Israel to lobby Germany against Palestinian plan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Josef Federman - April 6, 2011 - 12:00am

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ask Germany's leader to drop her support for a proposal endorsing a Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem when he meets with her this week, Israeli officials said Wednesday.

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Saudi dilemmas and the Arab Peace Initiative
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Madawi Al-Rasheed - (Opinion) April 6, 2011 - 12:00am

The Arab Peace Initiative, proposed by Saudi Arabia's then-Crown Prince Abdullah (king since 2005) and announced during the Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002, is hard to resurrect amidst revolutions and protests in the region. Not only was the initiative a stillborn baby, but over time it became a corpse in need of a death ritual. We all know how important such rituals are for the living, but unfortunately, the illusion of peace persists while the reality attests that "no solution has become the solution".

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The API in thrall to the Arab spring
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Nathalie Tocci - (Opinion) April 6, 2011 - 12:00am

The Arab Peace Initiative, first endorsed at the Beirut summit in 2002, was born of a specific context. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, what was to become the "moderate" Arab camp was intent on asserting its credentials to the West. Offering Israel full normalization of relations in return for an end of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights and an (unspecified) "just" solution to the refugee problem was an unprecedented move.

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Israel is confusing victimhood with foreign policy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Merav Michaeli - (Opinion) April 5, 2011 - 12:00am

In an op-ed piece published in The Washington Post, Richard Goldstone wrote that if he knew then what he knows today, the report would have looked different and that it would have been best had Israel cooperated with him.

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Growing Mideast democracy could benefit Israel too
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Moshe Arens - (Opinion) April 5, 2011 - 12:00am

Trying to evaluate the implication of the wave of demonstrations sweeping over the Arab World, one is reminded of Zhou Enlai, the premier of the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong - who when asked what he thought of the French Revolution, reportedly replied that it was too early to tell. Samuel Goldwyn's well-known aphorism reminds us that we should not hasten to predict future events: "Never make forecasts, especially about the future," he said. And especially not about the future of the Middle East, one might add.

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Obama: Mideast peace bid needed amid region's unrest
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Matt Spetalnick - April 5, 2011 - 12:00am

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday it was more urgent than ever to seize the opportunity to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts even as unrest swept the broader Middle East. Speaking after White House talks with Israeli President Shimon Peres, Obama pressed Israel and the Palestinians to capitalize on the wave of political change in the Arab world and seek to advance their long-stalled peace process. But Obama, whose attempts to broker a peace deal have yielded little since he took office, stopped short of unveiling any new initiative to bring the two sides together.

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What's behind Goldstone's flip-flop?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
(Editorial) April 5, 2011 - 12:00am

Few recent events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been as wildly controversial and polarizing as the release of the Goldstone report, a United Nations-sponsored study prepared in the aftermath of Israel's devastating, 3-week-long assault on the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-09.

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Obama's retreat leaves Israel at the mercy of multilateralism
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Tony Karon - (Opinion) April 4, 2011 - 12:00am

'This is how the international community should work," said President Barack Obama a little more than a week ago. "More nations, not just the United States, bearing the responsibility and cost of upholding peace and security." He was referring to the military campaign in Libya, in which the US insisted it was simply following the lead of the Europeans and the Arab League, and quickly handed off command of the operation to Nato and a multilateral consensus.

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The Goldstone Report and Israel’s moral standing
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Richard Goldstone - (Opinion) April 4, 2011 - 12:00am

It came as (almost) no surprise to me that Japanese utility workers remained at their crippled and highly toxic nuclear plant even at the risk of death. It came as (almost) no surprise either that in the chaos of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, there were no reported incidents of widespread looting. Japan is one vast community, mostly a single ethnic group, and societal pressures are intense. A nation, like an individual, has a culture.

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Israel holds secret talks with Russia in bid to thwart recognition of Palestinian state
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Barak Ravid - April 1, 2011 - 12:00am

Isaac Molho, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior adviser and top negotiator on the Palestinian channel, made a secret trip to Moscow on Wednesday and met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The purpose of the visit was to dissuade Russia from supporting the European Union’s intention to present in two weeks’ time a plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

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