December 23rd

The Gaza Time Bomb
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Middle East Times
by Patrick Seale - December 23, 2008 - 1:00am

PARIS -- With the ending of the truce between Israel and Hamas, Gaza is now one of the Middle East's most dangerous flashpoints. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has issued a cry of alarm, while Tony Blair, the Quartet's Middle East envoy, has urged Israel to defuse tensions by lifting the siege of Gaza. Everyone is aware that it would take only a spark - such as a Qassam rocket landing on a house in Sderot - to trigger a full-scale war. The paradox is that neither side really wants this to happen.

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Have politicians pushing for Gaza war forgotten Lebanon debacle?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Yoel Marcus - (Opinion) December 23, 2008 - 1:00am

As of writing these lines, no one had been killed by the rocket barrages after the official end of the cease-fire. This doesn't mean the situation is possible to live with, but it appears the hysterical reaction by the public as a whole and politicians in particular stems mainly from the fact that the country is in an election period. And when elections are in the offing people speak from the gut rather than the brain and demagoguery is rampant.

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Palestinian, Russian presidents talk Mideast peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
December 22, 2008 - 1:00am

MOSCOW: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday discussed ways to cooperate on Middle East peace. Medvedev said Russia was ready to continue working with the Palestinian authorities to help peace efforts. "We hope we will continue to cooperate productively, especially as the number of problems we are facing haven't become smaller," Medvedev said at the start of his Kremlin talks with Abbas. "We need to move forward, so we will discuss issues related to the Middle East settlement and the Palestinian-Israeli dialogue."

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Abbas: Hamas' abuse of religion for political end is unacceptable
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA)
December 21, 2008 - 1:00am

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, on a visit to Russia, strongly criticized the radical Islamic Hamas movement on Sunday, saying the organization's "abuse of religion for political ends" was unacceptable, Russia's Interfax news agency reported. Speaking in Grozny, the capital city of the Chechen Republic in Russia, Abbas said that extremists were to blame for Islam receiving so little respect in the world at present. In reality, terrorists have no relationship with religion, he declared.

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Domestic politics fuels Gaza conflict
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - December 23, 2008 - 1:00am

The collapse of a six-month Israel-Hamas calm last Friday unleashed a new wave of cross-border attacks and a spate of threats from leaders on both side about worsening violence. And although the Islamist militants called for a 24-hour halt in attacks on Monday for mediation, the region seems once again to be at the brink of another escalation over Gaza.

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Hamas says it may consider new truce with Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Agence France Presse (AFP)
December 23, 2008 - 1:00am

GAZA CITY - A tense calm reigned over the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday as the Palestinian Islamist group said it might be willing to agree to a new truce with Israel. Gaza militants fired one rocket which hit without causing damage or injury, and Israel did not launch any raids on the territory after Hamas announced on Monday that it would not launch rockets or fire mortars for 24 hours.

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December 22nd

Ha'aretz profiles Israel's security chief, Amos Gilad (1). Tensions rise as the cease-fire in Gaza expires (3, 4, 7). AP evaluates the implications of the removal of settlers from a house in Hebron (6). The New York Times profiles former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg's disillusionment with Israeli nationalism, while MJ Rosenberg observes that too much rhetorical support without enough concrete action may be "killing" the prospects for peace based on two states (2, 8).

Loving The Two-State Solution to Death
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Israel Policy Forum
by M.J. Rosenberg - December 19, 2008 - 1:00am

It didn’t take long for the “two state solution” to move from the category of radical to banal, but that is what has happened. Today the “two-state solution” is everyone’s favorite remedy. And yet it is farther from realization than ever. Its fate may, in fact, be that rare instance of a concept being killed by kindness.

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Ignoring the plight in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Boston Globe
by Yousef Munayyer - (Opinion) December 21, 2008 - 1:00am

The lights are out in Gaza again and few are paying attention. The 1.5 million Palestinians living in the densely populated strip are being collectively punished once more, while Israel attempts to strangle the Hamas government. The UN agency that feeds hundreds of thousands of people is unable to get supplies in because the border is closed, and a plea from UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has been ignored.

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West Bank settler eviction offers warning, hope
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Amy Teibel - December 21, 2008 - 1:00am

HEBRON, West Bank -- Israel's swift eviction of Jewish zealots from one of the most volatile West Bank flashpoints offers encouragement to people both inside and outside Israel who hope it is still possible to uproot settlers to make room for a Palestinian state. Israeli police and soldiers encountered little resistance this month when they expelled some 200 extremists from a contested house in Hebron, near the traditional burial site of Abraham, the shared patriarch of Muslims and Jews.

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