Korans burnt in West Bank mosque attack
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Douglas Hamilton - October 4, 2010 - 12:00am

BEIT FAJJAR, West Bank, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Jewish settlers opposed to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians were accused of setting fire to a mosque in the West Bank on Monday, burning the Koran and scrawling threats in Hebrew on its walls. "Mosques, we burn," said a warning scribbled at the door of the smoke-smudged mosque of Beit Fajjar south of Bethlehem on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed for cool heads to avert the collapse of U.S.-brokered peace talks.

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White House offers Israel a carrot for peace talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Glenn Kessler - September 30, 2010 - 12:00am

In its scramble to salvage Middle East peace talks, the Obama administration has dangled incentives before the Israeli government that touch on some of the most sensitive issues of final status talks between the two sides, administration sources said.

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In blame game, arrow tilts to Abbas
Media Mention of ATFP In Politico - September 28, 2010 - 12:00am

Israelis and Palestinians have yet to achieve any substantive progress in the nascent peace talks that resulted from President Barack Obama’s high-profile push for negotiations, but a subtle shift in the political balance between the two antagonists seems clear: Israel is now winning the blame game. The blame game always proceeds on a parallel, subterranean track to actual negotiations, the cynical mirror of the process’s insistent optimism. Some prominent figures on both sides barely disguise their assumption that peace talks will fail, as they almost always do.

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Settlement Moratorium Expires: Will Mideast Peace Talks Last?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from PBS
by Ghaith Al-Omari, Gwen Ifill, David Makovsky - (Analysis) September 27, 2010 - 12:00am

GWEN IFILL: For more on what's holding these talks together so far, we turn to Ghaith Al-Omari, the advocacy director for the American Task Force on Palestine and a former adviser to President Abbas, and David Makovsky, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the co-author of "Myths, Illusions, and Peace." Let's talk about myths, illusions and peace, Ghaith Al-Omari. What happened today? Why didn't the Palestinians walk away from the table, as they had promised they would if these settlements were not frozen? ARTICLE TOOLS Print E-mail * Share

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In blame game, arrow tilts to Abbas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Politico
by Ben Smith - September 27, 2010 - 12:00am

Israelis and Palestinians have yet to achieve any substantive progress in the nascent peace talks that resulted from President Barack Obama’s high-profile push for negotiations, but a subtle shift in the political balance between the two antagonists seems clear: Israel is now winning the blame game. The blame game always proceeds on a parallel, subterranean track to actual negotiations, the cynical mirror of the process’s insistent optimism. Some prominent figures on both sides barely disguise their assumption that peace talks will fail, as they almost always do.

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Why Palestinian refugees in Lebanon support violence rather than peace talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Nicholas Blanford - (Analysis) September 27, 2010 - 12:00am

Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp, Lebanon — Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations hung in the balance Monday as Israel ignored international pressure to extend a 10-month freeze on Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, under pressure from the United States to stick with the talks, is expected to consult with his partners in the 22-member Arab League next week before announcing a decision. But Mr. Abbas said Sunday, hours before the freeze expired, that Israel had only one choice: "either peace or settlements.”

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Divided city of Hebron shows challenge of peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Tom Perry - September 26, 2010 - 12:00am

The growth of a Jewish settlement next to Hany Abu Haykel's home means the Palestinian needs an Israeli permit to use his front gate. Hardly anyone visits, he says. Guests need permission to reach the house where he was born 41 years ago, in an old neighbourhood of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. Abu Haykel's family must trek through an olive grove patrolled by Israeli soldiers to enter the house the back way.

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For Palestinians, settler abuse is only the beginning of the ordeal
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - (Analysis) September 19, 2010 - 12:00am

  Almost every few weeks (or days, depending on the season), the following ceremony repeats itself in Palestinian villages around Nablus: A group of Israeli settlers from one of the outposts in the West Bank hills attacks Palestinian farmers while they are grazing sheep or working the fields, hoping to throw them off Palestinian land.

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Former Israeli premier details failed peace offer
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Statesman
by Matti Friedman - September 19, 2010 - 12:00am

Israel's former premier gave his most detailed description yet of his 2008 peace offer to the Palestinians, saying in a lecture Sunday that if the current talks are to succeed, the agreement would have to resemble the plan the Palestinians turned down two years ago. The Palestinians deemed Ehud Olmert's offer insufficient at the time, but wanted the more hawkish premier who replaced him, Benjamin Netanyahu, to use it as a starting point for negotiations. Instead, Netanyahu has taken it off the table.

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Peace talks highlight internal tensions in Hamas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Ehud Yaari - (Analysis) September 17, 2010 - 12:00am

Unsurprisingly, the Hamas leadership – both in Gaza and Damascus, and less so in the West Bank – has greeted the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian talks with a flood of contrarian rhetoric. Characterizing the process as a “sellout” of the Palestinian “cause,” the movement argues that President Mahmoud Abbas lacks the necessary “mandate” to represent his people. Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal went so far as to call Abbas “a zero,” amid accusations of “treason” and “betrayal.”

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