Tag: Palestinians

Without a renewal of peace talks, the Palestinians will seek UN recognition, president Mahmud Abbas said on Wednesday a day after a major speech...

The Palestinian leadership will seek United Nations recognition of their independent state, a top Fatah official said in Moscow on Tuesday, but insisted it...

Israel’s army is using attack dogs to stop Palestinians trying to damage the West Bank separation barrier in order to illegally enter Israel through...

JERUSALEM - Israeli police have arrested two Palestinian teenagers on suspicion of stabbing to death a Jewish couple and three of their children while they slept in a West Bank settlement, a police spokesman said on Sunday.
The killings on the night of March 11 in Itamar in the occupied West Bank caused shock in Israel and drew condemnation from the Palestinian Authority that exercises limited self-rule in the area. Police said Amjad Awwad, 19, and Hakim Awwad, 18, from Awarta, a

RAMALLAH - The US must move fast on its planned drive to revive Middle East talks before Palestinians seek recognition as a state, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday. "It's time for the American administration to move before September," said President Mahoud Abbas's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdainah. Given a continuing impasse despite 18 years of talks, Palestinian leaders aim to ask the UN General Assembly in September for recogniti-on of statehood on

RAMALLAH - The Palestinians are ready for statehood now, according to a report to be presented to major aid donor countries in Brussels this week by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. He will present facts and figures to show how his Palestinian Authority has used hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign assistance over the past two years to create health, education, energy, water, security, justice and housing services.
"I believe that our governing institutions have now reached a

JERUSALEM - Israeli and Palestinian officials floated a ceasefire on Sunday to end an upsurge of violence in Gaza, as Israel warned of a still stronger response if rocket fire from the coastal strip continues.
Speaking shortly after a rocket fired from Gaza struck near the southern city of Ashkelon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that any further attacks would be dealt with harshly. "If the criminal attacks against the Israeli military and civilians continue, Israel

RAMALLAH - Robert Gates on Friday became the first US Defense Secretary to visit the West Bank, meeting Palestinian leaders keenly aware of every little nod to their hopes of achieving statehood. Children in Ramallah stared as the long motorcade of US cars wound through the streets of the city north of Jerusalem.
With US diplomacy fully stretched over revolts in the Arab world and the air war with Libya, Gates was looking to revive stalled peace talks between Israel and the

GAZA - Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire on Saturday near Gaza's border with Israel, medical officials said on Sunday after their bodies were recovered.
The Israeli army said on Saturday that two militants were targeted after approaching a frontier area that Israel has put off-limits to Palestinians, citing attacks against border patrols. The incident followed a barrage of mortar bombs fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip, territory controlled by Hamas Islamists.

RAMALLAH - The Palestinian Authority on Sunday "strongly condemned" Israel's approval of hundreds of new West Bank settler homes following the grisly murder of a settler family. The Palestinian Authority "strongly condemns the decision of the Israeli government to speed up and increase the building of settlements," chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP. "It strongly condemns the settler attacks against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and we ask the Quartet to urgently

JERUSALEM - Envoys of the Middle East Quartet were meeting with Israel's chief peace negotiator on Thursday, as the Jewish state faced growing pressure to break the logjam in talks with the Palestinians.
Talks with Israeli envoy Yitzhak Molcho were being hosted by the US embassy, with Washington represented by David Hale, assistant to US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, an embassy spokesman told AFP. "There is a meeting today with the Quartet," Kurt Hoyer said. "We believe that

LAHORE - Palestinian coach Moussa Bezaz believes that the friendly series against Pakistan, which will open on March 1, will help them assess the skill level of their players before the coming events.
Pakistan and Palestine will play four-test series on home and away basis with the first being played tomorrow and the second on March 4 at Karachi while Pakistan will visit Palestine to play on May 24 and 27. Talking to journalists in his first interaction with the media here at

RAMALLAH - The Palestinians plan to make another attempt to seek United Nations condemnation of Israeli settlement, after the US torpedoed a motion at the Security Council, a senior official said on Saturday. Yasser Abed Rabbo, general secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organisation said that Palestinian leaders had decided to take a fresh bid before the world body's General Asembly, which convenes in New York in September.
"Our decision now is to go to the General Assembly of

RAMALLAH - Israel is destroying any chance of a return to peace talks by carrying out demolitions in annexed east Jerusalem, a spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Sunday.
"By doing this, Israel has destroyed all the US efforts and ended any possibility of a return to negotiations," Nabil Abu Rudeina said in a statement after Israeli forces demolished part of a former hotel in east Jerusalem. The Hotel Shepherd is being partially demolished to make way for 20 new

JERUSALEM - Palestinians in the occupied West Bank lack basic amenities and are effectively being forcibly displaced by discriminatory Israeli policies, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on Sunday.
The New York-based rights group called on the United States to penalise Israel by withholding from its massive annual aid a sum equal to the amount the Jewish state gives in subsidies to West Bank settlements.
The 166-page report accuses Israel of depriving the

JERUSALEM: Israel and the Palestinians are sending top officials to Washington for talks, the two sides announced on Wednesday, to try to rescue a Middle East peace process in crisis.
The peace process appeared to be in tatters after Washington on Tuesday admitted defeat in its efforts to secure an Israeli freeze on settlement building, the Palestinians' condition for resuming direct peace talks.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat is to meet US Secretary of State

JERUSALEM: Israel's plan to build new homes on occupied land should be countered by international recognition of a Palestinian state, the chief Palestinian negotiator said on Tuesday.
Raising the stakes in the deadlock over stalled peace talks, Saeb Erekat said it was clear from the latest announcement of building plans that Israel wants settlements, not peace.
"Israeli unilateralism is a call for immediate international recognition of the Palestinian state," he said in a