Israel To Build Homes In East Jerusalem
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Aron Heller - December 4, 2007 - 2:07pm

Israel said Tuesday it is seeking bids to build more than 300 new homes in a disputed east Jerusalem neighborhood, drawing Palestinian condemnations that the move is undermining the newly revived peace talks held last week in Annapolis, Md. A Housing Ministry spokesman said 307 units would be built in Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem. Israel captured the eastern part of the city in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed the area. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

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Mideast: Olmert Walks Razor's Edge In Peace Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Inter Press Service (IPS)
by Peter Hirschberg - (Analysis) December 4, 2007 - 2:06pm

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has issued a dire warning to his people. Failure to reach a negotiated two-state settlement with the Palestinians, he has declared, will mean the end of the State of Israel.

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Policy Surge Key To Mideast Peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Boston Globe
by H.d.s. Greenway - (Opinion) December 4, 2007 - 2:06pm

IT OFTEN takes electric shock treatment to get the Middle East off its dead center of inertia. The lightning success of the first Gulf war in 1991 produced just that, unsettling all the old presumptions.

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Palestinians Expand Security Drive With New Forces
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Muin Shadid - December 4, 2007 - 2:04pm

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's government stepped up a Western-backed crackdown on gunmen on Tuesday by deploying hundreds of security officers in the West Bank city of Tulkarm. Tulkarm is the second West Bank city to welcome the new Palestinian force. The security drive, which comes as Palestinians start talks with Israel about statehood, started last month when hundreds of officers were deployed in Nablus.

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Talk Less, Do More
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Michal Radoshitzky - (Opinion) December 3, 2007 - 4:25pm

“The international circumstances that were created, specifically at this time, allow you and us to take a courageous step, which involves the need to make painful compromises and forgo those dreams which were part of our national ethos for so many years, and to open a new chapter offering hope for a better life for all of us.” (Prime Minster Ehud Olmert, speaking at the official memorial ceremony for David Ben-Gurion, November 27, 2006.)

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Lieberman's Cigar Test
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - December 3, 2007 - 4:24pm

While MKs from all the parties crowded into the Knesset cafeteria to watch the television broadcasts from Annapolis, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman pushed aside the sign that bans smoking in the sitting room at the end of the main auditorium. It was clear he did not care a bit about the controversy over the joint declaration's content. Nor did the decision to begin accelerated talks about a final-status agreement arouse much excitement in right-wing circles, inside and outside the coalition.

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The Thing About Annapolis ...
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Osama Al Sharif - (Special Report) December 3, 2007 - 4:23pm

Sixteen years is a long time in politics. But that is the gap that now separates the Madrid Middle East peace conference, called for by President George Bush Sr and the Annapolis meeting, which convened last week under the patronage of his son. To underline the size of the gap between the two events one is reminded that all the key players have changed; passed on or retired. The world has evolved dramatically and the core issue of the conflict in the Middle East has become even more complicated.

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Israel Errs In Trying To Impose Its Jewish Identity
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Shulamit Aloni - (Opinion) December 3, 2007 - 4:21pm

Jews are a people but not a nation; they are a religious ethnic group or as respected a tribe as may be. The Jewish citizens of Britain, including the orthodox, are British, and that is what is written in their passports and in the British population registry.

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Peace Summit: 'if These Talks Fail, We Will All Be In Deep Trouble'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
by Donald Macintyre - December 3, 2007 - 4:20pm

Wael Mansour watched the Annapolis conference on al-Arabiya television last week in the barely furnished three-room Gaza home he shares with his wife, mother and five children. Did he think the proceedings – intended to clinch the start of a year of peace negotiations – will do any good? "Inshallah [God willing]," said Mr Mansour, 32. "I hope to get out of what we are in. We are in deep trouble."

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Big Turnout, Small Result
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Economist
December 3, 2007 - 4:18pm

THEY almost didn't make it, but in the last hour Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, agreed on a joint statement. Four months of preliminary talks had failed to produce what Mr Abbas and Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, had hoped to brandish at this week's peace summit in Annapolis: an agreement to predetermine some aspects of the final-status deal that would ultimately create a Palestinian state next to Israel. In the end, Ms Rice had to settle for less, but the Palestinians and Israelis did agree two things.

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