Is there a peace partner?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Donniel Hartman - (Opinion) January 11, 2012 - 1:00am

As the year 2012 began, Israel and the Palestinians sat down in Jordan and talked for the first time in more than a year. The discussions were prompted by a deadline from the Quartet and accompanied by relative disinterest in both Palestinian and Israeli societies. The conversation may have been substantive or merely warranting the diplomatic phrase, “fruitful.”

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Netanyahu mulls gestures toward Palestinians to keep peace talks going
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Barak Ravid - January 10, 2012 - 1:00am

At the request of American and Jordanian authorities, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering several confidence-building measures vis-a-vis the Palestinians. In return, the prime minister expects Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to continue the talks that began in Jordan a week ago, and to refrain from pursuing statehood at the United Nations.

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A Saudi-Israeli-Palestinian negotiation table
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Abdulateef Al-Mulhim - (Opinion) January 10, 2012 - 1:00am

The Palestinians met the Israelis in Jordan for the first time in 16 months. And these days there is talk about what is the best solution to end the issue of the Palestinian refugees before the UN withdraws its financial support. In addition to serious talks about a two-state solution. But, the whole world heard this many times before. So, is the Palestinian issue solvable and who can really have a solution? Could it be some one the Israelis never met? Here is my humble opinion:

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At best, a year of reassessment
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Yossi Alpher - (Opinion) January 10, 2012 - 1:00am

The year 2012 will almost certainly not witness any progress toward agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. We'll be lucky if there is no serious backsliding in the form of violence or formal withdrawal from negotiating frameworks. Meanwhile, however, we can and should be making good use of this year to reassess the entire peace process and find ways to reconstitute it in a more useful format. There are multiple reasons for a pessimistic prognosis regarding the year ahead.

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A grim staging ground
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Ghassan Khatib - (Opinion) January 10, 2012 - 1:00am

The two main Middle East-related events of 2011 appear to be continuing into the new year. One is the complete stagnation of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, and the other is the roiling wave of Arab revolutions and uprisings, which also carry weighty implications for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

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Mideast rivals should take a page from ANC's playbook
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Tony Karon - (Opinion) January 10, 2012 - 1:00am

Sunday's centenary of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African liberation movement for which I spent a decade of my life fighting apartheid in the 1980s, reminded me of a strange evening in New York in 1997. I'd been chatting at a media party with a well-known hip-hop scribe, who had offered me a ride home in his rented limo. When we began discussing my South Africa experience, he refused to believe that this white boy had been in the ANC.

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Israeli minister says peace deal should put some Israeli Arabs under Palestinian sovereignty
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
January 9, 2012 - 1:00am

JERUSALEM — Israel’s foreign minister said Monday that some Israeli Arabs should be stripped of their citizenship and placed under Palestinian sovereignty as part of any final peace deal. Avigdor Lieberman made the comments before a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators later Monday in Jordan — their second session in a week after a 15-month breakdown in talks.

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Palestinian peace hopes low as talks resume
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Hugh Naylor - January 9, 2012 - 1:00am

JERUSALEM // Expectations of progress in the peace process could not be lower as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators prepare to meet in the Jordanian capital today. It will be their second meeting in a week but these are rare encounters since direct negotiations collapsed more than a year ago, when Israel refused to stop building Jewish settlements. Still, the Palestinians' ageing leadership has continued with a two decades-old strategy of trying to end their conflict with Israel through negotiations.

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Why They Aren't at the 'Damn Table'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Yossi Alpher - (Opinion) January 9, 2012 - 1:00am

The past 18 years of failed attempts to guide Israelis and Palestinians to a two-state solution have produced memorable clichés and even curses on the part of frustrated third-party officials. One of my favorites is, “The outlines of an agreement are known to all,” which I usually attribute to Tony Blair, though there are other contenders. Another is, “Sign, you dog,” — Hosni Mubarak, through clenched teeth, trying to get Yasser Arafat to sign the second Oslo agreement. And there is Yitzhak Rabin’s “There are no sacred deadlines.”

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Peace Talks Are Discussed in a Session in Jordan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - January 9, 2012 - 1:00am

JERUSALEM — Israeli and Palestinian officials met in the Jordanian capital on Monday, their second session in less than a week, after peace talks had been stalled for more than a year. The encounter was kept at such a low profile, however, that it was almost as if it had not happened at all — attesting to the fragility of the contacts and the apparently minimal expectations each side has for progress. A Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity from Ramallah in the West Bank, said that the Israeli side did not produce anything on Monday that could move the process forward.

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