Palestina

CAIRO (Reuters) – The bloody takeover of Gaza by Hamas was a “coup against legitimacy,” Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Saturday, two days before he hosts a regional summit seen as an attempt to isolate the Islamist group.

The emergence of “Hamastan” in Gaza sent leaders in the Middle East and elsewhere scrambling for an answer: Whose fault is it? Is it reversible? Will the same thing happen in the West Bank? What should and could be done now? In this soul-searching process there is plenty of blame …

Despair, chaos and relief reign at the no man’s land between Israel and Gaza, where an infant with third degree burns waits for a ticket out, writhing in pain as US nationals rush to freedom.

Egypt has reinforced its border with the Gaza Strip and accused Iran of threatening its security after Islamist fighters of Hamas violently seized control of the territory.

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon’s defence minister said Thursday that Islamic gunmen holed up in a north Lebanon refugee camp have been defeated and that the monthlong “military operation is over”, except for mopping up.

KING ABDULLAH WilL take part in a four-way peace summit in Egypt with the Palestinian, Egyptian and Israeli leaders on Monday, a Royal Court official said on Thursday.

Beirut has declared that military action going on in Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp has ended. Minister of Defence of Lebanon Elias Murr said that the Lebanese army had destroyed all positions of Fatah Al Islam in the camp.

Lebanese troops said they had largely defeated Islamist rebels in a northern refugee camp, but continued their siege amid sporadic shelling and gunfire.

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Egypt’s president has invited the Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian leaders to a peace summit, officials said Thursday, the biggest show of support yet by moderate Arab states for beleaguered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will meet next week in Egypt in the first direct talks since Abbas dissolved a coalition government with Islamist Hamas, Israeli and Palestinian officials said Thursday.