Next step regarding Jerusalem
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Daoud Kuttab - (Opinion) December 10, 2009 - 1:00am

Forty-two years is a long time. Israel somehow thinks that with passing of time, and by passing unilateral laws, it can dictate history. This week, the Israeli arrogance in going against international will, which has been going on for so many years, seems to be facing a reality check. The next logical step is then for European Union countries to refuse to recognise any products produced in industrial zones created in East Jerusalem as coming from Israel.

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Israeli forces kill Israeli man at Gaza border
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
December 7, 2009 - 1:00am

Israeli forces shot and killed an Israeli citizen near a Gaza border crossing overnight, an official said. An Israeli military spokeswoman told Ma'an that forces opened fire at the man, a civilian in his 30s, as he attempted to enter northern Gaza near the Erez crossing early Monday. The spokeswoman added that when Defense Ministry guards identified seeing the man they first fired warning shots but ultimately targeted him when he failed to respond. The forces aimed at his lower body, she said.

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Altogether more than a footnote
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Olivia Snaije - December 4, 2009 - 1:00am

The first thing that comes to mind when holding graphic novelist and journalist Joe Sacco’s new book, “Footnotes in Gaza,” is the colossal amount of work that went into it. Not only is this pen-and-ink graphic novel almost 400 pages long, the subject too is heavy: The Israeli military’s massacre of Palestinian civilians in Khan Younis and Rafah (Gaza), during the 1956 Suez Crisis. The Malta-born American researched and reported on the subject for seven years, making two extended trips to Gaza – where he was often under fire from weapons paid for with his tax dollars.

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Israeli bombs follow Palestinian rockets
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
November 23, 2009 - 1:00am

Israeli aircraft attacked two suspected weapons-making factories and a smuggling tunnel in the Gaza Strip early Sunday in what the military said was retaliation for Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel. The airstrikes wounded at least seven people, including one seriously, and came despite an announcement by Gaza's Hamas rulers that the territory's military factions had agreed to stop firing rockets. The Hamas announcement came late Saturday, after the rocket attack.

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Peres: Netanyahu can and must make peace with Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
November 23, 2009 - 1:00am

President Shimon Peres said Monday that just peace between Israel and the Palestinians was just a "step away," and urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to do everything necessary to ensure an end to the conflict during its tenure. "Today, there is just one step left between us and the end of this conflict," said Peres. "The current government can and must do it. The painful solution of dividing the land, two states for two peoples, was something the [Israel's first prime minister] David Ben-Gurion took on himself, and today it is accepted by the majority of the nation.

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Rabbis at secret meet: Soldiers who refuse orders are 'heroes'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Chaim Levinson - November 23, 2009 - 1:00am

Dozens of religious Zionist rabbis held a secret meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday to discuss ways of bolstering the hesder yeshivas, the halachic argument for refusing to obey military orders to evacuate settlements, and the campaign against having the army evacuate Jews from their homes. The rabbis in attendance included Zalman Baruch Melamed, rabbi of Beit El and head of the yeshiva there; Shmuel Eliyahu, rabbi of Safed; and Yaakov Yosef, son of Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef.

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Comment / Why Netanyahu really does want to advance peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Aluf Benn - (Opinion) November 18, 2009 - 1:00am

I could hear the prime minister's familiar voice on the telephone. "I want to advance a peace agreement with the Palestinians. I am capable of achieving an agreement. I have the political will inside me," Benjamin Netanyahu told me. He repeated this message during his speeches at the conference of Jewish communities in Washington and at the Saban Forum in Jerusalem: great concessions, generosity of spirit, territorial compromise, let's start negotiations and surprise the world, he said.

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Israel’s double standards
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Faisal Al Rfouh - (Opinion) November 18, 2009 - 1:00am

Israel orchestrated a drama, interdicting a cargo ship on November 3 for allegedly carrying Iranian arms for Hizbollah and then releasing it after nothing incriminating was found. Israel’s reported justification for its action under UN Resolution 1747 looks paradoxical in view of its utter and open defiance of all UN resolutions pertaining to the Palestinian issue, particularly resolutions 242, 338 and 194.

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A Mideast Truce
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Roger Cohen - (Opinion) November 16, 2009 - 1:00am

I’ve grown so pessimistic about Israel-Palestine that I find myself agreeing with Israel’s hard-line foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman: “Anyone who says that within the next few years an agreement can be reached ending the conflict simply doesn’t understand the situation and spreads delusions.” That’s the lesson of early Obama. The president tried to rekindle peace talks by confronting Israel on settlements, coaxing Palestinians to resume negotiations, and reaching out to the Muslim world. The effort has failed.

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MI figures out what went wrong in Lavon affair - 55 years later
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amos Harel - November 11, 2009 - 1:00am

Fifty-five years after the notorious failure of an Israeli sabotage operation in Egypt, Military Intelligence has finally gotten around to figuring out what went wrong. The answer? Pretty much everything. An educational presentation about the 1954 Lavon affair prepared by the MI history and heritage division found that MI had not sufficiently trained the members of the sabotage unit, who were mostly amateurs and included several Egyptian Jews, and had failed to give them cover stories, plan escape routes or otherwise plan for the possibility that they would be caught.

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