Death by a thousand leaks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Aaron David Miller - (Opinion) January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

Somebody up there must really hate the Arab-Israeli peace process. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, that the odds against serious negotiations couldn't get any longer and the hope for a two-state solution couldn't be more forlorn, we now have the Palestinian version of WikiLeaks.

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What should we take away from the ‘Palestine Papers’?
Media Mention of Ghaith al-Omari In PBS - January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

In recent months, peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians have been fitful, to say the least. There was reason for hope when President Obama took office two years ago promising a recalculation of American foreign policy. By the time his administration restarted the negotiations in September, however, veterans of the peace process were skeptical that progress could be made. Now, just four months later, even the most optimistic observers have reason to be despondent.

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The Palestine Papers expose an Israeli-dominated process
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Rami Khouri - (Opinion) January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

The Palestine Papers being published this week by Al-Jazeera TV and The Guardian newspaper provide many important and, often problematic, insights into several key aspects of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to achieve a comprehensive, permanent peace agreement. Reading through the entire archive of over 1,600 documents, however, as I had a chance to do at the Al-Jazeera offices in Doha, Qatar, this week, provides a useful overview of, and insights into, the three principal actors in the process: the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli government, and American officials.

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Abbas to Peres: We must not kill the peace process
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Greer Fay Cashman - January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

PA president calls counterpart to express condolences on wife's passing, says should "stand together" against forces seeking to delegitimize PA. "We must not kill the peace process," Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told President Shimon Peres on Wednesday when he telephoned to express his condolences on the passing of the president's wife, Sonia Peres.

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Rattling the Cage: The brave, visionary leader - and Bibi
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Larry Derfner - (Opinion) January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

With all the different takes on Al- Jazeera’s “PaliLeaks” documents, one thing I think is beyond debate: Never in history have Palestinian leaders seemed so moderate, so flexible, so accommodating to Israel. All the issues the Palestinian Authority negotiators supposedly would not budge on, they more than budged on – they took very long steps toward meeting the Olmert government’s positions on Palestinian refugees, the Temple Mount, the Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, settlements and borders.

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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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There Is a Partner, Just Read the Papers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Forward
by J.J. Goldberg - (Opinion) January 26, 2011 - 1:00am

Well, well, well, isn’t this awkward? After all that talk about Israel having “no partner” for peace, it turns out the Palestinians were ready to make a deal after all, on terms that weren’t far from Israel’s bottom line.

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Palestinians insist leaked memos from peace process reveal nothing new
Media Mention of Ghaith al-Omari In PBS - January 25, 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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Good News From the Middle East (Really)
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Jeffrey Goldberg, Hussein Ibish - (Opinion) January 25, 2011 - 1:00am

IT has lately become the accepted wisdom that the Middle East peace process is dead, finished, kaput. This belief has been reinforced by Al Jazeera’s release this week of some 1,600 documents that are said to describe the inside workings of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2008.

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What should we take away from the ‘Palestine Papers’?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from PBS
by Sal Gentile - (Opinion) January 25, 2011 - 1:00am

In recent months, peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians have been fitful, to say the least. There was reason for hope when President Obama took office two years ago promising a recalculation of American foreign policy. By the time his administration restarted the negotiations in September, however, veterans of the peace process were skeptical that progress could be made. Now, just four months later, even the most optimistic observers have reason to be despondent.

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