May 25th, 2011

In speech to Congress, Israel's Netanyahu offers few concessions ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times by Paul Richter - May 25, 2011 - 12:00am Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a joint session of Congress he was prepared to make "painful compromises" for peace but he offered few of the concessions that President Obama has sought as a way to revive moribund Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Ending a tumultuous five-day visit to Washington, Netanyahu said Tuesday he was willing to give up "parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland" in negotiations to create a separate Palestinian state. But he set requirements that varied only slightly from his previous views, and he did not address many specific Palestinian demands. » Read more

Goldberg: Why Palestinians Have Time on Their Side ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bloomberg by Jeffrey Goldberg - (Opinion) May 24, 2011 - 12:00am If I were a Palestinian (and, should there be any confusion on this point, I am not), and if I were the sort of Palestinian who believed that Israel should be wiped off the map, then I would be quite pleased with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance before Congress this morning. I would applaud Netanyahu for including no bold initiatives that would have suggested to the world that Israel is alive to the threat posed by its seemingly eternal occupation of the West Bank. » Read more

Lessons From Tahrir Sq. ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Thomas L. Friedman - (Opinion) May 24, 2011 - 12:00am Being back in Cairo reminds me that there are two parties in this region that have been untouched by the Arab Spring: the Israelis and the Palestinians. Too bad, because when it comes to ossified, unimaginative, oxygen-deprived governments, the Israelis and Palestinians are right up there with pre-revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia. I mean, is there anything less relevant than the prime minister of Israel going to the U.S. Congress for applause and the leader of the Palestinians going to the U.N. — instead of to each other? » Read more

Netanyahu Gives No Ground in Congress Speech ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Ethan Bronner, Helene Cooper - May 24, 2011 - 12:00am Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, broadly laying out the Israeli response to President Obama’s peace proposals, called on the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, on Tuesday to accept what Mr. Netanyahu framed as a tenet: that Palestinians will not get a right of return to Israel. In so doing, he made clear that he was giving no ground on the major stumbling blocks to a peace agreement. » Read more

May 24th

Obama's Speech Was Misunderstood ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Wall Street Journal by Zvika Krieger, Robert Wexler - (Opinion) May 23, 2011 - 12:00am The reaction to President Barack Obama's speech on Thursday has largely focused on one line: "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." News outlets from across the political spectrum ran headlines highlighting Mr. Obama's demand that Israel return to the "1967 borders," referring to Israel's boundaries before it took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the 1967 Six Day War. » Read more

Meeting senseless aggression face-to-face ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Gershon Baskin - (Opinion) May 23, 2011 - 12:00am For months I have been hearing about disproportionate use of force by the army against weekly demonstrations in Nabi Saleh – a small pastoral Palestinian village northwest of Ramallah. Last week, I watched several YouTube videos filmed by activists in the village, providing vivid visual images of the forceful arrests of protesters by the army. I was disturbed because all of the clips showed how the demonstrations ended; none showed how they began. I was convinced that there must have been stone-throwing by the shabab in the village which provoked the violent army responses. » Read more

What was Netanyahu so enraged about? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from NOW Lebanon by Hussein Ibish - (Opinion) May 24, 2011 - 12:00am President Barack Obama’s Middle East speech last Thursday did not break any particularly new ground on Israeli-Palestinian peace or Washington’s basic positions on negotiations. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many of his supporters reacted furiously. Why? The reasons are deeply illuminating. » Read more

Beware the ides of September ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons by Yossi Alpher - (Opinion) May 23, 2011 - 12:00am President Barack Obama's two recent speeches on the Middle East, at the State Department and the AIPAC conference, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's response and related rhetoric, indicate that neither really understands that September at the United Nations is the only relevant arena they should be addressing. Meanwhile, Netanyahu picked a totally superfluous fight with the American president. » Read more

Losing sight of the 1967 borders means losing sight of two states ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons by Ghassan Khatib - (Opinion) May 23, 2011 - 12:00am US President Barack Obama's long-awaited speech on the "Arab spring" and the Arab-Israel conflict has created controversy and spurred contradicting reactions in Israel, Palestine and the Arab world. The immediate and most prominent reaction was that of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who objected publicly to Obama's reference to the borders of 1967 as the basis for negotiations. This automatically made this part of the speech the most dramatic. » Read more

Barack blinks again ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News (Editorial) May 23, 2011 - 12:00am Barely 48 hours after he called for a “viable Palestine” on the basis of the 1967 borders and exchanged cold vibes and hot words with Benjamin Netanyahu, poor Barack Obama found himself doing what successive US presidents and leading politicians have always done: Offer obeisance at the altar of almighty AIPAC and sing endless hosannas to the “Great State of Israel.” The so-called historic speech of the US president on Thursday was seen as “too little, too late” by the Arabs. However, even that timid “audacity of hope” was apparently too much for Israel’s friends in the US establishment. » Read more