November 13th

Arafat Remembered: 'hamas Threw Sound Grenades And Then I Got Shot In The Back' ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent by Donald Macintyre - November 13, 2007 - 3:45pm At least seven Palestinians were shot dead and scores more were injured yesterday as Hamas forces opened fire during a rally in Gaza City organised by the rival Fatah movement to commemorate the anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death Three years after the former president died in a Paris hospital – and almost six months after Hamas's bloody takeover of Gaza – an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 people took part in one of the largest political rallies held in the Palestinian territories in recent memory. » Read more

War And Peacemakers ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Newsweek by Christopher Dickey - (Special Report) November 13, 2007 - 3:44pm In a Middle East slipping from war to war, sometimes it seems only the old are truly impatient for peace. Certainly none is pushing harder than the octogenarian King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. His cause as crown prince in the 1990s and as reigning monarch since 2005 has been to settle as many disputes as he can in this region of clashing faiths, millennial rivalries and chronic conflagrations. They are all related, as he sees it, from Palestine to the price of oil, from Iraqi death squads to Iranian nukes to the risk of global recession, each cancroid problem feeding off the other. » Read more

Rice To Address G.a. Gathering ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) by Ami Eden - November 13, 2007 - 3:43pm With skepticism mounting over the upcoming American-backed Middle East summit, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is set to address the 3,500 delegates at the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities. Rice, who is scheduled to speak Tuesday at the closing plenary session, returned recently from a series of meetings in the Middle East with Israeli and Palestinian officals aimed at laying the groundwork for the summit, which is slated for the end of this month in Annapolis, Md. » Read more

Hamas Cracks Down On Fatah After Gaza Rally Bloodshed ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters by Nidal Al-mughrabi - November 13, 2007 - 3:41pm Hamas rounded up dozens of Fatah activists in the Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip after its secular rival drew more than 200,000 supporters to a rally that ended in gunfire that killed seven people, officials said on Tuesday. The assembly on Monday, marking the third anniversary of the death of iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was the biggest held by President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group in Gaza since Hamas Islamists seized the territory by force in June. » Read more

In The Mideast, America Casts An Imperial Shadow ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Rashid Khalidi - (Opinion) November 13, 2007 - 3:39pm Most Americans think that our role as a world power began with World War II, the "good war," and then continued with the similarly noble Cold War. We like to think that the United States acts in the world exclusively in the name of ideals such as freedom and democracy. » Read more

6 Killed In Gaza As Hamas Forces Disperse Huge Fatah Rally Held In Memory Of Arafat ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Islam Abdel Kareem, Samuel Sockol - November 13, 2007 - 3:37pm  Hamas militiamen on Monday violently dispersed a massive rally organized in the Gaza Strip by the rival Fatah movement. Six people were killed and 75 wounded, Palestinian officials said. Fatah officials accused security forces controlled by Hamas, a radical Islamic movement, of committing a massacre against an unarmed crowd that was marking the third anniversary of the death of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. » Read more

November 12th

Good News From Gaza ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Gideon Levy - November 12, 2007 - 1:47pm The group of reservist paratroopers returned all astir: Hamas fought like an army. The comrades of Sergeant-Major (Res.) Ehud Efrati, who fell in a battle in Gaza about two weeks ago, told Amos Harel that "in all parameters, we are facing an army, not gangs." The soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces were impressed by their enemy's night vision equipment, the tactical space they kept between one another - and their pants even had elastic bands to make them fit snugly around their boots. This is good news from Gaza. » Read more

Good Ackerman, Bad Ackerman ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Shmuel Rosner - November 12, 2007 - 1:46pm There are people in Jerusalem who have not yet forgotten the criticism leveled at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert by Gary Ackerman, a United States congressman from New York and head of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. He "kissed President Bush's ass," said the representative, in language that was not quite diplomatic, commenting to The Forward about Olmert's criticism of the new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, after her visit with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus last April. » Read more

Unite Or Dissolve ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons (Interview) November 12, 2007 - 1:45pm bitterlemons: Hamas is saying that by pursuing negotiations with Israel under current circumstances, the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority is in effect collaborating with the occupying power. Is this a fair assessment? » Read more

Enlarge Annapolis ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Middle East Times (Editorial) November 12, 2007 - 1:43pm The good thing that may be said about the Annapolis meeting is that the expectations are gloomily but realistically low. There are not many illusions left in the Middle East, and little is expected from yet another U.S.-brokered summit between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Perhaps what is wrong is not just the plot of this over-familiar drama, but the personnel. Maybe it is the three-way relationship between Americans, Israelis and Palestinians, who all know each very well by now; that is the problem. » Read more