Bush's Final Effort
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) January 3, 2008 - 5:46pm


President George Bush will complete his second term in the White House in one year and two weeks, at his successor?s inauguration. Bush?s final year in office is already under the shadow in the battle over succession. Because of this, the U.S. media is expected to focus during his visit to the region next week on the first formal stages of the nominating process of the two main parties in Iowa and in New Hampshire, rather than on Bush?s meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.


Pa Takes Back The Keys To A Key City
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - January 3, 2008 - 5:45pm


Four young women from the Nablus neighborhood of Rafidiyeh went into a shop yesterday near the clock square in the center of Nablus. Dressed in the trendiest jeans and blouses, they were looking for fashionable leather bags. Two minutes later they came out empty-handed, disappointed at not finding what they wanted.


Our Violent Presence
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - January 3, 2008 - 5:40pm


There is no Israeli whose presence in the West Bank is neutral. Civilian or armed, soldier or woman settler, resident of a quality-of-life settlement or a nearby outpost, MahsomWatch activist or guest at a settlement, Bezek worker or client at a Palestinian garage. All of them, all of us, are in this Palestinian territory, in the West Bank, because our state occupied it in 1967.


Stand-offs Threaten Arab Region
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Francis Matthew - (Opinion) January 3, 2008 - 5:36pm


The Middle East has never needed effective political leadership more than at present. Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq are three very troubled states which are in danger of seeing very little political progress in the coming year, and the effects of the continuing violence ripple out to all other nations in the region. All three share similar problems of poor state structures, lack of leadership and endemic violence, but each has very different local conditions which have created their bad situations.


The Rodeo Ride Of Manipulating Middle East Politics
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Rami Khouri - (Opinion) January 3, 2008 - 5:34pm


Four separate events in different parts of the world - Pakistan, Israel, the United States and wherever Osama Bin Laden makes his home these days - provided a gloomy but instructive start to the new year in the matter of Al-Qaeda-linked terrorism. The events were the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, a new audio tape by Osama bin Laden, Israel telling the world that Al-Qaeda is making inroads in Palestine, and US presidential candidates riding the terrorism horse like clowns at a rodeo.


The Beilin Syndrome
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Uri Avnery - January 3, 2008 - 5:32pm


Mephisto, the demon who bought the soul of Faust in Goethe’s monumental drama, describes himself as “a part of that force which always wants the bad and always creates the good.” Yossi Beilin, who resigned this week as chairman of the Meretz Party, is Mephisto’s opposite: he always wants the good and all too often creates the bad.


Christian Zionists Gain Israel's Inner Sanctum
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Inter Press Service (IPS)
by Bill Berkowitz - January 3, 2008 - 5:30pm


After raising more than two hundred million dollars for various projects in Israel, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), the organisation he founded and is president of, has hit pay-dirt.


Down Payment On A State
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Israel Policy Forum
by Sadie Goldman With Jason Proetorius And Ipf Staff - January 3, 2008 - 5:23pm


Every Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process comes with a price tag. The current process, which was re-launched in Annapolis, Maryland, and continued at the Paris Donor’s conference, is no exception.  It was in Paris that donors examined Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s three-year reform plan and then pledged 7.4 billion dollars to help implement it.


Jewish Pols Backing Clinton, But Also Obama, Mccain
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Ben Harris - January 3, 2008 - 5:22pm


As the nation trains its spotlight on New Hampshire, two Jewish politicians have become central players in the Granite State's political drama that may well determine who secures the Democratic and Republican nominations.


Peace Brokers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Century
by James M. Wall - (Opinion) January 3, 2008 - 5:19pm


The local public library asked me to introduce and discuss the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia. The screening happened to coincide with the day of the multinational Annapolis Conference on the Mideast, so I could not resist showing a segment from the final moments of the film. The parallel between Lawrence of Arabia, which ends in 1918 in Damascus, and the 2007 gathering of peacemakers at Annapolis, Maryland, is this: in both situations there is a deep imbalance of power and a pervasive distrust.



American Task Force on Palestine - 1634 Eye St. NW, Suite 725, Washington DC 20006 - Telephone: 202-262-0017