The moment of truth
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Issa Samander - December 14, 2009 - 1:00am

The US administration was very quick to announce its appreciation of the Israeli right-wing government's decision to temporarily and partially halt settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territories. In doing so, Washington has only shown its weakness. If the US cannot convince Israel even to properly freeze settlement construction in occupied territory, then how will it convince Israel to dismantle settlements? And if that doesn't happen, what then for the two-state solution?

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Abbas: West Bank mosque torching is despicable
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
December 11, 2009 - 1:00am

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday said that Israel must rein in settlers' provocative actions, after assailants vandalized a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, torching furniture and spraying Nazi slogans in Hebrew on the premises. "The torching of the mosque in Yasuf is a despicable crime, and the settlers are behaving with brutality," said Abbas, who called the act a violation of religious freedom. "The settlers' unruly behavior must be stopped," Abbas added after meeting on Friday with United Arab List-Ta'al chairman Ahmed Tibi in Amman.

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Gideon Levy / Let's face the facts, Israel is a semi-theocracy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Gideon Levy - (Opinion) December 10, 2009 - 1:00am

The storm over remarks made by Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman is in many respects a tempest in a teapot, which has for a long time taken on holier aspects than it seems. Neeman wants Torah law, or in other words, he wants Israel to be a country governed by Jewish religious law, halakha. In any event, Israel is already a semi-theocracy. The Israelis who were frightened by the minister's remarks and who love viewing their country as liberal, Western and secular are forgetting that our life here is more religious, traditional and halakhic than we are prepared to admit.

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Israeli settlers threaten to make Palestinians 'pay the price' on the West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Telegraph
by Adrian Blomfield - December 9, 2009 - 1:00am

Mounting discontent over the building ban, announced at the end of November, has already manifested itself in a series of scuffles between egg-throwing settlers and Israeli police officers. But this week hardline Jewish activists have signalled a change of tactic by circulating calls for Palestinian civilians to pay the price for the settlement freeze.

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Justice Minister: Jewish law should be binding law in Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Yair Ettinger - December 8, 2009 - 1:00am

Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman on Monday said he believes Jewish law (Halakha) should be the binding law in Israel, Army Radio reported. "Step by step, we will bestow upon the citizens of Israel the laws of the Torah and we will turn Halakha into the binding law of the nation," said Neeman at a Jewish law convention at the Regency hotel in Jerusalem, in the presence of many rabbis and rabbinical judges. "We must bring back the heritage of our fathers to the nation of Israel," Neeman said. "The Torah has the complete solution to all of the questions we are dealing with," he added.

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The US cash behind extremist settlers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from
by Andrew Kadi, Aaron Levitt - (Opinion) December 8, 2009 - 1:00am

Last month, a Brooklyn-based non-profit organisation called the Hebron Fund, which supports Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied city of Hebron, held a fundraiser at the New York Mets' stadium, Citi Field.

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West Bank settlers block freeze-order officials
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Omar Karmi - December 8, 2009 - 1:00am

Hundreds of settlers yesterday blocked the entrances to two settlements in the occupied West Bank to prevent Israeli government inspectors from serving construction freeze orders in line with a government order issued in late November.

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'The Freeze' is just another scene in Israel's masquerade
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Gideon Levy - (Opinion) December 7, 2009 - 1:00am

Like every production, be it a flop or a hit, the future of this show will also be decided by the audience. In the meantime, as the first act shifts into high gear, the viewers are yawning. The government and the settlers are proud to introduce "The Freeze," a show in which both sides play - in quite unconvincing fashion - already scripted parts. During the first act, no real, historic edict has been issued. Rather, these decrees are just props. Thus, nobody will evacuate one balcony in the final scene.

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Meet Daniel Pinner - an extremist West Bank settler
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Chaim Levinson - (Interview) December 7, 2009 - 1:00am

Daniel Pinner, whose monologue follows, lives in the settlement of Kfar Tapuah, which was founded in 1978 by a core group of members of Moshav Bareket belonging to the Hapoel Hamizrachi movement and is defined as a "religious communal" settlement. In 1990 Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane (the son of Meir Kahane, founder of the extreme right-wing Kach party, which was banned in 1994) moved there; he was murdered, together with his wife Talia in 2001, in a shooting on a highway south of the settlement of Ofra. Following the younger Kahane, others identified with the Kach movement moved to Tapuah.

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Trust the settlers to lose the West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Bradley Burston - (Opinion) December 7, 2009 - 1:00am

Barack Obama cannot and will not compel Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and free up land for a Palestinian state. Neither will the international community as a whole, nor Hamas, and certainly not the Palestinian Authority, nor what remains of the Israeli left. Trust the settlers, though. They alone will make it possible. Sooner or later, they'll lose the West Bank all by themselves.

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