Israel keeps door open to new settlement freeze
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from
by Jeffrey Heller - (Analysis) October 10, 2010 - 12:00am

JERUSALEM, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Israel is not closing the door on a further freeze of new construction in West Bank settlements after the Palestinians, backed by Arab powers, gave Washington a one-month window to save peace talks from collapse. Much could depend on whether the United States opts to sweeten incentives to Israel to agree to a proposed 60-day partial building moratorium, Israeli political sources said on Sunday.

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Future of vast Jewish enclave in West Bank far from settled
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Edmund Sanders - October 3, 2010 - 12:00am

Reporting from Ariel, West Bank advertisement Ron Nachman had waited 10 months for this day. But when Israel's West Bank construction moratorium expired a week ago and settlers celebrated with balloons and bulldozers, the mayor of the fourth-largest Jewish settlement was nowhere to be found. Nachman, 68, was in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy for recently diagnosed bladder cancer.

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Obama demands more than Israel can give
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from
by Richard Cohen - (Opinion) September 28, 2010 - 12:00am

Every so often, the sayings of Casey Stengel come to mind. The longtime manager of the New York Yankees, accustomed to a Prussian professionalism in the hitting and fielding of baseballs, moved over to the astonishingly hapless New York Mets in 1962 and, surveying his new team, uttered an exasperated question: "Can't anybody here play this game?" What applied to those Mets applies now to the Obama administration. In the Middle East, it's no hits and plenty of errors.

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World leaders criticize Israel for refusing to extend West Bank construction moratorium
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Edmund Sanders - September 28, 2010 - 12:00am

Reporting from Jerusalem — World leaders Monday criticized Israel's refusal to extend its construction moratorium on the West Bank even after Palestinians threatened to quit Mideast peace talks, but they vowed to prevent the stalled negotiations from collapsing.

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In blame game, arrow tilts to Abbas
Media Mention of ATFP In Politico - September 28, 2010 - 12:00am

Israelis and Palestinians have yet to achieve any substantive progress in the nascent peace talks that resulted from President Barack Obama’s high-profile push for negotiations, but a subtle shift in the political balance between the two antagonists seems clear: Israel is now winning the blame game. The blame game always proceeds on a parallel, subterranean track to actual negotiations, the cynical mirror of the process’s insistent optimism. Some prominent figures on both sides barely disguise their assumption that peace talks will fail, as they almost always do.

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In blame game, arrow tilts to Abbas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Politico
by Ben Smith - September 27, 2010 - 12:00am

Israelis and Palestinians have yet to achieve any substantive progress in the nascent peace talks that resulted from President Barack Obama’s high-profile push for negotiations, but a subtle shift in the political balance between the two antagonists seems clear: Israel is now winning the blame game. The blame game always proceeds on a parallel, subterranean track to actual negotiations, the cynical mirror of the process’s insistent optimism. Some prominent figures on both sides barely disguise their assumption that peace talks will fail, as they almost always do.

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Construction in West Bank settlements resumes
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Joel Greenberg - September 27, 2010 - 12:00am

KARMEI TZUR, WEST BANK - The rumble of a bulldozer preparing the ground for new homes started early Monday morning at this Jewish settlement in the southern West Bank, and residents said it was music to their ears after a 10-month building freeze. "We're very happy," said Erez Naim, who lives near the building site. "For 10 months we were asleep. Now suddenly things are coming back to life."

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Mideast Talks Teeter as the Settlement Freeze Expires
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner, Mark Landler - September 27, 2010 - 12:00am

JERUSALEM — Israel’s freeze on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank expired at midnight, but Palestinians did not immediately carry out a threat to quit peace negotiations as several settlements resumed limited home building on Monday and American-led efforts to save the talks moved into high gear. For President Obama, who had publicly called on Israel to extend the freeze, the Israeli decision was another setback in what has been a tortuous effort to help resolve one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.

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Jewish settlers claim biblical birthright to land
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Maayan Lubell - September 27, 2010 - 12:00am

YITZHAR, West Bank, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Jewish settler Avraham Binyamin says any Israeli withdrawal from occupied land would be like severing a limb from his body. As one of some 300,000 Israelis living in enclaves built on West Bank land that Palestinians seek for a state, Binyamin expresses a view held by many that the area is a Jewish biblical birthright and must never be relinquished, not even for peace.

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Settlement Moratorium Expires: Will Mideast Peace Talks Last?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from PBS
by Ghaith Al-Omari, Gwen Ifill, David Makovsky - (Analysis) September 27, 2010 - 12:00am

GWEN IFILL: For more on what's holding these talks together so far, we turn to Ghaith Al-Omari, the advocacy director for the American Task Force on Palestine and a former adviser to President Abbas, and David Makovsky, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the co-author of "Myths, Illusions, and Peace." Let's talk about myths, illusions and peace, Ghaith Al-Omari. What happened today? Why didn't the Palestinians walk away from the table, as they had promised they would if these settlements were not frozen? ARTICLE TOOLS Print E-mail * Share

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