Erekat: Settlement freeze a must
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Elior Levy - June 9, 2011 - 12:00am

A settlement construction freeze is still a precondition for Palestinian talks with Israel, senior Fatah official Saeb Erekat told Ynet Wednesday. Erekat denied an earlier Washington Post report whereby the Palestinian Authority is willing to renounce the building freeze demand. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat backs Mideast policy speech given by Barack Obama, which urges return to 1967 borders with land exchanges, but in a new twist says nothing of halting West Bank settlement activity

»

Abbas agrees to peace talks based on 1967 borders
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
June 6, 2011 - 12:00am

President Mahmoud Abbas has told France he is ready to attend a Paris peace conference if Israel accepts talks based on the 1967 borders, an aide told AFP Sunday. Nimr Hammad, a political adviser to Abbas, said the president had told French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe that he agreed officially to a French proposal to host a peace conference in Paris before July. Juppe raised the possibility of the conference during a visit to Israel and the West Bank this week.

»

Abbas agrees to peace talks based on 1967 borders
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
June 6, 2011 - 12:00am

President Mahmoud Abbas has told France he is ready to attend a Paris peace conference if Israel accepts talks based on the 1967 borders, an aide told AFP Sunday. Nimr Hammad, a political adviser to Abbas, said the president had told French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe that he agreed officially to a French proposal to host a peace conference in Paris before July. Juppe raised the possibility of the conference during a visit to Israel and the West Bank this week.

»

Netanyahu must accept French peace initiative
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) June 6, 2011 - 12:00am

France has placed an offer on the desk of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Begin direct negotiations with the Palestinians in September, on the basis of the Obama plan. The proposal does not define Israel's borders, draw a map of Jerusalem or determine which settlements Israel must remove. It even helps the Israeli position in that it speaks of "two states for two peoples," in other words it acknowledges that Israel is a Jewish state.

»

Israel to consider French Mideast peace bid: PM
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
June 5, 2011 - 12:00am

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel would consider a new initiative raised by France to relaunch the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. "I heard the proposal brought by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe," Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet session. "We very much appreciate our French friends and I will respond to them after we have considered the matters," he said, according to a statement sent to Xinhua. Netanyahu said Israel, while studying the French proposal, would bring up the option with the American interlocutors as well.

»

Barak to Juppe: Israel cannot negotiate with Hamas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Herb Keinon - June 3, 2011 - 12:00am

Defense Minister Ehud Barak met on Friday with French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe to discuss a French initiative involving a peace conference in Paris next month. The conference would be scheduled to precede September's contentious Palestinian state bid at the UN. During their meeting at Barak's office in Tel Aviv, the defense minister reiterated to Juppe that Israel would be unable to negotiate with Hamas since the group does not either recognize Israel nor denounce terrorist attacks against its civilians.

»

France invites Israel, Palestinians to peace talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
June 2, 2011 - 12:00am

The French foreign minister says he's inviting Israeli and Palestinian leaders to Paris this month to relaunch peace talks. Alain Juppe says "there's a sense of urgency. The status quo is unsustainable." Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who met with Juppe in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday, would not say whether the Palestinians would accept the invitation. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said he would not comment before Juppe meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later Thursday in Jerusalem.

»

The real issue is political leadership
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by David Pollock - (Opinion) June 1, 2011 - 12:00am

Around half of Israelis, Palestinians, and some other key Arab publics, according to various opinion polls taken in the past decade, support something like the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, whose basic concept is peace and Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel's full withdrawal from the territories it captured in the 1967 war.

»

Peace process and Arab Spring
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times
by Christopher Hill - (Opinion) June 1, 2011 - 12:00am

President Barack Obama’s speech on the ongoing popular uprisings in the Middle East, followed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to Washington, was intended to kick off a renewed effort to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Things are not turning out as planned.

»

The Virtues of Folding
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Policy
by Aaron David Miller - (Opinion) May 30, 2011 - 12:00am

"She crumbled," ace detective Phillip Marlowe observed in one of the greatest lines in Raymond Chandler's classic 1939 novel The Big Sleep, "like a new bride's pie crust." And so, come to think of it, has the Obama administration's approach to Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Thirty months in, a self-styled transformative president with big ideas and ambitions as a peacemaker finds himself with no negotiations, no peace process, no relationship with an Israeli prime minister, no traction with Palestinians, and no strategy to achieve a breakthrough.

»


American Task Force on Palestine - 1634 Eye St. NW, Suite 725, Washington DC 20006 - Telephone: 202-262-0017