January 4th

White House Downplays Bush Mideast Trip ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press by Jennifer Loven - January 4, 2008 - 2:26pm President Bush's aides all but ruled out a three-way meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders during his upcoming Mideast visit and dampened hopes that the president's high-profile travels would make tangible progress toward peace. "Just his going there is going to advance the prospects," Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, said Thursday. "We're not looking for headline announcements." » Read more

Israel Settlement Growth An "impediment": Bush ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters by Matt Spetalnick - January 4, 2008 - 2:25pm U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday called Israeli settlement expansion an "impediment" to revived peace efforts in rare criticism of the Jewish state less than a week before his first presidential visit there. In an interview with Reuters, Bush voiced optimism for securing an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the end of 2008, a goal set at November's Annapolis conference that has been viewed with widespread skepticism. He also acknowledged that obstacles remained after decades of Middle East conflict. » Read more

Palestinian Pm Assails Israel Over West Bank Raids ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters by Mohammed Assadi - January 4, 2008 - 2:22pm Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad criticized Israel on Friday for mounting a major military sweep in the West Bank, saying such intervention was ruining a Western-backed internal Palestinian security plan. Hundreds of Israeli troops flooded Nablus on Wednesday, conducting house-to-house searches, detaining at least 6 Palestinians. The move triggered a confrontation with stone-throwing youths in which, hospital officials said, at least 29 people were injured. » Read more

Israeli Operations Kill 9 In Gaza ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Jonathan Finer - January 4, 2008 - 2:21pm Israeli forces launched military operations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank early Thursday, hours before a Katyusha rocket fired from Gaza crashed down harmlessly near the Israeli city of Ashkelon. At least nine Palestinians were killed during Israeli tank and helicopter attacks in Gaza, including five members of a family killed near the central city of Khan Younis, Palestinian officials said. » Read more

January 3rd

Bush's Final Effort ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz (Editorial) January 3, 2008 - 5:46pm President George Bush will complete his second term in the White House in one year and two weeks, at his successor?s inauguration. Bush?s final year in office is already under the shadow in the battle over succession. Because of this, the U.S. media is expected to focus during his visit to the region next week on the first formal stages of the nominating process of the two main parties in Iowa and in New Hampshire, rather than on Bush?s meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. » Read more

Pa Takes Back The Keys To A Key City ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Avi Issacharoff - January 3, 2008 - 5:45pm Four young women from the Nablus neighborhood of Rafidiyeh went into a shop yesterday near the clock square in the center of Nablus. Dressed in the trendiest jeans and blouses, they were looking for fashionable leather bags. Two minutes later they came out empty-handed, disappointed at not finding what they wanted. » Read more

Our Violent Presence ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Amira Hass - January 3, 2008 - 5:40pm There is no Israeli whose presence in the West Bank is neutral. Civilian or armed, soldier or woman settler, resident of a quality-of-life settlement or a nearby outpost, MahsomWatch activist or guest at a settlement, Bezek worker or client at a Palestinian garage. All of them, all of us, are in this Palestinian territory, in the West Bank, because our state occupied it in 1967. » Read more

Stand-offs Threaten Arab Region ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News by Francis Matthew - (Opinion) January 3, 2008 - 5:36pm The Middle East has never needed effective political leadership more than at present. Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq are three very troubled states which are in danger of seeing very little political progress in the coming year, and the effects of the continuing violence ripple out to all other nations in the region. All three share similar problems of poor state structures, lack of leadership and endemic violence, but each has very different local conditions which have created their bad situations. » Read more

The Rodeo Ride Of Manipulating Middle East Politics ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star by Rami Khouri - (Opinion) January 3, 2008 - 5:34pm Four separate events in different parts of the world - Pakistan, Israel, the United States and wherever Osama Bin Laden makes his home these days - provided a gloomy but instructive start to the new year in the matter of Al-Qaeda-linked terrorism. The events were the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, a new audio tape by Osama bin Laden, Israel telling the world that Al-Qaeda is making inroads in Palestine, and US presidential candidates riding the terrorism horse like clowns at a rodeo. » Read more

The Beilin Syndrome ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News by Uri Avnery - January 3, 2008 - 5:32pm Mephisto, the demon who bought the soul of Faust in Goethe’s monumental drama, describes himself as “a part of that force which always wants the bad and always creates the good.” Yossi Beilin, who resigned this week as chairman of the Meretz Party, is Mephisto’s opposite: he always wants the good and all too often creates the bad. » Read more