A donkey and peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Yoel Marcus - (Opinion) September 17, 2010 - 12:00am

It's been a long time since negotiations elicited as many smiles and as positive an atmosphere as the Washington-Sharm-Jerusalem round of talks. The leaders, including two presidents and one king, enter closed sessions and emerge smiling, as though the meetings have turned into joke-telling competitions. Those setting the tone are U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington and his envoy here, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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Contesting Past and Present at Silwan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Middle East Report
by Joel Beinin - September 17, 2010 - 12:00am

On September 1, Elad -- a Hebrew acronym for “To the City of David” -- convened its eleventh annual archaeological conference at the “City of David National Park” in the Wadi Hilwa neighborhood of Silwan. Silwan, home to about 45,000 people, is one of 28 Palestinian villages incorporated into East Jerusalem and annexed by Israel after the June 1967 war. It lies in a valley situated a short walk beyond the Dung Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City.

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Settlers make renewed attempt on Jlem home
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
September 17, 2010 - 12:00am

Jerusalem's Qeresh family said friends and neighbors helped them resist what witnesses described as an attempted home take over on Wednesday. The event reportedly began in the early morning in the As-Sa’diyah neighborhood in the old city of Jerusalem, as Israeli settlers entered a wing of the family home and allegedly began removing furniture. Family members said young men from the neighborhood came to the scene, and forcibly prevented the settlers from taking the furniture out of the home.

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Barak may use legal loopholes to impose de facto settlement freeze
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Natasha Mozgovaya, Barak Ravid - September 17, 2010 - 12:00am

Defense Minister Ehud Barak held initial discussions with defense officials this week about the approaching end of the building freeze in the West Bank. He is trying to find ways to restrict settlement construction by the Defense Ministry, which is the de facto authority in the West Bank, without issuing a new order to suspend construction when the moratorium ends on September 26. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday urged Israel to extend the freeze. She told Channel 10 this would be "extremely useful" for making progress in negotiations with the Palestinians.

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Plan B for peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Ari Shavit - (Opinion) September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

On October 5, 1995, prime minister Yitzhak Rabin presented the Oslo 2 accord to the Knesset. In the speech he made on that momentous occasion, Rabin pledged that in the final-status agreement, Jerusalem would remain united, the settlement blocs would remain part of Israel and the security border would be the Jordan Valley. He also said Israel would not return to the June 4, 1967 lines and that the Palestinians would run their own lives in the framework of an entity that would be less than a state.

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Report: US wants borders set in 3 months
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Roee Nahmias - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Washington is trying to circumvent the obstacle posed by the settlement freeze in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and has devised a compromise which will allow the sides to make progress on other issues. The London-based Arabic-language al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Thursday that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has suggested a compromised according to which Israel will prolong the settlement freeze by three months and the time period wil be used by both parties to reach an agreement on the border issues.

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PM to Abbas: We'll continue building in settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Atilla Somfalvi - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

During their meeting in Jerusalem Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Israel plans to resume construction in the West Bank settlements once the moratorium expires on September 26. A senior Palestinian official reported that following the meeting Abbas threatened to quit the direct peace talks if building is resumed in the settlements

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Tight lips as Middle East peace talks rumble on
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
by Jeremy Bowen - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

With talks now well under way, the Americans are working hard to stop information leaking out of the conference rooms. The statements that have been released are bland, positive without minimising the problems ahead. We are told that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are "getting down to business", tackling the tough issues upfront.

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The Cage of “Silent” Negotiations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by Zuheir Kseibati - (Opinion) September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

In light of the carrot and the stick policy used by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her attendance of the sessions to launch the negotiations on the Palestinian-Israeli track, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas picked up the signal again, seeing how his team is still the sole one concerned about the stick and threatened with “unpredictable consequences” if the negotiations were hindered. At the level of the carrot, Washington believes it allows both sides to come up with “creative” exits for the discontinuation of the settlement freeze predicament at the end of the month.

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Undermining line of argument
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from
September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

George Mitchell, the US special envoy to the Middle East, and Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, were in Sharm El Sheikh to mediate between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators. Unfortunately, and although talks are set to continue in Jerusalem, judging from the public statements made after the meetings, US mediation is spectacularly failing. Settlements, Mitchell told reporters, are a "politically sensitive issue" in Israel, so he urged Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO leader, to "take steps" to "facilitate the process".

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