Middle East News: World Press Roundup

NEWS: Hamas celebrates the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate in Egypt's presidential election while Israel frets. Hamas threatens to escalate attacks against Israel. Israel and the US are planning their largest-ever joint military drill. PLO official Ishtayya says Palestinians are moving forward with efforts to gain membership in more UN bodies but the US has asked for a delay. Fatah says Pres. Abbas and Hamas leader Mishaal have agreed to set a date for their next meeting. The PA has arrested more than 100 people following the assassination of the governor of Jenin and is holding them under controversial circumstances. Settler Council leaders denounce extremist “price tag” violence. The mixed Jewish-Arab town of Acre is drawing more tourists and Jewish extremists. A Palestinian man is reported to have been killed during an Israeli military training exercise in the occupied West Bank. COMMENTARY: The Washington Post interviews PM Fayyad, who says he may run in future elections. Nathan Thrall says a third intifada is “inevitable.” Merav Michaeli says police are to blame for clashes with social justice protesters in Tel Aviv. Rivka Cohen says Israel's Jewish and Arab schools are separate and distinctly unequal. Khaled Abu Toameh says Hamas seems to be losing control of the Gaza Strip. Maya Sela says Israelis could learn from Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple if she would allow a Hebrew translation. Walid Choucair says it makes no sense for Palestinians or other Arabs to put their cause on hold for the next US elections, which are always around the corner. Yael Gvirtz asks what the real costs of the settlements are to Israel. Aaron David Miller looks at how the Palestinian-Israeli peace process got sidelined. Akiva Eldar says it's a shame that Israeli “social justice” protesters don't notice of the plight of Palestinians living under occupation. Hazem Saghiyeh says that regarding the tragedy of the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, there is no answer but the Lebanese state but no state to provide that answer.

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Gazans celebrate Brotherhood victory in Egypt ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press by Ibrahim Barzak - June 25, 2012 - 12:00am The Gaza Strip erupted in celebratory gunfire on Sunday with news that the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate won the presidency in neighboring Egypt, but one person was killed. Tens of thousands of joyous Palestinians took to the streets across the territory after Egypt announced that Mohammed Morsi won last weekend's runoff election, the first time an Islamist has won that nation's highest office. » Read more

Israel jittery after Brotherhood victory in Egypt ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press by Josef Federman - June 25, 2012 - 12:00am The Muslim Brotherhood victory in Egyptian presidential elections, announced Sunday, has raised fears in Israel that its strategic 1979 peace agreement with its southern neighbor could be in danger. In contrast, in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, ecstatic residents flocked into the streets, fired guns in the air and handed out candy in celebration. Israel's peace agreement with Egypt, its first with an Arab country, is a cornerstone of Israeli security. The agreement ended decades of hostilities, with to five wars and thousands of deaths. » Read more

Hamas threatens to escalate attacks on Israel ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press by Ian Deitch - June 24, 2012 - 12:00am Gaza's militant Hamas rulers threatened to escalate fighting with Israel on Saturday after airstrikes killed several gunmen in the coastal territory, and Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel wounded one person and damaged an elementary school in the country's south. The two sides periodically clash, but this flare-up was the most serious in months. It started with an attack by a little known al-Qaida-inspired Palestinian militant group but has extended to drag in Hamas. » Read more

Israel, U.S. planning largest-ever military drill ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua June 25, 2012 - 12:00am Israel and the United States are set to hold their largest-ever missile defense drill in October, local media said on Monday. About 3,000 soldiers are expected to take part in the drill and they will practice responses to a simulated mass barrage of hundreds of missiles fired at Israel simultaneously from Iran and Syria, the Ma'ariv daily reported. Israel will deploy its upgraded Arrow 2 missile defense system, while the U.S. do its Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense and PAC-3 Patriot air defense systems during the drill, according to the report. » Read more

Negotiator: UN bid underway, US asked for delay ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency June 25, 2012 - 12:00am PLO negotiator Muhammad Ishtayya said Monday that the US and other foreign nations were pressing the Palestinian leadership to suspend its campaign for membership of UN bodies until after the US presidential election. Ishtayya told the official PA radio Voice of Palestine that the leadership had initiated the process of obtaining a UN General Assembly resolution which recognizes a Palestinian state on borders prior to Israel's occupation in 1967. Palestinian officials have opened talks with Arab states and France to get the process started, he said. » Read more

Fatah official: Mashaal, Abbas to set meeting date ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency June 25, 2012 - 12:00am Fatah leader President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Khalid Mashaal are set to organize a meeting now the Egyptian presidential election results have been announced, a Fatah official said Monday. The heads of the rival political parties were scheduled to meet last Wednesday. The summit, the latest chapter of the long-running reconciliation process, was postponed amid the Egypt presidential electoral run-off. » Read more

Palestinian Authority arrests more than 100 following death of Jenin governor ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Amira Hass - June 25, 2012 - 12:00am Many family members of detainees from the Jenin refugee camp have been having trouble sleeping in recent weeks. Not because of their relatives held in Israeli prisons but rather because of their relatives held in Palestinian Authority prisons, and mainly because of rumors - which have been confirmed - of torture at the Preventative Security detention facility in Jericho. » Read more

Yesha leaders come out against extremist violence ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews by Itamar Fleishman - June 25, 2012 - 12:00am Yesha Council leaders voiced rare criticism against the violent acts of far Right activists on Sunday after unknown assailants punctured the tires of Yesha official Ze'ev Hever. In a Yesha Council conference in Ofra, chairman Danny Dayan said, "Violence has become common currency in our camps while we remain silent." » Read more

Israel's historic city of Acre faces tourist and settler tensions ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian by Harriet Sherwood - June 24, 2012 - 12:00am Amid narrow winding alleys, crumbling courtyards and dark doorways of neglected buildings, a work of art gleams within the walls of Israel's ancient but dilapidated city of Acre. The Efendi Palace hotel opened in March after eight-and-a-half years of painstaking restoration. » Read more

Israeli army ‘game’ leaves one Palestinian dead ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star by Selim Saheb Ettaba - June 25, 2012 - 12:00am As the Shawakha brothers rushed to protect their home from intruders, they had no clue they were unwitting participants in an Israeli army exercise that would leave one of them dead. “It was March 27, 1:30 in the morning,” recalls Akram Shawakha, 36, who was on watch duty on the top floor of the modest family home on a hill east of the West Bank city of Ramallah. Their house is on the outskirts of the wealthy village of Rammun, where most residents have emigrated to America. » Read more

Lally Weymouth interviews Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Lally Weymouth - (Interview) June 22, 2012 - 12:00am “If only we could clone him,” a senior U.S. official said to me recently, speaking about Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Held in great respect by foreigners, Fayyad may soon find himself out of a job if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (also called Abu Mazen) forges a national unity government with Hamas. This past week, Fayyad sat down in the West Bank city of Ramallah with The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth. Excerpts: » Read more

The Third Intifada Is Inevitable ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Nathan Thrall - (Opinion) June 22, 2012 - 12:00am EARLIER this month, at a private meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his security advisers, a group of Middle East experts and former intelligence officers warned that a third Palestinian intifada was imminent. The immediate catalyst, they said, could be another mosque vandalized by Jewish settlers, like the one burned on Tuesday, or the construction of new settlement housing. » Read more

The police turned Israel's nonviolent protest into terror ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Merav Michaeli - (Opinion) June 25, 2012 - 12:00am "Our policy is to use force to restore quiet," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Sunday, at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. And the translation: "Force," i.e., disproportionate violence; "quiet," i.e., suppression of the opposition that interferes with our ability to rule and do whatever we feel like doing; "to restore," i.e., it had previously been quiet, everything was in order and we just want to return things to that previous state. » Read more

Schools for Jews and Arabs: Separate but definitely not equal ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Rivka Cohen - (Opinion) June 25, 2012 - 12:00am In one clear step, Israel’s Education Minister has demonstrated that the separate Jewish and Muslim school systems have nothing to do with preserving an autonomous space for Jewish and for Arab culture, but rather - plain segregation. » Read more

Is Hamas losing control? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Khaled Abu Toameh - (Analysis) June 24, 2012 - 12:00am Hamas's failure to enforce the latest Egyptian-brokered cease-fire with Israel is seen by Palestinians as a sign that the Islamist movement may be losing control over the Gaza Strip. In the past, Hamas has shown that its security forces are capable of implementing cease-fires with Israel. Hamas, whose leaders maintain that they are not interested in providing Israel with an excuse to launch another major military offensive in Gaza, had even gone as far as detaining members of other groups who insisted on launching rockets at Israel. » Read more

Alice Walker's The Color Purple should be read in Israel ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian by Maya Sela - (Opinion) June 22, 2012 - 12:00am Literature at its best should be a Trojan horse. Good authors don't just tell us a story to pass the time in a pleasant way; he or she offers ideas that insinuate themselves into the reader's mind, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes in the form of a tale that disguises its moral and cultural lessons. Books can provide readers a mirror in which they will see something they hadn't seen before, and give them the opportunity of subsequently seeing themselves and their surroundings in a different light. » Read more

“Freezing” Palestine – not the Settlements ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Hayat by Walid Choucair - (Opinion) June 22, 2012 - 12:00am Eighteen months into the Arab Spring, as expected, the Palestinian situation is being neglected in the Arab world and by the international community. All of the countries concerned with Palestine have been busy tending to their domestic situations, or the regional repercussions of Arab uprisings on other countries, which has allowed Israel to act unilaterally against the Palestinians. » Read more

The Real Cost of Israel's Settlers ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Yedioth Ahronoth by Yael Gvirtz - (Opinion) June 13, 2012 - 12:00am The only difference between the hate crime perpetrated at Neve Shalom ("Oasis of Peace," a cooperative village jointly established by Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel as a model of coexistence) and others is that the target this time around was an Israeli village. » Read more

The Overshadowed Peace Process ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National Interest by Aaron David Miller - (Opinion) June 22, 2012 - 12:00am Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, there once lived something called the Arab-Israeli peace process. It never lived an altogether happy life, but it did actually exist and breathe. In fact, it was capable of some spectacular highs (Egyptian-Israeli and Israeli-Jordanian peace treaties) and a great many lows. More failures than successes, to be sure, but there was—at least most of the time—a real sense of hope and possibility and a credible process worth pursuing. » Read more

Palestinian disinheritance sponsored by Oslo ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) June 25, 2012 - 12:00am It's a shame the police don't show the same determination treating the settlers who invade private Palestinian land as they do evicting the temporary settlers on Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard. It's a shame the social justice activists ignore the creeping eviction by the Israeli government in the occupied territories. » Read more

Blocked prospects ATFP World Press Roundup Article from NOW Lebanon by Hazem Saghiyeh - (Opinion) June 25, 2012 - 12:00am The Nahr al-Bared ordeal epitomizes the ordeal befalling Lebanon as a whole, including with regard to the Palestinian issue. The Nahr al-Bared camp, which is still witnessing the same long-term misery and marginalization added to destruction that was not followed by the promised reconstruction, summarizes the situation of the Palestinian “community” in Lebanon. However, it also epitomizes the inability of the sectarian regime, which is extremely attached to “balances,” to take any useful step in dealing with the Nahr al-Bared ordeal (and others as well). » Read more

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