Ron Bousso
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/ 26 October 2007

Abbas, Olmert hope to break stalemate

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged on Friday to work towards a meaningful agreement for a United States conference following major disagreement on how to proceed. The two leaders met for two-and-a-half hours with their chief negotiators.

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/ 3 October 2007

Abbas, Olmert aim to bridge gaps in new talks

Israeli and Palestinian leaders held a new round of talks on Wednesday, meeting for the first time with their negotiating teams to try to bridge gaping differences ahead of a United States-sponsored peace summit. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas met one-on-one for the fourth time in less than two months.

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/ 1 March 2007

Embattled Israeli PM faces new corruption scandal

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was on Thursday accused of unlawfully appointing scores of political cronies from his former Likud party in the latest scandal to mar his beleaguered leadership. The more than 100 alleged fixed jobs include senior positions in public bodies, such as local councils and the postal authority, which require open competition at public tender.

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/ 19 January 2007

Israel transfers $100m to Palestinians

Israel transferred -million in frozen funds to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority on Friday in an effort to bolster moderate president Mahmoud Abbas, locked in a battle for power with the governing Hamas. Israel has withheld hundreds of millions of dollars collected on behalf of the Palestinians since the Hamas took over the government in March last year.

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/ 12 December 2006

Olmert’s nuclear slip stirs uproar in Israel

Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday sparked an uproar after an apparent slip of the tongue in which he for the first time listed Israel as a nuclear power, but few expected the blunder to alter the Jewish state’s "policy of nuclear ambiguity". Israel, widely considered the Middle East’s sole nuclear power, has for decades refused to admit or deny whether it possesses an atomic bomb.

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/ 28 June 2006

Israel’s assault could spin out of control

Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip launched on Wednesday in a bid to free a kidnapped soldier could escalate into a wider conflict, observers warned. The crisis has saddled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with the severest test of his premiership, but as dozens of tanks and troops poured into the southern Gaza Strip, officials were unable to say how or when the operation would end.

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/ 27 May 2006

Ultra-Orthodox Jews surf the forbidden web

Hidden behind curtains in small booths decked along the wall of a dark internet café in the heart of Jerusalem, Jewish ultra-Orthodox teenagers explore a forbidden world. More and more ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, youngsters are becoming interested in the secular world surrounding their tightly sealed society, and the web is today a central battleground between tradition and reform.