Olmert’s Lament
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Newsweek
by Kevin Peraino - June 13, 2009 - 12:00am

As the sun rose over New York City on Thursday, June 4, Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister of Israel, lay anesthetized on a Manhattan operating table. A cancerous tumor on his prostate had recently grown in size. His doctors had "all kinds of suspicions" about it, Olmert explained when we met at his house outside Jerusalem shortly before the surgery. Olmert, 63, looked terrible. He told me he hadn't been working out lately. He had put on a paunch, his eyes had a glassy quality and he had a persistent cough. I asked whether he was feeling any symptoms. "I sometimes feel tired," he said.

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Netanyahu meets MKs ahead of Sunday's policy address
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
June 12, 2009 - 12:00am

Ahead of a foreign policy speech Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to deliver Sunday, where he will outline his vision for the future of Israel and the region, the prime minister met coalition partners for discussions.

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Netanyahu's speech: Yes to road map, no to settlement freeze
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Aluf Benn, Barak Ravid - June 11, 2009 - 12:00am

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will announce in his foreign policy speech scheduled for Sunday the adoption of the road map and the "two-state solution" for settling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, according to sources close to the prime minister. The sources said the speech will "revolve around the road map." Netanyahu will present a few conditions for the implementation of the road map, above all a Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. He will also demand that the future Palestinian state be demilitarized.

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Obama to Mubarak: Netanyahu fears peace moves will ruin coalition
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - June 11, 2009 - 12:00am

During his recent visit to Cairo, U.S. President Barack Obama relayed to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that any cessation of settlement construction and acknowledgment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders will result in the collapse of his coalition government. Arab sources say Mubarak was not impressed and retorted it was Netanyahu's choice to form a right-wing coalition and he could therefore not repeatedly use that excuse for doing nothing.

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Knesset speaker: Bibi doesn't believe in 2-state vision
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Erfat Weiss - June 11, 2009 - 12:00am

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not believe in the two-state vision, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said Tuesday, days ahead of Bibi's much anticipated speech. Speaking during a West Bank tour, Rivlin said that the Arab-Israeli conflict must be resolved before going ahead and addressing the Palestinian question.

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ATFP President Joins Wilson Center Panel on “Obama and the Two-State Solution”
Press Release - Contact Information: Hussein Ibish - June 11, 2009 - 12:00am

Washington, DC, June 8 -- Dr. Ziad Asali, President of the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), joined a panel discussion on “Obama and the Two-State Solution: An Israeli, Palestinian, and Egyptian Perspective” at the Woodrow Wilson Center on June 8, 2009. The panel was moderated by Dr. Aaron David Miller, a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Institute and also included included Dr. Martin Kramer, Adelson Institute Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and Dr. Samer Shehata, a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.


'U.S. won't abandon legitimate Palestinian aspirations'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Barak Ravid - June 10, 2009 - 12:00am

The U.S. must create the conditions for the speedy resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Washington's envoy to the region said Wednesday in Ramallah, as he assured Palestinians that America would never abandon their "legitimate aspirations." "The only viable solution for this conflict is for the aspirations of both sides to be met in two states," former U.S. senator Mitchell told journalists after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city.

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Obama and the Two State Solution
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Gwynne Dyer - (Analysis) June 9, 2009 - 12:00am

It was a good speech by any measure, and it will go some way towards lessening the mistrust of the world’s Muslims towards the United States. But when it comes to the core issue that has put Americans and Arabs on different sides of the fence over the past decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it will take more than words.

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U.S. envoy: Obama wants 'immediate' Mideast talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
June 8, 2009 - 12:00am

United States President Barack Obama wants "immediate" talks between the Palestinians and Israel to forge a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement, U.S. envoy George Mitchell said on Monday. "The President has told me to exert all efforts to create the circumstance when the parties can begin immediate discussions," Mitchell told reporters at the start of a Palestinian donors' conference in the Norwegian capital.

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The Divisions Among Israelis and Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - (Analysis) June 6, 2009 - 12:00am

As President Obama was arriving in Cairo on Thursday to urge the Middle East toward peace, Hamas militants in the West Bank city of Qalqilya were fighting a gun battle against Palestinian Authority forces in which three men were killed. Israel Radio was reporting that settler extremists had sent letters to an Israeli general threatening him and his children, and comparing the forces that remove settler outposts with the Jewish councils obliged to collaborate with the Nazis.

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