Ahmadinejad, Durban and another fine mess
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Center For Strategic & International Studies
by Antony Lerman - (Opinion) April 20, 2009 - 12:00am

This is hardly the time for levity, but watching delegates at the Durban anti-racism review conference walk out while President Ahmadinejad served up his version of Zionist history, I couldn't help thinking of that immortal phrase from Laurel and Hardy: "Well, that's another fine mess you've gotten me into." The Geneva UN gathering is an event of high seriousness. It coincides with Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day and Hitler's birthday. It has been heading for disaster for months while western states and Jewish groups have been at loggerheads over strategy.

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If we give, we'll get
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - April 13, 2009 - 12:00am

It's a good thing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak didn't listen to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Instead of going to hell, as Lieberman has recommended, he sent his police to stop would-be terrorists planning to send many Israelis to that destination. I wonder what Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, well known for his fondness of Egypt, might have to say about the operation against Hezbollah in Egypt.

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Borderline outcast?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Financial Times
by Tobias Buck, Roula Khalaf - (Analysis) April 13, 2009 - 12:00am

It has been a tough few months for Israel's diplomatic corps. At the start of the year, diplomats were fending off accusations that Israel was using excessive force in its offensive against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. After that conflict they faced a torrent of allegations that their actions had amounted to war crimes, claims that they deny.

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Pride and empty words
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Eitan Haber - (Opinion) April 12, 2009 - 12:00am

At the height of the settlement enterprise in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, when thousands of settlers danced before Ariel Sharon and sang songs of praise for him, I used to tell my friends in the settlement movement: Arik, and none other than him, will kick you out of all the settlements one of these days and won’t look back.

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Washington Watch: Might Lieberman be the Arab world's best friend?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Douglas Bloomfield - (Opinion) April 12, 2009 - 12:00am

Even those who expected friction between the Obama and Netanyahu governments over pursuing Israeli-Arab peace were surprised that it came so quickly. About 20 minutes, by one count. Tzhat's how long it took Israel's new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, to scrap the US-led Annapolis peace talks on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, take the Golan Heights off the negotiating table with Syria, and reject the long-standing concept of land for peace, threatening a US-Israel rift if his government turns that rhetoric into policy.

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'Our man in Tel Aviv'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Abbas Al Lawati - (Opinion) April 7, 2009 - 12:00am

Ten years ago, the eloquent Arab Israeli politician Azmi Bishara sent a chill down Israel's spine and a cautious thrill in the Arab world by announcing his candidacy for prime minister of the Jewish state. Bishara's making of history as the first Arab to run for prime minister of Israel was cut short when he decided to withdraw early. Running against the more likely candidates for the position, Labour's Ehud Barak and Likud's then incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu, Bishara was under no illusion of winning.

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Awaiting Israel's next step
Media Mention of Ziad Asali In Gulf News - February 18, 2009 - 1:00am

The optimists in the Middle East, and they hardly exceed the number of fingers on one's hand, are wondering whether Benjamin Netanyahu, who may be charged of forming the new Israeli government, will pull a Richard Nixon out of his bag. After all, it was this former conservative American president who paved the way for establishing diplomatic relations with Communist China when he visited there in 1972.

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Awaiting Israel's next step
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by George S. Hishmeh - (Analysis) February 18, 2009 - 1:00am

The optimists in the Middle East, and they hardly exceed the number of fingers on one's hand, are wondering whether Benjamin Netanyahu, who may be charged of forming the new Israeli government, will pull a Richard Nixon out of his bag. After all, it was this former conservative American president who paved the way for establishing diplomatic relations with Communist China when he visited there in 1972.

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Victory elusive for both Israel and Hamas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Luke Baker - (Analysis) January 11, 2009 - 1:00am

When the firing eventually stops in the Gaza Strip, the question of "who won?" will hang heavily over the death and destruction. Neither Israel nor Hamas will be able to answer it with any certainty or immediacy. Israel says it launched its offensive on Dec. 27 to put a stop once and for all to Hamas's firing of rockets and mortars over the border into southern Israeli towns and cities. That objective, at least, has been stated very clearly.

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Obama Defers to Bush, for Now, on Gaza Crisis
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Helene Cooper, Steven Lee Myers - December 28, 2008 - 1:00am

WASHINGTON — When President-elect Barack Obama went to Israel in July — to the very town, in fact, whose repeated shelling culminated in this weekend’s new fighting in Gaza — he all but endorsed the punishing Israeli attacks now unfolding. “If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” he told reporters in Sderot, a small city on the edge of Gaza that has been hit repeatedly by rocket fire. “And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

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