Success Or Not, Israel's Top 3 Eye Summit As Campaign Booster
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Leslie Susser - November 26, 2007 - 12:54pm

By sending its top three leaders to the Annapolis peace summit, Israel is hoping to make a statement about the seriousness of its approach to peacemaking with the Palestinians. But a more complex reality lies under the surface of this diplomatic show. The big three -- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni -- have much different notions about what can be achieved with the Palestinians and how best to go about it.

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Annapolis Is Just The First Step
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Aaron David Miller - November 26, 2007 - 12:53pm

If Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice want to set the Annapolis conference to music, I have a suggestion: the chorus from Sugarland's latest country music hit: "Everybody's dreamin' big, but everybody's just gettin' by."

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Obstacles And Opportunity For Mideast Peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Boston Globe
by James Carroll - (Opinion) November 26, 2007 - 12:51pm

Obstacles abound. When representatives of more than 40 nations convene in Annapolis tomorrow, hoping to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, there will be many reasons for pessimism. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas presides over a fractured people, with Hamas ready to spoil any agreement. Qassam rockets fired from Gaza remind Israelis what a hostile Palestinian state could do from the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is politically vulnerable to extremist figures on the Israeli side who want no concessions.

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The Middle East's Middle Ground
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
(Editorial) November 26, 2007 - 12:49pm

An air of necessity, and thus possibility, lies over the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md. If Ben Franklin were there, as he was in Philadelphia to help 13 states draft a US Constitution, he might give the same advice to participants: We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

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Bush’s Best Hope
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Roger Cohen - (Opinion) November 26, 2007 - 12:38pm

The Palestinians are the cause of exiting and ex-presidents. There’s no electoral payback in supporting them. Jews and Israel-loving evangelicals dwarf any Arab lobby to the extent it’s not even funny. President Bush is on the exit track. It’s time to rectify the fundamental error he made in allowing war-on-terror rhetoric to discredit the Palestinian national movement.

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Rice’s Turnabout On Mideast Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Elisabeth Bumiller - November 26, 2007 - 12:37pm

At President Bush’s first National Security Council meeting in January 2001, he announced that he did not want to be drawn into the shattered Middle East peace process, people at the meeting recalled, because he believed that former President Bill Clinton had pushed so hard for an Israeli-Palestinian accord that he made the situation worse.

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More Palestinian-israeli 'normalization' Is Needed
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Walid Salem - (Commentary) November 23, 2007 - 6:43pm

In the Arab and Islamic world, normalization is looked upon as the process of building open and reciprocal relations with Israel in all fields, including the political, economic, social, cultural, educational, legal and security fields. Those who reject such "normalization" are divided into two groups: one thinks that Israel was established on Islamic and Palestinian land and at the expense of the Palestinian people, the legitimate owners of the land, who consequently suffered a fate as refugees outside their country.

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Don't Knock Annapolis
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) November 23, 2007 - 6:42pm

Lucky for Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill that the disparaging phrase "photo-op" had not been coined during their time. Otherwise, the wise guys of their generation would have torn into the Tehran Conference (1943) even before it could convene, causing the war to last even longer.

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Rice Sets Mid-east Peace Target
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bbc News
November 23, 2007 - 6:39pm

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said the United States will try to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians over the next year. Ms Rice said both sides had agreed to work towards the establishment of an independent Palestinian state before US President George W Bush leaves office. She also said Washington hoped such negotiations would be launched at next week's peace conference in Annapolis. Invitations have been issued to Israel, the Palestinians and key Arab states.

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Proceed Steadily But Firmly
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Miftah
by Caelum Moffatt - November 22, 2007 - 10:41pm

After seven years of stalled negotiations between Israel and Palestine, one could possibly not presume that all problems would be solved by one summit, let alone a summit that had been penciled in just as the two old enemies had reconvened dialogue.

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