Netanyahu rejects peace talks based on 1967 borders
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - August 12, 2010 - 12:00am

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday rejected a Palestinian demand that direct negotiations be based on a statement by the Quartet confirming its position that the future Palestinian state will be based on the 1967 borders. Meeting in Jerusalem with U.S. envoy George Mitchell, Netanyahu repeated his demand for the renewal of direct talks without preconditions. Mitchell briefed Netanyahu on his meeting on Tuesday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and gave the prime minister the Palestinian proposal.

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US: Direct talks ‘getting closer’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Khaled Abu Toameh - August 11, 2010 - 12:00am

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and US envoy George Mitchell on Tuesday failed to reach agreement on the issue of direct talks between the PA and Israel. The two men met in Ramallah to discuss the latest developments surrounding the peace process and US efforts to launch direct talks between the two parties.

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For Israel, There’s Only One End Game
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Leonard Fein - August 11, 2010 - 12:00am

The “two state solution” to the Israel/Palestine conflict has become the glamourless default position of most of those who think about the conflict. It has achieved that lumpy status despite the flaws in its logic, the problematics of its implementation, the dangers that inhere in it and the determined hostility to it from some on both sides of the conflict. Still, it’s been the only end game in town for quite some time, and it has had as its foundation stone the belief that only with two viable states can Israel preserve itself as both Jewish and democratic.

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At the crossroads to peace and war in the Middle East
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Michael B. Oren - August 6, 2010 - 12:00am

Rarely have the lines in the Middle East's sands been drawn so distinctly. Arrayed on one side is the peace-seeking camp that opposes militant extremism and favors direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians. On the other are the organizations, many of them surrogates for Iran, that work to undermine moderate governments and violently impede any effort for peace.

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The lie behind the right wing's truth
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Shlomo Avineri - (Opinion) August 4, 2010 - 12:00am

Some people are surprised at recent expressions of support on the right for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, through what appears to be a readiness to grant Israeli citizenship to Palestinians living in territories that would be annexed. I'm surprised they're surprised, because that has been the right wing's position since 1967. It's just that it hasn't been easy to openly advocate an explicitly annexationist stance.

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The West Bank illusion
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Menachem Klein - August 4, 2010 - 12:00am

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are darlings of Israel and the international community. For a long time now, they have been seen as brand names, not as officeholders dependent on circumstances of time and place. Abbas represents building the state in stages from the top down by negotiations. Fayyad represents building the state in stages from the bottom up. To Israel and the international community, they seem eternal.

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Palestinian Prime Minister: Unilateral Declaration of Statehood a Pipedream
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line
by Felice Friedson, Benjamin Joffe-Walt - August 2, 2010 - 12:00am

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Faya’d has ruled out any unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. “There is not going to be a unilateral declaration of statehood,” Faya’d told The Media Line during a private meeting in his office. “What’s the point? We did that in 1988, and what did it get us?” The statement was a public rejection of increasing calls from minority Palestinian factions to recalibrate the Palestinian struggle away from a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and towards a shared, bi-national, secular and democratic state.

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Israelis and Palestinians unite for peace - and theatre
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Sarfraz Manzoor - August 2, 2010 - 12:00am

Nour Shehadah and Chen Alon are both shaven-headed fathers in their forties. Shehadah is Palestinian and he spent five years in an Israeli prison for his activities as a leader of his local Fatah military. Alon is a former combat soldier and major in the Israeli army.

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ATFP President, Senior Fellow Participate in Dominican Republic Peace Conference
Press Release - Contact Information: Hussein Ibish - July 30, 2010 - 12:00am

ATFP President Ziad Asali and Senior Fellow Hussein Ibish participated in a major conference on Middle East peace, the “FUNGLODE Forum for Peace at Cap Cana,” in the Dominican Republic from July 23-25. FUNGLODE is the acronym for the Dominican Global Foundation for Democracy and Development. The conference was presided over by the President of the Dominican Republic, Dr. Leonel Fernandez, who attended and participated in all the sessions, provided a welcoming address and several other interventions, and took notes throughout.


Israel needs a Palestinian state
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Alon Ben-meir - (Opinion) July 27, 2010 - 12:00am

Israel’s national security and self-preservation as a democracy, if not its very existence, depend on its ability and willingness to come to terms with the reality of coexistence with the Palestinians on the basis of a two-state solution. Unfortunately, instead of seeking to promote the creation of a Palestinian state, the current government has sought to impede it.

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