September 20th

Hillary Clinton faces huge challenge in Mideast talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Paul Richter - September 20, 2010 - 12:00am

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders 11 times in three Middle Eastern cities last week, a diplomatic marathon that produced only promises that the adversaries remain committed to the latest U.S.-led peace initiative. Clinton couldn't extract the result she needs: that the two sides put aside their differences over Jewish construction in the occupied West Bank and move on. "All of this is complicated," Clinton acknowledged at the end of a disappointing week.

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Mideast needs a peace of the brave
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Adel Safty - (Opinion) September 20, 2010 - 12:00am

The late Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) used to refer to the peace process he and the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin started in the early 1990s as the "peace of the brave". This was more of a colourful description than an accurate rendition of reality.

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Contesting Past and Present at Silwan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Middle East Report
by Joel Beinin - (Analysis) September 17, 2010 - 12:00am

On September 1, Elad -- a Hebrew acronym for “To the City of David” -- convened its eleventh annual archaeological conference at the “City of David National Park” in the Wadi Hilwa neighborhood of Silwan. Silwan, home to about 45,000 people, is one of 28 Palestinian villages incorporated into East Jerusalem and annexed by Israel after the June 1967 war. It lies in a valley situated a short walk beyond the Dung Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City.

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Our Man in Palestine
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Review Of Books
by Nathan Thrall - (Analysis) September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

On August 31, the night before President Obama’s dinner inaugurating direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Hamas gunmen shot and killed four Jewish settlers in Hebron, the West Bank’s largest and most populous governorate. The attack—the deadliest against Israeli citizens in more than two years—was condemned by Palestinian and Israeli officials, who said that it was meant to thwart the upcoming negotiations.

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For Palestinians, settler abuse is only the beginning of the ordeal
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - (Analysis) September 19, 2010 - 12:00am

  Almost every few weeks (or days, depending on the season), the following ceremony repeats itself in Palestinian villages around Nablus: A group of Israeli settlers from one of the outposts in the West Bank hills attacks Palestinian farmers while they are grazing sheep or working the fields, hoping to throw them off Palestinian land.

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In West Bank, corruption-busting teenagers shake up local government
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Christa Case Bryant - (Analysis) September 18, 2010 - 12:00am

Ramallah, West Bank — Fatmeh Abu Afifeh doesn't look like someone who could intimidate tough bureaucrats. Demure and only 17, she had never even spent a night away from her family until now. But armed only with fine pearl pins that keep her head scarf firmly in place, Fatmeh is here in Ramallah with dozens of other students who exposed significant corruption across the West Bank.

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September 17th

NPR profiles the new Palestinian security services. Sec. Clinton wraps up the latest round of negotiations and Pres. Abbas says talks will continue. There is no indication of an agreement on settlements. Jackson Diehl says the Middle East is not Northern Ireland. The CSM asks what happens next without a deal on settlements and whether Syria can help contain Hamas. Jon Haber says boycotts against Israel are ineffective and unhelpful. Israeli troops assassinate a Hamas leader in the West Bank. The PA may be seeking to gain control of a Gaza crossing. Settlers continue to try to seize a Palestinian home in occupied East Jerusalem. The World Bank says Palestinians are well positioned to establish a state, but need foreign investment. UNRWA asks for more aid from Arab states. DM Barak may use legal loopholes to restrict settlement activity. Yoel Marcus says the settlement issue is up to the United States. Ehud Yaari says peace talks have exposed divisions within Hamas. Israeli and Palestinian women illegally visit the beach together. Jacob Savage compares the Israeli occupation with French rule in Algeria. Michael Weiss says analogies between the Middle East and Northern Ireland, and especially between Hamas and Sinn Fein, are deeply flawed.

Hamas Isn't the IRA
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Slate
by Michael Weiss - September 17, 2010 - 12:00am

With the resumption of Arab-Israeli direct talks comes the regurgitation of a minority view that these talks are destined to fail because Hamas is excluded. The first salvo in this ongoing campaign came from Palestinian-American blogger Ali Abunimah, an advocate of the one-state solution, who expounded upon the need for recognizing Hamas in the New York Times. Peter Beinart made the same case in a broader Daily Beast column about Obama's failed foreign policy.

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Sun, sea and grit: Israeli and West Bank women risk jail for day at the beach
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Rachel Shabi - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

The day starts early, at a petrol station alongside a roaring Jerusalem road. The mood among the 15 Israeli women is a little tense, but it's hardly surprising – they're about to break the law and with it one of the country's taboos. They plan to drive into the occupied West Bank, pick up Palestinian women and children and take them on a day trip to Tel Aviv.

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Peace talks highlight internal tensions in Hamas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Ehud Yaari - (Analysis) September 17, 2010 - 12:00am

Unsurprisingly, the Hamas leadership – both in Gaza and Damascus, and less so in the West Bank – has greeted the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian talks with a flood of contrarian rhetoric. Characterizing the process as a “sellout” of the Palestinian “cause,” the movement argues that President Mahmoud Abbas lacks the necessary “mandate” to represent his people. Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal went so far as to call Abbas “a zero,” amid accusations of “treason” and “betrayal.”

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