Palestinians insist leaked memos from peace process reveal nothing new
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from PBS
by Sal Gentile - January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

Leaked memos from a decade of negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian officials roiled the Mideast peace process and put the embattled Palestinian Authority on the defensive Monday. But moderate Palestinian observers and officials close to the government of President Mahmoud Abbas insisted that the documents reveal relatively little about the negotiations that isn’t already known. And if anything, they say, the records expose how uncooperative the Israeli and American governments have been throughout the process.

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WEST BANK: Leaks from peace talks don't show Palestinians making shocking concessions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Edmund Sanders - January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

If there’s a lesson from Sunday's leak of alleged meeting minutes from 2008 Mideast peace talks involving Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. officials and from the previous WikiLeaks dump of U.S. diplomatic cables, perhaps it's this: Governments needn't be so afraid of having their private business aired in public.

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Encountering Peace: What does Netanyahu want?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Gershon Baskin - January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

Understanding what has been leaked, the PM should move forward with current Palestinian leadership as soon as possible.

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Israel FM confirms interim Palestinian state plan
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Matti Friedman - January 24, 2011 - 1:00am

Israel's foreign minister confirmed Monday that he has drawn up a plan for the creation of an interim Palestinian state with temporary borders in the absence of a full peace agreement. Avigdor Lieberman argued that an interim arrangement was the only option, saying the Palestinians have turned down previous Israeli offers and no agreement is possible at present. "There is no other way. We must go back to an interim agreement," he told Israel Radio, adding, "The plan is ready." He offered no details and did not say when and if the plan would be made public.

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Wave in favor of Palestine gathers momentum
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Uri Avnery - (Opinion) January 23, 2011 - 1:00am

PLO’s permanent delegation in Washington has been allowed to fly the Palestinian flag over its building ISRAEL IS, as we well know, the land of unlimited impossibilities. In Israel, for example, the diplomats are striking. Postmen strike. Longshoremen strike. But diplomats — the most conservative, the most establishment people? Well, in Israel it is possible. All the Foreign Office services have ceased to function. For years, these people have suffered from miserable working conditions. Their salaries are bordering on the ridiculous. So they went on strike.

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No Partial Solution
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
(Editorial) January 23, 2011 - 1:00am

The two-state solution remains viable. That is the message sent out this weekend by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Nodding to Palestinian demands to use the pre-1967 lines as a basis while at the same time ensuring that a strong majority of the 327,000 Jewish settlers presently living in Judea and Samaria would stay put, David Makovsky, a former Jerusalem Post editor and senior fellow at the institute, presented options for resolving the territorial aspects of a two-state scenario, complete with maps and statistical data.

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Word of Palestinian Concession in 2008 Roils Mideast Debate
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - January 23, 2011 - 1:00am

Despite longstanding protests against the construction of Jewish developments in contested areas, Palestinian negotiators agreed to cede large tracts of Jerusalem to Israel during peace negotiations in recent years, according to a set of documents Al Jazeera says it has obtained. The materials suggest that the chief Palestinian negotiator at the time, Ahmed Qurei, “proposed that Israel annexes all settlements in Jerusalem,” except for the Jewish district known as Har Homa.

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Palestinian leaders deny offering major concessions to Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Edmund Sanders - January 23, 2011 - 1:00am

Palestinian leaders Sunday rejected a report by Al Jazeera television network that they had agreed in 2008 to cede most of disputed East Jerusalem and to make other major concessions in an unsuccessful bid to win statehood. Citing documents that it called the "Palestine Papers," the Arab television outlet quoted minutes from a Jan. 15, 2008, meeting involving then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei.

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Leader confounds both sides with plans for Palestinian state
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Edmund Sanders - January 21, 2011 - 1:00am

No one seems to know what to make of him. Israelis puzzle over the cleanshaven technocrat who denounces violence. Palestinians see an outsider who never cut his teeth on the tear-gas-choked streets of intifadas. Now, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad hopes to confound expectations even further, pursuing what some see as a quixotic goal of laying the groundwork for an independent country by August. No matter that peace talks are stalled. If Palestinians build the trappings of a state, he believes, a real state will follow.

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Palestinians defy US with Security Council request
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Karin Laub - January 20, 2011 - 1:00am

The Palestinian request to have the U.N. Security Council condemn Israeli settlements looks at first like another declarative gambit that changes little on the ground. But much more is at stake. Palestinians hope their Security Council initiative will give them an idea of how much support they have for future moves. These include seeking international recognition of a Palestinian state as early as this fall.

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