Palestinians Stop Paying Israeli Hospitals for Gaza and West Bank Patients
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - February 10, 2009 - 1:00am

JERUSALEM — Scores of Palestinian patients being treated in Israeli hospitals, a rare bright spot of coexistence here, are being sent home because the Palestinian Authority has stopped paying for their treatment, partly in anger over the war in Gaza. Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem says that for the past week, no payments have come in and Palestinians whose children it is treating have been instructed by Palestinian health officials to place them in facilities in the West Bank, Jordan or Egypt.

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Israeli politicians offer territory swaps and tunnels to solve the endless crisis
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Times
by James Hider - February 6, 2009 - 1:00am

Israel's hard-fought election campaign is throwing out a number of grand plans reminiscent of some of the treaties that carved up the Middle East in the 20th century, including a scheme to transfer Jewish-held areas of the West Bank to Israel in exchange for Arab-populated territories. As well as extreme right-wing plans to redraw boundaries Ehud Barak, the Labour Party leader and current Defence Minister, has proposed digging a 30-mile tunnel between the blockaded Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, to allow Palestinians the territorial continuity they are demanding in any peace deal.

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The Obama Administration and the Unavoidable Issue of Palestine
Policy Focus by ATFP - February 5, 2009 - 1:00am

Overview

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Editorial: Israel flouting own rules on settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
(Editorial) February 4, 2009 - 1:00am

There is no such thing as a legal Israeli settlement on the West Bank. Under international law there should have been no building in any of the occupied territories. Yet Israel has carried on constructing, often strategically, chains of settlements as around occupied East Jerusalem, in defiance of UN rulings. A halt to new settlement activity and to the expansion of existing sites has been pivotal to all recent efforts to advance the peace process.

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Bad news from a new neighborhood
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) February 2, 2009 - 1:00am

The news that Israel has invested close to NIS 200 million in Mevasseret Adumim, a new Jewish neighborhood east of Jerusalem where 3,500 housing units are slated to be built, reveals the real intentions of the outgoing government. As Amos Harel reported in Haaretz yesterday, for the past two years, Israel has invested massive amounts of money on infrastructure for the construction of housing units to create a contiguous bloc between Ma'aleh Adumim and East Jerusalem.

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ATFP Senior Fellow Speaks on Gaza Crisis at University of Costa Rica
Press Release - Contact Information: Hussein Ibish - January 31, 2009 - 1:00am

Washington, DC, Jan. 31 – ATFP Senior Fellow Hussein Ibish lectured at the University of Costa Rica Law School on Jan. 30 on the subject, “The Gaza Conflict: Summary and Future Impact.” Dr. Ibish told the audience of law students, faculty and diplomats that the Gaza conflict could be a turning point in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but its effects would more likely be decided by events in the West Bank in the coming 12-24 months as Palestinians and other Arabs would be comparing the results of the competing policies of confrontation and negotiation.


Abdullah II: The 5-State Solution
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Thomas L. Friedman - (Opinion) January 27, 2009 - 1:00am

In February 2002, I traveled to Saudi Arabia and interviewed the then crown prince, now king, Abdullah, at his Riyadh horse farm. I asked him why the next Arab summit wouldn’t just propose to Israel full peace and normalization of relations, by all 22 Arab states, for full withdrawal from all occupied lands and creation of a Palestinian state. Abdullah said that I had read his mind (“Have you broken into my desk?” he asked me) and that he was about to propose just that, which he later did, giving birth to the “Abdullah peace plan.”

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A Bibi-Barack Collision?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Creators Syndicate
by Pat Buchanan - (Opinion) January 27, 2009 - 1:00am

"Where there is no solution, there is no problem," geostrategist James Burnham once wryly observed. Ex-Sen. George Mitchell, the latest U.S. negotiator to take up the Palestine portfolio, may discover what it was that Burnham meant. For Israel's three-week war on Gaza, where Palestinians died at a rate of 100 to one to Israelis, appears to have been, like Israel's wars in Lebanon, another Pyrrhic victory for the Jewish state.

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Saudi patience is running out
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Financial Times
by Turki al-Faisal - (Opinion) January 23, 2009 - 1:00am

In my decades as a public servant, I have strongly promoted the Arab-Israeli peace process. During recent months, I argued that the peace plan proposed by Saudi Arabia could be implemented under an Obama administration if the Israelis and Palestinians both accepted difficult compromises. I told my audiences this was worth the energies of the incoming administration for, as the late Indian diplomat Vijaya Lakshmi Nehru Pandit said: “The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war.”

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Meeting of Arab leaders on Gaza ends in discord
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Diana Elias - January 20, 2009 - 1:00am

Arab leaders trying to come up with a plan to rebuild Gaza ended their meeting Tuesday in discord, unable to agree on whether to back Egyptian peace efforts or even set up a joint reconstruction fund for the devastated Palestinian territory.

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