The Gaza Time Bomb
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Middle East Times
by Patrick Seale - December 23, 2008 - 1:00am

PARIS -- With the ending of the truce between Israel and Hamas, Gaza is now one of the Middle East's most dangerous flashpoints. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has issued a cry of alarm, while Tony Blair, the Quartet's Middle East envoy, has urged Israel to defuse tensions by lifting the siege of Gaza. Everyone is aware that it would take only a spark - such as a Qassam rocket landing on a house in Sderot - to trigger a full-scale war. The paradox is that neither side really wants this to happen.

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West Bank settler eviction offers warning, hope
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Amy Teibel - December 21, 2008 - 1:00am

HEBRON, West Bank -- Israel's swift eviction of Jewish zealots from one of the most volatile West Bank flashpoints offers encouragement to people both inside and outside Israel who hope it is still possible to uproot settlers to make room for a Palestinian state. Israeli police and soldiers encountered little resistance this month when they expelled some 200 extremists from a contested house in Hebron, near the traditional burial site of Abraham, the shared patriarch of Muslims and Jews.

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Loving The Two-State Solution to Death
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Israel Policy Forum
by M.J. Rosenberg - December 19, 2008 - 1:00am

It didn’t take long for the “two state solution” to move from the category of radical to banal, but that is what has happened. Today the “two-state solution” is everyone’s favorite remedy. And yet it is farther from realization than ever. Its fate may, in fact, be that rare instance of a concept being killed by kindness.

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Lift the siege of Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Economist
(Editorial) December 19, 2008 - 1:00am

Contrary to the absurd claim of the rapporteur of the UN’s Human Rights Council, to whom Israel refused entry this week, the Gaza Strip is not facing a Nazi-like “Holocaust” at Israel’s hands. But the lot of the 1.5m Palestinians cooped up in this miserable scrap of desert is undeniably awful. Locked in on one side by Israel and on the other by Egypt, the Palestinians of Gaza have been subjected to an ever-tightening economic siege since the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, booted the secular Fatah movement out of the strip in June 2007.

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U.N. Resolution Is Bush’s Last Attempt To Save Annapolis Peace Process
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Marc Perelman - (Opinion) December 19, 2008 - 1:00am

With its days in office running out, the Bush administration turned to the United Nations to put its imprimatur on the struggling peace initiative that the United States launched in Annapolis, Md., a little more than a year ago. In a resolution co-sponsored by the United States and Russia, the U.N. Security Council declared its support for the process initiated at Annapolis and its commitment to the “irreversibility of the bilateral negotiations” between Israelis and Palestinians.

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Will Bibi or Livni be any better?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by George S. Hishmeh - December 18, 2008 - 1:00am

Unlike the just-concluded American election, where everyone is eagerly awaiting the change that has been promised, the ongoing election campaign in Israel which ends one month after President-elect Barack Obama settles in the White House, is noted for the absence of any similar commitments. If anything, the positions of the competing Israeli frontrunners have not been encouraging and even very alarming.

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A Comprehensive Approach to the Middle East Peace Process
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by David Miliband - (Opinion) December 18, 2008 - 1:00am

Next year needs to be an important year for the Arab-Israeli conflict. Unless we make real progress, the prospect of a two-state solution will slowly - or perhaps fast - slip away. The situation on the ground leaves too many people insecure, in poverty and despair, and is rapidly undermining the political process. While both sides are tiring of the conflict, they are also tiring, faster, of efforts to resolve it.

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Brown urges Olmert to lift curbs on Palestinian economy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Agence France Presse (AFP)
December 17, 2008 - 1:00am

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Tuesday urged Israel's caretaker leader Ehud Olmert to ease constraints on the struggling Palestinian economy. Brown held talks with Olmert at Downing Street a day after joining Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, at a forum in London to promote British investment in the Palestinian territories. The pair also discussed the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which Brown described Monday as a "barrier that's got to be overcome" in the Middle East peace process.

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Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Counterpunch
by Jeff Halper - (Opinion) December 17, 2008 - 1:00am

Writing recently in The Washington Post ("Middle East Priorities," Nov. 21), Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, two former US National Security Advisors, a Republican and a Democrat, declared: "We believe that the Arab-Israeli peace process is one issue that requires priority attention [from the incoming Obama Administration]."

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In new ads, Palestinians try to sway Israeli public on peace plan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Ilene Prusher - December 16, 2008 - 1:00am

Along Route 2, which follows the Mediterranean coastline, motorists are seeing an unusual sight: a Palestinian flag next to an Israeli one. Below the image appearing on billboards is a message in Hebrew: There's a viable peace initiative on offer from Arab states. Reach a land-for-peace deal with Palestinians, and we will recognize you. The signature? The flags of 57 Arab and Muslim states – all except Iran.

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