PA, Egypt Sign Gas Deal to End Gaza Crisis
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
March 28, 2012 - 12:00am

CAIRO (Ma'an) -- The Palestine Electricity Company on Tuesday announced a deal with Egypt to provide gas to the Gaza Strip. Palestine Electricity Company director in Gaza Walid Saad Sayil signed the agreement with the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation in Cairo on behalf of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. Sayil told reporters that Egyptian technicians have been instructed to conduct geographical surveys to find the best route for a network of pipelines to transport gas from Sheikh Zweid to the Rafah crossing on Gaza's border.

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PA will ask UN summit to end Israeli administrative detention
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
March 27, 2012 - 12:00am

RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- After the UN Human Rights Council voted to launch an international investigation into Israeli settlements last week, the PA prisoners ministry is preparing to ask a UN meeting to force an end to Israel's detention of Palestinians without charge. Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs Issa Qaraqe said Monday the PA is launching a legal campaign for the a UN meeting on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in Geneva starting next Monday.

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Israel's new friends
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Nimrod Asulin - (Opinion) March 27, 2012 - 12:00am

Following the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel managed to deescalate its decades-long conflict with the Arab world with an earnest effort to forge a peace process with the Palestinians. Over the last decade, however, the peace talks witnessed setbacks, which subsequently led to an escalation in violence. This escalation hampered the Jewish state's diplomatic ties, especially with its one time regional ally, Turkey. Due to the changing realities, Israel has responded by returning to and employing an “old” foreign relation policy in a new way.

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Olmert to J Street: Abbas a partner for peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Yitzhak Benhorin - March 27, 2012 - 12:00am

WASHINGTON - "Don’t tell me there is no partner. There is a partner. (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) wants peace with Israel," former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said during a J Street gala dinner on Monday. The former Israeli premier said Abbas was against terror during the Yasser Arafat era and was in favor of peace negotiations during Ariel Sharon's tenure as prime minister, as well as during his own.

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Toulouse attacks harm Palestinians in their own name
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Charles Glass - (Opinion) March 26, 2012 - 12:00am

It started in France in 1894, when a Viennese journalist covered the Paris treason trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. "In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism," Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary. "Above all, I recognised the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism." That futility led him to propose an escape from anti-Semitism to a nation-state in Palestine.

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Palestinians seek political, financial support from Baghdad Arab summit
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
March 25, 2012 - 12:00am

RAMALLAH, March 25 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian leadership is looking forward to gain decisions of full Arab political and financial support for their cause in the Arab League annual summit due to be held in Baghdad, Iraq on March 29, a senior Palestinian official said on Sunday. Despite the concerns that the Arab summit this year will be more involved in discussing the outcomes of the Arab revolutions, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Xinhua that President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to chair the senior Palestinian delegation that will attend the summit.

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Fayyad Welcomes Call to Boost PA Funding
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
March 23, 2012 - 12:00am

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The premier in Ramallah Salam Fayyad on Thursday welcomed the call to donors to give the Palestinian Authority $1 billion, but said the funds must be received swiftly to ease the deepening financial crisis. At a donors' conference in Brussels on Wednesday, the chair of the Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee on Palestine, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, urged donors to pledge $1 billion to fill the PA's budget deficit. Fayyad told Voice of Palestine radio that it was crucial that at least half of the money was transferred quickly to reduce the fiscal crisis.

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UN Rights Body Launches Probe into Israeli Settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Stephanie Nebehay - March 23, 2012 - 12:00am

GENEVA (Reuters) -- The United Nations launched an international investigation on Thursday into Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, with the United States isolated in voting against the initiative brought by the Palestinian Authority. The UN Human Rights Council condemned Israel's planned construction of new housing units for settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, saying they undermined the peace process and posed a threat to the two-state solution and the creation of a contiguous and independent Palestinian state.

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Israeli PM Terms UNHRC Settlement Fact-Finding Mission as “Hypocritical”
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
March 23, 2012 - 12:00am

JERUSALEM, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed at United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Thursday after it approved a fact-finding mission to Israel to probe into the effects of settlements on Palestinians. UNHRC on Thursday voted in favor of sending a dispatch to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in order to evaluate Jewish settlements repercussions on Palestinian human rights.

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Want to promote Israel in the U.K.? Recognize 1967 borders
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Barak Ravid - March 22, 2012 - 12:00am

Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) cancelled an advertisement by Israel’s Ministry of Tourism in London which attempted to promote a new book on northern Israel. The reason for the cancellation of the ad, which was first published in British newspapers in November 2011, was the fact that the map that was attached to it did not properly demarcate the 1967 borders in the Golan Heights and the West Bank.

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