October 16th

Us Presses Palestinians And Israel To Find Common Ground ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian by Ian Black - (Special Report) October 16, 2007 - 12:46pm  The US yesterday urged Israel and the Palestinians to work to overcome their differences before an international conference next month even as a top UN expert lambasted the "Quartet" of Middle East peacemakers for failing to promote Palestinian rights. » Read more

Politics: Another Mideast Envoy Fed Up With Quartet ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Inter Press Service (IPS) by Haider Rizvi - October 16, 2007 - 12:45pm The United Nations has come under strong criticism from one of its own top human rights officials for failing to take effective action to check the ongoing Israeli abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories. Expressing his anger and frustration at the fast-deteriorating human rights situation in Gaza and the West Bank, John Dugard, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights for the Palestinian territories since 2001, has suggested that the world body quit the Middle East Quartet. » Read more

How About A Peace Lobby? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from International Herald Tribune by Daniel Levy - (Opinion) October 16, 2007 - 12:42pm After seven lean years, Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are back on the agenda for a planned summit meeting next month in Annapolis, Maryland. Intriguingly, the return of the peace process coincides with an unusual public debate taking place in America regarding the U.S.-Israel relationship following the attention received by a book about the Israel lobby. » Read more

Rice Seeks To Marginalize Hamas ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times by Ashraf Khalil - October 16, 2007 - 12:39pm Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday expressed hope that a successfully negotiated vision of a Palestinian state would marginalize the militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. » Read more

The Israeli Right Has A Peace Plan ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Letter From Israel/antiwar.com by Ran Hacohen - (Blog) October 16, 2007 - 12:36pm While the world holds its breath in anticipation of the Mideast Summit in Annapolis – which, no doubt, will constitute a historic landmark, giving a most significant boost to the economy of that small town in Maryland – the Israeli right wing comes up with a new peace initiative, launched by MK Benny Elon, chairman of the National Union and the Moledet Party, as "The Israeli Initiative," "a new way of thinking about the conflict, in learning from our mistakes, and in rereading the regional map toward a revitalized and genuine quest to achiev » Read more

Rice Pushes Mideast Parties On Plan To Revive Peace Talks ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Michael Abramowitz - October 16, 2007 - 12:26pm Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Israelis and Palestinians on Monday to compromise on a plan to jump-start peace negotiations, describing the ending of their long conflict as one of the top goals of President Bush in the 15 months he has left in office. » Read more

Rice Hints At Timing Of Mideast Talks ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Steven Lee Myers - October 16, 2007 - 12:24pm It has officially been a secret of American diplomacy, if not a particularly well-kept one: the time and place of the international conference called by President Bush to begin negotiating peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.   Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday lifted the secrecy and, perhaps, nudged the process forward. » Read more

Mideast Summit Faces Huge Challenges ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press by Steven Gutkin - October 16, 2007 - 12:22pm Israel keeps building settlements, Islamic militants are in control in Gaza and both the Israelis and the Palestinians have politically vulnerable leaders. All that will make it difficult to implement an agreement even if the two sides agree on a path to peace at a summit next month. Weighing heavily on the U.S.-brokered summit is memory. Everyone remembers the steep price paid for the failure of the last round of peacemaking in 2001: thousands killed in years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting that broke out months after the talks fell apart. » Read more

October 15th

Only Bush Can ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) October 15, 2007 - 3:41pm U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insists that the Annapolis declaration will detail the principles of the permanent settlement, so yesterday's newspaper headlines proclaimed. Prior to her arrival in the region, her aides had said that the United States would not issue invitations to the peace conference before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas succeed in drafting a clear and mutually agreed upon document. In practice, this means that the peace summit initiated by President George W. Bush will not convene next month. Nor next year. » Read more

Declarations Of A United Jerusalem Are Just Empty Slogans In A De Facto Divided Jerusalem ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews by Yossi Beilin - (Opinion) October 15, 2007 - 3:39pm Two weeks ago a young journalist, Daniel Ofir, reported a story on "Hot News" that ought to have created quite a storm: The Palestinian Authority is paving a highway inside Israel's sovereign territory in "united" Jerusalem, our eternal capital. The highway begins in the Atarot area and passes through the Kafr Akab neighborhood in Jerusalem along 2.6 kilometers inside the sovereign territory of united Jerusalem, and ends in Ramallah. » Read more