PLO cabinet to meet Monday over failed talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
January 29, 2012 - 1:00am

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The Palestinian Liberation Organization Executive Committee will meet Monday in the West Bank to discuss failed talks with Israeli envoys this month, committee members said on Saturday. Wasil Abu Yousif, who is also secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Front, said the cabinet meeting would prepare for a Feb. 4 summit with the Arab League follow-up committee, after a deadline set by the international Quartet for resuming negotiations passed without agreement.

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Palestine is nearly here, deal with it
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Ibrahim Sharqieh - (Opinion) January 25, 2012 - 1:00am

Jan. 26 will mark the three-month deadline for Palestinians and Israelis to submit their opening positions on mutual borders and security. The deadline was set by the international Quartet – the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia. It followed the decision last September of a frustrated Palestinian Authority to pursue independent statehood through the United Nations, after 18 years of futile negotiations with Israel.

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Elections Office Opens in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
January 25, 2012 - 1:00am

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The Gaza headquarters of the Central Elections Commission reopened Tuesday and will start work Wednesday, officials said. CEC director Jamil Khalidi received keys for the Gaza City office a day after the commission's chairman Hanna Nasir lamented its closure. Nasir said Monday that the Hamas-led government had failed to reopen the elections offices despite pledging to do so two weeks earlier.

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Palestinian Tax Hike Riles Business, Unions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
by Mohammed Daraghmeh, Karin Laub - January 25, 2012 - 1:00am

RAMALLAH, West Bank—Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has sparked a furor with a push to get Palestinians to pay more taxes and reduce reliance on the massive foreign aid that has kept their self-rule government afloat for a generation. Long accustomed to minimal taxes, the most powerful groups in the West Bank -- private business, the civil servants' union and the main political party, Fatah -- are fighting back, including with threats of labor strikes.

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Israel orders 6 months jail without charge for PLC speaker
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
January 24, 2012 - 1:00am

RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- An Israeli military court on Tuesday ordered the detention of Palestinian parliamentary speaker Aziz Dweik for six months without charge. Dweik, who was seized by Israeli forces at a Ramallah checkpoint on Thursday, heads the Palestinian Legislative Council. His lawyer Fadi Qawasmi said Ofer military court gave the administrative detention order early Tuesday, after a Sunday hearing was postponed.

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Israel won't interfere with PA police stations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Yaakov Katz - January 24, 2012 - 1:00am

Israel is turning a blind eye to the establishment of two Palestinian Authority police stations on the border of Jerusalem as it considers a series of goodwill gestures to President Mahmoud Abbas. One of the police stations was established recently in the village of a-Ram, which lies northeast of the Jerusalem neighborhood Neveh Ya’acov, just outside the capital’s municipal borders. The second station was established in what is known as the Biddu enclave – a group of eight Palestinian villages located near Ramallah and along Road 443.

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Israeli soldiers arrest Hamas lawmaker in West Bank, fifth such arrest in as many days
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
January 23, 2012 - 1:00am

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israeli troops detained a Hamas legislator in the West Bank early Tuesday in the fifth such arrest in as many days, the Islamic militant group said. Hamas has accused Israel of trying to sabotage possible Palestinian elections, the centerpiece of reconciliation attempts between Hamas and the rival Fatah movement of internationally backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas has said it would only participate in elections, tentatively set for late spring, if its candidates are safe from arrest by Israel.

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Palestinian leader dismisses presidential rumors
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Times
by Ben Birnbaum - (Interview) January 23, 2012 - 1:00am

RAMALLAH, West Bank — A top Palestinian leader says he will not run for president, even as the two main Palestinian factions inch toward a unity deal that would allow elections as early as May. Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, dismissed reports that he is considering a presidential bid, particularly if President Mahmoud Abbas makes good on his pledge not to run again.

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Palestinians Remain a House Divided
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line
by Omar Ghraieb - (Opinion) January 23, 2012 - 1:00am

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip –Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas government in control of the Gaza Strip, will allow 80 members of the rival Palestinian Fatah movement into Gaza for the first time since they were expelled nearly five years ago.

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Toddling to talks about talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Economist
(Analysis) January 21, 2012 - 1:00am

NO ONE disagreed with the cautious assessment of King Abdullah of Jordan that “little baby steps” had been taken when Israelis and Palestinians met several times in Amman, the king’s capital, in early January to see if there were grounds to resume full-scale peace talks that might one day lead to the peaceful coexistence of two states. Even this tentative diplomatic toe-dipping was fraught. Big grown-up strides still seem a long way off.

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