Olmert, Abbas Try To Revive Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bbc News
December 28, 2007 - 4:31pm

Palestinian and Israeli leaders have pledged to press on with peace talks despite a continuing row about Jewish settlement activity. Mahmoud Abbas urged Ehud Olmert to stop building homes for Jews in occupied East Jerusalem, officials said. Israel has said the hundreds of new homes in the Har Homa settlement are within existing boundaries. Follow-up peace efforts since the US-sponsored Annapolis summit last month have been paralysed by the issue.

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Building Roadblocks To Peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Middle East Times
(Editorial) December 28, 2007 - 4:27pm

More roadblocks have sprung up on the Middle East road map to peace since the grand reunion organized by U.S. President George W. Bush at Annapolis just a few weeks ago, and where Israeli and Palestinian leaders promised to work toward a peaceful settlement of the 60-year conflict.

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Israeli And Palestinian Leaders Meet To Ease Tensions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Steven Erlanger - December 28, 2007 - 4:19pm

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, met here on Thursday to try to dispel the tensions of recent days, and they recommitted themselves to refrain from acts that would prejudice a final peace treaty while they try to negotiate one, officials from both sides said.

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Olmert Seeks To Tighten Grip On West Bank Building
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Ari Rabinovitch - December 28, 2007 - 4:15pm

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ordered the Housing Ministry not to unilaterally issue any additional building permits on occupied land in the West Bank, Israeli officials said on Friday. Olmert was caught off guard by a series of Housing Ministry announcements on settlements that have opened a rift in month-old peace talks with the Palestinians, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

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Settlements Have To Go
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Miftah
by Joharah Baker - (Opinion) December 28, 2007 - 3:56pm

Unsurprisingly, the newly resumed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalled yet again, this time over the highly-charged issue of Israeli settlements, which despite past commitments, Israel has continued to expand. On December 24, the two sides met for the second time since the Annapolis peace conference in November, but came out of the meeting empty handed, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat describing the meeting as “very difficult.”

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Middle East Bog
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
(Editorial) December 28, 2007 - 3:20pm

IT'S BEEN one month since Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met in Annapolis to launch the first Middle East peace negotiations in seven years. When they meet again today, they will have cause to reflect on how much can go wrong when the world's most notoriously difficult "peace process" is taken over by official negotiators, government bureaucrats and military commanders. Far from beginning to hammer out the two-state settlement that Mr. Olmert and Mr.

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Israel's Olmert Balks At Full Settlement Halt
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Adam Entous - December 28, 2007 - 3:15pm

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert balked on Thursday at committing to a total freeze in settlement activity, a key demand of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for advancing U.S.-backed peace talks. But the leaders agreed during their two-hour meeting to press ahead with negotiations that have been paralyzed since Israel announced plans to build hundreds of new homes in an area near Jerusalem known to Israelis as Har Homa and to Palestinians as Jabal Abu Ghneim.

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Mideast Talks Already Tangled A Month After Annapolis Summit
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Ilene Prusher - December 28, 2007 - 3:08pm

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are set to meet Thursday amid rising tensions over whether the promises of peace they made a month ago in Annapolis, Md., can be fulfilled. The Israeli and Palestinian leaders have quickly met a variety of roadblocks in the process they had pledged to relaunch last month at the summit under US auspices, buoyed by the attendance of other Middle East players.

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Har Homa Crisis / Waiting For Bush
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Aluf Benn - December 28, 2007 - 2:45pm

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is scheduled to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas tomorrow in an attempt to solve the so-called settlement crisis that has plagued negotiations since the Annapolis summit late last month. The Palestinians are upset over a tender by the Housing Ministry for the construction of 307 housing units in the southeast Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, on the Palestinian side of the Green Line.

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Mideast Peace Talks Go Nowhere
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Ken Ellingwood - December 28, 2007 - 2:27pm

Meeting for the second time this month as part of a new U.S.-launched peace effort, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators Monday bogged down again over familiar issues: proposed Israeli construction in areas the Palestinians claim for a future state and Israel's demand that the Palestinians crack down on armed groups.

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