At the very least, a de facto two-state solution is needed
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Ari Shavit - (Opinion) January 27, 2011 - 1:00am

If it weren't sad, it would be funny. Once every few years, some report appears about some Israelis and some Palestinians holding negotiations on some final-status arrangement. If you examine the report carefully, you see immediately that the negotiations in question, like all the previous ones, failed to solve the problems of the refugees, Jerusalem and demilitarization. They provided no solutions to the Hamas challenge, evacuating the settlers or the weakness of the Israeli and Palestinian governments.

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PLO: US credibility at stake in UN settlement vote
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
by Abdullah Rebhi - January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha'ath warned that Washington risks losing "any credibility as a peace broker" if it vetoes a UN Security Council resolution calling for a halt to Israeli settlement building. The Palestinians will address the 15-member Security Council "whether or not the United States wants it," Sha'ath told reporters late on Monday in Doha, where he was speaking to Al-Jazeera TV, and confirming the authenticity of the leaked "Palestine Papers" on peace talks with Israel.

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Jewish Lobbyists Still Skeptical of Palestinian Offers Of Concessions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Forward
by Nathan Guttman - January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

A video clip produced last October by the American Jewish Committee aimed to explain the reason for the repeated failures of the Middle East peace process. “The one word that frustrated over 60 years of hope for peace: no,” the clip stated, going on to detail Israeli peace efforts in the past two decades while stressing that the Palestinian response has always been negative. But do the recent revelations in the huge leak of peace process documents known as “the Palestine papers” put this worldview into question?

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A Palestinian state within the 1967 borders: settlements vs. sovereignty
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Philip C. Wilcox - (Opinion) January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

Today, few disagree that without massive withdrawals from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where over 500,000 settlers now live, there is no hope for a two-state peace. A majority of Israelis also agree that an end to the conflict, preservation of a democratic, Jewish Israel, and freedom and statehood for Palestinians, are impossible without a radical reversal of Israel's misbegotten settlement adventure.

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Documents Open a Door on Mideast Peace Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - January 25, 2011 - 1:00am

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks over the past 17 years have operated at two levels, one public, the other behind closed doors. To the world and their own people, each side spoke of sacred, nonnegotiable demands, while in the Jerusalem hotel suites where the officials met those very demands were under negotiation.

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The Palestine papers help Abbas in the diplomatic jiujitsu
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Aluf Benn - January 25, 2011 - 1:00am

The Palestine papers reveal that Israel has – or had – a partner for a negotiated two-state solution. They reveal that our previous government, led by Ehud Olmert as prime minister and Tzipi Livni as foreign minister, discussed a detailed partition plan involving serious give and take with its Palestinian interlocutors. Alas, the Palestine papers also reveal the lack of political will to conclude the deal, shown by the wide gaps over substantive positions, and both sides' leaning towards fruitless debating, rather than seeking a compromise.

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Israel worries over possible EU states' recognition of Palestinian state
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
by Dave Bender - January 25, 2011 - 1:00am

Israel's efforts to stem a rising tide of recognition of a Palestinian state received a blow Tuesday afternoon, with Ireland's decision to upgrade the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Dublin to that of an embassy. The announcement, broadcast by Israel Army Radio, followed a symbolic gesture of recognition by Peru on Monday. Sources at Israel's foreign ministry said officials had been discussing the possibility, and foresaw even more states following suit.

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Abbas: Concessions in Palestine papers came from Israel, not us
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday denied offering secret concessions to Israel and said that reporting of purportedly leaked documents had presented Israeli positions as those of his own negotiators. "What is intended is a mix-up. I saw them present things yesterday as Palestinian, but they were Israeli ... This is therefore intentional," Abbas told reporters in Cairo after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "We say things very clearly, we do not have secrets." Abbas stressed.

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The Palestine papers: Al-Jazeera trumps WikiLeaks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

While the leaked documents on Middle East negotiations are received in Israel and in the world as incisive evidence of the moderate positions of the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Hamas leadership as well as Abbas' rivals in Fatah will see the documents as additional proof of what they call the "defeatism" of the PA. Abbas is constantly treading the thin line between his will to acquire the sympathy of the Israeli and international public and his need to guard his back from the knives of his rivals at home.

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Counterpoint: Palestinians and the U.N.
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Aaron David Miller - January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

On Jan. 21, Hanan Ashrawi, the veteran Palestinian negotiator and politician, argued on these pages (“Palestinians, America and the U.N.”) that the Palestinians are justified in raising the issue of Israeli settlements before the U.N. Security Council, and that Washington should support them. The debate is joined. A bad idea

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