In Israel, Settling for Less
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Gadi Taub - (Opinion) August 29, 2010 - 12:00am

WILL Israel remain a Zionist state? If so, what kind? These are the important questions in Israeli politics today, and will be looming over the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority scheduled to begin Thursday in Washington.

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PM pulls back from Yosef’s words
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Khaled Abu Toameh, Herb Keinon - August 29, 2010 - 12:00am

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rushed on Sunday evening to distance himself and his government from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s death wish for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian people, after the flood of angry Palestinian reactions to the comments. “These words do not reflect the approach of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, nor the position of the government of Israel,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

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Activists created 'fictitious' graves in Mamilla cemetery, say Israeli authorities
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

A political battle over a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem that began with charges of insensitivity levelled at plans for building on the site has spread into a more curious fight about whether hundreds of nearby tombstones are even real. The Mamilla cemetery had its peace disturbed this month by Israeli bulldozers demolishing gravestones in the middle of the night and by Muslim protests. The once sleepy plot of Muslim gravestones in Jewish west Jerusalem has become a flash point for rival claims to the holy city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Dozens faint during prayers under Ramadan sun
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
August 20, 2010 - 12:00am

Tens of thousands of Palestinians lined up at West Bank checkpoints early on Friday morning, waiting to be granted access to the holy city of Jerusalem for prayer on the second Friday of Ramadan. Officials at the Islamic Waqf office estimated 150,000 worshipers gathered in the Old City mosque for prayer, while Israeli estimates put the number at 95,000.

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Counterpoint: Land and Sovereignty
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Charles Glass - August 20, 2010 - 12:00am

In the elegant and incisive style that characterizes all of his writing, James Carroll set out in these pages (“The wandering Jew and the mad Saracen,” Views, Aug. 12) the theological genesis of the dispute in Israel-Palestine. Mr. Carroll presented a compelling vision of Christian religious prejudice against both Jews and Muslims that he believes informs this seemingly intractable conflict. Christian insistence from St. Augustine onward that “Jewish exile was a matter of theological proof,” he wrote, animates Christian hostility to Zionism.

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Settlement rabbi arrested on suspicion of incitement to racism
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Chaim Levinson - August 19, 2010 - 12:00am

Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, from the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, was detained by police on Thursday and questioned by investigators from the international crimes unit on suspicions of incitement to racism. Elitzur and Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira wrote a book "The King's Torah" which condones the murder of non-Jews if they threaten the welfare of Jews, citing Jewish law to support the argument.

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Haniyeh: PA waging war against Islam
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
August 17, 2010 - 12:00am

Gaza government Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh accused the Palestinian Authority on Monday evening of waging a war against religion and Islam. Haniyeh, speaking to reporters at the rebuilding ceremony of the police station in Al-Shati refugee camp, said "what is happening in the West Bank is a religious war that targets the pious people, particularly the new generation."

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What Hamas is really afraid of
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - August 16, 2010 - 12:00am

"I wish these pictures reached leftists abroad," my friend said to herself Tuesday as she watched Hamas police use rifle butts and clubs to beat her friends - activists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Although my friend has never been a fan of the Fatah government in the West Bank, she is outraged by the romanticization of Hamas rule by foreign activists.

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Citizens, but not equal
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - August 16, 2010 - 12:00am

It sure was considerate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to wish a "Ramadan karim" to our Muslim brothers for their holy month. As they do every year, the radio broadcasts will include reports of how the president hosted "respected Arabs" for an iftar feast at the end of one of Ramadan's daily fasts. It's a lot easier to extend holiday greetings than it is to put a stop to the whims of a group of American Jews who decided to build a Museum of Tolerance on the site of what was once a Muslim cemetery in central Jerusalem.

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Why Israeli-Palestinian conflicts over land turn epic
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Omar Kasrawi - August 11, 2010 - 12:00am

Standing outside a mausoleum in Jerusalem's Mamilla cemetery, Rawan Dajani bows her head and cups her hands upward in prayer for her ancestor Sheikh Ahmed Dajani. He was buried in Mamilla, the oldest Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem, nearly half a millennium ago. About 200 meters away, a fenced-off construction zone marks the future site of the Center for Human Dignity – Museum of Tolerance, a project overseen by the California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.

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