Hamas is failing its responsibility to Palestinians ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National (Editorial) December 9, 2012 - 1:00am By the time Khaled Meshaal dropped to his knees and kissed the ground in Gaza on Friday morning, the damage had already been done. Declaring himself a martyr-in-waiting, Mr Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, confirmed what many already knew: violence is the group's only vision for the future. » Read more

Why Obama Will Ignore Israel ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by Peter Beinart - (Opinion) December 10, 2012 - 1:00am The last week of November 2012 was a big one on the Israeli-Palestinian front. On the 65th anniversary of the partition resolution that created a Jewish state, the United Nations recognized a Palestinian one. Israel retaliated with the West Bank equivalent of sequestration: announcing it would move toward building settlements in an area east of Jerusalem called E1, which many observers believe would kill the two-state solution. » Read more

Meshal Goes Out of Bounds ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National Interest by Paul Pillar - (Opinion) December 9, 2012 - 1:00am What Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal said at a mass rally in Gaza City on Saturday was contemptible. Taken at face value, his words eradicated any distinction between Israeli and Palestinian territory, and any possibility of Israelis and Palestinians living in peace. “Palestine, from the river to the sea, from north to south, is our land,” he said. » Read more

Israel must not dismiss outrage over settlements ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Boston Globe by James Carroll - (Opinion) December 10, 2012 - 1:00am AFTER A STORM of criticism hit Israel for the plan it announced to expand settlements in the occupied territories, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back. “Israel will continue to stand for its essential interests,” he declared, “even in the face of international pressure, and there will be no change in the decision it has taken.” » Read more

Israel’s List of Friends Keeps Getting Shorter ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bloomberg by Jeffrey Goldberg - (Opinion) December 3, 2012 - 1:00am When I made an appointment to see Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard last week, I hoped we would spend most of our time discussing her new effort to better integrate her country into Asia. » Read more

1947's Zionists, Today's Palestinians ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by David N. Myers - (Opinion) December 7, 2012 - 1:00am Sixty-five years ago, the Zionist movement scored the greatest success in its history—recognition on November 29, 1947, by the United Nations General Assembly, of the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. U.N. General Assembly resolution 181 called for the creation of a Jewish state alongside an Arab State, with Jerusalem as an international protectorate. It was this diplomatic act that brought the State of Israel into existence. » Read more

Peace moving further away ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews by Eitan Haber - (Opinion) December 9, 2012 - 1:00am There were times when the entire world would "hold its breath" before Egyptian rulers delivered their speeches, thinking they would make some earth-shattering remarks. In Israel, way before the Egyptian leaders spoke, IDF intelligence officers would hand their commanders reports containing the statements they expected the Egyptian leaders would make. The result, in most cases, was quite amusing. » Read more

Losing Hope on Israeli-Palestinian Peace ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New Republic by Leon Wieseltier - (Opinion) December 6, 2012 - 1:00am LOST CAUSES are not wrong causes, unless winning is the measure of right. The historical victory of an idea reveals nothing about its merit: power has uses for fictions, and the popularity of lies is an ancient feature of human affairs. » Read more

Drying out the Palestinians ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz (Editorial) December 10, 2012 - 1:00am Since the beginning of the year, Israel has destroyed 35 rainwater cisterns used by Palestinian communities, 20 of them in the area of Hebron and the southern Hebron Hills. In 2011, Israel destroyed 15 cisterns, and in the preceding 18 months, 29. In many of these cases ancient cisterns were destroyed that had served the forefathers of the inhabitants of these communities. Recently, they have been restored with European assistance. » Read more

Israel takes a harder line ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Los Angeles Times (Editorial) December 4, 2012 - 1:00am When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he would seek recognition from the United Nations for a Palestinian state, Israel complained that Abbas should have pursued that objective in face-to-face peace negotiations and warned of grave consequences, threatening to expand » Read more