Palestinian Aid: Where Will It Go?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bbc News
December 18, 2007 - 12:25pm

As donors meet in Paris to pledge aid to the Palestinian Authority, BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy explains the steps being taken to make sure the money will reach those who need it most. The idea is simple - to use a massive injection of outside aid to consolidate the fledgling peace process launched in Annapolis in November. But how will the aid get to those who need it? And how will it be spent?

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Conferees Pledge $7.4 Billion In Aid To Palestinian Authority
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by John Ward Anderson - December 18, 2007 - 12:22pm

Countries and international organizations pledged $7.4 billion in assistance to the impoverished Palestinian Authority at a conference in Paris on Monday, saying that an infusion of cash would help the peace process begun by the United States last month in Annapolis, Md.

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International Donors Are Cautiously Optimistic On Eve Of Palestinian Aid Meeting
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Howard Lafranchi - December 17, 2007 - 1:19pm

PARIS With Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seeking a large increase in aid for his would-be country, the international community gathers at a donors' conference here Monday to grapple with how to turn the billions of dollars the Palestinians receive into a tool for peace.

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Sealed Off By Israel, Gaza Reduced To Beggary
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Scott Wilson - December 17, 2007 - 1:16pm

The batteries are the size of a button on a man's shirt, small silvery dots that power hearing aids for several hundred Palestinian students taught by the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children in Gaza City. Now the batteries, marketed by Radio Shack, are all but used up. The few that are left are losing power, turning voices into unintelligible echoes in the ears of Hala Abu Saif's 20 first-grade students.

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Icrc Says Israeli Clamps Worsen Gaza And W.bank Crisis
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Stephanie Nebehay - December 13, 2007 - 12:50pm

Israeli restrictions have caused a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the West Bank that is growing worse, leaving hospitals unable to treat the sick and keeping farmers off their land, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. In a statement issued on Thursday, the neutral humanitarian agency called on Israel to "lift the retaliatory measures which are paralyzing life in Gaza" and urged Palestinian factions to stop targeting civilian areas and putting lives at risk.

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Hamas Asks Us To Free Gaza 'ghetto'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Australian
by Martin Chulov - December 11, 2007 - 1:45pm

THE Hamas rulers of Gaza have implored the US to bring an end to the crippling boycott of the Gaza Strip, which they have likened to the World War II siege of Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto.

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Without A Process, Aid To Palestinians Will Do Little
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Mohammed Samhouri - (Opinion) November 30, 2007 - 5:51pm

The Palestinian economy has been in an ever-deepening crisis since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, a crisis rooted in and perpetuated by an extremely inauspicious political setting.

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Gaza's Bleak Reality
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - November 27, 2007 - 2:05pm

Tzipi Livni says the world can be divided into two: The good guys, who came to Annapolis, the ones who want to make peace - and the bad guys, who oppose the conference and want to sabotage peace efforts. According to the foreign minister, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and his friends in the Ramallah government belong to the good guys. The Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, belongs to the bad guys.

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Proceed Steadily But Firmly
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Miftah
by Caelum Moffatt - November 22, 2007 - 10:41pm

After seven years of stalled negotiations between Israel and Palestine, one could possibly not presume that all problems would be solved by one summit, let alone a summit that had been penciled in just as the two old enemies had reconvened dialogue.

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From Payer To Player In The Mideast
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by El-hassan Bin Talal - (Opinion) November 16, 2007 - 4:25pm

The European Union’s policy in the Middle East is the litmus test of its common foreign and security policy. Many Europeans share this belief, but, as the EU considers entering the fray of Middle East peace talks, it must respond to former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s jibe that in the region “you are payers, not players”.

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