Palestinian anger at US rising over UN veto threat
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Statesman
by Mohammed Daraghmeh - October 6, 2011 - 12:00am

Palestinians have long been skeptical of America's ability to help them win independence. But low expectations have turned into frustration and in some cases outright anger after the U.S. threatened to derail a bid for U.N. recognition of an independent state and Congress put a hold on $200 million in badly needed aid.

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Israel to demand adjustment of Quartet Mideast peace plan, official says
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Barak Ravid - October 3, 2011 - 12:00am

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Sunday that he welcomed "the Quartet's call for direct negotiations between the parties without preconditions," the premier intends to present a list of qualifications to the Quartet's statement on a resumption of Mideast talks that in effect enfeeble that statement.

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Land without peace: Why Abbas went to the U.N.
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Charles Krauthammer - (Opinion) September 30, 2011 - 12:00am

While diplomatically inconvenient for the Western powers, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to get the United Nations to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state has elicited widespread sympathy. After all, what choice did he have? According to the accepted narrative, Middle East peace is made impossible by a hard-line Likud-led Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state and continues to build settlements.

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Standing firmly for Palestine
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Khalaf Ahmad al Habtoor - (Opinion) September 30, 2011 - 12:00am

Ever since Yasser Arafat passed away, the Palestinians have lacked a strong leader with the authority to speak on their behalf. His successor Mahmoud Abbas took a different approach on statehood in the belief the road to peace ran through Washington. And to that end, he has been unfailingly conciliatory, even on some of his people's basic demands. His statements were always designed to be non-inflammatory and whereas the Israelis and their American backers thought of him as a good guy, Palestinians themselves expected a lot more from him.

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Palestinian statehood bid stokes tensions in West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Joel Greenberg - September 29, 2011 - 12:00am

In this village tucked among the rocky hills of the northern West Bank, flags are flying to celebrate the bid for membership of a Palestinian state in the United Nations. A poster in the village center carries a picture of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is riding a wave of popularity after defying U.S. pressure and submitting the membership application last week.

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PA: We are one vote shy of a majority in Security Council
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
September 29, 2011 - 12:00am

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said Thursday that the Palestinians have received approval from eight members of the UN Security Council in support of their bid for full membership to the United Nations. If nine members of the Security Council vote in favor of the Palestinian state bid, the the resolution will pass, unless one of the council's five permanent members uses a veto. While the US, one of those five, has said before that it would veto the Palestinian resolution, it has also stated that it would rather not be forced to use the veto.

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The Palestinian Statehood Bid - What Comes Next?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Huffington Post
by Hussein Ibish, Saliba Sarsar - (Opinion) September 29, 2011 - 12:00am

President Barack Obama, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all played mainly to their domestic political bases at the United Nations General Assembly meeting last week. Despite the drama, nothing in the basic discourse has changed, no party shifted its bottom-line positions, and none of it brought us any closer to peace or improved the situation on the ground.

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America’s dangerous game at the UN
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by John V. Whitbeck - (Opinion) September 29, 2011 - 12:00am

The number of UN member states extending diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine has now risen to 131, leaving only 62 UN member states on the wrong side of history and humanity. If one ignores small island states in the Caribbean and the Pacific, almost all of the non-recognisers are Western states, including all five of the settler-colonial states founded on the ethnic cleansing or genocide of indigenous populations and all eight of the former European colonial powers.

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Victory in defeat
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
(Editorial) September 29, 2011 - 12:00am

Sometimes a defeat can be a great moral victory. For the British, Dunkirk in 1940 was such; a mass retreat before Hitler’s forces was seen as a glorious success against all the odds, shipping the troops across the Channel in an armada of small boats. For Americans, the battle of the Alamo against the Mexican Army in 1836 was a glorious defeat.

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A win-win strategy for the Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Andrew Kydd - (Opinion) September 29, 2011 - 12:00am

Everyone knows that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' bid for statehood through the United Nations Security Council will fail. Even if the Palestinians get the nine votes needed , the United States will veto it. And yet the strategy is brilliant. Why? Because the Palestinians win even if they lose.

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