Washington and Beirut set up joint military panel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Hussein Abdallah - October 6, 2008 - 8:00pm

Lebanon and the United States set up a joint commission on Monday charged with organizing their bilateral military relationship. The commission was set up after a meeting on Monday between Defense Minister Elias Murr and US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Mary Beth Long, who arrived in Beirut late on Sunday. In a related development, a joint statement by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the US Embassy said that Beirut and Washington had signed three military contracts worth $63 million in US grants to the LAF.

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Egypt to host ME summit in November
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Mohammed Mar’i - October 2, 2008 - 8:00pm

Israel, the Palestinians and the Middle East Quartet will meet in November to review progress in US-backed peace talks launched nearly a year ago, according to a senior Israeli official. The official told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the Israeli and Palestine Authority participants would brief the Quartet over progress made in the ongoing peace talks.

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How I became a target for Israel's 'Jewish terrorists'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
October 1, 2008 - 8:00pm

Zeev Sternhell is careful about his choice of words when he unhesitatingly calls the pipe bomb which exploded outside his front door last week "an act of Jewish terrorism." As a Holocaust survivor orphaned by the age of seven and a combat veteran of Israel's wars, Professor Sternhell, 73, who was lucky to have only been injured in the leg by flying shrapnel from the bomb, is "horrified" not for himself but because it might have hit his wife, daughter his grandchildren on one of their sleepovers, or their neighbours. "It was a terror act because they couldn't know who would have been hit."

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Third Palestinian Uprising Possible
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Middle East Times
by Cherrie Heywood - October 1, 2008 - 8:00pm

A senior Palestinian politician and member of Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA) of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has warned of the possibility of a third Palestinian uprising or Intifada. Kadoura Fares, a leader of the Palestinian peace coalition, demanded at a conference in Tel Aviv on the Geneva Initiative last week, that Abbas or Abu Mazen as he is better known, halt peace talks with Israel citing a lack of progress on the ground.

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Egypt to host 'Annapolis 2' peace summit in November
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Barak Ravid - October 1, 2008 - 8:00pm

An international summit is to be held in Egypt in November, with representatives from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the members of the Quartet - the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. According to a senior official in Jerusalem, the Israeli and PA participants will brief the Quartet over progress made in the ongoing peace talks.

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Book ban ends rare Arab-Israeli cultural exchange
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Joseph Nasr - September 30, 2008 - 8:00pm

For 15 years Israeli Saleh Abbasi has traded books between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbours, fostering a rare cultural link. But in August Israeli authorities suddenly refused to renew his trading licence because he was trading with "enemy" states Lebanon and Syria, frustrating both Abbasi's business and the Arab and Israeli readers he has helped interest in each other's literary traditions. "How can the People of the Book be against books?" Abbasi asked, evoking the Jewish Bible as the first monotheistic holy text. "Books are a bridge to peace between cultures."

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Oslo at 15 Years--A Vanishing Dream
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Prospectsforpeace.com
by Daniel Levy - September 28, 2008 - 8:00pm

This month marked 15 years since the signing of the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles on the South Lawn of the White House, launching the Oslo process and a new hope for the Middle East. The anniversary was largely ignored, overshadowed by the latest rounds of political uncertainty and upheaval in both Israel (where the ruling Kadima party elected Tzipi Livni its new leader) and in the Palestinian territories. Indeed there was little cause for fanfare or celebration.

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The Etzion illusion
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Gershom Gorenberg - September 28, 2008 - 8:00pm

History - the history everyone thinks they know - misleads us. Take the story of Kfar Etzion, the first Israeli settlement in the West Bank, established 41 years ago this week. In the Israeli consciousness, Kfar Etzion has played a double role. On one hand, it has been the ultimate "consensus settlement." After all, the settlers returned to the site of a kibbutz that was overrun, along with the rest of the Etzion Bloc, on the eve of Israel's independence. Even veteran opponents of settling in occupied territory shrug, smile and say "that's different" when the Etzion Bloc is mentioned.

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Bush meets with Middle Eastern leaders
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
September 24, 2008 - 8:00pm

In separate meetings with Middle East leaders Thursday, President Bush applauded Lebanon's efforts to forge a national reconciliation and told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the administration has not given up hope on an agreement to create a Palestinian state. "I appreciate your determination and your desire to have a Palestinian state," Bush told Abbas in front of reporters before an Oval Office meeting. "I share that desire with you. It's not easy."

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Jordan, Egypt say world must help
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
September 23, 2008 - 8:00pm

Jordan and Egypt on Tuesday agreed to further coordinate their stands in the face of present challenges. During a summit meeting in Cairo, His Majesty King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called for intensified international efforts to work out a just political settlement of the Palestinian issue that ends the Israeli occupation and leads to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

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