Land Swap | The American Task Force on Palestine

The Mideast blame game
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Aaron David Miller - (Opinion) August 18, 2011 - 11:00pm

When Secretary of State James Baker was organizing the Madrid peace conference in 1991, he resorted to a device he called the dead cat on the doorstep. Simply put, Baker threatened to publicly blame Israeli, Palestinian and Syrian leaders if they didn’t accept the terms and attend the conference. It worked. Ironically, the dead-cat routine also explains the current state of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — but in reverse.

Israel's West Bank dilemma
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The San Francisco Chronicle
by Joel Brinkley - (Opinion) August 13, 2011 - 11:00pm

Shaul Goldstein knows that most everyone on Earth dislikes him and his kind. For some, it's visceral hatred. For others, he represents the largest obstacle to solving a problem everyone everywhere wants resolved. "We are the enemy of the world," he volunteered without any prompting. "We have to hide behind a curtain."

IDF Civil Administration pushing for land takeover in West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - July 21, 2011 - 11:00pm

The IDF Civil Administration is taking steps to increase state-ownership of West Bank lands, an internal military document reveals. The policy enables increased construction not only around settlement blocs like Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion, but also in strategic areas like the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea. Until now it was not known that the administration, which is a military agency, was charged with distinguishing between the blocs Israel is demanding to annex as part of a final-status agreement and the rest of the settlements.

Oren presents Israel’s priorities for talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
June 29, 2011 - 11:00pm

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Israel's U.S. ambassador, Michael Oren, outlined for Jewish leaders his country's list of priorities in framing peace talks with the Palestinians. Oren, speaking Thursday in a conference call, said Israel is looking into President Obama's recent proposals for renewing talks. Such talks, Oren said, should be framed by what he called the "terms of reference": the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; no return of Palestinian refugees; and a long-term military presence for Israel along the Jordan-West Bank border. Also, that an agreement would end all claims.

Myth of indefensible borders
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Daniel Nisman, Avi Yesawich - (Opinion) June 13, 2011 - 11:00pm

Individuals who claim the 1967 borders are indefensible ignore the overarching paradigm shift of the Israeli-Arab conflict that has taken place over the last decade. The political outcry in Israel following Obama’s Mideast policy speech was palpable. The president stated what many Israeli hawks found to be unacceptable, if not outright dangerous: Any future Israeli-Palestinian agreement should be based on the 1967 borders with mutually agreed upon land swaps. Hysteria followed, with Netanyahu issuing a clear rebuke to Obama’s statement during his speech at the US Congress.

The Language Bibi and Bam Used
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Forward
by Philologos - (Opinion) June 7, 2011 - 11:00pm

“On the Same Page?” asked a front-page caption of the June 3 edition of the Forward, beneath which were parallel excerpts from President Barack Obama’s May 19 speech on U.S. policy in the Middle East and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s May 24 Congressional address. The second pair of matching quotes had the U.S.

The Palestinians’ trick answer to Obama
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Jackson Diehl - June 6, 2011 - 11:00pm

The chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel staked out a new position Tuesday in Washington: “We want to resume negotiations,” said Saeb Erekat, on the basis of President Obama’s recent Middle East address.

J'lem unsure Obama moved EU against Palestinian UN bid
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Herb Keinon - May 29, 2011 - 11:00pm

In Jerusalem’s post mortem evaluations of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s stormy visit to Washington, questions were raised about the wisdom of the US trying to prevent European support of a Palestinian state at the UN by first setting a return to the 1967 lines, with mutual land swaps, as the negotiation baseline. White House officials have said that one of the reasons why President Barack Obama unveiled this as the new US position in his May 19 speech on the Middle East was to better be able to convince the Europeans that there was no need to support a Palestinian state.

For Israelis, "defensible" border means more land
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Alertnet
by Dan Williams - (Analysis) May 28, 2011 - 11:00pm

JERUSALEM, May 29 (Reuters) - To ask Israeli officials how the border with a future Palestine should look is to invite a deluge of data -- from the regional military balance, to topographical surveys, to intelligence projections on Hamas strength. But no one will map it out. For while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused any return to the "indefensible" lines held before the West Bank's occupation in the 1967 war, the Israelis themselves have no ready alternative to hand.

Israel stripped 140,000 Palestinians of residency rights, document reveals
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Harriet Sherwood - May 10, 2011 - 11:00pm

Israel stripped thousands of Palestinians of their right to live in the West Bank over a 27-year period, forcing most of them into permanent exile abroad, a document obtained under freedom of information laws has disclosed. Around 140,000 Palestinians who left to study or work had their residency rights revoked between 1967 and 1994.