Two Hamas men accused of killing three Israeli teens, an act that sparked a war in Gaza, have been killed, according to the Israeli military.
Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement and the Islamic Jihad group say they fired rockets at Israel in response to an air strike that injured 10 people.
For many Arab Israelis, a young Muslim woman willingly performing national service at a hospital in the city of Haifa is nothing less than a betrayal.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers crossed into the Gaza Strip on Friday after the Jewish state warned it would retaliate against Hamas for a deadly explosion of violence earlier this week. Ten tanks and two armoured bulldozers entered 1km into Gaza, west of the Bureij refugee camp, drawing heavy fire from militants.
Faced with Israeli trade and travel restrictions, a stagnant economy and a flood of cheap imports from Asia, Palestinian businessmen are increasingly seeking their fortunes in China. Demand for Chinese visas among business owners in the occupied West Bank is so high that the Chinese consul regularly visits the city of Hebron to stamp their passports.
A play about the United States activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed at the age of 23 by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza, will be performed for the first time in Israel on Sunday, on the fifth anniversary of her death. The single-actor play My Name Is Rachel Corrie will first be performed in Arabic in Haifa, northern Israel.
Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip have been holding off from violence that could jeopardise Egyptian efforts to mediate a ceasefire, officials from both sides said on Monday. A truce deal may be key to United States-brokered peace efforts and also benefit Hamas Islamists.
A Palestinian gunman opened fire in a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem on Thursday, killing at least eight people and wounding about 10 in the most lethal attack in Israel in two years, emergency services said. ”It was a slaughterhouse,” said Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, head of the Zaka emergency service.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Wednesday to keep up military strikes on the Gaza Strip as long as rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled territory continues. ”The Israeli army operations against the Gaza Strip will continue as long as the rocket fire continues,” a senior official quoted the premier as saying.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrapped up a Middle East trip on Wednesday after failing to secure a resumption of peace talks as Palestinians insisted on a truce and Israel vowed more strikes on Gaza. Rice met senior Palestinian negotiators and Israeli ministers at the end of a visit aimed at mending peace efforts hobbled by Israeli attacks.
Israel killed 52 Palestinians on Saturday in its deadliest and deepest incursion into the Gaza Strip since pulling out in 2005, stoking fears of a broader conflict that could derail renewed United States-backed peace talks. At least 29 of the dead were civilians, among them women and children, said Palestinian doctors who were working round the clock.
Israeli forces killed 22 Palestinians in the Hamas-led Gaza Strip on Saturday in the most intense fighting in weeks and Israel threatened a broader offensive to stop rocket fire. A total of 57 Palestinians have been killed in four days of Israeli raids and air strikes in the Gaza Strip that the Jewish state launched after cross-border rockets killed an Israeli man on Wednesday.
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/ 25 February 2008
Palestinians protesting against an Israeli-led blockade formed a human chain on Monday along roads in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and Israel threatened to use force if they tried to surge into its territory. Hundreds of women and children turned out for the start of what organisers said they hoped would be a peaceful protest.
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/ 23 January 2008
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Wednesday he had given his security forces orders to let Palestinians in from Gaza to buy food and then return home. ”I told them: ‘Let them come in to eat and buy food’, then they go back, as long as they are not carrying weapons,” Mubarak told reporters at a Cairo book fair.
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/ 23 January 2008
Palestinian militants blew up part of the wall between Gaza and Egypt on Wednesday, and tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt to stock up on food and fuel in short supply due to an Israeli blockade. Egyptian riot police sent to reinforce the border mainly stood aside and let the Palestinians through.
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/ 18 January 2008
Israel closed border crossings with the Gaza Strip and destroyed the Hamas-run Interior Ministry on Friday in what witnesses said was an air strike, stepping up what it says is a campaign to halt Palestinian rocket attacks. One woman was killed and at least 30 others nearby were wounded in a large explosion, medical officials said.
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/ 26 October 2007
Israeli troops killed six Palestinian gunmen on Friday in some of the heaviest fighting for weeks in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical and militant sources said. Two Israeli troops were wounded, the army said, as three separate raids were mounted into the territory, backed by air strikes. Seven Palestinian militants and three civilians were wounded, hospital staff said.
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/ 25 October 2007
Israeli officials prepared a plan on Wednesday to cut power supplies to the Gaza Strip amid violence that killed two Palestinian boys after a rocket salvo damaged an apartment building in the Jewish state. The United Nations has told Israel it must not inflict collective punishment by cutting vital supplies and services.
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/ 21 October 2007
A study by an Israeli psychologist into the violent behaviour of the country’s soldiers is provoking bitter controversy and has awakened urgent questions about the way the army conducts itself in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Nufar Yishai-Karin, a clinical psychologist at the Hebrew University, interviewed 21 Israeli soldiers and heard confessions of frequent brutal assaults against Palestinians.
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/ 30 September 2007
Egypt abruptly allowed about 100 Palestinians who had been stranded in Egypt since Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in mid-June to return home before dawn on Sunday, witnesses said. Most were supporters of the Islamic militant Hamas or gunmen from other factions wanted by Israel, they said.
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/ 28 September 2007
An Israeli missile strike killed a Palestinian militant in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, medical workers and witnesses said, a day after 11 Palestinians were killed during an Israeli raid into the coastal territory. Residents said the missile attack killed one gunman and wounded two others from the Islamic Jihad militant group.