Middle East challenges for next president
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Alistair Lyon - October 28, 2008 - 8:00pm

Major foreign policy challenges await the next president in the Middle East. Here are some of the intertwined issues that Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain will inherit from President George W. Bush.

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Palestinian Forces in the Hebron Minefield
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Time
by Tim McGirk - October 27, 2008 - 8:00pm

When Palestinian security forces moved into the lawless West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus, all they had to worry about were the armed criminal gangs who had been shaking down shopkeepers and stealing cars — it didn't take long to wrest control from the thugs. But Hebron, where 600 Palestinian forces rolled up over the weekend in shiny new white pick-up trucks, is far more dangerous, because it is a stronghold of Hamas and also the base of an extremist Jewish settler community.

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Israel's Current Strategic Environment
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
by Amos Gilad - October 27, 2008 - 8:00pm

- Hamas could have pretended it wanted a political solution and the whole world would have recognized this. The Quartet posed to Hamas only three conditions: recognize your neighbor, recognize the peace agreements, and avoid terror. But Hamas said, no, Israel has no right to exist. They have a dream - to join the other Islamic forces, to revolutionize the whole Middle East. - The Palestinian Authority is doing better at maintaining law and order in its territory in the West Bank. However, it has far from demonstrated any level of performance in dealing with terror.

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Polls Show Even Split in Israeli Elections
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
October 26, 2008 - 8:00pm

Israel moved closer Monday to a bruising election campaign that will decide the future of peace talks, as polls showed the moderate foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, in a surprisingly close race with hard-line opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Neither of Israel's two leading political parties would have enough seats to form a government on its own, according to the surveys, which also showed an even split between the country's hawkish and center-left blocs. That signals more deadlock in peacemaking with Syria and the Palestinians.

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Bitter harvest: peace hopes wither in orchards of violence
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Sydney Morning Herald
October 23, 2008 - 8:00pm

AT around 10am last Saturday, Abed Hashalmoun, 45, a Palestinian news photographer who lives in the West Bank city of Hebron, followed a group of Israeli and international peace activists on an exercise to help local Palestinian farmers harvest their annual olive crop. Hashalmoun was accompanied by his brother Nayef, 55, a photographer for the Reuters news agency, and several other Palestinian journalists and television news crews.

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Breathing Life into the Arab Peace Initiative
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Israel Policy Forum
by Sadie Goldman - October 23, 2008 - 8:00pm

In a meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak today, Israeli President Shimon Peres praised the Arab Peace Initiative, first introduced by Saudi Arabia and adopted by the 22 states of the Arab League, and said that, “peace has never been more possible than it is now. It would be a mistake to miss out on this opportunity.”

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A Mideast plan for the next president
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Boston Globe
by Ephraim Sneh - October 17, 2008 - 8:00pm

THE NEXT president of the United States, in addition to dealing with the overwhelming global economic crisis, will have to contend with problems that have arisen recently in the Middle East. They include: # The decline of America's status; # The too-slow progress toward political stability in Iraq and the growing Iranian subversion there; # The rising influence of the "resistance camp" - Iran and its proxies: Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad; # The reluctance of US allies to stand defiantly against the anti-American forces; # The stagnation in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations;

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Time to resurrect the Arab peace plan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Ian Black - October 17, 2008 - 8:00pm

In late July, when Barack Obama toured the Middle East, he met the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for a private briefing on the state of the world's most intractable conflict - a major priority for the next occupant of the Oval Office. Abbas revealed later that when he told the Democratic candidate about the Arab peace initiative - offering Israel normal relations with all 22 Arab countries in exchange for a Palestinian state - Obama's (clearly private) response was unambiguous: "The Israelis must be crazy not to accept that."

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Some Good News for a Change
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Israel Policy Forum
by M.J. Rosenberg - October 16, 2008 - 8:00pm

In Sherlock Holmes stories, the dog that didn't bark is considered significant. That is not true when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where only bad news is considered news. It is now four months since the Egyptian-brokered Israeli-Hamas cease-fire went into effect. According to Alex Fishman, the security-minded Yediot Achronot military correspondent, the "agreement has resulted in an almost complete cessation of Kassam rocket fire" on Sderot and other Israeli towns.

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Symbol of Peace Stands at Divide Between Troubled Jerusalem’s East and West
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - October 16, 2008 - 8:00pm

One recent autumn evening, under a full moon, a monument to tolerance was unveiled on a ridge high above this revered and contested city, sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews. A soaring bronze column split down the middle, with a spindly, gilded olive tree reaching up through the chasm, it seemed to encapsulate both the promise and the fragility of peace in a city increasingly on edge.

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