Gaza Clashes Cloud Rice's Trip
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Time
by Tim Mcgirk - March 5, 2008 - 7:46pm

In the southern Israeli port city of Ashkelon, the bull's-eye of Palestinian rocket attacks, pharmacists noted that the sale of tranquilizers shot up by more than 60% in the past week as residents sought to calm their shattered nerves. But with Ashkelon's 120,000 citizens now in the range of the Russian-made Grad rockets recently hauled out of Hamas' arsenals to escalate the confrontation, the drug of choice for Israeli leaders and U.S. officials trying to revive peace talks is more likely to be aspirin or any other pain reliever to help treat their frequent headaches.

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Kosovo Raises Some Relevant Issues
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Yossi Alpher - (Opinion) March 4, 2008 - 6:35pm

If the current Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations fail--at the time of writing they have been suspended by the Palestinian side in protest at Israel's military response to rocket fire from Gaza--the Palestinian leaders in Ramallah ostensibly have a number of options. They can launch a third intifada in the West Bank. They can petition the international community to compel Israel to accept a single bi-national state solution. And they can declare independence.

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Abbas Calls For Middle East Truce
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bbc News
March 4, 2008 - 6:30pm

After meeting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Ramallah, he urged Israel to "halt its aggression so the necessary environment can be created" Mr Abbas suspended the talks in protest at Israel's offensive in Gaza, in which more than 110 Palestinians have died. Ms Rice insisted she still believed a peace deal could be achieved this year. Before flying to the West Bank, Ms Rice held talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and other senior government officials.

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The Gaza Dilemma
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
(Editorial) March 4, 2008 - 6:26pm

THE UPSURGE in fighting between Israel and Hamas over the weekend, and the resulting suspension of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, demonstrates again a crucial flaw in the Bush administration's Middle East strategy. President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have assumed that Hamas could be bottled up and ignored in the Gaza Strip while a deal for a Palestinian state was worked out.

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Rice To Raise Humanitarian Issues With Israelis
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Glenn Kessler - March 4, 2008 - 6:25pm

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday she planned to tell Israeli officials to ease the humanitarian suffering in the Gaza Strip and avoid attacks that might kill civilians, but she repeatedly refused to say whether she supported a cease-fire.

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Gaza The Victim
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al Hayat
by Elias Harfoush - (Opinion) March 3, 2008 - 6:59pm

The Gazans are falling victims caught between the blind Israeli aggression that does not distinguish child from fighter and the suicidal behavior that characterizes the Hamas Movement and its rockets that lure Israeli aggression and "test" the extent of its savagery and ability to kill civilians.

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Thinking The Unthinkable
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
(Editorial) February 29, 2008 - 6:03pm

Israel is in a diplomatic and military jam that keeps getting worse, but has no obvious solution. It is rapidly approaching the demographic tipping point, when Palestinian Arabs outnumber Israeli Jews in the land now under Israeli control. When that happens, Israel will find that it has become a minority-rule state, and it will have to make the choice it has avoided up to now: whether to be a Jewish or a democratic state.

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The Israeli Intransigence
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al Hayat
by Randa Takieddine - (Opinion) February 28, 2008 - 4:48pm

Every time the Israeli army or its leadership loses a certain battle, it treats its investigation into the causes behind this fiasco as some form of repentance. Many reports and investigations followed the war on Lebanon in 2006 as well as the horrible massacres in Qana and before that Sabra and Shatilla. But nothing really changed in the perspective of an Israeli leadership that fails to see that its policies will backfire and haunt its fate in the future.

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Hamas Rocket Attacks Must Stop: Rice
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
February 28, 2008 - 4:40pm

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that Hamas rocket attacks against Israel “need to stop,” demanding an end to the escalating violence that has rocked the Gaza Strip and set back US efforts to promote a Mideast peace deal. Her comments came after she met for an hour with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during a visit to Japan.

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Palestinians Mull A Majority
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Times
by Joshua Mitnick - February 27, 2008 - 6:41pm

New population data have some Palestinians contemplating an unorthodox formula for Middle East peace — a single democratic nation of Arabs and Jews, in which Palestinians would be the majority. "If Israel wants to call it Israel from Jordan to the Mediterranean, I accept it. So we'll be equal to them," said Saeb Erekat, a negotiator who has been at the center of negotiations to set up a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

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