Israel prevents Noam Chomsky from entering the West Bank. The Washington Post looks at the PA settlement boycott. The Christian Science Monitor profiles the first planned Palestinian city. Some Israelis say the Gaza blockade has failed. Palestinian officials say negotiations are unlikely to succeed. The PA dissolves the ministries of sport and information. Israel shuts down the PA municipal office in Hebron. Israeli leftists rally against the occupation. Palestinians mark the 62nd commemoration of the Nakba. Hamas destroys dozens of Palestinian homes in Gaza. US Jewish leaders echo a European call to end settlement activity. Israeli troops kill an elderly Palestinian man in Gaza. Egypt reportedly ends all contact with Hamas. Extremist settlers blame the Israeli military for their own violence. West Bank highway 443 remains closed to Palestinians despite a court order. Adel Safty says archaic Israeli beliefs are threatening peace. Peter Beinart looks at changing Jewish American attitudes towards Israel.

Archaic Israeli convictions and bad faith
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Adel Safty - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am

One of the fundamental tenets of political Zionism has been the so-called redemption of the land for the purpose of founding a Jewish state where all the Jews of the world are supposed to gather and find a safe haven from persecution. The early Zionist leaders recognised the difficulty they faced: the land to be redeemed was Palestine and it was inhabited by another people who could not be expected to peacefully acquiesce to the transformation of their country into a Jewish state.

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Israel's apartheid road
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Rachel Shabi - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am

If you didn't have peripheral vision, it would probably be fine. If you didn't glance to the sides of Israel's highway 443 between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, then it wouldn't smack you in the face that the road is – how shall we put it? – segregated. As it is, you can't help but notice that when the 443 passes by the Israeli town of Modi'in and heads east into the occupied West Bank, some of its side-routes are blocked. Concrete boulders, metal barriers, rubble and heaps of rubbish halt roads from Palestinian villages such as Beit Sira and Beit Ur al-Fuka.

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'IDF to blame for price-tag atmosphere'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Tovah Lazaroff - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am

The head of the soon-to-be-demolished Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement has blamed the IDF for creating an atmosphere in which some Jews were executed a "price-tag" policy of retribution against Palestinians for the IDF demolition of settler homes in Judea and Samaria. "A price tag policy is anarchy and they [the IDF] are the anarchists," said Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira on Sunday night at a solidarity event at the yeshiva. "A person who does things that can not be accepted by any sane person, is an anarchist."

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Leading Jewish and Palestinian American Groups Announce Joint Internship Program
Press Release - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am

Americans for Peace Now (APN) and the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) are today announcing a new joint summer internship program. APN will host a Palestinian student and ATFP will host an Israeli student. The two interns are part of a group of students – Israelis and Palestinians – who are participating this summer in the first-ever Middle East program of New Story Leadership, a locally-based organization that offers young adults from both sides of the conflict a transformative leadership experience in Washington.


Report: Egypt cutting Hamas off
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Roee Nahmias - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am

New record in Hamas-Egypt tensions? Cairo has decided to cut all contact with heads of the Hamas movement, both in the Palestinian territories, and abroad, "high-ranking Egyptian officials were quoted as saying. In Monday's edition, independent paper al-Mesryoon, which is affiliated with the Egyptian opposition, reported that Cairo has decided to reject any requests by Hamas officials for entry visas to Egypt in the near future, and to freeze all channels of diplomatic and security communications with the movement.

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Report: IDF soldiers kill elderly Palestinian near Gaza border
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
May 15, 2010 - 12:00am

Palestinian emergency services and witnesses said Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed one Palestinian and wounded another near the border with Gaza, Israel Radio reported on Saturday. Medical officials in Gaza said the man, who was 75 and whose body was only discovered on Saturday when it became light, had been shot several times. They added that his family had reported he had been missing for two days.

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U.S. Jewish leaders echo European call to end Israeli settlement building
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
May 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Following in the footsteps of the European initiative launched by JCall, a group of Jewish-American leaders on Friday launched an online petition urging an end to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and calling for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli protest against settlements Called "For the Sake of Zion," the petition is signed by dozens of prominent American rabbis, judges, writers, academics and philanthropists.

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Hamas destroys dozens of homes in southern Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Rizek Abdel Jawad - May 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Hamas police wielding clubs beat and pushed residents out of dozens of homes in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on Sunday before knocking the buildings down with bulldozers, residents said. Gaza's militant Hamas rulers said the homes were built illegally on government land. Newly homeless residents were furious over Palestinians on bulldozers razing Palestinian homes.

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Palestinians mark displacement in 1948 Mideast war
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Rizek Abdel Jawad - May 15, 2010 - 12:00am

Bitter Palestinian rivals marched together Saturday in a rare show of unity as they marked 62 years of displacement in the war surrounding Israel's creation. Loyalists of rival groups Hamas and Fatah held Palestinian flags and a giant key symbolic of their hoped-for return as part of annual commemorations of what they call the "catastrophe," or "nakba" in Arabic. The names of the villages and towns emptied during the war were written across the key, alongside the slogan "We will return."

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