June 27th

Buying Into Palestinian Statehood ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Yossi Alpher, Colette Avital, Shlomo Gazit, Mark Heller - (Opinion) June 24, 2011 - 12:00am TEL AVIV — Instead of wasting time and energy trying to revive a moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the United States and European Union should take another look at the Palestinian initiative to seek U.N. recognition in September. What is described in some quarters as a recipe for new strife and confrontation can actually be leveraged into a win-win situation for Israelis, Palestinians and the world. » Read more

Israel moves West Bank barrier after 4-year delay ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters by Maayan Lubell - June 26, 2011 - 12:00am BILIN, West Bank, June 26 (Reuters) - Israel began repositioning part of its contested barrier in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, four years after a court ruled it should be re-routed to give Palestinians greater access to farmland. Israeli tractors tore down a section of the barrier, a metal fence, as a clutch of journalists watched. A new concrete barrier has been erected some 600 meters from the old route near the Jewish settlement of Modiin Illit. The Israeli military tore down a watchtower overlooking Bilin on Wednesday and protesters rammed a bulldozer into the fence on Friday. » Read more

Palestinians going ahead with statehood bid ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency June 27, 2011 - 12:00am RAMALLAH (AFP) -- President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday that with no renewal of peace talks on the horizon, the Palestinians would pursue their unilateral bid for recognition in September. "I say that if negotiations have failed we will go to the United Nations for membership," Abbas told a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization and his Fatah party. "Until now there have been no new incentives to return to negotiations," he said. » Read more

Israel urged to speak directly to Arab world ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times by Edmund Sanders - June 26, 2011 - 12:00am Few countries are as active in courting international opinion as Israel. An entire ministry is devoted to a kind of global PR called hasbara, the Hebrew word for "explaining." Israelis studiously track public opinion in the United States and Europe, and Israel's military has taken to using YouTube, Twitter and an army of bloggers to disseminate real-time updates around the world, sometimes in the middle of battle. But the public diplomacy campaign, which has largely focused on the West, has ignored the Arab world, which many in Israel have viewed as a lost cause. » Read more

Ahead of U.N. Vote, Effort to Restart Mideast Talks ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Ethan Bronner - June 24, 2011 - 12:00am JERUSALEM — Intensive efforts are under way to stave off a Palestinian bid for United Nations membership in September, with diplomats trying to lure Israeli and Palestinian leaders back to negotiations on the basis of President Obama’s formula of a state based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps. » Read more

Avoid Gaza Flotilla, Israel Warns Foreign Journalists ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Ethan Bronner - June 26, 2011 - 12:00am JERUSALEM — Israel threatened Sunday to bar for up to a decade any foreign journalist who boards a flotilla seeking to challenge an Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. Oren Helman, the director of the Government Press Office, sent a letter to registered foreign correspondents here asserting that the flotilla, scheduled to sail this week, was illegal and that participation in it, even as a reporter, was “liable to lead to participants being denied entry into the State of Israel for ten years, to the impoundment of their equipment and to additional sanctions.” » Read more

June 24th

PA continues crackdown on settlements goods ban ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency June 23, 2011 - 12:00am SALFIT (Ma’an) -- The Magistrates Court of Salfit issued a decision Thursday, fining a driver $2,820 for transporting settlement goods, and suspending the man's license for six months. The 40-year-old truck driver, from the village of Deir Al-Hatab in the Salfit district, was charged according to the 2010 law on the prohibition and control of settlement products, article 14/2/A 2010 and under the Criminal Procedure Code article 274/2 of 2001. Police said the man had been transporting a load of gauze rolls, they said the goods were confiscated and would be sold at auction.

Fighting for the right to return ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Ahram by Mohsen Saleh - (Opinion) June 23, 2011 - 12:00am When 12-year-old Imad saw his mother preparing some sandwiches for the 15 May march to the southern Lebanese borders with Palestine, he wondered what the food was for. "Will we have the time to eat it," he asked. "Aren't we going to the borders of Palestine to fight the Israelis?" The message this child and his peers conveyed gave the event another dimension, for these marches of return to the borders with Palestine, occupied in 1948 and becoming Israel, have turned into landmarks in the Palestinian approach to the right of the Palestinians to return to their homeland. » Read more

Israel PM agrees to 1967 borders ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency June 24, 2011 - 12:00am TEL AVIV, Israel (Ma’an) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly agreed to peace talks based on 1967 borders on the condition that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state and solve the Palestinian refugee issue outside of Israel's borders. Netanyahu announced the position to US presidential Middle East adviser Dennis Ross, and acting envoy for the Middle East David Hale, both of whom Netanyahu met with last week, the Israeli daily Maariv reported Thursday. » Read more

Law of the jungle ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Ahram by Saleh Al-Naami - (Opinion) June 23, 2011 - 12:00am Despite the cold in this mountainous region, a group of young men gathered on the outskirts of the town of Al-Moghayer east of Ramallah in the centre of the West Bank. These youth are intent on preventing Jewish settlers from burning the town mosque again after they set it ablaze for the first time three weeks ago. Threats by settlers that they will continue these attacks moved the group of youth to risk their lives and volunteer to foil the settler plots. » Read more