Jewish Lobbyists Still Skeptical of Palestinian Offers Of Concessions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Forward
by Nathan Guttman - January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

A video clip produced last October by the American Jewish Committee aimed to explain the reason for the repeated failures of the Middle East peace process. “The one word that frustrated over 60 years of hope for peace: no,” the clip stated, going on to detail Israeli peace efforts in the past two decades while stressing that the Palestinian response has always been negative. But do the recent revelations in the huge leak of peace process documents known as “the Palestine papers” put this worldview into question?

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A Palestinian state within the 1967 borders: settlements vs. sovereignty
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Philip C. Wilcox - (Opinion) January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

Today, few disagree that without massive withdrawals from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where over 500,000 settlers now live, there is no hope for a two-state peace. A majority of Israelis also agree that an end to the conflict, preservation of a democratic, Jewish Israel, and freedom and statehood for Palestinians, are impossible without a radical reversal of Israel's misbegotten settlement adventure.

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Documents Open a Door on Mideast Peace Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - January 25, 2011 - 1:00am

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks over the past 17 years have operated at two levels, one public, the other behind closed doors. To the world and their own people, each side spoke of sacred, nonnegotiable demands, while in the Jerusalem hotel suites where the officials met those very demands were under negotiation.

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The Palestine Papers: Despair. But we still need a deal
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
(Editorial) January 25, 2011 - 1:00am

Yesterday Yasser Abed-Rabbo and Saeb Erekat, senior PLO leaders, attacked al-Jazeera, which obtained the Palestine papers, for distortions and fraud, and questioned the political motives of its Qatari owners. A demonstration in Ramallah burned an al-Jazeera logo. This leak originated in the Palestinian Authority's own institutions, and al-Jazeera is a rarity in the Arab world. It was praised for its coverage of the invasion of Iraq by the very people who attack it today. It should be defended by all who want democracy in the Arab world.

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Palestinians insist leaked memos from peace process reveal nothing new
Media Mention of Ghaith al-Omari In PBS - January 25, 2011 - 1:00am

Leaked memos from a decade of negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian officials roiled the Mideast peace process and put the embattled Palestinian Authority on the defensive Monday. But moderate Palestinian observers and officials close to the government of President Mahmoud Abbas insisted that the documents reveal relatively little about the negotiations that isn’t already known. And if anything, they say, the records expose how uncooperative the Israeli and American governments have been throughout the process.

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WEST BANK: Leaks from peace talks don't show Palestinians making shocking concessions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Edmund Sanders - January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

If there’s a lesson from Sunday's leak of alleged meeting minutes from 2008 Mideast peace talks involving Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. officials and from the previous WikiLeaks dump of U.S. diplomatic cables, perhaps it's this: Governments needn't be so afraid of having their private business aired in public.

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How leaked Palestinian documents will affect Abbas, peace process
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

A trove of secret documents obtained by Al Jazeera shows that Palestinian negotiators offered far-reaching concessions on borders and Jerusalem in 2008, but that their Israeli counterparts balked.

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Israel FM confirms interim Palestinian state plan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Matti Friedman - January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

Israel's foreign minister confirmed Monday that he has drawn up a plan for the creation of an interim Palestinian state with temporary borders in the absence of a full peace agreement. Avigdor Lieberman argued that an interim arrangement was the only option, saying the Palestinians have turned down previous Israeli offers and no agreement is possible at present. "There is no other way. We must go back to an interim agreement," he told Israel Radio, adding, "The plan is ready." He offered no details and did not say when and if the plan would be made public.

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Abbas: Concessions in Palestine papers came from Israel, not us
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday denied offering secret concessions to Israel and said that reporting of purportedly leaked documents had presented Israeli positions as those of his own negotiators. "What is intended is a mix-up. I saw them present things yesterday as Palestinian, but they were Israeli ... This is therefore intentional," Abbas told reporters in Cairo after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "We say things very clearly, we do not have secrets." Abbas stressed.

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The Palestine papers: Al-Jazeera trumps WikiLeaks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

While the leaked documents on Middle East negotiations are received in Israel and in the world as incisive evidence of the moderate positions of the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Hamas leadership as well as Abbas' rivals in Fatah will see the documents as additional proof of what they call the "defeatism" of the PA. Abbas is constantly treading the thin line between his will to acquire the sympathy of the Israeli and international public and his need to guard his back from the knives of his rivals at home.

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