Editorial: It’s time for action
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
(Opinion) September 15, 2009 - 12:00am

Egypt has been quietly negotiating between Israel and Hamas for the release of Hamas prisoners held by Israel and also for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in 2006. A deal appears imminent. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Cairo on Sunday for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak; Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal was also in the Egyptian capital a few days earlier and is expected there again this week. Neither of the two men would have turned up there if there were still a mountain of details to climb.

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PA Cabinet maintains hope for Obama peace efforts
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
September 15, 2009 - 12:00am

In their Monday meeting the West Bank cabinet ministers expressed positive sentiments around current US efforts to halt settlement construction and limit Israeli incursions into Palestinian areas. In a statement summing up the proceedings of the meetings, ministers expressed their hope around the visit to the region of US Special Middle East envoy George Mitchell this week. The cabinet said the visit indicates the serious of the US administration around re-launching the peace process.

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Fatah to Haaretz: No settlement freeze, no talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - September 15, 2009 - 12:00am

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) will meet Tuesday afternoon with the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. The two will discuss the prospect of renewing talks between the PA and Israel and the possibility of Abbas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting next week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Netanyahu was supposed to have met Mitchell Monday, but postponed the meeting to today to take part in the funeral of Capt. Asaf Ramon, son of Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon.

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Resolve of West Bank Settlers May Have Limits
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner, Isabel Kershner - September 14, 2009 - 12:00am

Of the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, those who live in unauthorized hilltop outposts like this one, a hardscrabble unpaved collection of 20 trailers, are considered the most dangerous.

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Israeli Cities Differences With U.S. on Peace Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Mark Lavie - September 14, 2009 - 12:00am

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, speaking ahead of a key meeting with the White House's Middle East envoy, said Sunday that differences remain with the United States over resuming peacemaking with the Palestinians. Netanyahu delivered the assessment before flying to Cairo for talks with Egypt's president, a main mediator in efforts to restart peace talks, and ahead of a meeting with George J. Mitchell, the U.S. envoy, later in the week.

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Passions High Ahead of Talks On Settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Howard Schneider - September 14, 2009 - 12:00am

The scene from the Dr. Billye Brim Community Pool, named after the American pastor from Branson, Mo., who helped underwrite it, is decidedly suburban and removed from the international fray over Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The modern design lets in ample sunlight and fresh air for swimmers doing laconic laps in the midafternoon, while sunbathers lounge on a courtyard of clipped grass spotted with white umbrellas. The more energetic pound away on treadmills in a swanky fitness center.

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Many American Jews support President Obama's proposed settlement freeze
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Seattle Times
by Richard Silverstein - (Editorial) September 14, 2009 - 12:00am

Over the past few months, the Obama administration has urged Israel to accept a settlement freeze as a means of showing good faith toward its Palestinian neighbors in negotiating peace. The freeze is important because 300,000 Israeli settlers live beyond the Green Line and they have poisoned the political atmosphere and prevented the parties from negotiating in earnest.

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Armed settlers enter West Bank village, spark clashes
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
September 14, 2009 - 12:00am

Violent clashes between Israeli settlers and Palestinians erupted in the village of Burin south of the West Bank city of Nablus erupted Sunday evening. Ghassan Daghlas, Palestinian official following Israeli settlement activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that “dozens of heavily armed settlers from the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Yitzhar attacked Palestinians in Burin after failing to steal dozens of sheep from a Palestinian shepherd who was in the area,” he explained.

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U.S. is blind to limits of Palestinian politics
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) September 14, 2009 - 12:00am

After a drawn-out and frustrated negotiation over several hundred housing units in the settlements, the Obama administration realized that instead of tasting the grapes, it is wasting its time fighting with the vineyard's gatekeeper. They also revealed that the greatest superpower came to the fight unarmed. They discovered that to threaten Benjamin Netanyahu and Moshe Ya'alon with ceasing construction in the West Bank by pain of not resuming the Oslo process, was akin to threatening them that if Israel does not remove the outposts, the United States would bomb Iran.

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Israel: Won't accept 'complete freeze' on settlement building
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Jonathan Lis - September 14, 2009 - 12:00am

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that there will not be a complete freeze on settlement building and that building in Jerusalem will proceed as usual. "The Palestinians expect a complete halt to building; it is now clear that this will not happen," Netanyahu said, "Jerusalem is not a settlement and the building [there] will continue as normal." While speaking to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset, Netanyahu spoke about progress made in regards to the peace process as well as the U.S. demand to freeze building beyond Israel's Green Line.

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