Palestina

GAZA (Reuters) – The main border crossing between the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and Egypt was temporarily opened on Saturday under a deal between the Islamist group and Cairo, Palestinian officials said.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – The Palestinians’ top peace negotiator said on Saturday he feared a criminal investigation of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could damage the chance of a deal this year on Palestinian statehood.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) – By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.

GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli forces on Thursday killed two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including a Hamas commander involved in the 2006 capture of an Israeli soldier, local medics and the army said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel would likely agree to an informal truce with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip if cross-border rocket attacks and arms smuggling into the territory ended, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas underwent heart tests in a Jordanian hospital on Thursday, a spokesman said, describing his condition as good.

GAZA (Reuters) – Sleeping in their cars outside petrol stations, Palestinians are feeling the pinch of a fuel crisis in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where black market gasoline sells for about $30 a gallon.

LONDON (Reuters) – The exiled leader of the Islamist Palestinian Hamas group, Khaled Meshaal, said on Monday that an Israeli soldier captured in 2006 and held in Gaza is alive and being well treated.

GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas wants this weekend’s Arab summit to back a Yemen-sponsored reconciliation agreement between the group and its Palestinian rival Fatah, a pro-Hamas Web site quoted the group’s leader as saying on Friday.

GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli troops killed one Hamas militant and wounded two during clashes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the Islamist group and the army said on Friday.