May 12th

Fuel Supply To Be Resumed To Gaza Power Plant
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
May 12, 2008 - 5:34pm

A Gaza power plant shut down by the ruling Hamas party will start operating again later on Monday, an official said. Hamas said the plant was shut down on Saturday because it ran out of fuel supplied by Israel. Israel claimed that Hamas was creating an artificial crisis, raising tensions ahead of a visit by the Egyptian mediator trying to broker a truce between the two enemies, and severely limited shipments to pressure Palestinian militants to halt their rocket barrages at nearby Jewish communities.

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Israelis Don't Believe Scandal-hit Olmert: Poll
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
May 12, 2008 - 5:33pm

A majority of Israelis want Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign or go on leave over a bribery scandal and do not believe his denials of wrongdoing, an opinion poll showed on Monday. The survey in Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, was the first to gauge the public mood since a court gag order in the case was partially lifted on Thursday and Olmert went on television to profess his innocence.

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Hezbollah 'redrawing' Mideast Map
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Times
by Joshua Mitnick - May 12, 2008 - 5:32pm

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Hezbollah's dramatic gains in Lebanon last week are just part of a regional process that began last year in the Gaza Strip and will continue in Jordan and Egypt, a Hamas official in the West Bank told The Washington Times. Sheik Yazeeb Khader, a Ramallah-based Hamas political activist and editor, said militant groups across the Middle East are gaining power at the expense of U.S.-backed regimes, just as Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

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Priority: Statehood
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Daoud Kuttab - (Opinion) May 12, 2008 - 5:28pm

In the spring of 1948, my father, George Kuttab, and his brother Qostandi fled Musrara, a Jerusalem neighborhood just outside the walled city, after their sister Hoda's husband was killed in front of her and their children. When Dad used to tell us about the Naqba, the catastrophe that befell Palestinians in 1948, he never talked politics or hatred. He would laugh as he told us how his brother secured their home near Damascus Gate.

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A Talk With Prime Minister Fayyad
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Lally Weymouth - (Interview) May 12, 2008 - 5:26pm

Lally Weymouth also spoke with Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad in Ramallah. Excerpts: Q. Did you [think] it was possible to do anything with [Yasser] Arafat? A. There is hardly anything I did here that was easy. Changing the way business is done in finance in the PA was not easy. You just didn't know where to begin. Was it possible to do anything with the PA? Yes, it was. This is fairly well documented. We did quite a few things in a relatively short period of time. So what did you decide to do?

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A Talk With President Peres
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Lally Weymouth - (Interview) May 12, 2008 - 5:26pm

Israeli President Shimon Peres is the last remaining founding father of the Israeli state. Last week he spoke with Newsweek-Washington Post's Lally Weymouth. Excerpts: Q. Is there a realistic chance of peace with the Palestinians?

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Rice: Israel, Palestinians Need To Show Progress
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Anne Gearan - May 12, 2008 - 5:24pm

The Bush administration has told Israeli and Palestinian leaders they will need to show progress in their secret talks soon, or risk a potentially fatal erosion in public support for a process now in its sixth month without any obvious successes. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice passed that message during meetings with both sides a little more than a week ago, Arab, U.S. and other Western diplomats said. Rice was reacting mainly to the increasingly pessimistic Palestinian assessments of the talks, but she warned that confidence was fragile among Israelis, too.

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May 11th

The Bush Administration pushes Israelis and Palestinians toward compromise (1). In the Washington Post, Lally Weymouth interviews Israeli President Shimon Peres (2) and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayaad (3). ATFP Board Member Daoud Kuttab writes about the practical reality of the Right of Return (4). Negotiations continue on a Gaza cease-fire (7) even as Israel weathers scandal allegations (6) and political unrest (12). In Haaretz, Akiva Eldar argues that U.S. president Bush should avoid visiting Israel (13).

May 8th

Mideast Change Is Coming, And May Not Be Pretty
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Rami Khouri - (Opinion) May 8, 2008 - 5:39pm

  The convergence of six trends in the Middle East - the changing realities of food, energy, water, population, urbanization and security-dominated politics - is likely to create conditions that will be politically challenging, if not destabilizing, in many countries in the years ahead. The confluence of these trends is very similar to what happened in the region in the mid to late 1970s, when the current Islamist wave of social identity and confrontational politics was initiated.

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Politics Aside, A Human Rights Crime Is Happening In Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Jimmy Carter - (Opinion) May 8, 2008 - 5:38pm

The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where 1.5 million human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air, or land. An entire population is being brutally punished.

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