The following are excerpts from editorials in newspapers from around the world.

Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, on Japan’s ConstitutionJapan’s Diet on Monday passed into law a controversial national referendum bill for constitutional amendments.

Since the constitution came into effect 60 years ago, this is the first law that determines procedures for constitutional revision. We are bitterly disappointed by the hasty manner in which this extremely important law was enacted.

Emboldened by the law, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is now more determined than ever to make constitutional revision a major election issue in July. It was actually for this reason that Abe was in such a hurry to pass the national referendum bill.

A new draft Constitution announced by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party forms the essence of the revisions Abe has in mind. Simply put, he intends to rewrite Article 9 and the current Self-Defence Forces will be replaced with a military. ...

And by lifting the stoppers on the nation’s right to collective self-defence, Japan will be able to use arms abroad. This leaves the possibility that someday, Japan will be like Britain, which invaded Iraq with the United States. Abe owes the Japanese people a clear explanation of what it means for the nation to maintain the proposed “self-defence military” and how it differs from the current SDF.The Jerusalem Post, Israel, on the status of Jerusalem... At some level, it is understandable that the international community regards the issue of Jerusalem as a matter that must ultimately be resolved in negotiations with the Arab world, and in particular with the Palestinians. Israel, since agreeing to the Oslo Accords that define Jerusalem as a final status issue, does not dispute this.

It is one thing, however, to treat a matter as negotiable, and quite another to lean so heavily against one side in a negotiation.

There is no reason or justice, for example, in the international refusal to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Every nation has a right to determine its capital, even if the borders of that capital are destined to be the topic of negotiations. ...

The policy of refusing to recognise Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem, far from encouraging a resolution to the problem, is harmful to the cause of peace. ...Khaleej Times, Dubai, UAE, on the Hamas-Fatah clashe>Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas failed to employ the correct spin on his oft-repeated rhetoric when he described renewed Hamas-Fatah clashes as “ghost of internal fighting.”

Not that the PA president would need reminding of the enormity of uncalled for damage that the new fighting has done, the situation does merit a thorough analysis, and goes to show just how much the Palestinians have to blame themselves not only for their continued losses on the freedom-struggle front, but now also for frustration in the wider Muslim world.

When Hamas and Fatah loyalists started shooting at each other again at the Karni crossing point ... they struck an arrow right into the heart of the painfully arrived at unity government, threatened to bring Saudi brokered efforts at peace to naught, embarrassed the collective Arab stand for the Palestinian cause and emboldened the Israelis by playing right into their hands.

Again, such needless and mindless internal bickering comes at a time of unprecedented Palestinian suffering on the humanitarian front speaks volumes of the increasingly unrepresentative nature of the Palestinian people’s leadership. ...

The present madness is definitely not a ghost, it is very much real, and carries extremely grim possibilities for the future if the present course is not streamlined immediately. Very soon, both Hamas and Fatah will either have effectively leveraged, or wasted their last opportunity to prove their worth to their people and the world.