United States authorities arrested an American engineer on Tuesday on suspicion of giving secrets on nuclear weapons to Israel during the 1980s, the Justice Department said. Ben-Ami Kadish was suspected of reporting to the same Israeli government handler as Jonathan Jay Pollard, who is serving a life term on a charge of spying for Israel.
Former United States president Jimmy Carter met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus on Friday for talks expected to focus on ways to include the Islamist group in efforts to achieve Palestinian-Israeli peace. High-level Hamas members also attended the meeting, at which Carter would also raise with Meshaal the fate of an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas.
Israel warned on Thursday it will retaliate against Hamas, blaming the Palestinian Islamist group for a deadly explosion of violence in the Gaza Strip that followed a month of relative calm. Israeli authorities said they temporarily shut down the Nahal Oz fuel terminal following Wednesday’s attack.
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.
British humanitarian agencies on Thursday said the situation in the Gaza Strip was the worst in 40 years and urged the European Union to hold talks with Hamas. ”The situation for 1,5-million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than at any time since the beginning of the Israeli military occupation in 1967,” the eight NGOs said in a joint report.
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.
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/ 7 February 2008
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas offered to help negotiate a ceasefire as Israel pounded Gaza on Thursday, killing seven people days after a suicide bombing claimed by Hamas rulers. Hamas promptly rejected the offer, with spokesperson Fawzi Barhum branding it a ”blackmail attempt against the Palestinian people”.
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/ 5 February 2008
Israeli forces killed at least eight Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, a day after a suicide bombing in Israel claimed by the Islamist group. Six of the Hamas men were killed by an air strike on a security post in southern Gaza and two other armed members of the movement were shot dead by Israeli soldiers.
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/ 4 February 2008
Egyptian security forces closed the border with the Gaza Strip on Sunday nearly two weeks after the wall was first breached. Gunmen from the Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, appeared to be cooperating with the Egyptians, turning back crowds of Palestinians as barbed wire and metal barricades were installed.
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/ 21 January 2008
Gaza endured a fourth day of hardship on Monday as Israel vowed to maintain a punishing blockade in response to rocket fire from the Hamas-run territory, despite increasing international concern over a developing humanitarian crisis. The European Union slammed what it termed the ”collective punishment” of impoverished Gaza’s 1,5-million residents.
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/ 11 January 2008
The Israeli government said on Friday it endorsed United States President George Bush’s call during his visit for a rapid peace agreement but made clear it does not see the final establishment of a Palestinian state this year. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokesperson said that Israel hoped for a ”historic agreement” in 2008.
The number of Israelis and Palestinians killed in the Middle East conflict dropped last year but human rights abuses continued, a leading Israeli human rights group said on Tuesday. The number of Israeli casualties was at its lowest level since the start of the second intifada in 2000, reflecting a growing sense of security within Israel.
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/ 20 December 2007
United States President George Bush is to embark on a week-long tour of the Middle East in the new year to nudge Israelis and Palestinians towards an end to their decades-long conflict and to bolster an Arab coalition against Iran. It will be the first time in his seven years as president that Bush will have visited Israel, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
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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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/ 5 December 2007
Jubilant Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Wednesday said the United States report confirming his country had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme was a ”declaration of victory”. ”This was a final shot to those who, in the past several years, spread a sense of threat and concern in the world through lies of nuclear weapons.” Ahmadinejad said.
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/ 5 December 2007
A jubilant Iranian leadership called on Tuesday for plans for new United Nations sanctions against the country to be dropped in the face of the United States report confirming it had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme. The report has forced America’s European allies to re-evaluate policy towards Iran on Tuesday.
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/ 19 November 2007
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Monday ahead of a United States-sponsored peace meeting that Israel would freeze construction of new settlements and dismantle unauthorised ones in the occupied West Bank. ”We have committed ourselves under the road map not to build new settlements in the West Bank,” a senior government official quoted Olmert as saying.
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/ 15 November 2007
Israel is quietly preparing for the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran despite public pledges to deny its arch-foe the means to pose an ”existential threat”, Israeli political and defence sources said on Thursday. Israel predicts that Iran’s nuclear programme could produce warheads by 2009.
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/ 26 October 2007
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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/ 17 September 2007
Israel has enforced a news blackout on what may be its air force’s most audacious raid since its jets destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor in 1981. The Israeli government has made no comment about the raid on what is believed to be a nuclear installation in Syria.
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/ 11 September 2007
A rocket fired by Gaza militants smashed into an Israeli army base early Tuesday, wounding dozens of sleeping conscripts and heightening pressure on the government to hit the Hamas-ruled territory. At least 69 soldiers sleeping in tents were wounded when the homemade rocket crashed into the Zikim base.