Netanyahu is fomenting revolution in the West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - November 16, 2010 - 1:00am

Haaretz's report last week that there are no more Palestinian fugitives in Samaria sparked many responses from Palestinian groups and the Arab media. Once more the Palestinian Authority was accused of collaborating with Israel and trying to avoid a reconciliation with Hamas.

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Palestinian held for Facebook criticism of Islam
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Statesman
by Diaa Hadid - November 12, 2010 - 1:00am

QALQILIYA, WEST BANK — A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars — caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down. The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from this backwater West Bank town, is highlighting the limits of tolerance in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority — and illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence.

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Six Years After His Death, Divided Palestinians Laud Arafat as Unifying Figure
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line
by Benjamin L. Hartman - November 12, 2010 - 1:00am

Six years after he died in a Paris hospital, leaving behind a failed peace process and a Palestinian government plagued by inefficiency and corruption, Yasser Arafat remains the object of veneration by Palestinians, even as they are divided between nationalist and Islamic factions. Construction on a museum dedicated to his life and containing many of his personal effects – including the black-and-white keffiyeh he turned into a symbol of Palestinian nationhood – has begun in the Muqata compound in Ramallah, where Arafat spent his last years besieged by Israeli troops.

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Six Years After His Death, Divided Palestinians Laud Arafat as Unifying Figure
Media Mention of Ghaith al-Omari In The Media Line - November 12, 2010 - 1:00am

Six years after he died in a Paris hospital, leaving behind a failed peace process and a Palestinian government plagued by inefficiency and corruption, Yasser Arafat remains the object of veneration by Palestinians, even as they are divided between nationalist and Islamic factions. Construction on a museum dedicated to his life and containing many of his personal effects – including the black-and-white keffiyeh he turned into a symbol of Palestinian nationhood – has begun in the Muqata compound in Ramallah, where Arafat spent his last years besieged by Israeli troops.

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WEST BANK: Abbas tells Israelis peace more important than settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Maher Abukhater - November 11, 2010 - 1:00am

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday called on Israelis to choose peace over settlements, urging them not to waste this opportunity. “To the Israeli people I say: Making peace is more important than settlements,” said Abbas as tens of thousands of Palestinians from all over the West Bank rallied at his headquarters to mark the sixth anniversary of the death of his predecessor Yasser Arafat, founder of Fatah movement.

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Israeli tactics are 'uniting' Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Jonathan Cook - (Opinion) November 10, 2010 - 1:00am

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, is in the United States this week, but few observers expect an immediate or significant breakthrough in the stalled peace talks with the Palestinian leadership. In public, Mr Netanyahu maintains he is committed to the pledge he made last year, shortly after he formed his right-wing government, to work towards the creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state.

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Israel's own citizens are the new target of extremist settlers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Jesse Rosenfeld - November 9, 2010 - 1:00am

West Bank settlers entered the Arab city under the cover of an armed escort. As they proceeded, security forces chased Palestinian youth down alleys, firing tear gas, stun grenades and foam-covered bullets. Masked in keffiyahs, local high school students who had been striking against the settlers' provocations reorganised, throwing stones at the Israeli forces from behind makeshift barricades.

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Headdress, radio, holy book help tell Arafat story
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Statesman
by Mohammed Daraghmeh - November 9, 2010 - 1:00am

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK — Yasser Arafat had a knack for turning ordinary objects into symbols, including the black-and-white checkered headdress that came to represent the Palestinian quest for a homeland. Six years after his death, the keepers of Arafat's memory are gathering thousands of objects — photographs, pistols, the trademark sunglasses and military-style suits he favored — for display in a museum under construction at his former West Bank headquarters, where Arafat spent the last three years of his life encircled by Israeli forces.

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Stressed out Gazans need therapists, pop pills
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Nidal al-Mughrabi - November 8, 2010 - 1:00am

JABALYA, Gaza Strip, Nov 8 (Reuters) - If ever there was a little corner of the world where trauma therapists hanging out their shingle should do a boom business, it has to be Gaza. Take, for example, Samira, a 43-year-old schoolteacher and mother of five who lived too close to a Hamas security complex bombed repeatedly during Israel's December 2008-January 2009 cross-border offensive.

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Israel artists boycott new theater in settlement
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Statesman
by Karin Laub - November 8, 2010 - 1:00am

JERUSALEM — An artists' boycott of a $11 million performing arts center opening Monday in the Jewish settlement of Ariel is giving a new twist to a pressing question — where should Israel's permanent borders run? Leading Israeli playwrights, actors and artists say they will not cross the "Green Line" — Israel's frontier before it captured the West Bank in 1967 — to perform in the new theater in Ariel, an Israeli enclave of 19,000 people. The artists wrote in a letter explaining the boycott that Ariel was built in the heart of a war-won land to prevent creation of a Palestinian state.

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