Jerusalem Braces After Gun Rampage
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Australian
by Martin Chulov - March 7, 2008 - 6:24pm

Tensions were heightened by the fact that the gunman, who killed eight students - most of them 15- and 16-year-olds - and wounded eight more in the library of the Jewish religious college on Thursday night local time, was an Israeli resident of east Jerusalem, with full access to the city.

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The Fading Jihadists
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by David Ignatius - (Opinion) February 28, 2008 - 4:38pm

Politicians who talk about the terrorism threat -- and it's already clear that this will be a polarizing issue in the 2008 campaign -- should be required to read a new book by a former CIA officer named Marc Sageman. It stands what you think you know about terrorism on its head and helps you see the topic in a different light.

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Israel Rejects Arab League Criticism On Palestinian Peace Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Steven Erlanger - February 25, 2008 - 7:17pm

Israeli officials on Friday rejected Arab complaints that they were not committed to a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians and said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had responded positively to the Arab League initiative as a basis for negotiations. Mark Regev, the spokesman for Mr. Olmert, was responding to recent Arab statements, published in The New York Times, warning Israel that unless it accepted the 2002 proposal — for full recognition of Israel in return for complete withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries — the deal would be withdrawn.

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Op-ed: Hezbollah Will Strike Back, Question Is Where And When
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Yehudit Barsky - (Opinion) February 20, 2008 - 6:52pm

For many of his victims around the world, the recent car-bomb assassination of Imad Fayez Mughniyeh -- one of the world’s most wanted terrorists for two decades -- has the ring of true justice. At least in the short term, the killing of Mughniyeh will have a deterrent effect and hamper Hezbollah’s capability to carry out a revenge attack.

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Revitalizing Diplomacy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Common Ground News Service
(Opinion) February 8, 2008 - 7:50pm

Daniel Kurtzer

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Looking At Process In The Arab-israeli Negotiations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Daniel Kurtzer - (Opinion) February 5, 2008 - 7:34pm

With the resumption of the Middle East peace process after Annapolis, the focus has turned to the substantive divide between the parties regarding the core issues of territory and boundaries, security, Jerusalem and refugees. Different ways have been suggested to approach these issues: for example, trying to reach agreement on a declaration of principles; trying to reach a full agreement and then putting it on the shelf until the time is ripe for implementation; or trying for a full agreement and implementation in phases, to begin immediately.

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Suicide Bombing Revives Israeli Push To Finish Its Wall
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Ilene Prusher - February 5, 2008 - 7:19pm

In the aftermath of the first Palestinian suicide bombing in more than a year, many Israelis have returned to an old conclusion: build a barrier. Some politicians said that the answer to Monday's attack on the southern town of Dimona was to resurrect an existing, but never-implemented, plan to build some combination of a wall and fence between Egypt and Israel. The barrier would be similar to the West Bank wall that Israel started erecting more than six years ago, at a time when there was an almost nonstop cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

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Gaza's Falling Wall Changes Middle East Map For Ever
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
January 28, 2008 - 7:25pm

They came and went in lorries and gas tankers, in flatbed trucks loaded with cattle and sheep, in coaches and mini-buses, loaded by the dozen in the backs of trucks, all shuttling across Gaza's southern border. Four days ago they went on foot like refugees, but yesterday for the first time the trucks drove through and it felt like an unstoppable momentum had been reached.

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Insubstantial Pageant
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
(Editorial) January 14, 2008 - 5:59pm

After all the supercharged talk of change in the primaries this week, George Bush's trip to the Middle East served as a reminder that America still has a way to go before it can wave goodbye to all that. As with the US summit in Annapolis last year, it is hard, even for the congenital optimist, to find much to cling on to after Mr Bush's first visit to the region as president. In Prospero's words, "the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind".

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Olmert, Abbas Try To Revive Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bbc News
December 28, 2007 - 4:31pm

Palestinian and Israeli leaders have pledged to press on with peace talks despite a continuing row about Jewish settlement activity. Mahmoud Abbas urged Ehud Olmert to stop building homes for Jews in occupied East Jerusalem, officials said. Israel has said the hundreds of new homes in the Har Homa settlement are within existing boundaries. Follow-up peace efforts since the US-sponsored Annapolis summit last month have been paralysed by the issue.

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