PA: Israel planning to expropriate another 2% of West Bank land
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - July 1, 2009 - 12:00am

The Palestinian Authority this week accused Israel of planning to declare another 2 percent of the West Bank state land, thus effectively expropriating it. But the defense establishment rejected this claim, saying the land in question had been under the Dead Sea until the shrinkage of that body of water uncovered it and the goal of the declaration is to prevent the land from being taken over by private or commercial entities. It is not clear which claim is correct.

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Why Defining ‘Natural Growth’ Is So Confusing, On Purpose
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Nathan Jeffay - June 24, 2009 - 12:00am

Givat Ha’eytam, West Bank — Givat Ha’eytam, a lonely hill in the Israeli occupied West Bank, seems like anything but a natural part of the bustling 8,000-person Jewish settlement of Efrat. Indeed, the stony outcrop, with its view of Efrat’s buildings in the distance, soon will be cut off from that settlement by the separation barrier Israel is building across the length of the West Bank, ostensibly to protect Israelis from Palestinian terrorism.

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Lawsuit brings murky West Bank land deals to light
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
by Amy Teibel - June 20, 2009 - 12:00am

OFRA SETTLEMENT, West Bank (AP) — It reads like a standard real estate contract between a Zionist institution and an Israeli couple. But it offers a rare glimpse into the bureaucratic smoke screen that helps ensure a strong Jewish presence on lands claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.

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Netanyahu Feels the Heat
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Harold Meyerson - (Opinion) June 17, 2009 - 12:00am

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has at last acknowledged, with caveats, the need to establish a Palestinian state. Actually, Netanyahu's Palestine is primarily caveats, with a dash of state thrown in for appearances' sake. In his speech last Sunday, the prime minister failed to address the continual growth of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank, where close to 300,000 Israeli settlers live. The Palestine that Netanyahu envisions must steadily shrink to accommodate the growing number of Israeli settlers in its midst. It would be a collection of barely contiguous cantons.

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Israel admits Tube advert map 'mistake'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
May 22, 2009 - 12:00am

Israel's tourist ministry has admitted to a "mistake" over adverts on the London Underground after complaints that they "wipe Palestine off the map". The ads include a map which campaigners say shows the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip - as well as Syria's Golan Heights - as integral parts of Israel. The ministry said that in general, maps should not be used on billboards. But it denied a Transport for London statement that it had asked for the offending posters to be removed.

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Palestinians say were promised Jerusalem
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Ali Waked - May 20, 2009 - 12:00am

US President Barack Obama's new peace plan for the Middle East continues to unravel, ahead of it official presentation in Cairo, on June 4. Official Palestinian Authority sources told Ynet Wednesday that following Jordan's King Abdullah's visit to Washington, as well as other visits to the US capital, they were given the impression that any new American peace plan would call for establishing a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

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It's not up to Israelis to determine the status of Palestine
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Daoud Kuttab - (Opinion) May 14, 2009 - 12:00am

As the summit between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approaches, most of the discussion has focused on whether or not the newly elected Israeli leader will finally say that he backs a two-state solution. This is the wrong approach. Israelis should not determine the status of the Palestinian entity, nor should Palestinians have a say in what Israelis call their own state.

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Ethnically cleansing the land where Christianity was born
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Michael Jansen - May 14, 2009 - 12:00am

During his high profile visit to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI preached reconciliation between Christians/Muslims and Jews. But he failed to bridge the gulf between the Vatican and Jews because he did not speak of past issues dividing Catholics and Jews. These include long-standing persecution of Jews by the church, culminating in the murder of six million by the Nazis during World War II, and the refusal of Pope Pius XII to intervene in the Nazi extermination of the Jews.

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New West Bank roads jeopardizing chances for peace accord
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amos Harel - May 14, 2009 - 12:00am

Palestinian interest in the intentions of the new Israeli government tends to focus on one small area in the West Bank, Ma'aleh Adumim and its environs, particularly the area known as E1 linking the settlement to East Jerusalem. Earlier this month Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad participated in mass Friday prayers against land expropriation in the area, and the Palestinian media was full of reports of Israeli settlement plans in Ma'aleh Adumim and E1.

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Michael Oren, Ambassador, or, this is how the occupation ends
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Bradley Burston - (Opinion) May 11, 2009 - 12:00am

I was reading an Etgar Keret book of gently hallucinatory short stories when I got the news. It fit right in. The Foreign Minister, who was now Avigdor Lieberman - himself nothing if not an Etgar Keret invention - had approved the choice of Michael Oren as Israel's next ambassador to Washington.

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