Secretary Rice fights peace-process inertia
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Ilene Prusher - November 9, 2008 - 8:00pm

Inertia, history shows, can be a dangerous thing in the Middle East. It leaves room for radicals and rockets to reset the agenda. That's why US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – and members of The Quartet – were in Egypt Sunday: To keep the peace train running, or at least to keep its engine warm. "I believe that the Annapolis process is now the international community's answer and the parties' answer to how we finally end the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis," Rice told reporters afterward.

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Olmert says time running out for two-state solution
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
November 9, 2008 - 8:00pm

Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday time was running out for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At an annual memorial ceremony for Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister killed by an ultranationalist Jew in 1995, Olmert again advocated a peace deal under which Israel would withdraw from nearly all of the occupied West Bank.

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Netanyahu: Peace Talks Will Continue if Elected
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
November 9, 2008 - 8:00pm

Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday pledged to continue negotiations with the Palestinians if he wins February elections, backing away from earlier hints he would abandon U.S.-backed peace talks. But Netanyahu gave no indication he would make significant concessions.

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IDF: Army may need to respond to fresh terror alerts from Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amos Harel - November 9, 2008 - 8:00pm

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip may be planning to execute terror attacks against Israel which would require responsive military operations like the one carried out last week, Israeli defense officials said on Sunday. Over the next two days, Defense Minister Ehud Barak will determine whether to reopen the border crossings with Gaza, which were shut down last Wednesday after Gaza militants resumed rocket fire on the western Negev.

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Wilson Center Briefing Summary and Video Available
Press Release - Contact Information: Hussein Ibish - November 9, 2008 - 1:00am

On October 20th, ATPF Senior Fellow Dr. Hussein Ibish participated in a panel entitled “McCain, Obama, and the Middle East: The influence of Domestic Politics on U.S. Policy” at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Panelists included Graeme Bannerman, Adjunct Scholar, Middle East Institute and Former Chief of Staff, Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Aaron David Miller, Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center and former U.S. Middle East Negotiator; and Richard Straus, Editor, Middle East Policy Survey and Former Staff, House Foreign Affairs Committee.


Rice Visits West Bank City; U.S. Announces Aid
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - November 7, 2008 - 8:00pm

In the first visit by an American secretary of state to the city of Jenin, a once-infamous hub of Palestinian militancy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to strike a positive chord at the close of what will probably be her last official trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Ms. Rice has acknowledged that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is unlikely to achieve its goal of an agreement by the end of the year and has devoted this trip to other aspects of the process, chiefly the building of reliable Palestinian institutions in preparation for a state.

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Time to appoint a Middle East envoy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Financial Times
(Editorial) November 6, 2008 - 8:00pm

In speech after spell-binding speech, Barack Obama made clear throughout his campaign his intention to restore America’s reputation in the world; that, as he told the vast crowd at his Chicago victory rally, “America’s beacon still burns as bright”. In the Middle East and throughout broad swathes of the Muslim world, that beacon is invisible after eight years of the Bush administration’s bungling. President-elect Obama has a unique chance to rekindle it.

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Bush punts unfinished Mideast peace deal to Obama
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Matthew Lee - November 6, 2008 - 8:00pm

The Bush administration has conceded that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal is no longer possible by the end of its term and is preparing to hand the fragile, unfinished U.S.-backed peace effort to President-elect Obama. Obama may not want it, at least as designed by the Republican Bush administration, seen as slow to embrace the role of honest Mideast broker. Many of Obama's foreign policy advisers were players in the Clinton administration's extensive Mideast peace efforts and are unenthusiastic about President Bush's hands-off approach.

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Rice insists peace attainable, despite deadline miss
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA)
November 6, 2008 - 8:00pm

Faced with the failure of Israelis and Palestinians to meet an end of year deadline for a peace deal, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nonetheless insisted Friday that a final settlement of the dispute between the sides was attainable. President George W Bush's vision of a Palestinian state living alongside Israel 'will not come in a single dramatic moment, but it will come,' she told a news conference in Ramallah.

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Israel in a Showdown with West Bank Settlers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Time
by Tim McGirk - November 2, 2008 - 8:00pm

The hill named Oush Grab lies a stone's throw from the Shepherd's Field, near Bethlehem. Christian pilgrims flock to the place where the Bible says an angel tipped off a shepherd that Jesus Christ had been born, but most visitors are unaware of the battle raging over this obscure hilltop. Oush Grab is an undistinguished rocky outcrop of limestone, dotted with thorny shrubs. And it has no political, strategic or Old Testament significance.

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