Middle East News: World Press Roundup

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak meets today with President Obama in Washington. A shootout at a mosque in south Gaza between Hamas and extremist Islamist group leaves at least 22 dead. Tensions increase between Israel and Hezbollah. Haaretz profiles a U.S.-based non-profit organization that has invested millions of tax-free dollars buying up land in occupied East Jerusalem. Israel's envoy to the United States is reportedly set to meet with White House officials and U.S. envoy George Mitchell's staff in Washington to discuss a settlement freeze. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak postpones a cement delivery into Gaza. Fatah elects a Jewish Israeli, Uri Davis, to its Revolutionary Council.

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Mubarak to Tell U.S. Israel Must Make Overture ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Michael Slackman - August 17, 2009 - 12:00am In White House meetings beginning Monday, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is expected to tell the Obama administration that Arab nations want peace, but are unwilling to abide Mr. Obama’s call to make good-faith concessions to Israel until Israel takes tangible steps like freezing settlements, an Egyptian official said. » Read more

Radical Leader Killed in Gaza Clashes ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Ethan Bronner - August 17, 2009 - 12:00am A shootout at a mosque in the southern Gaza city of Rafah between Hamas security men and a more extreme Islamist group called the Warriors of God ended early Saturday with 22 dead, including the group’s leader and a senior Hamas security officer. The Ministry of Interior in Gaza said the leader, Abdel Latif Moussa, died in an explosion at his house near the mosque when fighting resumed after dawn. A ministry spokesman said his death might have resulted from explosives in his house that detonated when security men sought to reach him. » Read more

For Hamas, Challenges May Be Growing ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Howard Schneider - August 17, 2009 - 12:00am The deadly shootout in a Gaza Strip mosque Friday between members of the ruling Islamist Hamas movement and a militant splinter group may signal further challenges to Hamas's authority in Gaza as it tries to reconcile the demands of running a government with its policy of armed conflict with Israel, according to Palestinian and Israeli analysts. » Read more

'Israel Is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and its History' by Rich Cohen ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Ruth Andrew Ellenson - (Book Review) August 16, 2009 - 12:00am If you have an inclination to be a rabble-rouser and find yourself bored at a dinner party with American Jews, bring up Israel. You might not get invited back, but in the meantime you'll have fun throwing down a choice apple of discord. Just for kicks, ask people how they feel about Noam Chomsky, the Jewish American linguist who's famously critical of Israel's policies regarding Palestinians, and let the games begin. » Read more

Israel, Hezbollah threaten war – again ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor by Nicholas Blanford - August 15, 2009 - 12:00am Israel and its arch foe Hezbollah are waging an increasingly heated war of words, fanning concerns about another bruising encounter between the two enemies who fought a devastating but inconclusive conflict in 2006. » Read more

In Israeli army, rabbis deepen religious tone. Is that kosher? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor by Joshua Mitnick - August 9, 2009 - 12:00am In the final days before his infantry platoon entered Gaza last January against Hamas, "M." and his reservist buddies were approached by a representative of the military rabbinate. Would they be interested in a chat with a military clergyman during a break in training? With no objections, they were introduced to a "Rabbi Chen," dressed in civilian clothes and red-bearded, who told the soldiers that "holiness of the people of Israel" would keep them safe. » Read more

Abbas: Talks, not terror, is way to Palestinian state ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters August 17, 2009 - 12:00am Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday negotiation was the only path to statehood, espousing non-violence after his Fatah party backed an option of "resistance" against Israeli occupation. "We are peace seekers," the Western-backed leader said at a cabinet meeting in Ramallah of the Palestinian Authority. "The main and the only path is the path of peace and negotiations. We don't have any other path and we do not wish to use any other path." » Read more

U.S. group invests tax-free millions in East Jerusalem land ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Uri Blau - August 17, 2009 - 12:00am American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, a nonprofit organization that sends millions of shekels worth of donations to Israel every year for clearly political purposes, such as buying Arab properties in East Jerusalem, is registered in the United States as an organization that funds educational institutes in Israel. » Read more

Yishai says outposts not illegal ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews by Erfat Weiss - August 17, 2009 - 12:00am Interior Minister Eli Yishai, Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Ya'alon, Minister of Information Yuli Edelstein and Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz toured illegal West Bank outposts Monday, at the invitation of the Shomron Regional Council. The ministers, traveling under heavy security, visited the outposts of Nofei Nehemia and Bruchin, both of which are awaiting the necessary zoning permits to become legal settlements, as well as Havat Gilad. The latter, according to its residents, was built on land purchased by Moshe Zar. » Read more

Israeli envoy to visit U.S. for settlement freeze negotiation ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua August 17, 2009 - 12:00am Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's envoy to negotiations with the Obama administration will depart on Sunday for meetings with U.S. officials in an attempt to negotiate a possible future settlement freeze, local daily Ha'aretz reported on its website. Yitzhak Molcho, the envoy, is expected to meet with White House officials and with the staff of U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, preparing the ground for a meeting between Netanyahu and Mitchell that is due to take place on Aug. 26 in London, according to the report. » Read more

Barak postpones cement delivery to Gaza Strip ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Yaakov Katz - August 17, 2009 - 12:00am The Defense Ministry is postponing the delivery of cement to the Gaza Strip out of fear that Hamas will get its hands on the material and use it to rebuild its military infrastructure damaged during Operation Cast Lead, officials said on Sunday. Defense Minister Ehud Barak was reconsidering the delivery of the cement after, according to IDF Southern Command intelligence, cement that was transferred for the renovation of a British War Cemetery in Gaza earlier this month was partially confiscated by Hamas. » Read more

Israeli wins Fatah top body seat ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News August 16, 2009 - 12:00am A Jewish-born Israeli has been elected to the governing body of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party. Uri Davis, 66, an academic who is married to a Palestinian, is an outspoken critic of what he calls Israel's "apartheid policies". As the only Israeli member of the Revolutionary Council he says he wants to represent non-Arab people who support the Palestinian cause. He called for an international campaign to boycott Israel to be toughened up. Dr Davis said his Israeli citizenship made no difference to his election. » Read more

Qaeda a challenge to Hamas, but also opportunity? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters by Alastair MacDonald - (Analysis) August 16, 2009 - 12:00am On Peace Street, it's hard to tell where the scars of one war end and another's begin. Yet the weekend battle that raged along this dusty alley in the Gaza Strip may just offer a glimmer of opportunity to ease conflict -- though only if one looks beyond evidence that it adds new layers of hatred to an already tangled struggle. The rubble of homes and the bullet-scarred mosque at the end of the road in the Palestinian border town of Rafah lay as fresh relics on Sunday of bloody clashes between Gaza's ruling Hamas Islamists and a splinter group aligned with global al Qaeda. [nLG71700] » Read more

Who was Abu Noor al-Maqdisi? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat August 16, 2009 - 12:00am Dr. Abdul Latif Bin Khalid Al Mousa AKA Abu Noor al-Maqdisi was the leader of the Salafist Takirist Jihadist group Jund Ansar Allah [Soldiers of the Companions of God]. Al-Maqdisi was born in the Gaza Strip and was said to be fifty years old at the time of his death. He studied in the Gaza Strip education system, completing his secondary school education in the late 1970s where he was particularly noted for excellence the field of science. » Read more

Palestinian state is not synonym for terrorist entity ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) August 17, 2009 - 12:00am The soldier at the Qalandiyah checkpoint gave a bored look at the car with the Israeli license plates. No one asked for documents or passes. Ten minutes later we were in the heart of Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian Authority. The security forces obviously know there is no cause for concern. Nowadays Tel Aviv's beaches are more dangerous than the West Bank's cities. According to statistics from the Prime Minister's Office, more Israelis have been murdered in the past month in Israel than those murdered since January 2007 in the territory of the PA. » Read more

Hamas: Extremism Breeds Extremism ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat by Tariq Alhomayed - August 16, 2009 - 12:00am Armed conflict between Palestinians has returned to Gaza once more, however this time it is against the Islamic Hamas movement in the name of religion and under the pretext of Jihad. On Friday, an extremist group announced the establishment of a new Islamic Emirate; the group also announced that it considered Hamas to be a secular movement that had falsely laid claim to Islam. » Read more

What is Required of the Obama Administration Today… ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat by Raghida Dergham - (Opinion) August 14, 2009 - 12:00am The Barack Obama Administration behaved naively when, in demanding that both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict fulfill their commitments, it forcefully introduced the idea of the Arabs offering the Israeli government a reward or a bribe to stop violating international law and freeze illegal settlement-building, by taking step towards normalization that would be linked or would coincide with freezing Israeli settlement activity. » Read more

A fight for Palestine ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News (Editorial) August 17, 2009 - 12:00am Hamas may have ended the rebellion launched by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Jund Ansar Allah, but it did so the hard away. Not before 24 people were killed, including two children, and over 100 were injured, was some semblance of order restored in the southern Gaza Strip. If Hamas would like to take credit for crushing this Al-Qaeda group in a standoff that came to a fiery end, it must also take the blame for having started the conflagration when it opened the Gaza Strip two years ago to foreign extremist elements in the absence of a legitimate Palestinian authority. » Read more

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