Palestinians condemn latest Israel settlement plan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
May 20, 2011 - 12:00am

Palestinian officials on Friday condemned an Israeli plan to build 1,550 housing units on annexed land around Jerusalem, authorised the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left for talks in Washington. An Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman said a planning committee had approved two building projects in Pisgat Zeev and Har Homa. These urban settlements were built on land that Israel annexed after a 1967 war, in a move not recognised internationally, and that it sees as Jerusalem neighbourhoods. The spokeswoman did not say when construction was expected to start.

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Settlement Row May Steal Obama's Thunder
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from SkyNews
by Dominic Waghorn - May 19, 2011 - 12:00am

A new settlement row threatens to overshadow a key speech on the Middle East by US President Barack Obama and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to America. Har Homa The settlement of Har Homa on the outskirts of east Jerusalem Controversial plans to approve 1,608 new homes in east Jerusalem will be discussed as Mr Netanyahu boards a plane to fly to Washington DC. One plan involves carving into a picturesque hillside overlooking the West Bank town of Bethlehem to create 1,000 new homes for Jewish settlers near to the settlement of Har Homa.

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Report: 1,500 new settler homes ready for approval
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
May 19, 2011 - 12:00am

The Planning and Building Committee for the Jerusalem municipality will discuss Thursday plans to build 1,500 new Jewish-only housing units in illegal settlements of Har Homa and Pisgat Ze'ev. Both settlements are built on lands occupied by Israel in 1967, and are at least partially constructed on privately owned Palestinian property.

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Construction of 1,550 Jerusalem homes OK'd
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Ronen Medzini - May 19, 2011 - 12:00am

Next crisis with US underway? The Interior Ministry's district committee for construction and planning approved Thursday evening two major plans for some 1,550 housing units in contentious Jerusalem neighborhoods. The construction plans for Har Homa and Pisgat Ze'ev, both located beyond the Green Line, were given the go-ahead as President Barack Obama was delivering his major Mideast policy speech. Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's departure to Washington Thursday evening, the government secretary ordered the committee to proceed with the touchy session.

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Israel's Likud demanding West Bank settlement annexation
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
May 17, 2011 - 12:00am

Israel's Likud party on Monday asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex areas of the West Bank containing Israeli settlements, ahead of a possible United Nations General Assembly resolution in September recognizing a Palestinian state. The call comes after Likud Knesset member Danny Danon announced findings of a party-sponsored poll that showed more than half of the respondents supporting annexation of West Bank settlement areas, the Ynet news site reported on Monday.

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The Invisible Return
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Danny Rubenstein - May 13, 2011 - 12:00am

THE MAIN ROAD BETWEEN Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and the coastal area is especially crowded on spring days between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot, when tens of thousands – tourists and hikers, Jews, Christians and Muslims – make the traditional pilgrimage to the holy sites in Jerusalem.

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Close the door on Israel's land grab
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
(Editorial) May 13, 2011 - 12:00am

What would you do if your citizenship were rejected once your passport expired? Impossible, you would think - a travel document isn't your only, or even your primary, tie to your land of origin. But that was the fate of 140,000 Palestinians, as the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported this week, when Israel quietly cancelled their West Bank residency status between 1967 and 1994. It was as if residents simply blinked out of existence when their travel documents expired.

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Israel trying to push Palestinians out of Jordan Valley, says report
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Vita Bekker - May 13, 2011 - 12:00am

By exploiting the land, water resources and tourist sites of the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea areas, Israel is trying to annex the territory, an Israeli human rights group said yesterday. Such exploitation of the strip of land on the eastern part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank helps Israel maintain its authority over the area's borders and prevent them from falling under the control of the Palestinians, according to the group, B'Tselem, and other analysts.

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Report: Israel freezes West Bank fence near major settlement bloc
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
May 11, 2011 - 12:00am

Israel has frozen the construction of the West Bank separation fence near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc over budget concerns, Army Radio said on Wednesday, adding that Defense Ministry documents showed construction could resume in late 2012. According to a Defense Ministry document quoted in the Army Radio report, the defense establishment "realizes the importance of erecting the fence and retains all of the claims to its construction despite a lack of funding." The cost of completing the said section is estimated at around NIS 5 billion.

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FM: Israel will talk with PA, but won’t freeze settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Hilary Leila Krieger, Tovah Lazaroff - May 11, 2011 - 12:00am

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to reject the unity deal Fatah made with Hamas and to resume direct talks with Israel – even though Israel has no intention of ceding to Abbas’s demand that it freeze settlement activity.

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