Israel holding up settlement college upgrade
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
August 13, 2012 - 12:00am

Israel's defense minister is holding up the politically charged upgrade of the only West Bank settlement college to a full-fledged university. A month after a settler council approved the upgrade, a spokesman said Defense Minister Ehud Barak has to study the security and diplomatic implications before signing off on the move. Without his go-ahead, the upgrade cannot be finalized.

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Fayyad raps Israeli plan to evict Palestinian shepherds
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
by Jihan Abdalla - August 9, 2012 - 12:00am

An Israeli plan to evict 12 shepherd communities in the occupied West Bank to make way for army training zones was condemned by the Palestinian Authority premier on Wednesday as a move to depopulate Palestinian areas. Israel has designated the area south of the city of Hebron as a closed military zone and asked for Supreme Court approval to move the residents to the nearby village of Yatta, where the Israeli Defense Ministry claims many of them have permanent homes.

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West Bank settlers raise fund to purchase Palestinian land
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
August 9, 2012 - 12:00am

Residents of a West Bank outpost slated for demolition on Thursday launched a fundraising campaign aimed at purchasing the land on which their community was built.

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Susiya: A Human Rights Calamity
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast
by Kathleen Peratis - (Opinion) August 9, 2012 - 12:00am

In 2004, Ha'aretz ran the following story: "Last week, the High Court of Justice postponed for four months the state's request to destroy the structures and tents in Susiya, a village of caves in the southern part of the Hebron Hills.”

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Israel evacuates illegal buildings in West Bank outpost
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
August 8, 2012 - 12:00am

Israeli security forces evacuated residents and demolished several structures in an illegal West Bank outpost early Wednesday, with no clashes reported. The Maoz Esther outpost, located in the Benjamin regional council, was founded in 2007 on a private Palestinian land. It was dedicated to the memory of Esther Galia, resident of a neighboring settlement who was killed by Palestinian militants.

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After seven years, Gaza evacuees are growing distant from the settler movement
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Ben Sales - August 7, 2012 - 12:00am

From an overlooking road, the district of this desert town called Nitzan B seems like a unified mass of identical red-roofed single-family homes, reminiscent of a crowded American postwar Levittown. “From far away it looks nice,” says Galit Kakon, a Nitzan B resident. Like the rest of the district’s 600 families, Kakon used to live in Gush Katif, the bloc of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip that Israel evacuated seven years ago this week in an operation called "the disengagement."

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Traditional stone walls help protect Palestinian land
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Agence France Presse (AFP)
by Hossam Ezzedine - August 6, 2012 - 12:00am

It has taken four years for Amer Dahabreh to build a traditional stone wall around his land, in what appears to be the ideal solution for protecting it from Jewish settlers. Within the safety of this stone enclosure, this 60-year-old farmer grows apricots, grapes, peaches and courgettes in the village of Ein Yabrud, which is overlooked by the neighbouring Jewish settlement of Ofra. The village is located in Area C, an area under total Israeli control which comprises some 60 percent of the West Bank.

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Legalizing outposts the last thing we need
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Gili Heskin - (Opinion) August 5, 2012 - 12:00am

A committee headed by former Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy determined that Israel is not an occupying power in the West Bank and recommended that the State sanction the majority of illegal Jewish outposts in the region. Netanyahu announced that he would implement the panel's recommendations as soon as possible, as though the settlement policy has ever been subjected to legal or moral decisions.

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Dani Dayan's War: Can Israeli Settlers Control Both the West Bank and Themselves?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Atlantic
by Zvika Krieger - (Opinion) August 3, 2012 - 12:00am

Dani Dayan has decided to come "out of the closet," he tells me as we sit in a coffee shop looking out onto the Judean hills earlier this summer. The head of the Yesha Council, which represents the approximately 300,000 Israelis who live in the West Bank, was not referring to his strident opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state; he's been an out-and-proud critic of the two-state solution for years, prominently showcased in an inflammatory op-ed last week. When we met in Jerusalem, he was actually in the process of coming out as a moderate.

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Settlers yearn for 'environment without borders' - and without Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Zafrir Rinat - (Opinion) August 2, 2012 - 12:00am

In the last two years, Jewish settlers in the West Bank have made a concerted PR effort to showcase their commitment to the environment. At the heart of this campaign, headed by NGOs and regional councils operating on the other side of the Green Line, is the call to separate politics from the environment. According to the settlers, it is important to create Palestinian-Israeli cooperation in order to tackle problems hurting both sides.

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