A Bibi-Barack Collision? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Creators Syndicate by Pat Buchanan - (Opinion) January 27, 2009 - 1:00am "Where there is no solution, there is no problem," geostrategist James Burnham once wryly observed. Ex-Sen. George Mitchell, the latest U.S. negotiator to take up the Palestine portfolio, may discover what it was that Burnham meant. For Israel's three-week war on Gaza, where Palestinians died at a rate of 100 to one to Israelis, appears to have been, like Israel's wars in Lebanon, another Pyrrhic victory for the Jewish state. » Read more

Abdullah II: The 5-State Solution ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Thomas L. Friedman - (Opinion) January 27, 2009 - 1:00am In February 2002, I traveled to Saudi Arabia and interviewed the then crown prince, now king, Abdullah, at his Riyadh horse farm. I asked him why the next Arab summit wouldn’t just propose to Israel full peace and normalization of relations, by all 22 Arab states, for full withdrawal from all occupied lands and creation of a Palestinian state. Abdullah said that I had read his mind (“Have you broken into my desk?” he asked me) and that he was about to propose just that, which he later did, giving birth to the “Abdullah peace plan.” » Read more

At a Border Crossing, Drivers and Truckloads of Aid for Gaza Go Nowhere ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Michael Slackman - January 27, 2009 - 1:00am France sent technical equipment to help Gazans draw water from the ground. The Swiss sent blankets and plastic tarps. Mercy Corps, a relief agency, sent 12 truckloads of food. And on Tuesday all of it, including dozens of other trucks carrying sugar, rice, flour, juice and baby formula, sat in the hot sun here going nowhere. » Read more

Gaza ceasefire of critical importance, says US envoy ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian by Ewen Macaskill, Rory McCarthy, Peter Walker - January 28, 2009 - 1:00am A continued ceasefire in Gaza is of "critical importance", Barack Obama's Middle East peace envoy, George Mitchell said today, as Israeli jets bombed smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border amid the worst violence in the territory since a truce began 10 days ago. Mitchell arrived in Israel this afternoon after talks in Cairo with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. In Jerusalem, he held talks with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, and was due to meet the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, before travelling to the West Bank to see the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. » Read more