June 28th

Intense Israeli lobbying stalls Gaza flotilla
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Dan Murphy - June 28, 2011 - 12:00am


International activists from a dozen countries are trying to break Israel's blockade on the Gaza Strip, just a little over a year after a Gaza-bound aid flotilla ended in a fatal confrontation with Israeli naval commandos. The participants should have already set sail. But the US boat at least is being held up in Athens on what activists say are spurious charges amid a broader Israeli push to thwart a repeat of last year's events.


Israel Rescinds Its Warning to Gaza-Bound Journalists
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - June 27, 2011 - 12:00am


Israel on Monday set aside a warning it issued the previous day that foreign journalists aboard a flotilla planning to challenge its naval blockade of Gaza risked being barred from the country for up to a decade and having their equipment impounded.


June 27th

Interview: Alice Walker
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Policy
by Robert Zeliger - (Interview) June 24, 2011 - 12:00am


Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker will join the flotilla of ships next week that will try to break Israel's maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. She says the goal is to bring supplies and raise awareness of the situation there. Last May, during a similar attempt by activists, Israel raided six ships. On one, clashes broke out and Israeli commandos killed nine people. Foreign Policy reached the author of The Color Purple in Greece, where she is preparing for her departure. Foreign Policy: Why are you taking part in the flotilla mission?


Palestinians seek to redefine national struggle
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Raymond G. Helmick, Nazir Khaja - (Opinion) June 26, 2011 - 12:00am


Young Palestinians, fascinated by the Arab Spring, have demonstrated recently in ways that ignore the contest of parties within their own community and seek simply freedom, justice, dignity and equality. Their movement is still small, only a couple of hundred demonstrators, determinedly nonviolent in their demand, gathered, but of course they were immediately flooded with tear gas and worse by the Israelis, who understand how vital it is for them to provoke nonviolent protesters into throwing that first stone.


Mantras parading as incontestable truths
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Uri Avnery - (Opinion) June 26, 2011 - 12:00am


Those opposing the Palestinians’ UN bid forget that State of Israel was proclaimed unilaterally The Palestinians are planning something thoroughly obnoxious: They intend to apply to the UN for statehood. Why obnoxious? Any Israeli spokesman (not to mention spokeswoman) will tell you readily: Because it is a "unilateral" move. How dare they proclaim a state unilaterally? How dare they do so without the consent of the other party to the conflict — us?


Israel’s Soviet Political Party
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Liam Hoare - (Opinion) June 27, 2011 - 12:00am


Yisrael Beiteinu is widely understood to be the party of Russian Jewry, that population of nearly one million Jews who arrived in Israel after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Twelve years since its founding, it has become the third largest party in the Knesset, on a radical anti-clerical and staunchly nationalist platform.


Peres's Conference, Netanyahu's Challenge
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by J.J. Goldberg - (Opinion) June 27, 2011 - 12:00am


Tel Aviv — When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rose to address the 4,000 delegates at the close of Shimon Peres’s Israeli Presidential Conference in Jerusalem on June 23, he beamed like a film student accepting an Oscar.


Europe's responsibility
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) June 27, 2011 - 12:00am


BRUSSELS - Last week I met with more than a dozen European officials who closely follow Israel and its dispute with its neighbors. Some wondered how it could be that Israel's defense minister warns about a "tsunami," while the country's public os focused on cottage cheese. Some asked whether I had a clue as to what my prime minister wants. Are all statements made by Benjamin Netanyahu about negotiations, they asked, aimed at giving the settlers another year or two, and also at scuttling any prospect of dividing the country?


Let the flotilla go
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) June 27, 2011 - 12:00am


The term "flotilla" is understood in Israel as a declaration of war. This is the case with respect to the latest Gaza-bound flotilla, just as it was with the one that set off from Turkey in May 2010. Furthermore, due to unstable relations with Turkey, Israel is still feeling the repercussions of its deadly raid on that maritime convoy.


Fayyad nomination is final, Fatah says
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Nasouh Nazzal - June 27, 2011 - 12:00am


Ramallah: The Fatah party Sunday said the nomination of Dr Salam Fayyad to lead the Palestinian unity government is final. It said if Hamas did not agree with the nomination in the next couple of days, the current caretaker government under Fayyad will remain in place. "If agreement on the nomination of Dr Fayyad is not reached within the coming couple of days, it is highly possible that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas assigns Dr Fayyad to reshuffle his cabinet and preserve the status quo," Ameen Maqboul, who heads the Revolutionary Council at Fatah, told Gulf News in an interview.



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