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July 21, 2011 

 


This week's issue highlights the following significant developments here and in the Middle East:

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Remember to check out our blog to keep up with current events, op-eds, reproductive rights information, sort fact from fiction in your inbox about Israel, and Presidential Ponderings - Gail's thoughts and observations.

 

ISRAEL & THE MIDDLE EAST 

PA should delay UN statehood bid, says PLO official
The Palestinian Authority leadership has climbed a very high tree with its plan to ask the UN to recognize a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines in September, Nabil Amr, member of the PLO Central Council and a former PA minister, said on Tuesday.
"The leadership does not have any guarantees that it would be able to climb down safely from the tree," he cautioned, advising the PA to delay the statehood by another year.

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Palestine: the flags are already waving but will a declaration of statehood help?
The Palestinian Authority plans to ask the UN to recognise a declaration of independence and statehood. The Arab street may be in favour, but elsewhere opposition is growing.
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survey6 in 10 Palestinians reject 2-state solution, survey finds
Only one in three Palestinians (34 percent) accepts two states for two peoples as the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an intensive, face-to-face survey in Arabic of 1,010 Palestinian adults in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip completed this week by American pollster Stanley Greenberg.
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Why The Palestinians Do Not Want Fayyad 
In Palestinian society, it is much more important if one graduates from an Israeli prison than from a university in Texas. This is the reason that the two Palestinian governments, both Hamas and Fatah, are dominated by graduates of Israeli prisons who hold senior positions.
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70% of Sderot kids traumatized
Shaked and Maor Harush, 11-year-old twins from Sderot, saw a Qassam rocket explode a few feet away for them, setting a car ablaze. Since then, fear has become an everyday presence in their lives.
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The Good Fence
Just about anything that makes Israel more secure is opposed by someone: either by its enemies and their enablers, or by its fair-weather friends in the international arena, or by dissident elements within the Jewish community-and sometimes by all three. A case in point is Israel's West Bank security barrier. 
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For America, An Arab Winter
As Arab political horizons expand, the space for the United States to pursue its interests in the Middle East may well contract.
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REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS 

contraception Institute of Medicine Report Recommends Free Women's Health Services
Health insurers should pay for a range of services for women at no cost, including birth control, counseling on sexually transmitted diseases, and AIDS screening, the influential Institute of Medicine recommended on Tuesday.

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Wichita Doctor Takes Up Fight for Abortions
Not long ago, Dr. Mila Means, the physician trying to open an abortion clinic in this city, received a letter advising her to check under her car each morning - "because maybe today is the day someone places an explosive under it," the note said.

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Senate approves measure banning late-term abortions

Ohio is prepared to become the latest state to ban late-term abortions.

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SEPARATION OF RELIGION & STATE

separation Surprising support for separating church from stateIIt's It's been a good month for the much-maligned, often misunderstood principle of church-state separation.

A whopping 67% of the American people agree that the First Amendment "requires a clear separation of church and state," according to the 2011 State of the First Amendment survey released July 12 by the First Amendment Center.

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POLITICAL BYTES 

Michele Bachmann's Hazardous Love for Israel: Jeffrey Goldberg
Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman and Republican candidate for president, is making a muscular showing in the polls. She is telegenic. She is clever. Some of her Republican opponents worry she may be unstoppable.
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House Race Scramble  

In recent years, it hasn't been hard for House campaign committee officials to identify their list of most vulnerable members on the other side of the aisle.  Going after Republicans representing Democratic-leaning suburbs has been a key element of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's strategy to win control of the House.
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Gillibrand Why Kirsten Gillibrand Wants You to Run for Office 
The number of women in Congress has declined for the first time in decades. The junior senator from New York wants to change that.
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FYI

fuelFueling Israel's Future
Are abundant natural resources a blessing, or a curse? This is the sort of question that economic theorists love to play with, usually concluding that, depending on other factors, they can be either or both.
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Sincerely,

 

Gail Yamner, President
Marcia Balonick, Executive Director
Joy Malkus, Executive Research Director