Mideast Peace Talks Get Underway
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Richard Bourdreaux - January 15, 2008 - 5:39pm

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators began addressing the most difficult issues of their decades-old conflict Monday, keeping a promise to President Bush but putting Israel's coalition government under strain. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei emerged from a two-hour session at a Jerusalem hotel with little to say about what they had discussed. Israeli officials said the two lead negotiators planned to meet at least once a week.

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Olmert Is Cautious As Talks With Palestinians Begin
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - January 15, 2008 - 5:38pm

Top Israeli and Palestinian negotiators began talks on core issues on Monday, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel sought to lower expectations of reaching a final peace agreement within a year. “I’m not sure we can reach an agreement, and I’m not sure we can reach its implementation,” Mr. Olmert told Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee on Monday, an official who had attended the meeting said.

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Palestinians Collectively Reject Bush Proposal
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Ali El-saleh - January 14, 2008 - 6:10pm

The proposal by US President George Bush during his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories of laying down an international mechanism to compensate the Palestinian refugees has aroused Palestinian reactions that could be described as homogenous in their content, whether at the official, unofficial, or opposition levels.

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Insubstantial Pageant
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
(Editorial) January 14, 2008 - 5:59pm

After all the supercharged talk of change in the primaries this week, George Bush's trip to the Middle East served as a reminder that America still has a way to go before it can wave goodbye to all that. As with the US summit in Annapolis last year, it is hard, even for the congenital optimist, to find much to cling on to after Mr Bush's first visit to the region as president. In Prospero's words, "the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind".

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Tensions Threaten Israeli Coalition
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Financial Times
by Tobias Buck - January 14, 2008 - 5:58pm

Ehud Olmert is battling to keep together Israel’s fractious multi-party government, amid rising tensions between the prime minister and his rightwing coalition partner over the current Middle East peace talks.

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It's Not About Iran
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Shibley Telhami - January 14, 2008 - 5:28pm

As President Bush travels through the Middle East, the prevailing assumption is that Arab states are primarily focused on the rising Iranian threat and that their attendance at the Annapolis conference with Israel in November was motivated by this threat. This assumption, reflected in the president's speech in the United Arab Emirates yesterday, could be a costly mistake.

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Still Waiting To Seize The Moment
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
(Editorial) January 14, 2008 - 5:24pm

Visiting the Middle East this week, President Bush sounded an unaccustomed note of diplomatic urgency. He insisted that Israel and the Palestinians will conclude a peace agreement before he leaves office in early 2009, and he tried to rhetorically prod the process along.

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Bush Tells Olmert: End The Occupation
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
January 11, 2008 - 3:59pm

U.S. President George W. Bush implored senior cabinet ministers at a dinner yesterday evening to work to promote the peace process, telling them that the current situation cannot continue and efforts to achieve a peace treaty must be made.

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A Palestinian Exploration
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al Hayat
by Hassan Haidar - (Opinion) January 11, 2008 - 3:54pm

A few years after Lebanon gained its independence in 1943, the Palestinians were hit by what is known as the naqba - or 'catastrophe.' The Israelis seized more than half of their country and several Arab armies were unable to recapture the land. Thus, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees poured into neighboring Arab countries - including a certain small country barely managing its politics through a delicate sectarian system.

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George Bush Drinks In The Last-chance Casbah
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Economist
January 11, 2008 - 3:49pm

GEORGE BUSH flew in to a fanfare of bugles and cynicism at the start of his tour of the Middle East this week. The cynicism, it must be said, is not misplaced. Although he said in Jerusalem that he detected “a new opportunity for peace”, he has waited too long to make his first visit as president to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Even if he did everything right in his final year, he does not have time to realise his “vision” of a free Palestine alongside an Israel at peace with its neighbours.

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