Pa May Holds Election By Year's End, Source Says
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews by Ali Waked - April 2, 2008 - 6:45pm "The organizations must be at the heightened state of alert, so that the Israelis won't be able to say that there is no one to deliver the authority to. There will be a new elected government and professional organizations capable of enforcing order and security in the West Bank," the source said. He added that the PA had briefed the Americans on the plan and that the latter tend to support it. |
Beware Of Tampering With The Arab Peace Initiative
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat by Tariq Alhomayed - (Opinion) April 2, 2008 - 6:43pm In its closing statement, the Damascus Summit called for the re-assessment of the peace strategy with Israel, furthermore setting the coming May as the latest deadline. This formula appears to be the middle ground in terms of the demands that were proposed during the summit with regards to the reconsideration of the Arab Peace Initiative. Doesn't "reassessing the peace strategy" – if that may be deemed a diplomatic expression – imply that the other option is war? And which among the Arab states is ready to declare war on Israel today? |
A Fundamental Misconception
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons by Safwat Kahlout - (Opinion) April 2, 2008 - 6:41pm Ever since Hamas overwhelmingly won parliamentary elections in 2006, the international community has been trying to reverse a result that neither it nor Hamas expected. At first the international community, led by the US, tried to include Hamas in its designs for the region by offering it three conditions to enter the regional order. Once those were rejected, Washington instead opted to isolate Hamas and ignore the elections. |
Rice Misses The Obvious In Peace-making
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star by Rami Khouri - (Opinion) April 2, 2008 - 6:37pm It is hard to tell if US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is being deliberately innocent and juvenile, or, as the highest American foreign policy official, she is genetically incapable of being honest when it comes to Palestinian-Israeli issues. There is now only one real test of progress, or criterion of political seriousness, in the Arab-Israeli conflict in the short term: Can the United States make Israel stop expanding its settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories? |
Apocalypse Now
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Wired by Joshua Davis - April 2, 2008 - 6:31pm Yitzhaq Hayutman holds the key to peace on Earth - it's on a floppy disk in his pants pocket. With his full white beard, bald pate, and well-pressed khakis, the 61-year-old Israeli cybernetics expert and tech investor looks like Moses done over for a Banana Republic ad. Right now, he's showing me how he wants to position an airborne hologram over the Dome of the Rock, a gold-capped shrine that's one of the most holy sites in Islam. "The blimp will go there," Hayutman says pointing into the blue. "And eventually the Messiah will come." |
Amid Israeli Siege, Palestinian Businesses Look East To China
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters April 2, 2008 - 6:28pm Faced with Israeli trade and travel restrictions, a stagnant economy and a flood of cheap imports from Asia, Palestinian businessmen are increasingly seeking their fortunes in China. Demand for Chinese visas among Palestinian business owners in the West Bank is so high that the Chinese consul regularly visits the city of Hebron to stamp their passports and circumvent an Israeli ban that prevents them from traveling to the embassy in Tel Aviv. |
Tiny Party Shows Large Clout On Settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Griff Witte - April 2, 2008 - 6:27pm Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left Israel on Monday having failed to persuade leaders here to halt settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land. But the setback for Rice was a victory for Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Within hours of Rice's departure, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was on the phone with Yossef to tell him that plans for building 800 new homes in the West Bank settlement of Betar Illit had been approved, according to two Shas officials, just as Shas had requested. |
The Same Air, The Same Water
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Meron Benvenisti - (Opinion) March 27, 2008 - 6:59pm Ecological issues have become central in public discourse, with almost all activity in the fields of transportation, infrastructure, industry and agriculture spurring a lively debate on their environmental impact. The discussion long ago went beyond the limited themes of protecting nature reserves, wild animals and plants, and has begun to bite into sacred myths about the "conquest of the wilderness" and the dressing of the land "in a frock of cement and concrete." |
Drive Slowly
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Shmuel Rosner - (Opinion) March 27, 2008 - 6:58pm U.S. President George Bush is finishing his tenure in office precisely as he began it: still determined not to repeat the mistakes of the previous administration, that of Bill Clinton. In 2000 this determination had one face: stopping over-investment in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Bush saw his predecessor buried under the rubble of Camp David and found no reason to retrace that same path. On February 9, 2001, the Bush administration announced that the Clinton proposals during that failed summit "were no longer United States proposals." |