Settlers can stay, but only as citizens of Palestine
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Alexander Yakobson - (Opinion) January 1, 2010 - 1:00am

The time has come to say to the settler leaders: Okay - you've convinced us. It seems that a mass evacuation of settlers is an impractical idea. You showed us clearly that you're prepared to turn such a removal into a national trauma. It's doubtful that any Israeli politician would chance it.

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Netanyahu proposes peace summit with Abbas this month
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
January 1, 2010 - 1:00am

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later this month in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, government sources said Thursday. "There is a possibility of a breakthrough surrounding the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority," senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office said earlier Thursday. The Egyptian administration began efforts to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table following Netanyahu's recent visit in Cairo, the officials said.

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‘The two-state solution is starting to look impractical’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Jonathan Cook - December 31, 2009 - 1:00am

The biggest effect for Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of its assault on Gaza last winter has been to smash any remaining illusions that there is a future for the minority in a Jewish state, the community’s leaders have agreed. They say that minority voters have almost completely abandoned Zionist parties, even left-wing ones, believing that none is really interested in a peaceful solution to the country’s conflict with the Palestinians.

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Q&A: ''Israeli Settlements Killing Two-Nation Solution''
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Inter Press Service (IPS)
by Jerrold Kessel, Pierre Klochendler - (Interview) December 30, 2009 - 1:00am

JERUSALEM, Dec 30 (IPS) - In the absence of any progress towards peace between Israelis and Palestinians, leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) are adopting a reasonable approach as a way of building up international pressure on Israel to get it back to the negotiating table.

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Talk about 1967 borders, not settlement blocs
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) December 21, 2009 - 1:00am

These days, it's tough to find a used car with a bumper sticker that reads "Peace is better than a Greater Israel." Nowadays, everyone seems to favor the latest formula: two states for two peoples. A few people on the right-hand margins are sticking to the belief that there's no difference between Yitzhar and Herzliya, but turbulent debates about the "heritage of the fathers" have given way to a consensus over "dividing the land." Instead of talking about the country's "narrow hips," we are erecting a fence that approximates the route of the Green Line.

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Steps to create an Israel-Palestine
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Jonathan Kuttab - (Opinion) December 20, 2009 - 1:00am

For a while, it seemed that a two-state solution might actually be achievable and that a sovereign Palestinian state would be created in the West Bank and Gaza, allowing Jews and Palestinians at last to go their separate ways. But these days, that looks less and less likely.

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Despair in Ramallah
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Uri Misgav - (Opinion) December 19, 2009 - 1:00am

I recently committed a criminal act. I cannot even plead ignorance. A large red sign at the roadblock near the Qalandiya refugee camp made it clear. Israelis are forbidden from entering Area A in the West Bank. It may be a security constraint, but it also has a symbolic significance. The moderate and quiet capital of the Palestinian Authority is located a few minutes away from Jerusalem, yet visiting it is a crime.

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A basis for talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) December 18, 2009 - 1:00am

Israel has a supreme interest in achieving a peace agreement that would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state, delineate a border between the states and put an end to the mutual demands. Former prime minister Ehud Olmert's proposal for a final-status arrangement with the Palestinians, the details of which were revealed by Aluf Benn in Haaretz yesterday, can and should serve as a basis for resuming negotiations. There is no point in returning to "point zero" in the talks and ignoring previous offers and understandings.

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Hamas still wants to liberate 'all of Palestine'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Ari Shavit - (Opinion) December 17, 2009 - 1:00am

The cat is out of the bag: Palestine, all of Palestine. Standing before 100,000 people in the center of Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh this week declared the objective of the Hamas movement. The moderate prime minister of the moderate faction of the Palestinian religious movement publicly announced the peace solution for which his government is aiming. The ultimate solution is not the total liberation of the Gaza Strip or a Palestinian state. It is the liberation of all of Palestine.

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Oslo: far from perfect but it’s the best place to start
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Michael Young - (Opinion) December 17, 2009 - 1:00am

Two authors who have written lucidly and imaginatively on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process are Robert Malley and Hussein Agha. Mr Malley served in the National Security Council under Bill Clinton, and heads the Middle East programme at the International Crisis Group, while Mr Agha is a senior associate member at St Antony’s College, Oxford. Yet recently they wrote an article in The New York Review of Books that showed how, when it comes to a final settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, their imagination has dried up.

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