June 29th

NEWS: UNESCO votes to add Bethlehem holy sites to world heritage list. The evacuation of the “unauthorized” settler outpost of "Ulpana” is completed without incident. Palestinian citizens of Israel express concern about new plans regarding mandatory National Service. Hamas airs videos of confessions of accused Israeli collaborators. Another 25 Palestinian prisoners are going on hunger strike in Israeli jails. Women in Palestinian society with disabilities face double discrimination. Palestinians say the upcoming meeting between Pres. Abbas and Deputy PM Mofaz is not a resumption of negotiations. Israeli police are reportedly told to specifically target any Palestinian citizens of Israel joining “social justice” protests. Israel reportedly suspends plans to relocate Bedouins to a site near a garbage dump. A Palestinian activist in the occupied West Bank says the US is supporting “an apartheid system that is suffocating us.” COMMENTARY: Tania Hary talks about supporting human rights in Gaza. Mira Sucharov says the only way for Israelis to forget about the occupation in the long run is to end it. Jay Bushinsky says that since Israel is effectively annexing the occupied Palestinian territories, ways should be found to integrate the Palestinian population better into Israeli society. Ami Kaufman says it would be foolish to combine Israeli social justice protests with the issue of the occupation. Jessica Montell says PM Netanyahu is playing a shell game with settlements in the occupied West Bank. Donald MacIntyre says Israel must see that mistreatment of Palestinian children in detention will come with a heavy international cost. Dan Ephron says moderate Israeli settlers are afraid to speak out against extremists among them. The Economist says frustration is bubbling up in the occupied West Bank and another intifada is indeed possible. Stuart Eizenstat evaluates the views of his former boss, Pres. Carter, on Israel and the occupation. David Shulman looks at the threatened Palestinian West Bank village of Susya, slated for demolition by Israeli occupation authorities.

‘I Am an Illegal Alien on My Own Land’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Review Of Books
by David Shulman - (Opinion) June 28, 2012 - 12:00am

In 1949, shortly after Israel’s War of Independence, S. Yizhar—the doyen of modern Hebrew prose writers—published a story that became an instant classic. “Khirbet Khizeh” is a fictionalized account of the destruction of a Palestinian village and the expulsion of all its inhabitants by Israeli soldiers in the course of the war. The narrator, a soldier in the unit that carries out the order, is sickened by what is being done to the innocent villagers.

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Palestinian: US supports 'an apartheid system that is suffocating us'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from MSNBC
by Yara Borgal - June 28, 2012 - 12:00am

BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK – At the Aida Refugee Camp, a few blocks from Israel’s separation wall, is the Al Rowwad Cultural and Theater Center founded by Dr. Abdelfattah Abusrour in 1998 with the philosophy of “beautiful resistance” against the Israeli power over their land. Abusrour is part of the first generation of children born to refugee parents in the Aida Refugee Camp, which was established in 1950 between the towns of Bethlehem and Beit Jala. It is now home to around 5,000 inhabitants all descendants from the 1948 expulsion from Palestine.

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Carter compares conflict to U.S. civil rights movement, not apartheid, says former adviser
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Mordechai Twersky - (Opinion) June 29, 2012 - 12:00am

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter views Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as similar to that of the "African Americans of the 1950s and '60s," a former Carter adviser told Haaretz during a recent trip to Israel. According to Stuart E. Eizenstat, who served as Carter's chief White House domestic policy adviser from 1977 to 1981, Carter "looks at the conflict through the lens of the Civil Rights movement, as a Southerner who witnessed discrimination against African Americans, who he equates with the Palestinians."

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Hamas says the Mossad killed its senior figure
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Harriet Sherwood - June 28, 2012 - 12:00am

A senior Hamas figure has been killed at his home in Damascus, in an operation that the Islamist organisation swiftly attributed to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad. Kamel Ranaja, who died on Wednesday night, was reported to be a deputy to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed in a Dubai hotel in 2010.

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Experts: Israel didn't kill Hamas man in Damascus
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Yaakov Lappin - June 28, 2012 - 12:00am

Israel was most likely not behind the assassination of Hamas operative Kamal Ranaja in Damascus, Israeli security experts told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

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The calm may not last for ever
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Economist
(Opinion) June 30, 2012 - 12:00am

FIVE years after Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, dismissed an elected government run by the Islamists of Hamas and decided to rule instead by decree, the Palestinian Authority (PA) that oversees the West Bank is being dangerously challenged from within. In Nablus, the first city where Mr Abbas chose to fill the security vacuum with his American-trained national-security battalions, turf wars have recently erupted between rival commanders, puncturing four years of calm.

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Israel freezes plan to move East Jerusalem Bedouin to site near garbage dump
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - June 29, 2012 - 12:00am

The state has suspended a plan to forcibly relocate Bedouin from East Jerusalem to a site next to a city garbage dump. The state told the High Court of Justice two weeks ago it was putting off the plan until surveys were conducted to assess the environmental repercussions and hazards involved.

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Report: Police intelligence told to target Israeli Arabs joining social protests
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Roy Arad, Ofra Edelman - June 29, 2012 - 12:00am

Police intelligence officers have been told to collect information about Israeli Arabs who join the social justice protests, Channel 10 reported last night. Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino issued a directive to the police top brass ordering them to document every "involvement of the Arab community in the protests." Unlike the directives about Jewish demonstrators, which focus on rioters and anarchists, the section about Arabs does not specify which type of demonstrators police should watch out for, referring only to Arabs in general.

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Fearing Public Backlash, Israeli Settlers Speak Out Against Their Own
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast
by Dan Ephron - (Opinion) June 29, 2012 - 12:00am

When you hear an Israeli criticizing violence among settlers in the West Bank, it’s usually a peacenik or a human rights advocate. But in recent weeks, a number of prominent Jewish settlers themselves have spoken out against the hooliganism, perpetrated mainly by young extremists living in the occupied territories. Their record includes mosque burnings and other attacks on Palestinians and even assaults against Israelis whom they perceive as adversaries.

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