May 18th

A Beer for Palestine
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Roger Cohen - (Opinion) May 17, 2010 - 12:00am

Few people vacation on the West Bank, but if they did they might head for Taybeh, a hilltop village clustered around a church whose charm trumps the Israeli checkpoints that have to be negotiated to get there. The air is good, the stones smooth, the light brilliant — and the beer excellent.

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Israel Roiled After Chomsky Barred From West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - May 17, 2010 - 12:00am

A fierce debate broke out in Israel on Monday amid finger pointing and hand wringing over the country’s refusal to permit the linguist Noam Chomsky, an icon of the American left, to enter the occupied West Bank from Jordan. Majed Jaber/Reuters Front-page coverage and heated morning radio discussions asked how Professor Chomsky, an 81-year-old professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, could pose a risk to Israel and how a country that frequently asserts its status as a robust democracy could keep out people whose views it found offensive.

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ATFP Senior Fellow Joins J Street and APN Board Member to Advocate Peace at New Jersey Event
Press Release - Contact Information: Hussein Ibish - May 18, 2010 - 12:00am

Peace between Israel and the Palestinians will be difficult but is essential to achieve, Dr. Hussein Ibish, Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, and Dr. Edward Witten, world renowned theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and member of the National Advisory Boards of J Street and Americans for Peace Now, told an overflow audience of more than 120 people on Sunday, May 16. The Princeton, New Jersey event, entitled "Peace and Justice in Israel and Palestine," was hosted by the Princeton Community Democratic Organization.


PA launches door-to-door settlement good boycott
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
May 18, 2010 - 12:00am

Ramallah – Ma'an – The Palestinian Authority will officially launch its settlement goods boycott campaign, entitled House to House, on Tuesday at 10am across the West Bank, aimed at encouraging residents to opt for Palestinian produce instead. The campaign, which will see over 3,000 volunteers go door-to-door to distribute the first part of a settlement produce guide, is the first leg of the PA's attempts to encourage West Bank residents to implement a wide-ranging boycott of goods made on illegal settlements.

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May 17th

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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