January 5th

Almost irreversible ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons by Ghassan Khatib - January 4, 2010 - 1:00am The first decade of the twenty-first century, which ended a few days ago, witnessed the undoing of all the positive milestones and achievements that had occurred in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process in the last decade of the twentieth century. That decade started with the first international peace conference in Madrid. This was followed by the first Arab-Israel multilateral and bilateral negotiations, which ended with the signing of the first Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement, the Oslo Accords. » Read more

Israeli PM hints at possible improvement in stalemated peace process with Palestinians ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua (Editorial) January 4, 2010 - 1:00am JERUSALEM, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday referred to a "change in the air" over the stalled peace process with the Palestinians, adding to speculation that the two neighbors might resume peace talks soon. "In recent weeks, I have felt that there is a certain change in the air, and I hope that this will mature, allowing the start of the diplomatic process," local daily Ha'aretz quoted Netanyahu as telling lawmakers from his Likud party at an internal meeting. » Read more

Palestinians stop torturing Hamas inmates ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Toronto Star January 4, 2010 - 1:00am NABLUS, WEST BANK–Palestinian security forces in the West Bank have stopped torturing Hamas prisoners, ending two years of systematic abuse, Hamas inmates said in jailhouse interviews. The change in practice, said to have taken effect in October, was confirmed by a West Bank Hamas leader, human rights activists and the Palestinian prime minister. It defuses a potential problem for Washington, because the U.S. has been closely involved in training Palestinian troops under the control of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas, a rival of the Hamas militants. » Read more

Palestinians Bid to Join International Finance Body ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line by Benjamin Joffe-Walt - January 5, 2010 - 1:00am The Palestinian Authority is forming a "national team" to drive the bid to gain membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), it was announced on Monday. The team, approved during Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's weekly cabinet meeting in Ramallah, will lead efforts to reform Palestinian economic institutions as part of the campaign to gain permanent observer status and eventually membership in the international trade body. » Read more

January 4th

Egypt’s Steel Wall Sparks ‘Fatwa War’ ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line by Rachelle Kliger - January 3, 2010 - 1:00am A religious ruling in support of the construction of a massive steel wall on the Egypt-Gaza border is drawing fire from fellow clerics. The steel wall intended to stop smuggling across the Egypt-Gaza border was declared permissible in a religious ruling, or fatwa, by the Islamic Studies College of the renowned Al-Azhar institution, drawing angry responses from other Muslim figures in Egypt, including from within Al-Azhar itself. » Read more

Peacemaking in the Mideast: Obama's Year of Missteps ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Time by Massimo Calabresi - (Opinion) January 1, 2010 - 1:00am It has taken President Obama just 10 months to achieve something each of his immediate predecessors delivered in their final year in office: failure in the Middle East peace process. Riding a wave of optimism in January, the President on his second day in office named retired Senator George Mitchell as his Middle East special envoy, tasked with kick-starting the dormant negotiations over a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. » Read more

Hamas vows to fight with Hizbullah in next war ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star January 4, 2010 - 1:00am Hamas official in Lebanon Ali Baraka vowed on Sunday to fight alongside Hizbullah in the next Israeli war on Lebanon. “We are guests in Lebanon and our policy will not change,” Baraka said during a memorial service to mark one week since the death of two Hamas members in a mysterious explosion in Beirut’s southern suburbs. “However, we are committed to resisting Israeli occupation” forces,” he added. “Israel should know that if it launched a new attack against Lebanon, we will not stand handcuffed. » Read more

Gaza remains under pressure and ‘waiting to explode’ ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National by Jonathan Cook - January 2, 2010 - 1:00am A year on from Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s offensive in Gaza, the threads of a possible Middle East peace are so knotted that they look impossible to disentangle. A right-wing government in Tel Aviv has dared to snub the US administration by barely enforcing what has become a partial and very temporary freeze on the expansion of its settlement programme in the West Bank. Israeli generals, meanwhile, proclaim that they are gearing up for an even fiercer repeat of the attack on Gaza last winter that killed around 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians. » Read more

‘No one can take me away from Gaza’ ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National by Hamida Ghafour - January 2, 2010 - 1:00am For weeks the defining image of Israel’s military siege of the Gaza Strip was a distant haze of smoke rising from the ground, sanitised footage that told nothing of the horrors of war. But in the late afternoon of January 16, Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish broke through the silence imposed by the Israeli government’s news blockade and for a few minutes the raw, unfathomable grief of a father whose three daughters and niece had been killed minutes before rang out to the world. » Read more

Israel calm but ready to pull trigger, analysts say ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National by Omar Karmi - January 4, 2010 - 1:00am A year after the Israeli offensive on Gaza, the ceasefire continues to hold and 2009 saw Israel register the lowest number of incidents of Palestinian-Israeli violence in the decade just ended, according to a report released last week by the country’s internal security agency Nevertheless, Israeli analysts will not rule out another war on Gaza, even if Israeli leaders are wary of the political cost. The question is not whether, but under what circumstances, renewed conflict might break out, the analysts say. » Read more