Lieberman on Quartet call: You can't make artificial peace
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Barak Ravid - March 19, 2010 - 12:00am

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman responded Friday to the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators' call to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, saying that peace is not something which can be created artificially and with unrealistic timetables. "Peace will be established through actions and not by force," Lieberman told Belgium's Jewish community ahead of his scheduled talks with the ministers of several European nations.

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Israeli-Palestinian peace hopes rise as US envoy prepares to get talks moving
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Luke Harding - March 19, 2010 - 12:00am

The US special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, is due to fly to the region on Sunday to try to secure a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks amid optimism about a breakthrough. Mitchell had been due to visit Israel on Tuesday but his trip was cancelled – a victim of US-Israeli tensions. It was reinstated after Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, bowing to US pressure, phoned the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, last night to offer concessions.Mitchell is scheduled to see Netanyahu in Israel and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah.

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Netanyahu thought he could take Obama, and lost
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Anshel Pfeffer - March 19, 2010 - 12:00am

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quite right. As he said in his speech at the Knesset on Monday while greeting Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, over the last four decades, every single Israeli government has built Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. No prime minister, from the right, left or center, has ever caved to international pressure and agreed to curtail the development of the capital east of the Green Line.

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U.S. to send envoy back to Mideast as Israel moves to smooth relations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Glenn Kessler - March 19, 2010 - 12:00am

In an effort to defuse a bitter spat with the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday night to propose confidence-building measures to get Middle East peace talks back on track, U.S. and Israeli officials said.

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How Obama created the Biden incident
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Charles Krauthammer - March 19, 2010 - 12:00am

And a gaffe it was: the announcement by a bureaucrat in Israel's Interior Ministry of a housing expansion in a Jewish neighborhood in north Jerusalem. The timing could not have been worse: Vice President Biden was visiting, Jerusalem is a touchy subject, and you don't bring up touchy subjects that might embarrass an honored guest. But it was no more than a gaffe. It was certainly not a policy change, let alone a betrayal. The neighborhood is in Jerusalem, and the 2009 Netanyahu-Obama agreement was for a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlements excluding Jerusalem.

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Israeli settlement crisis clouds Mideast talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Arshad Mohammed - March 19, 2010 - 12:00am

Middle East mediators from Europe, the United States, Russia and the U.N. met on Friday seeking to defuse the latest crisis in peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians. "All of us today hope to arrive at some common conclusions which will help to promote the beginning of a dialogue between the two sides," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at the start of talks.

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Israel, U.S. seek to defuse settlement dispute
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Arshad Mohammed - March 19, 2010 - 12:00am

Israel tried to defuse a dispute with the United States on Friday over plans to expand settlements, saying it would offer the Palestinians "confidence-building" steps to encourage a renewal of peace talks. Relations between Israel and the United States, its main backer, have been frayed by Israel unveiling plans to build 1,600 housing units near occupied East Jerusalem during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden last week.

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Opportunity in a Fight With Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Mark Landler - March 18, 2010 - 12:00am

For President Obama, getting into a serious fight with Israel carries obvious domestic and foreign political risks. But it may offer the administration a payoff it sees as worthwhile: shoring up Mr. Obama’s credibility as a Middle East peacemaker by showing doubtful Israelis and Palestinians that he has the fortitude to push the two sides toward an agreement. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said ties between the United States and Israel were still strong.

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US military moves towards a harder line against Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Alan Philps - (Editorial) March 18, 2010 - 12:00am

For many years, American diplomats have had to approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a rigidly pro-Israeli position. On a personal level, that is no doubt the way they had been taught to see the world. But careerism required that they never deviate, whatever they learned on the job. The result was that, during the 1990s, all US proposals were put to the Israeli government in advance for approval.

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Obama: No crisis in U.S. ties with Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Natasha Mozgovaya, Barak Ravid - March 18, 2010 - 12:00am

United States President Barack Obama said Wednesday that there was no crisis in ties with Israel, despite a high-profile diplomatic feud over the Netanyahu administration's plans to build 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem. "Israel is one of our closest allies, and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that's not going to go away," Obama said in an interview with Fox News. "But friends are going to disagree sometimes," Obama said.

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