Donors Pledge Aid For Palestinians ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press by Karin Laub - December 17, 2007 - 1:18pm The world rallied to the support of the embattled Palestinian government Monday, and the co-chairman of a donors' conference said he was confident they could meet a $5.6 billion target in aid. World leaders at the conference also urged Israel to ease restrictions on movement in the West Bank and Gaza to make a recovery of the Palestinian economy possible. Some 90 countries and international organizations came together in Paris for the biggest pledging conference in more than a decade. » Read more

The Right Wing's Jerusalem Gambit ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Salon.com by Gregory Levey - December 17, 2007 - 1:18pm On Nov. 26, the U.S. State Department got hit with an unexpected barrage of phone calls. The Coordinating Council on Jerusalem, a new coalition of American groups with hard-line views on Israel, was on the line -- all of the lines. Or so the group said two days later in a press release, proudly proclaiming that with 10,000 calls in less than 48 hours it had managed to overload the State Department's voice-mail system. » Read more

Sealed Off By Israel, Gaza Reduced To Beggary ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Scott Wilson - December 17, 2007 - 1:16pm The batteries are the size of a button on a man's shirt, small silvery dots that power hearing aids for several hundred Palestinian students taught by the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children in Gaza City. Now the batteries, marketed by Radio Shack, are all but used up. The few that are left are losing power, turning voices into unintelligible echoes in the ears of Hala Abu Saif's 20 first-grade students. » Read more