May 12th, 2008

Israelis Don't Believe Scandal-hit Olmert: Poll ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters May 12, 2008 - 5:33pm A majority of Israelis want Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign or go on leave over a bribery scandal and do not believe his denials of wrongdoing, an opinion poll showed on Monday. The survey in Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, was the first to gauge the public mood since a court gag order in the case was partially lifted on Thursday and Olmert went on television to profess his innocence. » Read more

Hezbollah 'redrawing' Mideast Map ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Times by Joshua Mitnick - May 12, 2008 - 5:32pm RAMALLAH, West Bank — Hezbollah's dramatic gains in Lebanon last week are just part of a regional process that began last year in the Gaza Strip and will continue in Jordan and Egypt, a Hamas official in the West Bank told The Washington Times. Sheik Yazeeb Khader, a Ramallah-based Hamas political activist and editor, said militant groups across the Middle East are gaining power at the expense of U.S.-backed regimes, just as Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. » Read more

Priority: Statehood ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Daoud Kuttab - (Opinion) May 12, 2008 - 5:28pm In the spring of 1948, my father, George Kuttab, and his brother Qostandi fled Musrara, a Jerusalem neighborhood just outside the walled city, after their sister Hoda's husband was killed in front of her and their children. When Dad used to tell us about the Naqba, the catastrophe that befell Palestinians in 1948, he never talked politics or hatred. He would laugh as he told us how his brother secured their home near Damascus Gate. » Read more

A Talk With Prime Minister Fayyad ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Lally Weymouth - (Interview) May 12, 2008 - 5:26pm Lally Weymouth also spoke with Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad in Ramallah. Excerpts: Q. Did you [think] it was possible to do anything with [Yasser] Arafat? A. There is hardly anything I did here that was easy. Changing the way business is done in finance in the PA was not easy. You just didn't know where to begin. Was it possible to do anything with the PA? Yes, it was. This is fairly well documented. We did quite a few things in a relatively short period of time. So what did you decide to do? » Read more

A Talk With President Peres ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Lally Weymouth - (Interview) May 12, 2008 - 5:26pm Israeli President Shimon Peres is the last remaining founding father of the Israeli state. Last week he spoke with Newsweek-Washington Post's Lally Weymouth. Excerpts: Q. Is there a realistic chance of peace with the Palestinians? » Read more

Rice: Israel, Palestinians Need To Show Progress ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press by Anne Gearan - May 12, 2008 - 5:24pm The Bush administration has told Israeli and Palestinian leaders they will need to show progress in their secret talks soon, or risk a potentially fatal erosion in public support for a process now in its sixth month without any obvious successes. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice passed that message during meetings with both sides a little more than a week ago, Arab, U.S. and other Western diplomats said. Rice was reacting mainly to the increasingly pessimistic Palestinian assessments of the talks, but she warned that confidence was fragile among Israelis, too. » Read more

May 8th

Mideast Change Is Coming, And May Not Be Pretty ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star by Rami Khouri - (Opinion) May 8, 2008 - 5:39pm   The convergence of six trends in the Middle East - the changing realities of food, energy, water, population, urbanization and security-dominated politics - is likely to create conditions that will be politically challenging, if not destabilizing, in many countries in the years ahead. The confluence of these trends is very similar to what happened in the region in the mid to late 1970s, when the current Islamist wave of social identity and confrontational politics was initiated. » Read more

Politics Aside, A Human Rights Crime Is Happening In Gaza ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star by Jimmy Carter - (Opinion) May 8, 2008 - 5:38pm The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where 1.5 million human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air, or land. An entire population is being brutally punished. » Read more

For Some Palestinians, One State With Israel Is Better Than None ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times by Richard Boudreaux And Ashraf Khali - (Opinion) May 8, 2008 - 5:37pm Frustrated by years of on-and-off peace talks with Israel, Palestinians are losing hope for an independent homeland, and some are proposing a radically different cause: a shared state with equal rights for Palestinians and Jews. » Read more

Bush Plans No Peace Talks On Mideast Trip ATFP World Press Roundup Article from United Press International (UPI) May 8, 2008 - 5:36pm The White House says now isn't the time for a peace conference between U.S. President George Bush and leaders of Israel and the Palestinians. Bush will be in Israel next week to help the Jewish state mark the 60th anniversary of its founding. He also plans to visit Egypt and Saudi Arabia. National security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters that next week "did not seem the time for a big high-level, three-way event " with the president, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. » Read more