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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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/ 5 February 2008
Israeli police were on a heightened state of alert on Tuesday a day after Palestinian militants carried out the first suicide attack in the Jewish state in a year. ”Our forces have been placed on a heightened state of alert as we fear a wave of terrorist attacks after Monday’s attack in Dimona,” Bertie Ohayon, a senior police officer, told public radio.
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/ 4 February 2008
At least one person has been killed in a suicide bomb attack in southern Israel on Monday — the first inside the country for a year. Firefighters told radio stations that at least one person had died in the blast, which happened in the commercial district of the southern town of Dimona.
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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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/ 28 January 2008
Dozens of policemen in riot gear at Egyptian checkpoints set up in the pouring rain just a few kilometres from the border with Gaza on Sunday failed to halt the flow of Palestinians into Egypt five days after the border was breached. Taiser Shuber had spent two days in Sheikh Zuwayed, a town about 19km into northern Sinai, where he savoured his first trip outside the Palestinian territories.
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/ 25 January 2008
Egypt began closing its breached border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Friday, using barbed wire and water cannons to keep Palestinians from crossing into Egypt in defiance of an Israeli blockade. Israeli air strikes overnight killed four Palestinian militants in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, where Hamas blasted open the border wall on Wednesday.
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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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/ 24 January 2008
Gazans poured into Egypt for a second consecutive day on Thursday to stock up on supplies after militants blew open the border barrier of the Hamas-run territory, witnesses said. Hundreds of people continued to cross the border, most of them intent on buying goods on the Egyptian side a week after Israel imposed a blockade on territory.
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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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/ 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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/ 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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/ 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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/ 16 January 2008
A right-wing party quit Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government on Wednesday, condemning his peace talks with the Palestinians and leaving him even more politically vulnerable. Olmert had his majority in the 120-member Parliament cut from 78 seats to 67 after Yisrael Beiteinu’s defection.
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/ 15 January 2008
Israel killed 15 Palestinians, nearly all of them militants, in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, dealing its deadliest blow to Hamas in more than a year in raids that followed a peace mission by United States President George Bush. A volunteer from Ecuador, working on an Israeli kibbutz, was killed by a Palestinian sniper.
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/ 11 January 2008
United States President George Bush made his most explicit call for an end to the Israeli occupation after making his first visit to the West Bank on Thursday, where he witnessed Israel’s military checkpoints, the vast West Bank barrier and the spread of Jewish settlements.
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/ 10 January 2008
United States President George Bush on Thursday predicted the signing of a Middle East peace treaty in a year and called for an end to Israel’s four-decade occupation of Palestinian land. Giving an assessment of his talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders over the past two days, he said it was time for both to make ”difficult choices”.
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/ 10 January 2008
Embarking on his first visit to Jerusalem as United States President, George Bush pressed Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Wednesday to seize what he called an historic opportunity and make tough concessions for peace. Defying sceptics who doubt he can deliver on a pledge to seek a deal on a Palestinian state before he leaves office in a year, Bush said he was ”very hopeful”.
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/ 23 December 2007
The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, on Sunday ruled out ceasefire negotiations with the Islamist movement Hamas and said his military was fighting a ”true war” against armed groups in Gaza. He warned of further Israeli military strikes in the days ahead which he said were intended to prevent Palestinian militants from firing makeshift rockets into 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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/ 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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/ 3 December 2007
More than 400 Palestinian prisoners came home to a heroes’ welcome on Monday after the latest Israeli release aimed at boosting President Mahmoud Abbas during the revived peace process. Thousands of singing and dancing well-wishers waving Palestinian flags gathered to greet the buses filled with the smiling ex-detainees.
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/ 30 November 2007
Israel’s top court has upheld a government decision to reduce the Gaza Strip’s fuel imports, but postponed planned electricity cuts to the Hamas-ruled territory, Israeli officials said on Friday. Israel began reducing the amount of fuel oil, diesel and petrol allowed into Gaza last month as part of economic sanctions.
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/ 28 November 2007
United States President George Bush invited Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the White House to renew long-stalled peace talks on Wednesday but faced deep scepticism over chances for a deal. Finally embracing a hands-on approach, Bush will ceremonially inaugurate the first formal Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in seven years.
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/ 28 November 2007
United States President George Bush has set himself the herculean task of shepherding an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the end of next year, but doubts remain about his commitment. Talks on borders, settlements, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees — are to begin on December 12.
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/ 27 November 2007
United States President George Bush said on Tuesday it was the ”right time” for peace between Israel and the Palestinians before launching his biggest initiative to negotiate an end to the conflict. But he warned ”achieving this goal will not be easy”, according to remarks prepared for delivery at the opening later of the Annapolis peace conference.
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/ 27 November 2007
President George Bush launched a United States drive to create a Palestinian state on Monday, with Israelis and Palestinians nearing an agreement to address the toughest issues of their decades-old conflict. His legacy dominated by war in Iraq, Bush began three days of Middle East diplomacy in separate Oval Office meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
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/ 26 November 2007
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators neared an agreement on Monday on a peace agenda ahead of a new drive by United States President George Bush to restart long-dormant talks to create a Palestinian state. Expectations were low for three days of meetings in Washington and nearby Annapolis, Maryland.
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/ 26 November 2007
United States President George Bush meets Palestinian and Israeli leaders on Monday in a last-ditch push for Palestinian statehood before he leaves office in 14 months. Expectations are low for three days of talks because Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas all face political challenges at home.
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/ 25 November 2007
Hamas officials have issued stark warnings that the Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in Annapolis this week is likely to result in more violence rather than settlement, including a threat from the group to escalate its own ”resistance” to Israeli occupation.
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/ 23 November 2007
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned on Friday that the failure of new peace efforts would be ”deadly” as new polls showed Israelis and Palestinians equally pessimistic about its chances of success. Most Israelis and Palestinians do not think the meeting, opening on Tuesday in the United States, will succeed, according to separate opinion polls.