Plan B for peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Ari Shavit - (Opinion) September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

On October 5, 1995, prime minister Yitzhak Rabin presented the Oslo 2 accord to the Knesset. In the speech he made on that momentous occasion, Rabin pledged that in the final-status agreement, Jerusalem would remain united, the settlement blocs would remain part of Israel and the security border would be the Jordan Valley. He also said Israel would not return to the June 4, 1967 lines and that the Palestinians would run their own lives in the framework of an entity that would be less than a state.

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Report: US wants borders set in 3 months
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Roee Nahmias - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Washington is trying to circumvent the obstacle posed by the settlement freeze in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and has devised a compromise which will allow the sides to make progress on other issues. The London-based Arabic-language al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Thursday that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has suggested a compromised according to which Israel will prolong the settlement freeze by three months and the time period wil be used by both parties to reach an agreement on the border issues.

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Tight lips as Middle East peace talks rumble on
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
by Jeremy Bowen - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

With talks now well under way, the Americans are working hard to stop information leaking out of the conference rooms. The statements that have been released are bland, positive without minimising the problems ahead. We are told that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are "getting down to business", tackling the tough issues upfront.

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The Cage of “Silent” Negotiations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by Zuheir Kseibati - (Opinion) September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

In light of the carrot and the stick policy used by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her attendance of the sessions to launch the negotiations on the Palestinian-Israeli track, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas picked up the signal again, seeing how his team is still the sole one concerned about the stick and threatened with “unpredictable consequences” if the negotiations were hindered. At the level of the carrot, Washington believes it allows both sides to come up with “creative” exits for the discontinuation of the settlement freeze predicament at the end of the month.

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Undermining line of argument
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from
September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

George Mitchell, the US special envoy to the Middle East, and Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, were in Sharm El Sheikh to mediate between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators. Unfortunately, and although talks are set to continue in Jerusalem, judging from the public statements made after the meetings, US mediation is spectacularly failing. Settlements, Mitchell told reporters, are a "politically sensitive issue" in Israel, so he urged Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO leader, to "take steps" to "facilitate the process".

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Two states and one Holy Land
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by John V. Whitbeck - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

The Declaration of Principles so optimistically signed on the White House lawn in September 1993 proclaimed as its goal a "historic reconciliation" between the two peoples. Today, even optimists seem to hope only for a definitive separation of the two peoples behind high walls and fences.

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Abbas Says Israel Talks Will Continue
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Mark Landler - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

After two days of difficult peace negotiations with Israel over the issue of Jewish settlements, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, sounded a modestly positive note on Thursday, declaring that he saw no alternative but to keep talking. The Palestinians have threatened to walk out of the talks if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not extend a partial moratorium on the construction of settlements, something he has refused to do.

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Clinton wraps up Israeli, Palestinian talks - for now
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Glenn Kessler - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday wrapped up three days of intense Middle East diplomacy that produced good atmospherics but no sign that an impasse over Israeli settlement construction has been resolved. "We all know that there is no alternative to peace other than negotiating peace, so we have no alternative but to continue peace efforts," Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said before meeting with the chief U.S. diplomat in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

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Israel-Palestinian talks end without settlement deal: What happens next?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left the Middle East on Thursday with no sign of a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, despite three days of intensive mediation. The key sticking point is an unresolved dispute over Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank. Only two weeks remain before Israel's settlement freeze expires. With Palestinians threatening to quit the talks if construction resumes, negotiators have a fast-closing window – one filled with a cluster of Jewish holidays – to come up with an end game.

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Why I doubt Binyamin Netanyahu
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Gilead Sher - (Opinion) September 15, 2010 - 12:00am

Eleven years ago, on September 4 1999, the government of Israel, under Ehud Barak, and the PLO, under Yasser Arafat, signed an agreement called the Sharm-el-Sheikh Memorandum. It provided that accelerated permanent status negotiations would commence shortly, and that their goal was to reach a framework agreement on permanent status in five months and a comprehensive agreement in one year.

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