What West Bank road renovations say about the occupation
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

Whenever I am driving uphill, I nearly always think of Abu Mazen, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. To be more precise, of two sentences he uttered during the sixth Fatah conference a year ago.

»

Those noisy barbarians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Noam Ben Ze'ev - August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, head of the rabbinical committee in the territories and a power broker in the halls of government, is this country's real prime minister, writer Sefi Rachlevsky said in an op-ed in Haaretz's Hebrew edition last week.

»

Palestinians: No talks if settlement freeze ends
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
by Mohammed Daraghmeh - August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

The Palestinian leader has warned President Barack Obama that he will pull out of upcoming peace talks if Israel ends a slowdown of West Bank settlement construction, a Palestinian negotiator said Monday. Direct negotiations aimed at ending the decades-old Mideast conflict are to resume in Washington next week after months of U.S. diplomatic efforts. Both sides seem pessimistic about the talks, their first in 20 months.

»

End of settlement freeze could derail Mideast talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Times
by Eli Lake - August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians that are set to begin next week in Washington may be scuttled before they even get going. Israel has yet to commit to extending a freeze on construction of settlements that the Palestinian side says it needs to continue negotiations. That settlement freeze is set to expire Sept. 26. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas stated in a letter to President Obama that he would not participate in the direct talks if Israel continued construction in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

»

WEST BANK: Big obstacles in road to direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Maher Abukhater - (Blog) August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

Even before direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations kick off in Washington on Sept. 2, the road there is littered with political landmines. The Palestinians stated when they agreed on Friday, under U.S. and international pressure, to resume direct negotiations that if Israel resumed settlement construction in the West Bank, the talks would stop.

»

MESS Report / PLO must cease climbing trees too high to climb down
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - (Blog) August 22, 2010 - 12:00am

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to resume direct negotiations with Israel on September 2 in Washington without any of his preconditions being met. Israel has not promised to end construction in the settlements, and the Quartet's statement does not even mention this issue. Contrary to the demand that the Quartet's announcement would constitute the framework for the talks, U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell was quick to make it clear this is not the way things will be.

»

Israeli army's female recruits denounce treatment of Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Harriet Sherwood - August 22, 2010 - 12:00am

It was a single word scrawled on a wall at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that unlocked something deep inside Inbar Michelzon, two years after she had completed compulsory military service in the Israeli Defence Force. The word was "occupation". "I really felt like someone was speaking the unspoken," she recalled last week in a Tel Aviv cafe. "It was really shocking to me. There was graffiti saying, 'end the occupation'. And I felt like, OK, now I can talk about what I saw."

»

Anshel Pfeffer / It's all too easy for Israeli rights groups to call the IDF's bluff
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Anshel Pfeffer - August 20, 2010 - 12:00am

This week I published in Haaretz the story of a small group of reserve soldiers who last month, while on active duty in the Jordan Valley, decided to make a small modification to their routine: They replaced the standard collection of curt phrases in basic Arabic - used by generations of IDF soldiers to order Palestinian civilians to stop, open their car door, present documents and identify themselves - with the more pleasant greetings and respectful, traditional blessings of which Arabic is so full.

»

Those forced from their land need a common voice
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Jesse Rosenfeld - August 20, 2010 - 12:00am

It has been just over a year since Israeli settlers backed by the courts began evicting and taking over the homes of Palestinian families in the Sheik Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem. In response, neighbourhood residents have been joined by Israeli and international activists in weekly demonstrations, inspired by the protests against Israel’s Wall in the West Bank towns of Bi’lin and Ni’lin.

»

1948 and Israel's deceptive bargaining position
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Salon.com
by Ben White - August 19, 2010 - 12:00am

The refrain from Israeli politicians and the country’s allies and apologists is familiar: There can be no peace deal until the Palestinians "recognize" Israel as "a Jewish state." While this can sound reasonable to the casual listener in the West, this demand actually points to critical flaws in the "peace process" and the way in which the international community approaches the Palestine/Israel question.

»


American Task Force on Palestine - 1634 Eye St. NW, Suite 725, Washington DC 20006 - Telephone: 202-262-0017