August 23rd

Palestinians: No talks if settlement freeze ends ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press by Mohammed Daraghmeh - August 23, 2010 - 12:00am The Palestinian leader has warned President Barack Obama that he will pull out of upcoming peace talks if Israel ends a slowdown of West Bank settlement construction, a Palestinian negotiator said Monday. Direct negotiations aimed at ending the decades-old Mideast conflict are to resume in Washington next week after months of U.S. diplomatic efforts. Both sides seem pessimistic about the talks, their first in 20 months. » Read more

Support builds for boycotts against Israel, activists say ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Boston Globe by Farah Stockman - August 22, 2010 - 12:00am In May, rock legend Elvis Costello canceled his gig in Israel. Then, in June, a group of unionized dock workers in San Francisco refused to unload an Israeli ship. In August, a food co-op in Washington state removed Israeli products from its shelves. The so-called “boycott, divestment, and sanctions’’ movement aimed at pressuring Israel to withdraw from land claimed by Palestinians has long been considered a fringe effort inside the United States, with no hope of garnering mainstream support enjoyed by the anti-apartheid campaign against South Africa of the 1980s. » Read more

Israel's Netanyahu scores big victory with direct peace talks – for now ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor by Joshua Mitnick - August 22, 2010 - 12:00am Savoring the diplomatic victory of renewed direct peace talks announced last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet today that a peace treaty with the Palestinians would be "a difficult thing, but it is possible." » Read more

Palestinians see danger for Abbas in resumed Israel peace talks ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor by Ben Lynfield - August 20, 2010 - 12:00am There was little for Palestinians to be upbeat about Friday as they waited for an official invitation to join Israel at resumed direct peace talks to be hosted by President Obama on Sept. 2. » Read more

Counterpoint: Land and Sovereignty ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Charles Glass - August 20, 2010 - 12:00am In the elegant and incisive style that characterizes all of his writing, James Carroll set out in these pages (“The wandering Jew and the mad Saracen,” Views, Aug. 12) the theological genesis of the dispute in Israel-Palestine. Mr. Carroll presented a compelling vision of Christian religious prejudice against both Jews and Muslims that he believes informs this seemingly intractable conflict. Christian insistence from St. Augustine onward that “Jewish exile was a matter of theological proof,” he wrote, animates Christian hostility to Zionism. » Read more

Gaza Mall Seeks to Make Statement of Resolve ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Ethan Bronner - August 22, 2010 - 12:00am Colognes by Hugo Boss, Dunhill and Givenchy line the shelves of the cosmetics shop. One of the two women’s clothing stores features a window mannequin in a hot pink T-shirt and low-slung jeans. In the supermarket freezer is Nestlé ice cream and on its shelves are salty and cheesy chips and doodles that well-off societies consume by the bagful. Gaza, famous for its misery, has a shopping mall. It opened a month ago to considerable fanfare, with Palestinian television cameras trailing Hamas government officials meandering proudly around the bright new stores filled with imported goods. » Read more

Stakes are high in Mideast peace talks ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Boston Globe by Farah Stockman - August 21, 2010 - 12:00am The United States will host the launch of direct peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Washington early next month, a diplomatic breakthrough for the Obama administration, which has invested much of the president’s global political capital in an attempt to broker peace in the Middle East. » Read more

In New Mideast Talks, A Small Victory For U.S. ATFP World Press Roundup Article from National Public Radio (NPR) by Michele Kelemen - August 21, 2010 - 12:00am The Obama administration has set the date for the first direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in two years, a small diplomatic victory for an administration that made Arab-Israeli peace an early priority. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have been invited to the White House on Sept.1. They will be joined by Jordan's King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. » Read more

Mideast talks offer promise, peril for Obama ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Politico by Carol E. Lee, Laura Rozen, Ben Smith - August 23, 2010 - 12:00am Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's announcement Friday of new direct Middle East peace talks will renew the sense of opportunity that had faded as the regional stalemate hardened. But the talks also renew the political peril for President Barack Obama, who once again is in the position of pledging progress that's easier to promise than to deliver. » Read more

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks: What Will Help, Hinder? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from PBS August 20, 2010 - 12:00am Transcript JEFFREY BROWN: And to talk about the talks, we go to David Makovsky, senior fellow at the Washington Institute and co-author of the book "Myths, Illusions and Peace," and Ghaith Al-Omari, advocacy director at the American Task Force on Palestine and a fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is a former aide to President Abbas. Ghaith al Omari, what is your answer to the question posed at the announcement today, why now? » Read more