What Was the Gaza War About?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Middle East Times
by Claude Salhani - (Opinion) January 20, 2009 - 1:00am

The 23-day war in Gaza ended almost as abruptly as it began. And it ended in a way that allows for both sides in the conflict to declare victory. That is an important point if the parties involved aspire to move forward toward peace. This is where the lessons of the June, 1967 Six-Day War are important.

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Gaza has exposed the Arab leaders to fury and contempt
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Ian Black - (Opinion) January 20, 2009 - 1:00am

It was Monday, so it had to be Kuwait. And there they were, 17 leaders and five senior representatives of all 22 members of the Arab League, gathered to discuss the impact of the global economic crisis, though the original agenda was hijacked by the end of Israel's devastating three-week onslaught against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

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Parsing Gains of Gaza War
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - (Analysis) January 19, 2009 - 1:00am

The Parliament building here has been reduced to rubble. The five-story engineering department of the Islamic University is a pile of folded concrete. Police stations, mosques and hundreds of homes have been blown away.

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Gaza: so what really happened?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
by Anne Penketh - (Analysis) January 19, 2009 - 1:00am

It started with "shock and awe" at 7.30pm on 27 December as flares lit up the skies and 100 tons of bombs rained down on the Gaza Strip in the space of 24 hours. Israel declared it was time to put an end to the Hamas rockets terrorising its people, as the world's leaders enjoyed a Christmas break. It ended with a fragile ceasefire shored up by the international community after a three-week military campaign that resulted in the deaths of 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis - and calls for an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes.

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Israel preparing for Iran bid to rearm Hamas in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amos Harel, Avi Issacharoff - (Analysis) January 19, 2009 - 1:00am

A long column of Israel Defense Forces infantrymen on Sunday morning made its way back to Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. The soldiers marched about 10 kilometers, along the same route that they had taken in the opposite direction during the warfare over the past two weeks. A number of the officers remembered a similar march that took place in August 2006, from southwest Lebanon back to Israel.

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Saudi Arabia offers $1 billion to rebuild Gaza as fragile cease-fires hold
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Borzou Daragahi, Raed Rafei - January 19, 2009 - 1:00am

The Saudi Arabian monarchy vowed to spend $1 billion to help rebuild the Gaza Strip after a devastating three-week war between Hamas and Israel but warned the Jewish state that an Arab 2002 peace offer was imperiled and that conflict could be renewed. "Israel must realize that the choice between peace and war will not always be open to it," King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz said at a long-scheduled Arab League economic forum in Kuwait, according to the Persian Gulf state's official Kuwait News Agency. "The Arab peace initiative will not always remain on the table."

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Decision Time for Hamas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed - (Opinion) January 19, 2009 - 1:00am

We are entering a new era following the end of the Israeli war on Gaza; the positions have been examined and the results have become known, and things are presently less ambiguous. The leaders of the Hamas movement- because there is not one single leader that can be addressed- have two choices with regards to their [foreign] relations that will decide the fate of the movement, especially as they are aware of their strengths and weaknesses in confronting [Israel].

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Q. and A. With Taghreed El-Khodary in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
(Interview) January 19, 2009 - 1:00am

This afternoon we have answers from Taghreed El-Khodary, our correspondent in Gaza, to some of the many questions submitted by readers for our Q&A. Ms. El-Khodary, who was born in Gaza, has reported for The New York Times since 2001. During the recent conflict, Ms. El-Khodary was one of the few people reporting from inside Gaza, in part due to the fact that the Israeli military refused to give Western reporters access to the Palestinian territory during the fighting.

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The Egyptian paradox in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Ahram
by Abdel-Moneim Said - (Opinion) January 19, 2009 - 1:00am

The nightmare of politics is when political leaders have to deal with deeply contradictory goals. And when these contradictory goals characterise an environment of armed conflict, "war" for short, the nightmare is at its worst. Nothing represents this nightmare better for Egypt than the Israeli war in Gaza, where contradictory objectives describe both external and internal policy.

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Palestinians mourn Gaza dead, gape at destruction
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Nidal Al-Mughrabi - January 19, 2009 - 1:00am

Mourning tents dotted the Gaza Strip on Monday as Palestinians gathered to remember loved ones among the 1,300 people killed by Israeli forces. Saber Jnaid said his son, a Hamas fighter, had been killed 12 days ago during Israel's 22-day onslaught on the Islamist militant group. He could not formally receive condolences until fighting stopped on Sunday and Israeli forces pulled back. "May God make the Islamic resistance stronger," the grey-bearded father told Reuters as he sat with relatives. "I have 10 more sons and I hope all of them die as martyrs."

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