Mideast Peace Mired as Abbas Trades Taunts With Netanyahu
Media Mention of Hussein Ibish In Bloomberg - September 28, 2012 - 12:00am

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exchanged taunts at the United Nations as the world body watched a peace process that has all but slipped away.


NEWS: Pres. Abbas and PM Netanyahu separately address the UN General Assembly. As expected, Abbas asks for an upgrade of Palestine's status to UN nonmember observer state, but most Palestinians seem unimpressed. Netanyahu's speech is widely derided in Israel. Hamas denounces Abbas' initiative. Israelis conclude Netanyahu speech means there will be no war this year. Iran vows to retaliate if attacked. Israeli troops wound two Palestinians in northern Gaza. Four more Palestinians are killed in northern Syria. Gaza smugglers say their tunnel networks are operating at approximately 10 percent. Hamas officials say Egypt has promised to ease border restrictions in the coming days. Hamas bans fruit imports from Israel into Gaza, claiming the area is “self-sufficient.” The BBC looks at Israel's new campaign on Jewish refugees and migrants from the Arab world. Hospitals in occupied East Jerusalem say they face an unprecedented financial crisis. COMMENTARY: Yehouda Shenhav says Israel is trying to use Mizrahi Jews as pawns against Palestinian refugees. Saud Abu Ramadan looks at the politics behind the latest Palestinian UN initiative. David Andrew Weinberg analyzes Netanyahu's “meddling” in the US presidential election. Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff say the security situation on the Israeli-Egypt border has reached a crisis point. The Economist notes that the government of Pres. Morsy has done almost nothing to help Hamas. Jonathan Marcus says Abbas and Netanyahu's UN speeches show they have other priorities than the peace process. Hugh Naylor says the speeches offer little hope for peace. Mark Perry speculates about what an Israeli attack against Iran might look like.

The Entebbe Option
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Policy
by Mark Perry - (Opinion) September 27, 2012 - 12:00am


While no one in the Barack Obama administration knows whether Israel will strike Iran's nuclear program, America's war planners are preparing for a wide array of potential Israeli military options -- while also trying to limit the chances of the United States being drawn into a potentially bloody conflict in the Persian Gulf. 


Netanyahu and Abbas offer little hope for future peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Hugh Naylor - (Opinion) September 28, 2012 - 12:00am


JERUSALEM // The Palestinians and Israelis diverge on almost every issue but what they do have in common is that they have done little to satisfy the administration of Barack Obama. In his address at the United Nations yesterday, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, called for world recognition of a Palestinian state while Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, demanded firmer international pressure on Iran.


Netanyahu, Abbas display divergent priorities at UN
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
by Jonathan Marcus - (Opinion) September 27, 2012 - 12:00am


t is perhaps one of the paradoxes of the past 18 months in the Middle East that as people protested and dictators toppled, so the region's longest-lasting conflict - that between Israel and the Palestinians - has largely disappeared from the headlines. What used to be termed "the peace process" has largely become moribund - a useless label as there is no peace process to describe.


A honeymoon that wasn’t
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Economist
(Analysis) September 29, 2012 - 12:00am


ABOVE Gaza’s parliament hangs a tableau of two smiling Islamist leaders. Muhammad Morsi, the new president of Egypt, and Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the neighbouring Gaza Strip, which is run by Hamas, the Palestinians’ dominant Islamist movement. The two men are raising their hands together, hailing a regional dawn against a backdrop of Cairo’s pyramids. The billboard’s message is that the new Egypt, under a Muslim Brother, recognises Hamas, originally a Brotherhood branch, as its new ally—and as the legitimate authority in Palestine.


As Sinai border heats up, Egypt buries its head in the sand
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amos Harel, Avi Issacharoff - (Opinion) September 28, 2012 - 12:00am


Beyond this week's dramatic media coverage of the female soldier deployed with the Karakal infantry battalion credited with helping to end a terror attack, and the subsequent Facebook correspondence between her and a female colleague who hid when the firing began, the incident last Friday in which Israel Defense Forces soldier Cpl. Natanel Yehoshua Yahalomi was killed gives Israel cause for concern.


What Netanyahu's meddling in US election means for Obama, Romney, and diplomacy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by David Weinberg - (Opinion) September 27, 2012 - 12:00am


Some observers claim that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to tip the scales against President Obama in the elections this November. Judging by his recent behavior – and based on my own research about how such efforts have played out in other settings – these accusations are probably correct.


Abbas goes for UN bid of recognition as two-state solution retreated
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
by Saud Abu Ramadan - (Analysis) September 27, 2012 - 12:00am


  RAMALLAH, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas found out that reviving the stalled peace process with Israel impossible and the United States retreated from backing the two-state solution, he decided to go to the UN to ask for recognizing a non-member Palestinian state.


Spineless bookkeeping: The use of Mizrahi Jews as pawns against Palestinian refugees
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from 972 Magazine
by Yehouda Shenhav - (Blog) September 25, 2012 - 12:00am


In the last three years, we have witnessed an intensive campaign aimed at winning political and legal recognition of Arab Jews as “refugees.” The aim of this campaign is to create symmetry in public opinion between the Palestinian refugees and the “Oriental” Jews who arrived to Israeli in the 50s and 60s, presenting both populations as victims of the 1948 war.



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