Norway leads against the settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Rami Khouri - (Opinion) December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

While US President Barack Obama has not been able to secure a total freeze of Israeli settlements, several European governments and the European Union collectively have undertaken a series of measures related to Israeli colonization policies in the occupied West Bank that are worth noting. The increasing focus in some Western countries on the criminality of Israel’s colonization may represent a new point of pressure that – like the international boycott of South Africa – could ultimately push Israel to a more responsible and realistic response to criticisms of its colonialism.

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Editorial: Unsettling facts
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
(Editorial) December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

Israeli Jewish settlers need not worry about being evicted or that the homes built for them will be brought down. They should have no concerns that Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition will stop settlement construction. There has never been a climate in Israel more conducive to building them. And the reasons are economical as much as they are ideological.

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Israel: Who will soldiers obey on settlements – Netanyahu or rabbis?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

In an unprecedented move, Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday cut ties with one of the dozens of religious seminaries that feed students to the military amid concerns that its ideologically driven students might refuse orders to evacuate settlements. The military was concerned that the chief rabbi of the school, known as a “hesder” yeshiva and located in the West Bank settlement of Har Bracha, was educating students to become insubordinate soldiers.

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A Year of Stalemate, Dashed Hopes in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Voice of America
by Luis Ramirez - December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

2009 saw no resumption of the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. Both sides are beginning the New Year at a stalemate over Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and rising tensions over the status of Jerusalem. 2009 began with bombs and rockets as Israel launched a massive assault, Operation Cast Lead, aimed at stopping militants from firing rockets at Israel. During the assault, militants from Gaza continued to fire homemade missiles over the border, exploding in communities of southern Israel.

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West Bank Is Tense After Arson at Mosque
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

Passions ran high on Sunday in this Palestinian village in the northern West Bank two days after arsonists, presumed by Palestinians and many Israelis to be Jewish extremists, set fire to the central mosque. A delegation of Jewish religious leaders and activists, including some from West Bank settlements, tried to reach the village to express their abhorrence of the attack. But the Israeli Army prevented the group from entering Yasuf for security reasons as enraged villagers proclaimed that the visitors would not be welcome.

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Israel settlement freeze shields dismantling of illegal outposts
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

Israel’s settlement freeze is supposed to clamp down on new housing starts in the West Bank, but it’s also shielding illegally built outposts and settler houses from demolition. The enforcement of an order to evacuate outposts – a step demanded by the US to help restart peace talks with the Palestinians – has been put off for years. Palestinians and Israeli peace groups have been challenging the delay in Israel’s Supreme Court, which requested from Israel a timetable for the demolitions.

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Real Settlements and Imagined State
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by Husam Itani - (Opinion) December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

The sympathy in the words of Israeli Minister Benny Begin and the attack of settlers against the mosque of the village of Yasuf in the West Bank, in addition to the tepid response to Palestinian efforts aimed at obtaining international recognition of the state which the Palestinian Authority is threatening to declare unilaterally, reveals the depth of the Palestinian predicament and its urgent need for a approach different from that which has proved bankrupt, in and from the side of the two camps dominating the Palestinian scene.

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Far-right yeshiva head: My duty is to tell troops to refuse orders
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Chaim Levinson, Anshel Pfeffer - December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

The head rabbi of a far-right West Bank yeshiva declared Monday after his school was ousted from the Israel Defense Forces hesder program that he encouraged his students to refuse settlement evacuation orders because he had an obligation to "speak his inner truth." Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, whose Har Bracha Yeshiva's status was revoked late Sunday, wrote in an article published on Arutz 7 that he had skipped a critical hearing on the matter with Defense Minister Ehud Barak because he would not give in to "governmental pressure."

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The slope of Masada
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

For decades the settlers have been stealing the helpless peasants' land and Israeli governments have been paving the settlers' roads. Every year during the olive harvest, Jewish malefactors raid olive groves in the West Bank, and the long arms of the security forces are too short to assist the Palestinians. In the rare cases when they do catch the culprits, a charitable judge "takes the circumstances into consideration."

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The ball is now with the international community
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Ghassan Khatib - (Opinion) December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

Binyamin Netanyahu's announcement in late November that his government would implement a settlement freeze was not taken seriously by Palestinians, Arabs or other interested and involved parties. Palestinians warned that the announcement amounted to no more than a public relations gimmick aimed at reducing growing international criticism of Israel's settlement expansion policies. Palestinian officials made clear that the Israeli "freeze" did not signal any change to Israeli settlement expansion, which is responsible for preventing the resumption of negotiations.

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