Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon becoming less of a hotbed for militancy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Nicholas Blanford - December 31, 2010 - 1:00am

The murder of a senior Al-Qaeda-inspired jihadi and the exodus of other militants from here in recent months may herald some welcome stability for this impoverished Palestinian refugee camp. With some 70,000 Palestinian refugees squashed into little more than a square mile near Sidon, Ain al-Hilweh lies outside the jurisdiction of the Lebanese government and has long been plagued by Islamic radicalism and factional violence.

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The problem with Israel's Jewish 'refugee' initiative
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Rachel Shabi - (Opinion) December 16, 2010 - 1:00am

While the US has given up pressing for a freeze on illegal settlement building, one Israeli minister has been cranking up the volume on an issue he apparently considers more pressing. The deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, recently launched a new initiative to demand that Palestinians "recognise Jews who exiled from Arab lands as refugees". Ayalon's initiative is in alliance with Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), whose mission is to put this issue on the international agenda.

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Palestinians' future is in their hands
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Akiva Eldar, Carlo Strenger - (Editorial) December 14, 2010 - 1:00am

The Israel-Palestine conflict has been endlessly long, tragic, filled with wrong decisions on all sides and there are many ways of telling the story. Saeb Erekat, in his recent article on the Palestinian right of return, chooses to begin his story ("narrative" is the fashionable word) with the assassination of Count Bernadotte, the first UN mediator, by Jewish militants commanded by Yitzchak Shamir, later prime minister, in 1948. The implication is clear: Israelis killed justice from the very outset.

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The returning issue of Palestine's refugees
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Saeb Erakat - (Opinion) December 10, 2010 - 1:00am

Before his murder in 1948, Lord Folke Bernadotte, the first UN mediator to the Arab-Israeli conflict, stated: "It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent [Palestinian] victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine." Lord Bernadotte paid for his candour with his life as Jewish militants assassinated him under the direction of Yitzhak Shamir, the man who would later become prime minister of Israel.

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Memories and maps keep alive Palestinian hopes of return
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Ian Black - November 26, 2010 - 1:00am

Refugees remain the most intractable issue of the Middle East conflict, as two new books show A Palestinian girl at a refugee camp in Jordan. 1948 is a key date in Palestinian collective memory. Memories and maps feature prominently in the experience of Palestinians – a people scarred by dispossession, dispersion, occupation and profound uncertainty about their future. So amid the latest wrangling over the stalled peace talks with Israel come two sharp reminders of the depth of the conflict and how difficult it will be to resolve.

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Analysis: U.S. pinning its Mideast hopes on 90-day settlement freeze
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Glenn Kessler - (Opinion) November 15, 2010 - 1:00am

Call it a triumph of hope over experience. When Israel agreed to a 10-month partial settlement freeze last year, U.S. officials said it was exactly what they needed to get talks with the Palestinians started. They whispered that they were sure the freeze would be extended; Israel wouldn't dare curtail the negotiations by ending it.

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Analysis: U.S. pinning its Mideast hopes on 90-day settlement freeze
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Glenn Kessler - (Analysis) November 15, 2010 - 1:00am

Call it a triumph of hope over experience. When Israel agreed to a 10-month partial settlement freeze last year, U.S. officials said it was exactly what they needed to get talks with the Palestinians started. They whispered that they were sure the freeze would be extended; Israel wouldn't dare curtail the negotiations by ending it.

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My family, the enemy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Jonathan Freedland - (Film Review) November 8, 2010 - 1:00am

Back when peace did not seem such an impossibility, it was fashionable to cast the Middle East conflict as a family feud. Jews and Arabs were held to be if not brothers then long-lost cousins – the descendants, of Isaac and Ishmael, perhaps, or of Jacob and Esau – who would one day end their estrangement in an embrace. After the collapse of the Oslo peace process, a second intifada and a lethal military offensive in Gaza, you don't hear that kind of talk so much these days.

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Negev councilor cuts off 4,000 Bedouin's water supply
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Yanir Yagna - October 27, 2010 - 12:00am

A Negev politician cut off the water supply of some 4,000 Bedouin for 24 hours this week because he did not want his town to shoulder their nearly NIS 2 million water bill. The water was turned back on Tuesday afternoon, by order of the Be'er Sheva District Court, pending a hearing set for Thursday. "They're not under the jurisdiction of Lakiya, but their water bills are sent to us," said Lakiya town council head Khaled al-Sana, referring to the Bedouin residents. "I have 10,000 residents in the town, and I have to pay the bills of another 4,000 residents? That just isn't right."

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Rights of Return and Recognition Cannot Be Swapped
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Leonard Fein - October 20, 2010 - 12:00am

In a recent New York Times essay, published Oct. 14, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren, argues forcefully on behalf of the call by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. “Affirmation of Israel’s Jewishness,” he writes, “is the very foundation of peace, its DNA.”

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