Giving up is not an option
In Print by Ziad Asali - The Huffington Post (Opinion) - December 8, 2010 - 1:00am

Introduction The Administration has mercifully, and honestly, admitted that the time has come to abandon its policy of seeking a settlement freeze as a path to negotiations.  It will pay a political price and will be blamed and endure the gloating of its critics. However, at the end of the day, the US government will be the one that everyone else will look to for providing answers and driving policy.  The two-state solution is the unchanging American policy because it is in our own national strategic interest.

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Israel and the U.S.: A lopsided relationship
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Andrew J. Bacevich - (Opinion) December 6, 2010 - 1:00am

The widely reported deal negotiated by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — Israel committing itself to a nonrenewable 90-day freeze on settlement activity in return for 20 F-35 fighters and a U.S. promise to block anti-Israel resolutions in the United Nations — illuminates with startling clarity the actual terms of U.S.-Israeli relations.

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Still not too late to change course
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Yossi Alpher - (Blog) December 6, 2010 - 1:00am

In these early days of December, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took time off from his seemingly endless negotiations with both the Obama administration and his own coalition over the terms for a renewed settlement-construction freeze. Netanyahu was totally immersed in Israel's biggest-ever natural disaster, a mega-fire on Mt. Carmel. Friends, neighbors, even semi-enemies--countries as diverse as the Palestinian Authority, Turkey and the United States--all gallantly helped Israel fight the fire.

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Clinton to issue statement on Israeli-Palestinian talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
December 6, 2010 - 1:00am

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States will issue a declaration this week on Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. "I will be making a very formal set of remarks about that next week," Clinton said in a interview over the weekend with Al Hurra, the U.S.-run Arab language broadcaster. "We have been talking with both parties very substantively, and I think that the United States can play a role to help each make decisions about very difficult matters that then can be presented to the other side."

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Abbas: US proposal for peace talks expected soon
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
December 5, 2010 - 1:00am

AMMAN (AFP) - A US proposal to bolster troubled Middle East peace talks was expected within days, President Mahmoud Abbas said following a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah II on Sunday. "His majesty and I agreed to continue our cooperation and coordination in light of an expected US position in the coming few days, and we should examine it together," a palace statement quoted Abbas as saying. Abbas did not elaborate. Direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have faltered following the end of a temporary ban on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank.

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'US committed to peace talks, Israel’s security'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Hilary Leila Krieger - December 3, 2010 - 1:00am

The Obama administration is “fervently” seeking progress in the peace process as it continues talking to Israel to find a formula for moving forward with talks, senior White House adviser David Axelrod told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday evening. “This is a critical juncture and we so fervently want to move forward, to get that two-state solution so that Israel can live in peace and security, and we’re going to keep pressing for that,” he told the Post, speaking ahead of an Israeli Embassy candlelighting ceremony in honor of Hanukka.

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US mum on efforts for Israeli settlement freeze
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Agence France Presse (AFP)
December 3, 2010 - 1:00am

The United States declined Thursday to say whether or not efforts by Washington to have Israel impose a new settlement freeze on Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories had failed. In Jerusalem, the US administration informed the Palestinian Authority "that the Israeli government did not agree to a new settlement freeze," a Palestinian official said on condition of anonymity. But State Department spokesman Philip Crowley declined to confirm the remarks. "As we've said many, many times, we're not going to give you a play-by-play," Crowley told reporters.

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Israel can't be a democracy with two classes of citizens
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) December 3, 2010 - 1:00am

Cracks are emerging in Israel's democracy. A comprehensive survey compiled by the Israel Democracy Institute and reported in yesterday's Haaretz paints a gloomy, worrisome picture whose gist is a lack of understanding of the basic principles of Israel's political system.

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Rosen Remains Determined to Prove Trafficking in Secrets is Normal at AIPAC
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Nathan Guttman - December 2, 2010 - 1:00am

A key court filing in the legal battle between Steve Rosen and his former employers at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been postponed, but tensions still run high.

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UPDATE 1-Israel to blame for "collapse" of talks-Abbas aide
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Tom Perry - December 2, 2010 - 1:00am

The United States should openly blame Israel for the "collapse" of the peace process, a senior Palestinian official said on Thursday, in one of the bleakest assessments yet on Middle East peace efforts. New Israeli plans to build near East Jerusalem show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want to resume peace talks, Palestinian officials said.

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