 1,000 who arrived in Cairo in hopes of entering the territory but who were stopped by the Egyptian authorities. After days of negotiation, Egypt permitted a small delegation to cross the normally closed border at the southern Gazan city of Rafah.

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In reversal, Egypt allows some foreign activists to enter Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
December 31, 2009 - 1:00am

Cairo, Egypt — Egypt has allowed 84 pro-Palestinian foreign activists to march to Gaza, which is under an Israeli-led blockade, an Egyptian official in the North Sinai governorate said. Some 1,400 activists from 43 countries had gathered in Cairo since Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the Israeli three-week offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Egypt said 100 activists would be allowed to pass through.

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Communal Groups Back Somali in Bid To Block Israel Lawsuits
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Nathan Guttman - December 30, 2009 - 1:00am

WASHINGTON — American Jewish organizations that fought to establish the jurisdiction of U.S. courts for suits against terrorist groups are taking an opposite tack in suits involving human rights abuses. Jewish groups have filed briefs siding with a former Somali official now living in Virginia who is alleged to bear responsibility for atrocities committed during his tenure.

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