Middle Orient

GAZA (Reuters) – An education and health dispute that has sparked a huge strike in Gaza may deepen the rift between Hamas and Fatah and harm chances of Palestinian reunification, a United Nations envoy said on Tuesday.

An Israeli court has convicted two border guards over the unlawful killing of a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank town of Hebron in 2002.

Lauren Booth, human rights activist and sister-in-law of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has said she is being prevented from leaving Gaza.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi security forces began a push on Tuesday to evict people squatting in Baghdad homes that were abandoned by residents fleeing sectarian violence, a military spokesman said.

As of Monday, Sept. 1, 2008, at least 4,151 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.The figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,371 died as a result of hostile action, …

JERUSALEM – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected Israel’s idea of an interim peace agreement at a Sunday summit, a Palestinian negotiator said, insisting on an all-or-nothing approach that virtually ruled out an accord by a January target date.

The US military has handed Anbar province, once the centre of Iraq’s Sunni insurgency, to Iraqi control at a ceremony in the provincial capital.

Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank have shot and wounded a mentally disabled Palestinian man during a raid on his house, medical officials say.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies will sign an accord with Turkey aimed at boosting ties between the Arab bloc and Ankara, the chief of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) said on Sunday.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday, hoping to cap his scandal-plagued leadership of Israel with a document of peace understandings within the next two weeks, officials said.