Don't do us any favors
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Issa Amro - (Opinion) May 20, 2009 - 12:00am

I am unfamiliar with any location in Israel or in the occupied territories where a Jew cannot travel to his own home in his car. Yet for us, the Palestinians in Hebron, this is the norm. Since 2001, the main street in Hebron's Wadi Hassan, which you refer to as the Zion Route, has been closed off to the movement of Palestinian vehicles. The street is only open to Israelis, even though all its residents are Palestinian. Not even one Jew resides on this street.

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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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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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Gaza patients questionings 'rise'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
May 4, 2009 - 12:00am

The number of Palestinians forced to provide information before being let out of Gaza for medical treatment is rising, an Israeli group has reported. In the first three months of 2009 more than 400 patients were interrogated, Physicians for Human Rights says. They say Israeli security services are involved in a systematic attempt to recruit Palestinians as collaborators. Israeli officials say they are carrying out security checks to ensure those entering Israel do not commit attacks.

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Gazans continue digging lifeline tunnels even as Egypt, Israel scramble to seal them
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Nidal Al-Mughrabi - April 30, 2009 - 12:00am

Once a profitable business, Abu Abdullah's tunnel under the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip has been out of work for three weeks due to an Egyptian security crackdown on smuggling. The Palestinian network of some 3,000 tunnels, created to thwart Israel's blockade of the coastal territory ruled by Hamas Islamists, was reduced to hundreds by bombing during Israel's three-week offensive in January. Now Egyptian police efforts are also biting into Gaza's underground supply system, which supplements the tightly restricted flow of aid commodities allowed in by the Israelis.

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Two killed in Gaza-Egypt tunnel collapse: medics
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Agence France Presse (AFP)
April 30, 2009 - 12:00am

GAZA CITY - Two Palestinians were killed on Thursday when a smuggling tunnel linking the Gaza Strip and Gaza collapsed, Palestinian medics said. Three other people who were in the tunnel at the time of the collapse were still missing, they said. The Palestinians have been using hundreds of tunnels to ferry food supplies and other necessities into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, which has been under a crippling Israeli blockade since June 2007. Israel claims the tunnels are also used by the Islamists to smuggle weapons including rockets into the Gaza Strip for use against the Jewish state.


Sick Gazans victims of Hamas-Fatah power struggle
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
April 28, 2009 - 12:00am

Hundreds of Palestinian patients have been trapped in the Gaza Strip, unable to travel abroad for crucial treatment for cancer and other diseases, because of political infighting between Gaza's Hamas rulers and their Palestinian rivals. Eight Gazans who were waiting to travel abroad have died since the crisis began in March, when the dispute shut down a medical referral committee that helps sick residents find treatment outside of Gaza, according to the World Health Organization.

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Egypt puts the bite on Gaza tunnel smugglers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Nidal Al-Mughrabi - April 28, 2009 - 12:00am

Once a profitable business, Abu Abdallah's tunnel under the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip has been out of work for three weeks due to an Egyptian security crackdown on smuggling. The Palestinian network of some 3,000 tunnels, created to thwart Israel's blockade of the coastal territory ruled by Hamas Islamists, was reduced to hundreds by bombing during Israel's three-week offensive in January. Now Egyptian police efforts are also biting into Gaza's underground supply system, which supplements the tightly restricted flow of aid commodities allowed in by the Israelis.

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Connect Gaza and West Bank now
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Daoud Kuttab - (Opinion) April 22, 2009 - 12:00am

US presidential envoy George Mitchell is touring the region searching for signs of progress to report back to his boss and to move the peace process forward.

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