Israeli and Palestinian officials say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with Palestinian premier Salam Fayyad in coming weeks.
After four years of turbulent rule in the Gaza Strip, the Islamic militant group Hamas is weighing up a new strategy.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the Middle East Quartet "strongly supports" Palestinian efforts to create their own state.
Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad on Tuesday unveiled his government’s plans to create a de facto state in two years.
Salam Fayyad announced on Saturday he would resign in a move to bolster unity talks between Fatah and Hamas, but Mahmoud Abbas has asked him to stay.
Palestinian leaders were urging US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday to push Israel to freeze construction in West Bank settlements.
Hillary Clinton pledged on Tuesday to press for Palestinian statehood, putting Washington on a possible collision course with Benjamin Netanyahu.
Britain and other European governments should break from the United States over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter said on Sunday. Carter described the current European Union position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as ”supine” and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as ”embarrassing”.
Israel will be urged on Friday to ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip to avert a humanitarian disaster as the Middle East ”quartet” meets to consider the state of the faltering peace process. Oxfam and five other United Kingdom aid agencies are calling for the quartet to end its ”complacency” by putting the ”highest diplomatic pressure” on Israel.
Israeli troops pulled out of the Gaza Strip on Monday after a United States appeal to end days of fighting that killed more than 100 Palestinians, and rescue peace talks. The Hamas Islamists who control the coastal enclave declared ”victory” and vowed to continue firing rockets into Israel.
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/ 29 January 2008
Egypt boosted security around the border town of Rafah on Tuesday and resealed parts of the barrier blasted open a week ago as it tried to control the flow of people in and out of the Gaza Strip. Egyptian forces strung barbed wire along some of the gaps between two gates leading into the Palestinian territory, while riot police were deployed.
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/ 24 January 2008
Israel wants to cut its links with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip after militants blasted open the territory’s border with Egypt in defiance of an Israeli blockade. Israel, which occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967, pulled troops and settlers out in 2005 but still controls its northern and eastern borders.
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/ 22 January 2008
Guns were fired on Tuesday at the Gaza-Egypt border during protests against Israel’s blockade of the coastal strip. Dozens of Palestinian protesters stormed the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, pushing past Egyptian riot police, live footage from the al-Jazeera TV network showed.
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/ 18 December 2007
Palestinians were given a powerful signal of international and Arab support for an independent state on Monday night, with ,4-billion in aid to revive their moribund economy and bolster renewed but faltering peace negotiations with Israel.
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/ 14 December 2007
Israel must ease restrictions on the Palestinians if efforts led by Tony Blair to boost the Palestinian economy are to be successful, the World Bank and Oxfam said on Thursday. Next Monday Blair, representing the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers, is to chair a conference in Paris of 90 countries and organisations.
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/ 30 October 2007
Israel’s attorney general (AG) told the government on Monday it could not cut electrical power to the Gaza Strip as part of its sanctions against the Hamas controlled territory, although he did approve other measures. Israel began implementing economic sanctions on Sunday in what it said was a response to Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli towns.