May 12, 2008

Middle East News: World Press Roundup

The Bush Administration pushes Israelis and Palestinians toward compromise (1). In the Washington Post, Lally Weymouth interviews Israeli President Shimon Peres (2) and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayaad (3). ATFP Board Member Daoud Kuttab writes about the practical reality of the Right of Return (4). Negotiations continue on a Gaza cease-fire (7) even as Israel weathers scandal allegations (6) and political unrest (12). In Haaretz, Akiva Eldar argues that U.S. president Bush should avoid visiting Israel (13).

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A Talk With Prime Minister Fayyad

Lally Weymouth also spoke with Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad in Ramallah.

Excerpts:

Q. Did you [think] it was possible to do anything with [Yasser] Arafat?

A. There is hardly anything I did here that was easy. Changing the way business is done in finance in the PA was not easy. You just didn't know where to begin.

Was it possible to do anything with the PA?

Yes, it was. This is fairly well documented. We did quite a few things in a relatively short period of time.

So what did you decide to do?

Priority: Statehood

In the spring of 1948, my father, George Kuttab, and his brother Qostandi fled Musrara, a Jerusalem neighborhood just outside the walled city, after their sister Hoda's husband was killed in front of her and their children. When Dad used to tell us about the Naqba, the catastrophe that befell Palestinians in 1948, he never talked politics or hatred. He would laugh as he told us how his brother secured their home near Damascus Gate.

Hezbollah 'redrawing' Mideast Map

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Hezbollah's dramatic gains in Lebanon last week are just part of a regional process that began last year in the Gaza Strip and will continue in Jordan and Egypt, a Hamas official in the West Bank told The Washington Times.

Sheik Yazeeb Khader, a Ramallah-based Hamas political activist and editor, said militant groups across the Middle East are gaining power at the expense of U.S.-backed regimes, just as Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israelis Don't Believe Scandal-hit Olmert: Poll

A majority of Israelis want Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign or go on leave over a bribery scandal and do not believe his denials of wrongdoing, an opinion poll showed on Monday.

The survey in Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, was the first to gauge the public mood since a court gag order in the case was partially lifted on Thursday and Olmert went on television to profess his innocence.

Fuel Supply To Be Resumed To Gaza Power Plant

A Gaza power plant shut down by the ruling Hamas party will start operating again later on Monday, an official said.

Hamas said the plant was shut down on Saturday because it ran out of fuel supplied by Israel.

Israel claimed that Hamas was creating an artificial crisis, raising tensions ahead of a visit by the Egyptian mediator trying to broker a truce between the two enemies, and severely limited shipments to pressure Palestinian militants to halt their rocket barrages at nearby Jewish communities.

Jerusalem Diary: Monday 12 May

'AND HERE I AM 60 YEARS LATER'

To get to Ali Abu Zour's living quarters, you have to fold yourself into an improbable shape, and stoop-crawl-walk through the square hole in the back of his shop.

Once we had reached the bare room next to the kitchen, we decided it would be better to go back to the shop: just as comfortable, and he might not lose any passing business, as we talked.

A Historic Compromise Under Threat

With both Israelis and Palestinians commemorating 60-year anniversaries at this time, it is instructive to look at what the respective sides are remembering. For Israelis, 1948 brought independence and statehood. For Palestinians, 1948 brought only disaster, the forced displacement of between more than half of their number, a majority that was to be shoehorned into refugee camps across the Arab world.

Iran And The Fearful Arabs

Amidst the political classification in the region and talk of the moderate and extremist states, other states seem to have been overlooked – and they are the states that deserve to be called the 'fearful Arab' states. Clearly, they have come to the forefront of the events in Lebanon once again and those who attended the exceptional summit in Cairo are aware of that.

Shas Threatens To Quit Gov't Over Future Peace Deal

 

Shas will quit the government should "a dangerous deal" with the Palestinians materialize, party chairman Eli Yishai stated Monday. "Shas will not be part of a government that will reduce the territory of the Jewish people's state and fill it with refugees," he told Ynet.

"The rabbi (Ovadia Yosef) said he would not lend his hand to another disengagement. We will not lend our hand to an attempt to hand over territory to Hamas," Yishai added.

Bush Should Stay Home

If George Bush were a true friend of Israel, he would seize the investigation against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as an excuse to stay home tomorrow. Unless he has a rabbit in his hat, this will be the third time in the past half year that the U.S. president shows the Palestinians and the entire Arab world that they are wasting their time by trying to end the occupation by peaceful means.

Econ Progress In The West Bank Lays Basis For Peace

President Bush departs Tuesday for a Mideast peace mission that on the surface appears unpromising.

But administration officials say there is quiet movement on the outlines of a future Palestinian state and that momentum is building on the economic-development front, particularly in the Palestinian West Bank. Even if Mr. Bush's 11th-hour push for a peace deal ultimately fails, growing investment in the area is pointing the way toward possible longer-term progress, officials say.

Abbas Is A Viable Peace Partner

US President George W. Bush said on Monday that he could not envisage the Middle East evolving "without a Palestinian state that's free and democratic." Bush, who flies to Israel on Tuesday, told The Jerusalem Post that he remains convinced that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is a partner for peace. And he went on to say, at a briefing with the Post and three other Israeli journalists in the Oval Office, that he was still convinced that an accord on Palestinian statehood was attainable this year.

America's Elusive Search For Arab-israeli Peace

My book The Much Too Promised Land had a very strange origin in that I really never intended to write it. I "resigned" from the State Department in January 2003 because I had concluded - and nothing has changed my mind in the past five years - that the road to Arab-Israeli peace was going to be a long and bumpy one. It had come time for me to take a break after 25 years of providing varying degrees of advice - some good, some bad - to a number of secretaries of state.

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