Martin Indyk says PM Netanyahu must choose between confronting his right wing or the US president, and that when Israel can go it alone, it can decide things on its own. FM Lieberman says an "imposed solution" would provoke violence. Hamas burns recreational drugs, taxes cigarettes. The PA denies reports of an upcoming peace summit. US officials strongly criticize an ad saying Jerusalem is beyond politics. Bradley Burston says Israel must be freed of the occupation. YNet interviews PM Fayyad on state-building and nonviolent protests. The Israeli military complains about settler violence, prepares for a West Bank pullback. The New Israel Fund gets more donations in the wake of intense criticism. American Jewish leaders are criticizing the administration in public, but defending it in private. Israeli and Palestinian villagers build relationships across the Green Line. Rahm Emanuel says there is no US peace plan. The UN says Palestinian armed factions in Lebanon are a threat to regional stability. Bret Stephens says the US should leverage Israeli concerns about Iran for progress on settlements. Rashid Khalidi says Israel is acting in bad faith in Jerusalem.

Bad Faith in the Holy City
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Affairs
by Rashid Khalidi - (Opinion) April 21, 2010 - 12:00am

The Israeli government’s announcement in March that it would further expand East Jerusalem settlements was just the latest in a decades-old series of calculated slights to the United States.

»

Trading Sanctions for Settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Affairs
by Bret Stephens - (Analysis) April 21, 2010 - 12:00am

When Joe Biden touched down in Tel Aviv on March 8, there was no indication that his visit would set off the most serious crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations in decades. The U.S. vice president arrived carrying the text of an effusively pro-Israel speech that was meant to assure skittish Israelis that the Obama administration would remain as committed as any of its predecessors to their security.

»

Palestinian armed factions grave threat to Lebanon's security - Ban
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Patrick Galey - April 21, 2010 - 12:00am

The continued presence of Palestinian armed factions in Lebanon constitutes a serious threat to national and regional security, according to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The alleged transfer of Syria-exported Scud missiles to Hizbullah is also a major cause of international concern, the UN chief said. In his latest interim report on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, seen by The Daily Star on Tuesday, Ban encouraged Lebanese leaders to exert pressure on groups possessing arms outside of state power.

»

Emanuel: No U.S. peace plan for now
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
April 20, 2010 - 12:00am

The time is not ripe for a U.S.-promoted Middle East peace plan, President Obama's chief of staff said. "A number of people have advocated that," Rahm Emanuel said Monday on the Charlie Rose show on Bloomberg Television. "That time is not now," Emanuel said. The "time now is to get back to the proximity talks, have those conversations that eventually will lead to direct negotiations, start to make the hard decisions to bring a balance between the aspirations of the Israelis for security and make that blend with the aspirations of the Palestinian people for their sovereignty."

»

Palestinian village and Israeli town build rare partnership across line
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Sue Fishkoff - April 21, 2010 - 12:00am

Mohammed Mansara, a 70-year-old farmer who goes by the name Abu Mazen, indicates with a sweep of his arm the fruit trees and vegetables he grows on his small plot of land in this Palestinian village in the West Bank, population 1,200. Then he points to a small green hill on the western side of the village topped by a tidy cluster of red-roofed homes. That is Tzur Hadassah, an Israeli community of about 5,000 Jewish residents. “Tzur Hadassah has such nice people,” he says in Hebrew. “They are great neighbors.”

»

ATFP Senior Fellow Addresses Israel-Palestine Peace Conference at CCSU
Press Release - Contact Information: Hussein Ibish - April 21, 2010 - 12:00am

ATFP Senior Fellow Hussein Ibish gave a keynote address at the second annual Israel-Palestine Piece Conference at Central Connecticut State University on April 16, 2010. Ibish told the audience that the context in which the conflict and the lack of peace was viewed in Washington had shifted dramatically in recent months, and had been gradually evolving over the past two years.


Jewish leaders caught between criticizing, defending Obama
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Ron Kampeas - April 20, 2010 - 12:00am

With anxiety over the White House’s Middle East policy mounting in some pro-Israel circles, several Jewish organizational leaders have found themselves in a discomfiting position: criticizing the Obama administration in public while stridently defending the president in private against the most extreme attacks. It's an upside-down version of what pro-Israel groups usually do: lavishing praise on the U.S. government of the day for sustaining the "unbreakable bond" while making their criticisms known quietly, behind closed doors.

»

IDF drafts pre-intifada pullback plan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Irish Times
by Yaakov Katz, Tovah Lazaroff - April 21, 2010 - 12:00am

The army has drawn up plans to withdraw to pre-intifada lines in the West Bank, if ordered to do so by the government, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Such a withdrawal was one of the demands that US President Barack Obama made to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during their meeting at the White House last month. The demand refers to the positions the IDF held when the second intifada erupted in late 2000, before the army swept into all the Arab towns and cities in the West Bank. It maintains a presence on the outskirts of many of them today.

»

Campaign against New Israel Fund boosts donations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Yitzhak Benhorin - April 21, 2010 - 12:00am

Donations to the New Israel Fund (NIF) have increased by 35% since Zionist student group Im Tirtzu launching a campaign accusing the fund of direct responsibility for the UN’s Goldstone Report on the IDF’s offensive in Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009.. Im Tirtzu published a report according to which 92 percent of the Goldstone document’s allegations criticizing the IDF’s conduct came from 16 Israeli NGOs that received some $7.8 million from the NIF in 2008-2009 alone.

»


American Task Force on Palestine - 1634 Eye St. NW, Suite 725, Washington DC 20006 - Telephone: 202-262-0017