Obstacles And Opportunity For Mideast Peace ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Boston Globe by James Carroll - (Opinion) November 26, 2007 - 12:51pm Obstacles abound. When representatives of more than 40 nations convene in Annapolis tomorrow, hoping to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, there will be many reasons for pessimism. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas presides over a fractured people, with Hamas ready to spoil any agreement. Qassam rockets fired from Gaza remind Israelis what a hostile Palestinian state could do from the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is politically vulnerable to extremist figures on the Israeli side who want no concessions. » Read more

The Middle East's Middle Ground ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor (Editorial) November 26, 2007 - 12:49pm An air of necessity, and thus possibility, lies over the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md. If Ben Franklin were there, as he was in Philadelphia to help 13 states draft a US Constitution, he might give the same advice to participants: We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. » Read more

Bush, Olmert Said Hopeful On Mideast ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press by Mohammed Daraghmeh, Amy Teibel - November 26, 2007 - 12:45pm Hours before the opening of a high-stakes international conference on the Middle East, President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed hope Monday that peace finally could be achieved. A senior member of the Palestinian delegation said an elusive joint statement on the contours for future talks was within reach. » Read more

Messiah On A Hill ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Newsweek by Kevin Peraino - November 26, 2007 - 12:44pm By car they're only 15 minutes apart, but you can't get much further from the West Bank's desperate refugee camps than the summit of Mount Gerizim, on the outskirts of Nablus. The Palladian-style mansion perched there—the home of Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri—houses a staircase imported from Sicily, a Gothic fireplace from Versailles and a glassed-in winter garden that al-Masri says was a gift from Napoleon to Josephine. "This is a Picasso, but it looks like a Goya," the billionaire says with a casual wave. He is unapologetic about the excess. » Read more

Appointment In Annapolis ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post (Editorial) November 26, 2007 - 12:42pm SECRETARY OF State Condoleezza Rice chose to plunge into Mideast peacemaking earlier this year because, she said, she saw an opportunity in the rise of a moderate Palestinian government in the West Bank and a common interest of Israel and many Arab states in checking Iranian-backed extremism in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Yet exploiting that opening is proving excruciatingly difficult. The Bush administration is expecting some 40 countries to attend a meeting Tuesday in Annapolis that is meant to kick off intensive negotiations on a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement. » Read more

For Bush, It's Not About Being There ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Michael Abramowitz - November 26, 2007 - 12:40pm The opening of Tuesday's Middle East conference in Annapolis, seven years into the Bush administration, is a reminder of how little the traditional concept of brokering an Arab-Israeli settlement through an ongoing "peace process" has figured into President Bush's foreign policy. Another is Bush's near-absence from the Middle East during his presidency. He has traveled to the region four times, but two of those visits were one-day trips to Iraq, and one was for a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. » Read more

Bush’s Best Hope ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Roger Cohen - (Opinion) November 26, 2007 - 12:38pm The Palestinians are the cause of exiting and ex-presidents. There’s no electoral payback in supporting them. Jews and Israel-loving evangelicals dwarf any Arab lobby to the extent it’s not even funny. President Bush is on the exit track. It’s time to rectify the fundamental error he made in allowing war-on-terror rhetoric to discredit the Palestinian national movement. » Read more

Rice’s Turnabout On Mideast Talks ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Elisabeth Bumiller - November 26, 2007 - 12:37pm At President Bush’s first National Security Council meeting in January 2001, he announced that he did not want to be drawn into the shattered Middle East peace process, people at the meeting recalled, because he believed that former President Bill Clinton had pushed so hard for an Israeli-Palestinian accord that he made the situation worse. » Read more