December 12th

Palestinians Demand Halt To Settlements As Peace Talks Begin ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian by David Batty - December 12, 2007 - 5:29pm The first formal Middle East peace negotiations in seven years got off to a tense start today with the Palestinian Authority demanding a halt to Israeli plans to build settlements on disputed territory. Palestinian negotiators said the planned construction in the Har Homa neighbourhood in disputed east Jerusalem, along with Israeli military activity in Gaza, threatened to undermine the new peace talks. » Read more

Hellish Journey Around Holy City ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Toronto Star by Oakland Ross - December 12, 2007 - 5:27pm It is not the volume of traffic, much less the issue of distance, that puts a pair of dents each day into the life of Mouse Hindi.I It is the city of Jerusalem. "There is no limit to the time it takes," says the 40-year-old Palestinian consulting engineer. "It could take two hours. It could take three hours. We don't know." The round-faced husband and father of five is talking about the daily journey he makes from his home in Beit Sahour near Bethlehem to his office in Ramallah. » Read more

Meet The Neo-cons' Neo-con ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Australian by Greg Sheridan - December 12, 2007 - 5:23pm Occasionally  you recognise that you are in the presence of human greatness. I had that experience this week in Jerusalem when I went to interview Natan Sharansky. Sharansky was one of the most famous dissidents and refuseniks of the Soviet Union. Refuseniks were Russian Jews who wanted to live as Jews and migrate to Israel. They were prevented from doing either of these things by the harsh, totalitarian Soviet system. » Read more

Creative Approaches Needed In Mideast Peace Talks ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Philadelphia Inquirer by Eric Trager - (Opinion) December 12, 2007 - 5:21pm The Annapolis Conference heralded a new strategy in Middle East peacemaking. Whereas conventional wisdom held that domestically strong Israeli and Arab leaders were a prerequisite for fruitful negotiations, Annapolis attempted to work backward, using negotiations to strengthen two very weak leaders. » Read more

Israel's Palestinians Speak Out ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Nation by Nadim Rouhana - December 12, 2007 - 5:19pm The Annapolis peace talks regard me as an interloper in my own land. Israel's deputy prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman, argues that I should "take [my] bundles and get lost." Henry Kissinger thinks I ought to be summarily swapped from inside Israel to the would-be Palestinian state. » Read more

Splinter Group Bids To Keep The Outpost Movement Alive ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) by Dina Kraft - December 12, 2007 - 5:17pm Her heart pounding, the 15-year-old girl with a long, honey-colored braid down her back scrambled down the steep hillside in the black of night, running from police who had swarmed in to evacuate her and others who had come to set up an illegal settlement outpost. It was a scene that has become familiar in the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between youths determined to spread Jewish settlement in the West Bank and the police charged with stopping them. » Read more

Key Players In Mideast Talks May Remain Unseen ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor by Joshua Mitnick - December 12, 2007 - 5:16pm A handshake across a table and a spray of camera flashes will probably serve as starting gun of the first official Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in seven years Wednesday – talks aimed at producing a treaty on Palestinian statehood in 2008. Over the coming months, the talks will break into about a half-dozen subcommittees to tackle such issues as dividing Jerusalem and dealing with Palestinian refugees. But none of those discussions are likely to lead to breakthroughs necessary to clinch a final agreement, analysts say. » Read more

Israel, Palestinians Launch Peace Talks In Discord ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters by Wafa Amr, Adam Entous - December 12, 2007 - 5:15pm The first peace talks in seven years between Israel and the Palestinians opened in discord on Wednesday with the Palestinians demanding a halt to settlement building and Israel calling for a crackdown on militants. The tensions, coming just two weeks after a U.S.-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, highlighted the difficulties ahead for negotiators trying to reach agreement on a Palestinian state before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009. » Read more

December 11th

Annapolis ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al Hayat by Cyril Townsend - (Opinion) December 11, 2007 - 1:56pm To my alarm, and possibly for the first and only time, I found myself agreeing with a comment by John Bolton, President George Bush's former and totally miscast Ambassador to the United Nations.  Speaking of the Annapolis summit, which collected together the representatives of 44 countries in Maryland, he said:- "Normally, you have substantive actions and then you bring in the television cameras - they reversed that order." » Read more

Time-wasting Manoeuvres ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times December 11, 2007 - 1:55pm It has been reported that during the Annapolis conference, Israel offered the Palestinian side recognition of a Palestinian state with provisional borders and that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas quickly rejected the offer. It is not hard to guess why Abbas refused such an offer; its acceptance would be tantamount to consolidating Israel’s grip on Palestinian territories for an indefinite period of time and would put the border issue in deep freeze. » Read more