Gaza schoolgirls say Hamas cracking down on dress code
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
August 24, 2009 - 12:00am

Responding to multiple reports on Sunday that the de facto government was cracking down on dress in Gaza's schools, Hamas on Monday denied making any recent policy changes on uniforms or expulsions. A spokesman for the Hamas-run Education Ministry in Gaza, Khaled Radi, reiterated that his office had not received instructions from the de facto government imposing conservative dress codes on schoolgirls.

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Hamas to expel Gaza schoolgirls not wearing Muslim dress
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - August 24, 2009 - 12:00am

Female students in the Gaza Strip will be required to wear head coverings and full-length robes beginning this school year, the Hamas rules of the Gaza Strip announced on Monday. According to the new regulations, any female student that does not attend class in the proper attire will be sent home. The ministry also has ruled that male teachers cannot teach in girls' schools and women are not allowed to teach at boys' schools.

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US must choose between the two voices of Hamas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Amr Hamzawy - (Opinion) August 24, 2009 - 12:00am

When will President Obama abandon the Bush doctrine of isolating Hamas? During a press conference in Gaza City a few weeks ago, Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, declared: “If there is a real project that aims at resolving the Palestinian cause on establishing a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, under full Palestinian sovereignty, we will support it.” And in an interview shortly after, Khaled Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas’s political bureau, welcomed the “new language towards the region” from President Obama.

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Hamas branded 'too secular'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Ahram
by Saleh Al-Naami - August 24, 2009 - 12:00am

In the biggest confrontation yet between the dismissed government of Ismail Haniyeh and an Islamic group, more than 30 people were killed last week, including 12 civilians and several policemen. The bloody confrontation came after Abdel-Latif Moussa -- also known as Abul-Nur Al-Maqdisi, leader of Jund Ansar Allah, or Soldiers of the Followers of God, and among the killed -- declared an Islamic emirate, or mini-state, in Rafah. Moussa, who promised to implement Islamic law, accused Hamas of being too "secular".

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The Missing Courage
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by Abdullah Iskandar - (Opinion) August 19, 2009 - 12:00am

The state of embarrassment and opportunism, and sometimes malice, that accompanied the military settlement carried out by Hamas against Jund Ansar Allah in the Gaza Strip, is not unique in the relationship between political Islam and the hard-line fundamentalist organizations it brought about under different names. We have seen such a case in Egypt when some fundamentalist organizations ignited armed violence in the face of the state and citizens. We also witnessed it in Algeria with the outbreak of hostile activities.

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Growing threat to Hamas: Gazans who think it has sold out
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Erin Cunningham - August 18, 2009 - 12:00am

Two years after its takeover of the Gaza strip, Hamas has faced down its greatest challenger: A militant, Al Qaeda-inspired organization that says Hamas is not Islamic enough. Last Friday, Hamas forces and the Jund Ansar Allah (Soldier of God) movement fought a day-long gun and artillery battle that killed about 30 in the southern Gaza town of Rafah after the group's spiritual leader, Sheikh Abdel Latif Moussa, declared an Islamic emirate in Gaza and denounced Hamas. Mr. Moussa was killed in the fighting, centered on the mosque where he and his followers had gathered.

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Israel wrecked Arafat, crowned Hamas, and gave birth to Al-Qaida in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Nehemia Shtrasler - (Analysis) August 18, 2009 - 12:00am

This week marked four years since the Gaza disengagement, and it seems that the Strip is becoming increasingly radical - that peace is more distant and the settlers who were removed from the enclave are more embittered. Did Ariel Sharon and the majority of the Israeli public that supported the move make a bad deal?

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Radical Leader Killed in Gaza Clashes
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - August 17, 2009 - 12:00am

A shootout at a mosque in the southern Gaza city of Rafah between Hamas security men and a more extreme Islamist group called the Warriors of God ended early Saturday with 22 dead, including the group’s leader and a senior Hamas security officer. The Ministry of Interior in Gaza said the leader, Abdel Latif Moussa, died in an explosion at his house near the mosque when fighting resumed after dawn. A ministry spokesman said his death might have resulted from explosives in his house that detonated when security men sought to reach him.

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For Hamas, Challenges May Be Growing
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Howard Schneider - August 17, 2009 - 12:00am

The deadly shootout in a Gaza Strip mosque Friday between members of the ruling Islamist Hamas movement and a militant splinter group may signal further challenges to Hamas's authority in Gaza as it tries to reconcile the demands of running a government with its policy of armed conflict with Israel, according to Palestinian and Israeli analysts.

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A fight for Palestine
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
(Editorial) August 17, 2009 - 12:00am

Hamas may have ended the rebellion launched by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Jund Ansar Allah, but it did so the hard away. Not before 24 people were killed, including two children, and over 100 were injured, was some semblance of order restored in the southern Gaza Strip. If Hamas would like to take credit for crushing this Al-Qaeda group in a standoff that came to a fiery end, it must also take the blame for having started the conflagration when it opened the Gaza Strip two years ago to foreign extremist elements in the absence of a legitimate Palestinian authority.

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