Asharq Al-awsat Interviews Mahmud Abbas
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Ali El-saleh - (Interview) November 14, 2007 - 1:12pm

[Asharq Al-Awsat] Following your meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, you spoke with a sign of optimism. Was there a breakthrough that you did not disclose?

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Tough Homecoming For Lebanon's Refugees
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Nicholas Blanford - November 14, 2007 - 12:46pm

Abu Tawfiq stands in the soot-encrusted ruin of his home as cold rain blows in where an outside wall once stood. "This room is Hiroshima and the other one is Nagasaki," says the former school teacher who, agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. He's one of some 5,000 Palestinians who recently returned to the battle-ravaged ruins of this coastal refugee camp in north Lebanon, home to more than 40,000 people before the outbreak in May of three months of fighting between the Lebanese Army and Al-Qaeda-inspired militants of Fatah al-Islam.

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What The Palestinians Must Do
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Uri Savir - (Opinion) November 13, 2007 - 3:58pm

It is essential that the impending regional meeting in Annapolis be successful. Failure at Annapolis would translate into a victory for the extremist elements in Israel, Palestine and throughout the region. Without success at Annapolis the next phase of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship will find a far less forthcoming Israeli government squaring off against an implacable Hamas.

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War And Peacemakers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Newsweek
by Christopher Dickey - (Special Report) November 13, 2007 - 3:44pm

In a Middle East slipping from war to war, sometimes it seems only the old are truly impatient for peace. Certainly none is pushing harder than the octogenarian King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. His cause as crown prince in the 1990s and as reigning monarch since 2005 has been to settle as many disputes as he can in this region of clashing faiths, millennial rivalries and chronic conflagrations. They are all related, as he sees it, from Palestine to the price of oil, from Iraqi death squads to Iranian nukes to the risk of global recession, each cancroid problem feeding off the other.

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Abbas Urges Support Of Peace Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Financial Times
by Tobias Buck - November 12, 2007 - 1:39pm

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, on Sunday seized on a demonstration marking the third anniversary of Yassir Arafat’s death to urge support for the latest round of Middle East peace talks and turn up the heat on Hamas, his Islamist rivals.

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Mideast: All Not Quite Aboard For Annapolis
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Inter Press Service (IPS)
by Peter Hirschberg - November 12, 2007 - 1:37pm

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has again paid a visit to the Middle East, held meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, spoken about the seriousness of the two sides in their efforts to revive the peace process, but has again left the region without issuing invitations to a planned U.S.-led peace summit in Annapolis, Maryland.

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A Glimpse At A Life In Line
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Chicago Tribune
by Robert Cotton Fite - (Opinion) November 12, 2007 - 1:35pm

Waiting in line at a West Bank border checkpoint, intimidated by the prisonlike atmosphere and frustrated by the Israeli soldier denying me passage back into Israel, I got my first real taste of what it's like most days for thousands of Palestinians. There I was, having just enjoyed visits to several Palestinian towns, looking very much the harmless, middle-class American tourist, with what I was sure were the right stamps in my passport, being told I could not re-enter Israel nor continue my trip to Nazareth.

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Gaza’s Isolation Takes Toll On Students And Prices
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Steven Erlanger - November 12, 2007 - 1:31pm

Miriam Ashour will turn 18 in November and speaks English with only the slightest of accents. She has a scholarship to study for a college degree in business administration at Columbia College, affiliated with the United Methodist Church, in Columbia, S.C. But she will miss at least the first semester. She is among some 670 Gazans enrolled in schools abroad who have been denied permission to leave the territory.

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U.s. And Israel Play Down Hopes For Peace Talks
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Steven Erlanger - November 12, 2007 - 1:30pm

The American-sponsored Middle East peace conference expected by the end of the month looks to be thin on content, mostly serving as a stage to begin formal negotiations on a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Israeli and American officials have been so busy dampening expectations that they are not even calling the event a conference anymore, instead referring to it merely as a “meeting.”

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Time For Modesty In The Middle East Peace Process
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Richard Naass - (Opinion) November 9, 2007 - 6:29pm

"Ripeness is all," concludes Edgar in King Lear. I will leave it to Shakespeare scholars to decipher what he had in mind. But for diplomats and historians, understanding the concept of ripeness is central to their jobs: it refers to how ready a negotiation or conflict is to be resolved.

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