Promises Of Annapolis
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by George S. Hishmeh - (Opinion) December 6, 2007 - 4:33pm

Now that the dust has settled on the recent Annapolis conference that promised to try and reach a Palestinian-Israeli settlement by the end of next year, it is time to review the event that was an unprecedented achievement for the lameduck Bush administration, particularly on the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict that has been virtually neglected in Washington for nearly seven years.

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Hamas Urges Talks With Abbas Amid Israeli Attacks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Nidal Al-mughrabi - December 6, 2007 - 4:31pm

A Hamas leader on Wednesday renewed his call for dialogue with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's rival Fatah faction a week after Abbas restarted talks with Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas formally relaunched a U.S.-sponsored peace process last week and Israel has since stepped up raids on Hamas-run Gaza to try to curb rocket fire by militants.

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In The Wake Of Annapolis, Other Fronts Develop
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Marc Perelman - December 6, 2007 - 4:30pm

In a bid to reassert itself in a region where it long held sway, Russia has re-entered the Middle East diplomatic fray by serving as a go-between for Israel and Syria and by offering to host a follow-up meeting to last week’s peace summit in Annapolis, Md.

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More Gazans Turn Away From Hamas As Fatah Heads Toward Peace Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - December 6, 2007 - 4:29pm

Support for Hamas, the Islamist militant group that has controlled Gaza since June, has frayed as Israel keeps intense pressure on the thin, coastal strip and its chief Palestinian rival is embracing a language of peace.

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Palestinian Entrepreneurs Plan Two Built-from-scratch Cities In The West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
December 6, 2007 - 4:28pm

In this ancient land where communities have grown helter-skelter, the future now looks more like well-tended U.S. suburbia: powerful entrepreneurs are planning two built-from-scratch West Bank cities with thousands of homes as well as malls, high-tech call centers and hotels. The projects, with a total investment of up to $900 million (€610 million), are part of ambitious plans to revive the Palestinian economy, as Israelis and Palestinians talk peace again after seven years of violence.

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The Devastation Our Disunity Has Created
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Miftah
by Joharah Baker - (Opinion) December 5, 2007 - 5:02pm

This morning, Israeli forces killed yet another three Hamas activists in an air strike on Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. Over the past two weeks, some 30 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military forces, mostly in the Strip, even as Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak insists his army continues to hold out on wide scale military action there.

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Israel Fails To Demolish West Bank Buildings
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Telegraph
by Carolynne Wheeler - December 5, 2007 - 4:56pm

The Israeli army has followed up on only three per cent of its own orders to demolish illegal buildings in Jewish settlements in the West Bank over the last decade, a study says. The report by Peace Now, an Israeli settlement watchdog, follows pledges by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to freeze new construction in settlements. Israel also faces increasing pressure to dismantle illegal outposts in preparation for negotiations toward the founding of a Palestinian state.

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Darkness Surrounds Spotlight On Peace Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Inter Press Service (IPS)
by William Fisher - December 5, 2007 - 4:54pm

Most of those representing Middle East and North African nations at the Nov. 27 conference appear to endorse the idea of a "two-state solution" to the decades-old conflict: a separate and contiguous Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. But Arab delegates to Annapolis -- including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen -- have had little to say about the nature of the state that may emerge from negotiations set to begin soon between Israel and the Palestinians.

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The Failure Of Annapolis
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Policy In Focus
by Stephen Zunes - (Commentary) December 5, 2007 - 4:51pm

Despite the best efforts by the Bush administration of putting a positive spin on the recently-completed summit in Annapolis to restart the “Performance-Based Road Map to Peace,” there is little reason to expect that it will actually move the Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward as long as the United States insists on simultaneously playing the role of chief mediator and chief supporter of the more powerful of the two parties.

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Ehud The Semi-believer
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The American Prospect
by Gershom Gorenberg - (Analysis) December 5, 2007 - 4:49pm

Ehud Olmert has begun to fascinate me. Don't misunderstand: I am completely innocent of ever voting for him. I have no intent of committing such an act in the future. Had fate not put me in a country of which Olmert is prime minister at a moment that might be seized by someone else, an actual leader, to make peace, my interest in him would be purely as a literary figure, a character. I don’t mean that he is a tragic hero; precisely the point is that he lacks grandeur. He is Willy Loman with a vision: a glad-handing hack politician who was ambushed one day by a truth.

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