June 28th

Flotilla activists seek "blood" -Israeli FM ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters by Ori Lewis - June 28, 2011 - 12:00am Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday participants in an aid flotilla planning to challenge an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip were seeking "confrontation and blood". Pro-Palestinian activists have said around a dozen ships carrying aid to Gaza, territory controlled by Hamas Islamists, could depart from European ports in the coming days. A year ago, nine Turkish activists, including a dual U.S.-Turkish national, were killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers who raided a Gaza-bound convoy in the eastern Mediterranean. » Read more

Sha'ath: PA optimistic about UN statehood bid ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency June 28, 2011 - 12:00am The Palestinian leadership is to step up efforts to consolidate a UN statehood bid this September, Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Sha'ath told local media in Ramallah on Tuesday. Sha'ath, who is also commissioner for external relations in the Fatah movement, said that the Palestinian Authority has decided to set up a committee to manage all matters related to preparations for the September UN bid. » Read more

Hamas' Zahar says Fatah to blame for talks delay ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency June 28, 2011 - 12:00am Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar has reportedly blamed Fatah for the delay in reconciliation talks, confirming reports that talks reached a dead end. "After we signed the agreement, Fatah on the ground worked against it," Al-Zahar told the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustur on Tuesday. He added that Fatah were linking the whole reconciliation process to the position of prime minster, an approach which was damaging unity efforts. » Read more

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. » Read more

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. » Read more

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? » Read more

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. » Read more

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? » Read more

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. » Read more

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. » Read more