'Settlements aren't Obama's problem'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
July 14, 2009 - 12:00am

The Peace Now movement launched a new campaign on Tuesday, calling on Israelis to push for a freeze on settlement construction. The campaign focuses around the slogan: "Settlements are not Obama's problem, not the world's problem, but your problem." At a press conference held in Jerusalem Tuesday morning, Peace Now chair Yariv Oppenheimer said, "The Israeli public has been brainwashed, first by the Labor party, and then by Kadima, Likud and obviously the right-wing parties, that settlement building is in the nation's interest."

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Will EU Penalize Exports from Israeli Settlements?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Der Spiegel
by Ralf Beste, Christoph Schult - July 14, 2009 - 12:00am

The Israeli settlement known as Maale Adumim sits fortress-like atop a red stone plateau. In the Bible, the road to the plateau was known as the "steep red road." As the largest Israeli settlement in the Palestinian-administered areas of the West Bank, Maale Adumim is home to 40,000 people. Bulldozers are clearing lots for new houses on its outskirts. Its population is growing by the week and, in recent years, it has grown faster than any other settlement.

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Why US diplomats are visiting Israeli settlers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - July 14, 2009 - 12:00am

While the Obama administration keeps up pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cap Jewish settlement expansion, locally based US diplomats are cultivating ties with the very communities they consider an obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state.

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Defending the indefensible settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Richard Silverstein - July 13, 2009 - 12:00am

A former insider at Aipac has spilled the beans on a major secret initiative by The Israel Project (TIP) designed to counter opposition in the US to Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Douglas Bloomfield, former chief lobbyist for Aipac, writes that TIP, a group dedicated to promoting Israel's positive image among the US media and policymakers, has circulated a 140-page primer designed to prompt supporters in their exchanges with US journalists and key decision-makers when they are arguing in favour of the settlements:

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Negotiations and settlement construction cannot coexist
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Ghassan Khatib - (Opinion) July 13, 2009 - 12:00am

One subject on which there is complete Palestinian consensus across the political spectrum is that negotiations and Israeli settlement expansion in occupied territory including East Jerusalem are mutually exclusive. Indeed, according to numerous studies and surveys, one of the main reasons for the steady decline in public support for the PLO leadership, whether under President Mahmoud Abbas during the Annapolis process or the late President Yasser Arafat before him, is that they continued negotiating with Israel in spite of the settlement expansion.

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Freezing settlement construction a defining test of Israel's intentions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Daoud Kuttab - (Opinion) July 13, 2009 - 12:00am

A year or so after the signing of the Oslo accords, I was one of a group of Palestinian journalists who were invited by Shimon Peres to his office at the Israel Foreign Ministry in West Jerusalem. When questions focused on continued settlement activities, the then foreign minister tried to deny them.

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For our own good
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Yossi Alpher - (Opinion) July 13, 2009 - 12:00am

Ever since the Israeli-Palestinian peace process began in earnest with the Oslo accords of 1993, the two sides' negotiations have been accompanied by Israeli settlement construction. Serious Israeli peace-seekers like Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert all continued building or at least expanding settlements even as they sought interim and final status arrangements with the PLO leadership. The latter, first Yasser Arafat and in recent years Mahmoud Abbas, proceeded with negotiations even as they protested settlement expansion.

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Trading a settlement freeze for action on Iran, Arab ties
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Leslie Susser - (Analysis) July 13, 2009 - 12:00am

The fact that Israel and the United States have yet to reach an agreement on Jewish settlement growth in the West Bank is as much a question of wider Middle East concerns as about the settlement issue itself.

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Settlers are encountering their first real opponent - Obama
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amos Harel - (Opinion) July 10, 2009 - 12:00am

The mood in Jerusalem this week was one of shock. As if it weren't enough that the Obama administration is ignoring previous understandings between Israel and the Bush administration regarding natural growth in the settlements, now it seems there isn't agreement even on the outposts.

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Peace Now: Probe settler youth movements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Erfat Weiss - July 10, 2009 - 12:00am

Peace Now has declared war on Hilltop Youth – will the State join in? In an appeal to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, Peace Now demanded Friday that an investigation be opened against two prominent right-wing youth organizations that focus their energies on establishing illegal outposts in the West Bank and on fighting authorities seeking to evacuate them.

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