Building Roadblocks To Peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Middle East Times
(Editorial) December 28, 2007 - 4:27pm

More roadblocks have sprung up on the Middle East road map to peace since the grand reunion organized by U.S. President George W. Bush at Annapolis just a few weeks ago, and where Israeli and Palestinian leaders promised to work toward a peaceful settlement of the 60-year conflict.

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Challenges 2007-2008: Gates Led Realist Resurgence In ‘07
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Inter Press Service (IPS)
by Jim Lobe - (Opinion) December 28, 2007 - 4:26pm

2007 will likely go down in U.S. history as the year in which the balance of power in the long-running struggle between hawks and realists in the administration of President George W. Bush shifted decisively in favour of the latter.

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Gop Leader Calls For Revisions To Fatah Movement’s Outdated Charter
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Nathan Guttman - December 28, 2007 - 4:23pm

A push by right-wing American Jewish activists to change the constitution of the governing Palestinian party is gaining momentum in Congress, even as Israelis are dismissing the document as “irrelevant,” and the umbrella body of American Jewish organizations has voted against taking up the issue.

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Israeli And Palestinian Leaders Meet To Ease Tensions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Steven Erlanger - December 28, 2007 - 4:19pm

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, met here on Thursday to try to dispel the tensions of recent days, and they recommitted themselves to refrain from acts that would prejudice a final peace treaty while they try to negotiate one, officials from both sides said.

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Olmert Seeks To Tighten Grip On West Bank Building
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Ari Rabinovitch - December 28, 2007 - 4:15pm

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ordered the Housing Ministry not to unilaterally issue any additional building permits on occupied land in the West Bank, Israeli officials said on Friday. Olmert was caught off guard by a series of Housing Ministry announcements on settlements that have opened a rift in month-old peace talks with the Palestinians, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

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Settlements Have To Go
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Miftah
by Joharah Baker - (Opinion) December 28, 2007 - 3:56pm

Unsurprisingly, the newly resumed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalled yet again, this time over the highly-charged issue of Israeli settlements, which despite past commitments, Israel has continued to expand. On December 24, the two sides met for the second time since the Annapolis peace conference in November, but came out of the meeting empty handed, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat describing the meeting as “very difficult.”

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Negotiating Solutions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
(Editorial) December 28, 2007 - 3:54pm

It is fine that the Palestinian delegation to the bilateral negotiations with Israel should refuse to negotiate anything other than a freeze on settlement building. It is a shame that the Palestinian side should have granted Israel the diplomatic victory of Annapolis before such a principled stand could be reached.

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Glimmers Of Mideast Peace Rise From Ashes
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Star
by Oakland Ross - December 28, 2007 - 3:47pm

Where would the Middle East be without another war? No one knows, because every passing year seems to bring with it a new armed conflict, and 2007 was no exception, producing a brief but bloody outbreak of fraternal killing that has sharply divided some 3 million Palestinian people, while plunging the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip into even greater depths of misery. Paradoxically, however, the five-day shootout that splintered Palestinians this past June also ignited the first glimmers of peace this region has known in seven years.

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Middle East Bog
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
(Editorial) December 28, 2007 - 3:20pm

IT'S BEEN one month since Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met in Annapolis to launch the first Middle East peace negotiations in seven years. When they meet again today, they will have cause to reflect on how much can go wrong when the world's most notoriously difficult "peace process" is taken over by official negotiators, government bureaucrats and military commanders. Far from beginning to hammer out the two-state settlement that Mr. Olmert and Mr.

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Beware Of Barak
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Antiwar
(Editorial) December 28, 2007 - 3:18pm

Israeli "Defense" Minister Ehud Barak is definitely the most dangerous politician in the Middle East. Ahmadinejad can only dream of having the powers – political and military, conventional and non-conventional – that Barak already possesses. Netanyahu and other far-right Israeli politicians say what they think and are earmarked as extremists, so they are under permanent scrutiny. Barak is more extreme than Netanyahu, but he's an extremist in disguise.

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