US Defense Chief Criticizes Palestinian Aid Block
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Voice of America
October 4, 2011 - 12:00am

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has criticized U.S. lawmakers for suspending $200 million in aid slated to fund development projects in the Palestinian territories. Panetta said Monday at a news conference in Tel Aviv with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak that this is "no time to withhold those funds." He said it is a "critical" moment in the region, as U.S. officials continue to urge Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate a peace deal.

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Union: PA employees to receive salaries
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
October 4, 2011 - 12:00am

Government employees will receive their September salaries by Wednesday, the head of the civil servants' union Bassam Zakarnah said Tuesday. The Ministry of Finance in Ramallah informed the union that wages for civil servants in the West Bank and Gaza were distributed to banks on Tuesday, Zakarnah said. In recent months, the Palestinian Authority has twice failed to pay employees on time and in full. Officials had blamed a shortfall in aid from Arab states for the fiscal crisis.

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Nigeria: Nation Shies On Palestinian UN Bid
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from All Africa
October 4, 2011 - 12:00am

Nigeria is refusing to say how it will vote when the United Nations Security Council decides on the Palestinians' request for U.N. membership, as increasing diplomatic pressure mounts on the oil-rich West African nation. Nigeria appears to be a crucial vote as Palestinians try to secure support from at least nine of the 15 council members. The U.S. has said it will veto the request. However, the U.S. could avoid that if Palestinians fail to get those nine votes.

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Palestinian PM: Israel's West Bank separation fence will fall like Berlin Wall
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA)
October 4, 2011 - 12:00am

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad Monday said the half-concrete, half fence barrier Israel is building along the West Bank will fall just as the Berlin Wall did. Speaking at a reception at the German Representative Office in Ramallah to mark the Day of German Unity, Fayyad said the barrier, which in places snakes deep into the West Bank, "is going to fall under the will of the Palestinian people just as the Berlin wall had fallen under the will of the German people who wanted to reunite their country."

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‘Price Tag’ Vandals Mark Up Violence
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line
by Arieh O'Sullivan - October 4, 2011 - 12:00am

The escalation in “price tag” attacks on Arab targets and even on the property of the Israeli establishment is a sign of a sense of growing alienation among the Jewish extremist fringe, analysts say. The latest attack suspected of being carried out by Jewish extremist was the torching Monday of a mosque in a Bedouin village in northern Israel. It was the first time vigilantes are believed to have struck inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders rather than in the West Bank.

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Food and Palestinian Identity
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Renee Ghert-Zand - (Blog) October 3, 2011 - 12:00am

It all started in 1996, when Liora Gvion first wondered why the food served at a local restaurant in an Arab-Israeli town with a primarily Arab-Israeli clientele was the same as what was on the menu of Arab-owned restaurants that catered to Jewish Israelis. The sociologist of food, who lectures at the Kibbutzim College of Education and the Hebrew University, spent the next ten years, off and on, trying to figure out why this was so.

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Poet Taha Muhammad Ali dies in Nazareth
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
October 3, 2011 - 12:00am

Celebrated poet Taha Muhammad Ali died in Nazareth on Sunday aged 80 years old. Muhammad Ali was born in Saffuriya village, north of Nazareth, in 1931. He fled to Lebanon with his family in 1948 when the village was captured by the Israeli army. The family was never able to return to his home, moving to nearby city of Nazareth, where he lived and worked in a souvenir shop throughout his life. His poetry followed the experiences of Palestinians living in Israel, and Palestinian refugees around the world. They were translated into several languages, including English and Hebrew.

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Land without peace: Why Abbas went to the U.N.
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Charles Krauthammer - (Opinion) September 30, 2011 - 12:00am

While diplomatically inconvenient for the Western powers, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to get the United Nations to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state has elicited widespread sympathy. After all, what choice did he have? According to the accepted narrative, Middle East peace is made impossible by a hard-line Likud-led Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state and continues to build settlements.

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Palestinians deny bid to remove Tony Blair from Quartet
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC World News
by Jon Donnison - September 29, 2011 - 12:00am

Mr Blair, a former UK prime minister, has held the position of special envoy for four years. Palestinians see him as biased towards the Israelis. The Quartet, made up of the US, Russia, the EU and UN, was established in 2002 to help mediate peace in the region. There have been no direct Israeli-Palestinian talks for more than a year. A spokesman for the PA said that while there was great unhappiness with Mr Blair's role as envoy, his removal was not a priority. He said there were no plans to formally ask for Mr Blair to be replaced. 'Suspicion'

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Palestinians could pursue war crimes charges without full statehood: ICC prosecutor
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Star
by Olivia Ward - September 29, 2011 - 12:00am

In the fierce debate over the Palestinian bid for UN membership, one unseen presence has cast a long shadow. It’s that of Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court — the body Israel has long feared would take up Palestinian allegations of war crimes if its statehood bid is successful. A few blocks away from the UN this week, the man at the centre of the controversy said if Palestine becomes a member state, or a lower-ranked non-member observer state, it could be eligible to pursue claims against Israel.

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