April 19th

West Bank contractors protest unpaid fees ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency April 19, 2011 - 12:00am Contractors and their union representatives protested Monday outside the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Finance in Ramallah over millions of dollars owed to them by the government. Union officials said the PA owed the contractors around 200 million shekels (around $58 million) for their work on government projects. PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's advisor Jamal Zaqout talked to the contractors and suggested they met with the premier Tuesday to discuss the debt but protesters refused the proposal, a Ma'an correspondent said. » Read more

No one is really interested ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons by Yossi Alpher - (Opinion) April 18, 2011 - 12:00am The question why there is no peace progress offers a good opportunity to review the obstacles to peace that have emerged in the course of the past two and a half years. During that time, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama took office, and the Olmert-Abbas peace talks ended in failure. » Read more

State funeral for Italian activist slain in Gaza ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency April 19, 2011 - 12:00am Palestinian civilians joined members of the Hamas police and security forces on Monday for a funeral to mourn the death of an Italian activist killed by a Salafist group last week. Hundreds of people gathered in Gaza City and at the Rafah border crossing to pay to their respects to Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, who was found hanged in an empty house in northern Gaza on Friday, hours after he was kidnapped. His body was carried from Gaza City's Shifa Hospital in a wooden coffin draped in a Palestinian flag and strewn with rose petals. » Read more

Abbas: New PA cabinet within a week ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency April 19, 2011 - 12:00am A new Palestinian Authority cabinet will be announced within the week, President Mahmoud Abbas told interviewers on the Al-Arabiya satellite channel Monday, as he headed for Tunis to meet with its new transitional government. "Since Hamas did not respond positively, we cannot wait anymore," Abbas said over his earlier decision to postpone the reappointment of a cabinet, which he said was an attempt to buy time for a reconciliation effort between Fatah and Hamas. » Read more

Israel under pressure to offer peace plan ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times by Edmund Sanders - April 19, 2011 - 12:00am Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under mounting pressure to unveil a new plan for solving the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict or risk having the U.S. and international community move ahead with a strategy of their own. » Read more

More process than peace ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons by Ghassan Khatib - (Opinion) April 18, 2011 - 12:00am After eight months of no negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, it is useful to clarify that recent experience has demonstrated that the existence of a peace process does not necessarily mean moving towards peace. The peace process that was launched in Madrid in 1991 included declared objectives of reaching a peace settlement between Israel on the one hand and Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and Jordanians on the other hand. » Read more

Palestinians will seek Security Council approval for UN membership if no peace ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press April 19, 2011 - 12:00am The Palestinians say that if a peace treaty with Israel isn’t reached by September their first choice is to go to the U.N. Security Council with such strong support and arguments that it would recommend admission of Palestine as a new member of the United Nations. That would require convincing the U.S., Israel’s ally, not to veto a resolution supporting membership for an independent Palestinian state, which won’t be easy. » Read more

Authors Pamuk, McEwan Back Bookseller Facing Israel Deportation ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bloomberg by Calev Ben-Dor - April 18, 2011 - 12:00am At Munther Fahmi’s small bookshop in East Jerusalem, Martina Quick, political counselor at the Swedish embassy to Israel, peruses a copy of Palestinian academic Sari Nusseibeh’s autobiography “Once Upon A Country.” “This is the best bookshop in the country,” says the blond, bespectacled Quick, 39. “It has the most varied selection in English about the region, including fiction, non- fiction, memoirs and travel writing. My boss, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, feels the same way and he really knows bookstores.” » Read more

April 18th

2 Palestinian Teens Held in Killing of Israeli Family ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Isabel Kershner - April 17, 2011 - 12:00am Israeli officials announced on Sunday the arrest of two Palestinian teenagers from this village in the northern West Bank who they said were responsible for the killing of five members of the Fogel family in the neighboring Jewish settlement of Itamar last month. Israeli security officials said that the two suspects, ages 17 and 18, had confessed and carried out a reconstruction of the attack. » Read more

Gaza Killing of Italian Activist Deals a Blow to Hamas ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Fares Akram, Isabel Kershner - April 18, 2011 - 12:00am For Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian pro-Palestinian activist who friends said fought peacefully for justice, the end was as violent as it was incongruous. Police officers from Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, found his body in a house in Gaza City that was empty of furniture, except for the mattress on which the body was lying, according to witnesses. The doctor who performed the autopsy said Mr. Arrigoni’s killers had used a plastic cord to strangle him. » Read more