Israel-Palestinian talks end without settlement deal: What happens next?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Joshua Mitnick - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left the Middle East on Thursday with no sign of a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, despite three days of intensive mediation. The key sticking point is an unresolved dispute over Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank. Only two weeks remain before Israel's settlement freeze expires. With Palestinians threatening to quit the talks if construction resumes, negotiators have a fast-closing window – one filled with a cluster of Jewish holidays – to come up with an end game.

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Abbas: No alternative to peace talks, we will continue efforts
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Offering a positive note after two days of inconclusive Mideast peace negotiations, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday he sees no alternative to continuing the talks in search of a peace deal with Israel. "We all know there is no alternative to peace through negotiations, so we have no alternative other than to continue these efforts," Abbas said, speaking through an interpreter during a welcoming ceremony for visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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U.S. confirms intense efforts to restart Israel-Syria peace efforts
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Zvi Barel, Barak Ravid - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Special U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell confirmed at a press conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday that the United States is making intense efforts to restart negotiations between Israel and Syria. Mitchell said U.S. President Barack Obama has been briefed on the results of these efforts. Mitchell said Washington did not consider the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations a barrier to Israeli-Syria talks. On the contrary, he said, the two tracks could help each other.

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Clinton meets Abbas in Ramallah
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah Thursday to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The meeting is part of intensive discussions between Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. officials in the past two days in the region. An official from President Abbas' office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Abbas and Clinton will dedicate their talks to pushing forward the U.S.-brokered peace negotiations earlier this month.

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Report: US wants borders set in 3 months
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Roee Nahmias - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

Washington is trying to circumvent the obstacle posed by the settlement freeze in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and has devised a compromise which will allow the sides to make progress on other issues. The London-based Arabic-language al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Thursday that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has suggested a compromised according to which Israel will prolong the settlement freeze by three months and the time period wil be used by both parties to reach an agreement on the border issues.

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PM to Abbas: We'll continue building in settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Atilla Somfalvi - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

During their meeting in Jerusalem Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Israel plans to resume construction in the West Bank settlements once the moratorium expires on September 26. A senior Palestinian official reported that following the meeting Abbas threatened to quit the direct peace talks if building is resumed in the settlements

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Tight lips as Middle East peace talks rumble on
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
by Jeremy Bowen - September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

With talks now well under way, the Americans are working hard to stop information leaking out of the conference rooms. The statements that have been released are bland, positive without minimising the problems ahead. We are told that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are "getting down to business", tackling the tough issues upfront.

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The Cage of “Silent” Negotiations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by Zuheir Kseibati - (Opinion) September 16, 2010 - 12:00am

In light of the carrot and the stick policy used by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her attendance of the sessions to launch the negotiations on the Palestinian-Israeli track, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas picked up the signal again, seeing how his team is still the sole one concerned about the stick and threatened with “unpredictable consequences” if the negotiations were hindered. At the level of the carrot, Washington believes it allows both sides to come up with “creative” exits for the discontinuation of the settlement freeze predicament at the end of the month.

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Why I doubt Binyamin Netanyahu
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Gilead Sher - (Opinion) September 15, 2010 - 12:00am

Eleven years ago, on September 4 1999, the government of Israel, under Ehud Barak, and the PLO, under Yasser Arafat, signed an agreement called the Sharm-el-Sheikh Memorandum. It provided that accelerated permanent status negotiations would commence shortly, and that their goal was to reach a framework agreement on permanent status in five months and a comprehensive agreement in one year.

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Amid Shelling, Mideast Peace Talks Drag
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner, Mark Landler - (Analysis) September 15, 2010 - 12:00am

JERUSALEM — Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians shifted to home turf here on Wednesday, amid a rain of mortar shells on southern Israel and with no sign that the two sides had broken an impasse over Israel’s moratorium on the construction of Jewish settlements. In a gesture to the Israelis, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, traveled to Jerusalem for a two-hour meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at his official residence, and Mr. Netanyahu returned the favor by welcoming him with a Palestinian flag.

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