International Community | The American Task Force on Palestine

Prominent Italian author lashes out at Israel boycott proponents
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Maya Sela - February 24, 2011 - 1:00am

Celebrated Italian novelist Umberto Eco yesterday challenged those who advocate cultural boycotts and said that censuring artists because of actions committed by their governments was akin to racism. Last week, British writers called on prominent British novelist Ian McEwan to reject an Israeli literary prize in protest at Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

In the Middle East protests, a seismic shift
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Fareed Zakaria - (Editorial) February 24, 2011 - 1:00am

We are in the midst of a revolution in the Middle East, one that has unleashed long-suppressed forces that will continue to send shock waves across an arc of countries from Morocco to Iran. We are all looking at each crisis individually as it breaks out. But if we step back we can see that this is really a seismic shift and that it will in time reverberate throughout the region.

AYALON: The death of ‘linkage’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Times
by Danny Ayalon - (Editorial) February 24, 2011 - 1:00am

The last few weeks and months have finally proven the fallacy of one of the most mistaken theories about development and peace in the Middle East. For a number of years, foreign officials, experts and commentators have claimed that if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was solved, then there would be peace in the Middle East. This was coined “linkage.”

An Appeal to My Muslim Friends
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Eric Yoffie - (Opinion) February 23, 2011 - 1:00am

I need your help and your reassurance. This is, I know, a time of great uncertainty in large stretches of the Muslim world. The Middle East is in turmoil. Dictators have been toppled, others cling desperately to power, and demonstrators fill the streets and the squares of the Arab world to demand freedom.

Accountability beyond rhetoric
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from
by Ziad Asali - (Opinion) February 23, 2011 - 1:00am

The recent uprisings in the Arab world, including some regime changes, call for a meaningful reassessment of current policy. One would expect the usual demands for democracy, human rights, freedom of expression and regularly scheduled elections as well as a heightened commitment to the people of the region, that their rights and aspirations will be reflected in this new vision. Furthermore, it would not be surprising if all these were packaged as part of an initiative to address the Palestine/Israel conflict and a commitment to the establishment of a state of Palestine.

Accountability Beyond Rhetoric
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Huffington Post
by Ziad Asali - (Blog) February 23, 2011 - 1:00am

The recent uprisings in the Arab world, including some regime changes, call for a meaningful reassessment of current policy. One would expect the usual demands for democracy, human rights, freedom of expression and regularly scheduled elections as well as a heightened commitment to the people of the region, that their rights and aspirations will be reflected in this new vision. Furthermore, it would not be surprising if all these were packaged as part of an initiative to address the Palestine/Israel conflict and a commitment to the establishment of a state of Palestine.

Fear grows in Israel over backlash from Egypt
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Edmund Sanders, Batsheva Sobelman - February 22, 2011 - 1:00am

Israel's so-called cold peace with Egypt is looking colder by the day. Early Tuesday, Egypt reportedly permitted two Iranian warships to enter the Suez Canal for the first time since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. During a mass prayer service Friday in Cairo's Tahrir Square, anti-Israel cleric Yusuf Qaradawi— who returned to Egypt after years in exile — called for the "conquest" of Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, which was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War and sits atop a Jewish holy site.

Fayyad: US veto obstructed Palestinian efforts
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
February 22, 2011 - 1:00am

Palestinian Authority Prime Minster Salam Fayyad on Sunday said the US veto of a UN anti-settlement resolution was a clear obstruction to Palestinian efforts to end Israel's occupation. All 14 other Security Council member states voted in favor of the resolution condemning illegal settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land. US President Barack Obama's administration used its veto to torpedo the motion after Obama failed to convince President Mahmoud Abbas to abandon the resolution in a last minute appeal.

The UN is ripe for advancing the Palestinian agenda
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Shlomo Shamir - (Editorial) February 22, 2011 - 1:00am

A new era has dawned at the United Nations with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From this point on, new, different rules will characterize discussions of the conflict in the Security Council. The most important and, from Israel's standpoint, alarming change is this: In the one UN body that has the authority to forcibly enforce resolutions, a new alignment of forces is rapidly taking shape, and a new distribution of influence is emerging between the United States and the other four members of the exclusive club of states with permanent membership and veto power.

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