Washington Watch: Ships of fools
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Douglas Bloomfield - (Opinion) July 6, 2011 - 12:00am

There’s more to the story of this year’s would-be Gaza flotilla than friends of Hamas going for another Mediterranean cruise just to poke their fingers in Israel’s eye. As this is being written, the ships remain bottled up in Greek harbors, stopped not by Israeli commandos rappelling from helicopters, but by something even more intimidating: squads of Jewish lawyers and diplomats. Israel also had help from international leaders who didn’t want to appear to be backing an international terrorist organization.

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2 killed in IDF strike on terror cell
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Hanan Greenberg - July 5, 2011 - 12:00am

The Israel Air Force targeted a terror cell in Gaza Tuesday, after it was identified as attempting to fire projectiles at Israel. The pilots reported hitting their mark. A Palestinian medical source said two people were killed and one wounded in the strike, which took place east of the Maghazi refugee camp. The sources said the three were hit while approaching the security fence in central Gaza; adding that the bodies were taken to the Gaza hospital. It is still unclear which militant organization the three were associated with.

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The blockade is the problem
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) July 4, 2011 - 12:00am

All signs indicate that the government of Israel has taken steps to receive the present Gaza flotilla in a manner much more systematic than last year's actions. Instead of relying entirely on the use of force, diplomatic measures were taken this time, and friendly states, first and foremost Greece, mobilized to help Israel and hampered the flotilla's departure. This diplomatic action proved that there are alternatives less violent than Israel's predilection for discharging armed soldiers to suppress civilian protests.

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With Gaza flotilla stalled, both sides claim victory
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Joel Greenberg - July 3, 2011 - 12:00am

After intense diplomatic efforts and threats of military action, Israel appeared Sunday to have stymied an attempt to challenge its naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, with nearly all boats in a planned aid flotilla confined to ports in Greece. Israeli officials pronounced themselves satisfied with efforts to block the flotilla, which have averted a confrontation at sea. Last year, Israeli naval commandos boarded a similar flotilla and killed nine people in clashes on a Turkish ship, drawing international condemnation that forced Israel to ease its land blockade of Gaza.

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Intense Israeli lobbying stalls Gaza flotilla
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Dan Murphy - June 28, 2011 - 12:00am

International activists from a dozen countries are trying to break Israel's blockade on the Gaza Strip, just a little over a year after a Gaza-bound aid flotilla ended in a fatal confrontation with Israeli naval commandos. The participants should have already set sail. But the US boat at least is being held up in Athens on what activists say are spurious charges amid a broader Israeli push to thwart a repeat of last year's events.

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Flotilla activists seek "blood" -Israeli FM
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Ori Lewis - June 28, 2011 - 12:00am

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday participants in an aid flotilla planning to challenge an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip were seeking "confrontation and blood". Pro-Palestinian activists have said around a dozen ships carrying aid to Gaza, territory controlled by Hamas Islamists, could depart from European ports in the coming days. A year ago, nine Turkish activists, including a dual U.S.-Turkish national, were killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers who raided a Gaza-bound convoy in the eastern Mediterranean.

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Gaza flotilla organizer: We have no intention of attacking IDF soldiers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amos Harel, Barak Ravid - June 28, 2011 - 12:00am

The organizer of the Gaza-bound flotilla dismissed Tuesday Israeli allegations that extremists aboard the ships plan to harm Israeli soldiers who would be dispatched to stop them. Dror Feiler says the hundreds of people planning to sail soon in a bid to break Israel's naval blockade of the Palestinian territory have signed a declaration of nonviolence. Feiler told Army Radio on Tuesday that if Israel has information about specific suspects, it should pass it along to flotilla's organizers.

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Israel Rescinds Its Warning to Gaza-Bound Journalists
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - June 27, 2011 - 12:00am

Israel on Monday set aside a warning it issued the previous day that foreign journalists aboard a flotilla planning to challenge its naval blockade of Gaza risked being barred from the country for up to a decade and having their equipment impounded.

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Palestinian Inmates Put Down Their Textbooks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line
by David Miller - June 27, 2011 - 12:00am

Weeks before Israeli Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu declared he was putting an end to college-level studies by Palestinian prisoners, the inmates had already stopped making notations in textbooks on Islamic history and studying for final examinations in international relations. But both the students and their teachers are angry and perplexed by the decisions.

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Let the suffering end
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Ghassan Khatib - (Blog) June 27, 2011 - 12:00am

Palestinians, especially prisoners' families, are following with a great deal of interest (and sometimes jealousy) the relatively successful public relations and media campaign by family and friends to obtain the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. When hearing the sincere expressions and words of his family, especially his father and mother, many Palestinians can easily identify with them. They wonder, though, whether his mother understands that in the same instant, thousands of Palestinian mothers are having the same feelings.

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