When Will It Be Our Time?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Mustafa Barghouthi - (Opinion) December 17, 2009 - 1:00am

I have lived my entire adult life under occupation, with Israelis holding ultimate control over my movement and daily life. When young Israeli police officers force me to sit on the cold ground and soldiers beat me during a peaceful protest, I smolder. No human being should be compelled to sit on the ground while exercising rights taken for granted throughout the West.

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Go back unto death: Life in postwar Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
December 17, 2009 - 1:00am

In one corner of Salah Samouni’s modest living room hangs a “martyr poster” – a customary honor printed for those killed in all Israeli attacks, in the West Bank and Gaza over the years. On the Samouni poster, the 29 faces stare back from eternity, from Muhammad Helmi Samouni, age six months, to Rizqa Muhammad Samouni, age 55. It was this oversize poster that Salah Samouni brought with him to the public hearing held by the UN Fact Finding Mission led by Richard Goldstone in Gaza City in June.

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Childhood in ruins
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Harriet Sherwood - (Opinion) December 17, 2009 - 1:00am

Ghiada abu Elaish's fingers twist in her lap and her eyes cloud over as she recalls the day an Israeli shell killed four of her cousins and left her in a coma for 22 days. She has had almost 12 months to reflect on the tragedy, a time in which hatred and anger might have consumed the 13-year-old. Remarkably, though, not only has she survived shocking injuries and a dozen operations, with many more to come, but she has retained both her sweet nature and faith in a bright future.

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Hamas: Deal for Shalit release still a long way off
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Jack Khoury - December 15, 2009 - 1:00am

Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha said Tuesday that a prisoner exchange deal for the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces solider Gilad Shalit was still a long way off. President Shimon Peres told IDF soldiers Monday that the release Shalit did not depend solely on Israel, but was being hampered by disagreements between Hamas' wing in the Gaza Strip and its overseas wing.

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Israel: Who will soldiers obey on settlements – Netanyahu or rabbis?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

In an unprecedented move, Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday cut ties with one of the dozens of religious seminaries that feed students to the military amid concerns that its ideologically driven students might refuse orders to evacuate settlements. The military was concerned that the chief rabbi of the school, known as a “hesder” yeshiva and located in the West Bank settlement of Har Bracha, was educating students to become insubordinate soldiers.

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Israel settlement freeze shields dismantling of illegal outposts
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

Israel’s settlement freeze is supposed to clamp down on new housing starts in the West Bank, but it’s also shielding illegally built outposts and settler houses from demolition. The enforcement of an order to evacuate outposts – a step demanded by the US to help restart peace talks with the Palestinians – has been put off for years. Palestinians and Israeli peace groups have been challenging the delay in Israel’s Supreme Court, which requested from Israel a timetable for the demolitions.

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Far-right yeshiva head: My duty is to tell troops to refuse orders
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Chaim Levinson, Anshel Pfeffer - December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

The head rabbi of a far-right West Bank yeshiva declared Monday after his school was ousted from the Israel Defense Forces hesder program that he encouraged his students to refuse settlement evacuation orders because he had an obligation to "speak his inner truth." Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, whose Har Bracha Yeshiva's status was revoked late Sunday, wrote in an article published on Arutz 7 that he had skipped a critical hearing on the matter with Defense Minister Ehud Barak because he would not give in to "governmental pressure."

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No freeze on Palestinian suffering
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Seth Freedman - (Opinion) December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

Within minutes of our arrival in Tuwani, in the south Hebron hills of the West Bank, an army Jeep rolled into the village and shattered the mid-morning tranquillity. "We're turning this place into a closed military zone," announced the stern-faced commander to anyone within earshot. Brandishing his rifle in one hand and a military document in the other, he proceeded to explain that "I decide who can be here and who can't, and anyone who isn't a resident has to leave immediately".

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Peace itself may be the price for these attacks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
(Opinion) December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

‘The IDF won’t determine where to fight us. We will choose the battlefield.” This taunt aimed at the Israeli army did not come from Hamas or Hizbollah, but it presents just as much danger to the state of Israel and to greater hopes for peace in the Middle East. It came from Yonatan Rachamin, a 25-year-old Israeli, and he is not alone in his intransigence.

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Israeli forces disrupt UNRWA chief's farewell
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
December 10, 2009 - 1:00am

Israeli police ordered outgoing UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd to leave an East Jerusalem home on Thursday during her last official visit as the head of the relief agency. Ma’an’s reporter on the scene said AbuZayd left after police gave her five minutes to evacuate the premises of the house of the Al-Kurd family, as a Palestinian woman yelled "We want our homes and our lands. We have no alternative."

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