ATFP Advocacy Director Ghaith Al-Omari discusses direct negotiations on the PBS Newshour. A new mall opens in Gaza. Charles Glass says the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about politics, not religion. Palestinians express concern about negotiations, but PM Netanyahu expresses optimism. Activists say support is growing for boycotts against Israel. PLO officials say renewed settlement activity could threaten negotiations. Amira Hass looks at the politics of road paving in the occupied territories. Ha'aretz interviews a leading settler rabbi who wants all non-Jews in Israel and the occupied territories expelled to Saudi Arabia. The Jerusalem Post finds some reason for optimism about the negotiations. A group of women Israeli soldiers denounce the treatment of Palestinians. Lara Friedman says two states are the only solution. Israeli authorities question the authenticity of Muslim gravestones in a cemetery at the heart of a major controversy in occupied East Jerusalem. The Gulf News says the deck is stacked against Palestinians in the negotiations, and the Arab News says the one-year time frame is too ambitious. Hussein Ibish looks at the new PA education initiative.

One Solution: Two States
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Lara Friedman - August 18, 2010 - 12:00am

The steady march of settlements, the rightward shift in Israeli politics, the growing sense that a conflict-ending peace agreement is impossible — all these things are feeding some pundits’ impulse to declare the death of the two-state solution as a means of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But what are the alternatives?

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Palestinians: No talks if settlement freeze ends
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
by Mohammed Daraghmeh - August 23, 2010 - 12:00am

The Palestinian leader has warned President Barack Obama that he will pull out of upcoming peace talks if Israel ends a slowdown of West Bank settlement construction, a Palestinian negotiator said Monday. Direct negotiations aimed at ending the decades-old Mideast conflict are to resume in Washington next week after months of U.S. diplomatic efforts. Both sides seem pessimistic about the talks, their first in 20 months.

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Support builds for boycotts against Israel, activists say
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Boston Globe
by Farah Stockman - August 22, 2010 - 12:00am

In May, rock legend Elvis Costello canceled his gig in Israel. Then, in June, a group of unionized dock workers in San Francisco refused to unload an Israeli ship. In August, a food co-op in Washington state removed Israeli products from its shelves. The so-called “boycott, divestment, and sanctions’’ movement aimed at pressuring Israel to withdraw from land claimed by Palestinians has long been considered a fringe effort inside the United States, with no hope of garnering mainstream support enjoyed by the anti-apartheid campaign against South Africa of the 1980s.

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Israel's Netanyahu scores big victory with direct peace talks – for now
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - August 22, 2010 - 12:00am

Savoring the diplomatic victory of renewed direct peace talks announced last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet today that a peace treaty with the Palestinians would be "a difficult thing, but it is possible."

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Palestinians see danger for Abbas in resumed Israel peace talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Ben Lynfield - August 20, 2010 - 12:00am

There was little for Palestinians to be upbeat about Friday as they waited for an official invitation to join Israel at resumed direct peace talks to be hosted by President Obama on Sept. 2.

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Counterpoint: Land and Sovereignty
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Charles Glass - August 20, 2010 - 12:00am

In the elegant and incisive style that characterizes all of his writing, James Carroll set out in these pages (“The wandering Jew and the mad Saracen,” Views, Aug. 12) the theological genesis of the dispute in Israel-Palestine. Mr. Carroll presented a compelling vision of Christian religious prejudice against both Jews and Muslims that he believes informs this seemingly intractable conflict. Christian insistence from St. Augustine onward that “Jewish exile was a matter of theological proof,” he wrote, animates Christian hostility to Zionism.

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Gaza Mall Seeks to Make Statement of Resolve
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - August 22, 2010 - 12:00am

Colognes by Hugo Boss, Dunhill and Givenchy line the shelves of the cosmetics shop. One of the two women’s clothing stores features a window mannequin in a hot pink T-shirt and low-slung jeans. In the supermarket freezer is Nestlé ice cream and on its shelves are salty and cheesy chips and doodles that well-off societies consume by the bagful. Gaza, famous for its misery, has a shopping mall. It opened a month ago to considerable fanfare, with Palestinian television cameras trailing Hamas government officials meandering proudly around the bright new stores filled with imported goods.

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Stakes are high in Mideast peace talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Boston Globe
by Farah Stockman - August 21, 2010 - 12:00am

The United States will host the launch of direct peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Washington early next month, a diplomatic breakthrough for the Obama administration, which has invested much of the president’s global political capital in an attempt to broker peace in the Middle East.

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In New Mideast Talks, A Small Victory For U.S.
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from National Public Radio (NPR)
by Michele Kelemen - August 21, 2010 - 12:00am

The Obama administration has set the date for the first direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in two years, a small diplomatic victory for an administration that made Arab-Israeli peace an early priority. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have been invited to the White House on Sept.1. They will be joined by Jordan's King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

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