Palestina

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dispatched top aides to Washington on Sunday to try to narrow differences with Israel and ensure wide Arab participation in a US-led peace conference.

Key Arab governments will announce Friday if they will attend a US-backed Mideast peace conference aimed at relaunching the stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, said an Arab League official Sunday.

One posed for a photo as she scrubbed a Palestinian corpse. Another stripped a man to his underwear and then beat him. A third helped cover up the abuse of a young boy.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday urged the people of Gaza to oust his Islamist rivals who seized control of the territory in June, as he seeks a lasting peace with Israel.

 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will announce a freeze in West Bank settlement expansion as a gesture towards the Palestinians at a US peace meeting this month, a senior official said Thursday.

Sectarian strife remains a great threat despite improving security, Iraqi leaders said at a conference on Wednesday, hours after a powerful roadside bomb exploded not far from where they met in central Baghdad.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Wednesday talks on Palestinian statehood must be predicated on the recognition of Israel as “the state of the Jewish people”, a new Israeli condition.

Wearing blue camouflage fatigues and crooning about Islamic holy war, the five members of Hamas’s Protectors of the Homeland police band are trying to boost morale in Gaza with an arsenal of anti-Israel numbers.

Israel’s parliament gave preliminary approval on Wednesday to legislation that would make it more difficult to give up parts of Jerusalem in any peace deal with the Palestinians.

Hamas rounded up at least 200 Fateh party members in Gaza on Tuesday, the day after Islamist gunmen killed seven people at a mass rally that underscored the deep divisions between rival Palestinians.