Obama shifts to Israel’s corner, but tries not to show it
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Uriel Heilman - November 10, 2009 - 1:00am

When the White House chief of staff took to the podium at the federations’ General Assembly to call for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without preconditions, he sounded almost exactly like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a day earlier. "All issues should be resolved through negotiations," Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday to delegates at the Jewish Federations of North America's annual meeting. "No one should allow the issue of settlements to distract from the overarching goal of lasting peace."

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A place to live
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Karen Janjua - (Opinion) October 23, 2009 - 12:00am

Dante’s conception of a tortuous place invoking hopelessness cannot hold a candle to a place that I visited recently. The Gaza refugee camp near Jerash is a ramshackle, over 40-year-old “temporary settlement” where 96 per cent of the inhabitants live without the optimism which comes “bundled” with a passport having a national number. Citizenship is granted to most residents of UNWRA’s nine other official camps in Jordan, but the residents of Gaza camp constitute “a special case”.

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No way home: The tragedy of the Palestinian diaspora
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
by Judith Miller, David Samuels - October 22, 2009 - 12:00am

It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel.

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Israel pulls textbook with chapter on Nakba
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Or Kashti - October 19, 2009 - 12:00am

The Ministry of Education has taken the unusual step of collecting all copies of the history textbook, "Nationalism: Building a State in the Middle East" which was published about two months ago by the Zalman Shazar Center. They will be returned to the shelves only after corrections are made to the text, particularly with reference to the War of Independence. The book had already been approved by the ministry.

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The return of 1948
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Shlomo Ben-Ami - (Opinion) October 13, 2009 - 12:00am

The United Nations conference commemorating the 60th anniversary of UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) could not come at a better moment. The restitution of lands occupied in 1967 will obviously continue to be indispensable to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it is the legacy of the 1948 war that both parties to the conflict have now put at the centre of the debate.

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'Fayyadism' tests the narrative of Palestinian dispossession
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Shlomo Ben-Ami - (Opinion) October 8, 2009 - 12:00am

The forthcoming United Nation’s conference commemorating the 60th anniversary of UNRWA (The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) could not come at a better moment. The restitution of lands occupied in 1967 will obviously continue to be indispensable to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it is the legacy of the 1948 war that both parties to the conflict have now put at the center of the debate.

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For Palestinian Refugees, Dream of Returning Home Remains
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Voice of America
by Sonja Pace - September 30, 2009 - 12:00am

Two states side by side, two homelands for two peoples - those are the broadly accepted tenets for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a cornerstone for peace in the Middle East. Many hurdles lie ahead, not least of which is the claim to land. For Palestinians, that means the right of return for more than four million people - those who fled or were driven from their homes at Israel's founding in 1948 and their descendants.

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Yearning for the Golan Heights: why Syria wants it back
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Julien Barnes-Dacey - September 28, 2009 - 12:00am

The US demonstrated its commitment to reengage Syria as a partner for Middle East peace Monday, advancing a process that some Arab countries had declared dead in recent weeks. At Washington's invitation – the first one extended to a high-ranking Syrian official in five years – Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad came to town to meet US officials.

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Absurd Negotiations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Bilal Hassen - (Opinion) September 28, 2009 - 12:00am

US President Barak Obama has himself declared that the attempt he made for launching Palestinian-Israeli negotiations based on halting settlement construction has ended. Netanyahu challenged him, declaring that he will not freeze settlement construction. Afterward, the US president invited Netanyahu for a meeting at the White House. He even announced on behalf of the superpower that success had been made on which we can build.

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Obama Presses Mideast Leaders To Broaden Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from
by Glenn Kessler - September 23, 2009 - 12:00am

President Obama's meetings Tuesday with the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority signaled his impatience with months of stalemate in the quest for Middle East peace, as well as his desire to move beyond talks about settlement construction and straight to negotiations on the final shape of the region.

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