Shin Bet: 2009 was quiet year
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Hanan Greenberg - December 30, 2009 - 1:00am

The year 2009 saw a significant decline in the number of attacks both in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank compared with previous years, according to data released Wednesday by Israel's Shin Bet to mark the end of the year. At the same time, many attempts by terror groups from the Gaza Strip to plant booby traps inside Israel were thwarted by removing the devices from the Strip into the Sinai, and from there to Israel.

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US administration delaying trial against PA
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Yitzhak Benhorin - December 29, 2009 - 1:00am

A federal judge in Washington has criticized the American administration's refusal to take a stand on a damages claim filed against the Palestinian Authority over a terror attack which left an American citizen dead. Esh Kodesh Gilmore, 25, who worked as a security guard at the National Security Institute offices in east Jerusalem, was murdered in a terror attack which took place in the area in the year 2000. His friend Itay Swissa was seriously injured.

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Israeli Consensus Cracks over Shalit
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line
by Rachelle Kliger - December 23, 2009 - 1:00am

Every day for the past three and a half years, campaigners have sat at a makeshift tent outside the official prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem in protest, cajoling passersby to sign a petition urging the release of captured soldier Gilad Shalit. At first, the campaigners were loud and aggressive. People who passed the tent without signing would get called back, stickers and fliers thrown into their faces. Not signing, the campaigners explained, was simply not an option.

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Netanyahu not at all serious about peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Hassan Tahsin - (Opinion) December 15, 2009 - 1:00am

PEACE with Palestinians has never been on the agenda of Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Nevertheless, he speaks about peace. In his view peace has only one meaning — the total surrender of Palestinians to Israel. In his opinion, all the Palestinians presently living in the occupied territories are terrorists because they demand freedom from Israel; they want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their independent state; they don’t want their children to die of malnutrition; they don’t want to be humiliated by Israeli soldiers or thrown arbitrarily out of their homes and farms.

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Israel is ready for peace. Are its neighbors?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Nadav Tamir - (Opinion) December 15, 2009 - 1:00am

The time for peace in the Middle East is now. This has been the consistent message from both the Netanyahu and Obama administrations. And it is time to take advantage of the fact that we have a stable government in Israel capable of making a move toward peace, a US government that has made it an important foreign-policy priority, our best Palestinian Authority negotiating partner thus far in President Mahmoud Abbas, and a majority of the population and government on both sides who desire a two-state solution.

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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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Gaza one year on: The aftermath of a tragedy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
(Opinion) December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

Hilmi Samouni still hopes at some point – "inshallah" – to go back to his old job as a kitchen assistant in the Palmyra, Gaza City's best known shwarma restaurant. But unlike his 22-year-old brother Khamiz, who is working once again in a car paint shop, and his 20-year-old cousin Mousa, on a two-year accountancy diploma course at Al Azhar University, Hilmi, who is 26, found that he couldn't cope when he returned to the Palmyra after the war.

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Popular Fatah Leader Complicates Prisoner Swap
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Wall Street Journal
by Charles Levinson - December 9, 2009 - 1:00am

Marwan Barghouti, the popular imprisoned Palestinian leader, embodies the promise and the peril Israel faces as it negotiates with Hamas to trade hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for a long-held Israeli soldier. Islamist Hamas says Mr. Barghouti tops the list of approximately 1,000 prisoners it is demanding Israel free in exchange for Sgt. Gilad Shalit, who Hamas has held captive in Gaza for more than three years.

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J'lem banning foreign leaders from Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Herb Keinon - December 8, 2009 - 1:00am

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government has an undeclared, but de facto policy, of not letting senior political figures, such as foreign ministers, enter the Gaza Strip from Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned. According to government officials, the reasoning is twofold: to deny Hamas legitimacy that would come of such visits, and as a way of trying to apply pressure over kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit. The policy has come to light after Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin told a parliamentary committee last week that Israel had banned a visit he had hoped to make to Gaza.

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The US cash behind extremist settlers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from
by Andrew Kadi, Aaron Levitt - (Opinion) December 8, 2009 - 1:00am

Last month, a Brooklyn-based non-profit organisation called the Hebron Fund, which supports Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied city of Hebron, held a fundraiser at the New York Mets' stadium, Citi Field.

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