Abbas to bypass US opposition to UN bid
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
July 19, 2011 - 12:00am

OSLO, Norway (AFP) -- President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday said he was ready to circumvent opposition from the United States to a bid for statehood by taking the proposal to the United Nations' General Assembly. The plan to seek UN membership for a state on the lines that existed before the 1967 Six Day War is opposed by among others Israel and the United States. It risks being blocked by a US veto at the UN Security Council.

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Asharq Al-Awsat talks to Just Journalism director Michael Weiss
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Mohammed Al Shafey - (Interview) July 19, 2011 - 12:00am

London, Asharq al-Awsat- Michael Weiss is an American journalist, and contributing editor of Tablet magazine. Having received a BA in History from Dartmouth College in 2002, Weiss has gone on to write extensively on the Middle East, with particular expertise on the Israel-Palestine conflict and human rights issues. His work has been featured in many prestigious publications in both the United States and Britain, including The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, where he currently contributes a regular blog on Middle Eastern issues.

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Peace: So far and yet so close
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Michael Felsen - (Opinion) July 19, 2011 - 12:00am

The Quartet – the US, Russia, the EU, and the U.N. – this week announced that it hasn’t yet found the way to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. And according to Haaretz, Israeli and Palestinian sources concur that intensive US efforts to create an agreed outline for renewed negotiations have failed.

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Israel: Support waning for Palestinian state bid
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Statesman
by Associated Press - July 18, 2011 - 12:00am

Israel's deputy foreign minister says he believes international support for recognizing an independent Palestinian state at the U.N. this fall is waning. Danny Ayalon has been leading Israel's international lobbying effort against the Palestinians. He says he has met with representatives from dozens of countries, and he believes many are not going to vote with the Palestinians. With peace talks stalled, the Palestinians plan to ask U.N. member states to vote for recognition of an independent state. The vote is expected to be largely symbolic, but could isolate Israel.

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Special from Gaza: Factions vow imminent armed uprising
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Masry Al-Youm
July 18, 2011 - 12:00am

GAZA - Leading Islamic Jihad figure Khaled al-Batch is over fifty and has been a part of the Palestinian struggle for years. His organization is deemed a terrorist group not only by the United States and Israel, but also by the rest of the world. The senior official’s activity in the group hasn’t exactly discouraged such a label. He helped orchestrate a series of bombings in Israel that ravaged the country during the outbreak of the Second Intifada. And now Batch, sitting barefoot in his Gaza office, says he’s convinced the Third Palestinian Intifada will erupt in a matter of months.

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Ineffective position
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
(Editorial) July 18, 2011 - 12:00am

The recent meeting in Washington of the Quartet, made up of the US, Russia, the EU and the UN, ended without the usual statement calling on the Palestinians and Israelis to resume peace talks. This suggests that there is a rift among the members of the group who are represented by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. Only that could explain why such statement was not issued.

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Israeli minister says Palestinians losing UN bid
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Daniel Estrin - July 18, 2011 - 12:00am

JERUSALEM — International support for a planned Palestinian declaration of independence at the U.N. in September is waning, in large part because of intense Israeli lobbying against the initiative, a senior Israeli diplomat claimed Monday.

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Regards from Khaled Meshal
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from
by Amos Harel, Avi Issacharoff - (Opinion) July 15, 2011 - 12:00am

The baklava almost got stuck in the officers’ throats. A week ago, Munib al-Masri, the world’s richest Palestinian, hosted a group of Israeli officers from the West Bank coordination unit at his Nablus home. At one point he mentioned that he had received the pastry from Damascus, from his friend Khaled Meshal, head of the Hamas politburo. “Khaled sends regards,” he said.

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A Year of Waste
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Roger Cohen - (Opinion) July 14, 2011 - 12:00am

WASHINGTON — Almost a year ago, President Obama declared to the United Nations General Assembly: “When we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations — an independent sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel.”

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Sean Cleary: ‘Seize the Moment!’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Arabiya
by Sean Cleary - (Opinion) July 12, 2011 - 12:00am

All of us need to change gears, and direction, in our approach to the challenges of the world between the eastern Mediterranean and Central Asia. The turmoil in the Arab world must focus our minds, causing us to look beyond past habits and present uncertainty, to define and create a future that offers hope for generations to come. Efforts by the United States over the past ten years to counter what two different administrations have seen as threats to US interests in the Gulf and Afghanistan, have not brought benefits to many who dwell there.

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