Gaza Strip

JERUSALEM -- A top Palestinian security leader who is a relative of Yasser Arafat escaped injury yesterday when a booby-trapped car exploded near his convoy in Gaza City, security officials said. The bomb rocked Gaza City after nightfall as Moussa Arafat's convoy was leaving his headquarters. As the convoy sped off, Moussa Arafat's body guards fired submachine guns in the air. Security officials said none of the bodyguards were hurt. Israel's military denied involvement. It appeared more likely that local opponents were responsible, though no one claimed responsibility for the attack.

JERUSALEM - The Israeli military said Wednesday it has closed its investigation into the shelling deaths of 21 members of a single Palestinian family and would not file any charges in what was one of the gravest episodes in the 2009 war in the Gaza Strip. The military's move, which exonerates Israeli soldiers from any responsibility in the killings, outraged relatives of the killed Palestinians and the Israeli human rights group that had pressed for the investigation. They said the findings proved the army is not capable of investigating its soldiers' conduct.

KUWAIT CITY - Arab leaders trying to come up with a plan to rebuild Gaza ended their meeting yesterday in discord, unable to agree on whether to back Egyptian peace efforts or even whether to set up a joint reconstruction fund for the devastated Palestinian territory. The deep tensions among rival Arab leaders could affect the fragile cease-fire between Hamas and Israel that ended a three-week Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip. Israel's military campaign to stop rocket fire from Gaza militants left about 1,300 Palestinians dead, according to Gaza health officials, and material damage is...

Authorities in the U.S. have accused a divorced Palestinian man of illegally moving his three children from their home in Kansas to his native Gaza earlier this year. Their mother, Bethany Gonzales, says she wants her children back in the U.S., but she has limited political and legal means available to her in the Gaza Strip, a largely isolated and impoverished Palestinian territory ruled by the Islamic militant group Hamas. The father, Ahmed Abuhamda, denies any wrongdoing, saying he followed the couple's divorce decree when he moved the children from the Kansas City suburb of...

RAFAH, Gaza Strip -- Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas promised freedom, jobs, and homes for the people of Gaza once Israel completes its pullout. Hours before he spoke yesterday, at Gaza's abandoned airport, an Israeli bulldozer demolished the first Jewish settlement, clearing land for Palestinian development. In the settlement of Gadid, Israeli troops crashed through a flaming barricade of cars, wooden planks, and garbage bins and expelled the last settlers, who were holed up in a synagogue.

JERUSALEM - Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired four rockets into southern Israel yesterday, as Hamas formally announced the end of its unwritten, often-breached truce with Israel. The Israeli military said two rockets were fired yesterday morning, and two more after sunset. It said troops guarding Israeli farmers in fields adjoining Gaza also came under sniper fire from across the border. No injuries were reported. In a statement posted on its website, Hamas said Israel had breached agreements by imposing an economic blockade on Gaza, staging...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Egyptian mediators hammered out an agreement to end a day of clashes yesterday in Gaza that killed four and jeopardized a power-sharing agreement between rivals Hamas and Fatah. Fighting, however, began again this morning, resulting in another death. The Egyptian security delegation stationed in Gaza brought the two sides together and got them to agree to withdraw their forces and exchange captives, spokesmen from Hamas and Fatah said early today. Such agreements have not always been carried out in the past.

JERUSALEM - Israel yesterday issued a tough threat against activists sailing toward the Gaza Strip with a delivery of humanitarian supplies, calling the mission an unacceptable provocation and saying all options were under consideration. The two boats carrying members of a US-based activist group set sail from Cyprus early yesterday in a bid to break Israel's 14-month blockade of Gaza. The activists hope to reach Gaza's shores today. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron said Israel was closely following the boats.

AS A FORMER legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, I spent more than six years working toward a "two-state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During that period, we held countless negotiation sessions, examined scores of proposals, met with hundreds of diplomats and even went house-to-house campaigning for the two-state solution. Today, we are no closer to achieving a two-state solution than we were 20 years ago when negotiations started. Since that time, the number of Israeli settlers living in the West Bank has almost tripled...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - About 30 Israeli tanks and bulldozers moved into the southern Gaza Strip today in an operation against Palestinian militants, the military said, sparking clashes with Hamas fighters firing rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells. Soldiers took over the rooftops of several homes and arrested about 60 people in house-to-house raids, residents said. The gunfire kept frightened motorists away from the main road between the towns of Khan Younis and Rafah, which was blocked at one section by an Israeli tank.

Israel expelled a Palestinian prisoner Sunday to the Gaza Strip as part of a compromise deal that persuaded her to end her 43-day hunger strike. Under the terms of her release, Hana Shalabi, a 30-year-old Islamic Jihad supporter from the West Bank, must remain in the seaside strip for the next three years. Shalabi went on hunger strike to protest Israel's policy of "administrative detention," under which it holds some Palestinian prisoners for months — even years — without charges.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Cross-border fighting between Gaza and Israel, touched off by Israel's killing of a top militant leader, showed no signs of letting up on its third day Sunday. Gaza militants fired dozens of rockets at Israeli towns, and Israeli airstrikes killed three Gazans, including a boy and a farm guard. Egypt tried to mediate but failed to end the worst violence in more than a year, which has killed 18 Gazans, all but two of them militants, and disrupted the lives of some 1 million Israelis living in Gaza rocket range.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes killed a schoolboy and two other Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, while Gaza rocket squads fired salvos into southern Israel, deepening the worst round of violence between the sides in more than a year. A Gaza health official said a 12-year-old boy, a 60-year-old farm guard and a militant were killed as the exchanges of fire entered their third day. Egyptian efforts to achieve a cease-fire faltered, spurned by the two factions in Gaza responsible for the rocket fire.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israel pounded Gaza for the second day in a row Saturday, trading airstrikes and rocket fire with Palestinian militants and killing 15 of them as the deadliest Gaza violence in more than a year showed no sign of abating. Despite Egyptian efforts to mediate a cease-fire, Palestinians fired more than 100 rockets, some striking major cities in southern Israel and seriously wounding an Israeli civilian. The military responded with more than a dozen airstrikes and the targeted killings of Palestinian militants from various Gaza organizations.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Friday killed the commander of the militant group behind the abduction of Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier who was held captive for more than five years and freed in a prisoner swap for more than 1,000 Palestinians. The midday attack marked the highest-profile Israeli strike against the coastal strip in several months and immediately sparked retaliatory rocket attacks toward Israel - raising the specter of a violent escalation after a period of relative calm.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Political expression in this seaside strip is firmly regulated by the ruling Islamist militant group Hamas, and authorities recently approved a robust street rally against an unlikely target: the government in Syria, long Hamas's benefactor and host. The demonstration, as well as Hamas leaders' statements in support of Syrian protesters and the abandonment of their Damascus offices, was an indicator of the Gaza-based movement's stark break with Syria - and of the rapidly shifting partnerships of a changing Middle East.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israeli artillery killed a Palestinian teenager in the Gaza Strip yesterday, and militants vowed to step up their attacks against Israel. The army said the attack was conducted against militants who were launching rockets at Israel, including one that hit a town in the south of the country yesterday, causing no casualties. The artillery fire in the northern town of Beit Hanoun hit a house, killing a 17-year-old Palestinian boy and slightly wounding a 2-year-old in a nearby home, doctors said.

CARACAS — President Hugo Chávez denounced Israel yesterday as a “genocidal’’ government as he hosted President Bashar Assad of Syria on his first visit to Latin America. Chávez has drawn close to Syria and Iran, and cut ties with Israel last year to protest its military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Assad called Israel a state “based on crime, slaughter.’’ He also sardonically suggested Venezuela and Syria could help form an “an organization called the ‘axis of evil,’ in which good governments would participate.’’

AS A FORMER legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, I spent more than six years working toward a "two-state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During that period, we held countless negotiation sessions, examined scores of proposals, met with hundreds of diplomats and even went house-to-house campaigning for the two-state solution. Today, we are no closer to achieving a two-state solution than we were 20 years ago when negotiations started. Since that time, the number of Israeli settlers living in the West Bank has almost tripled to 600,000, with settlements...

Palestinian power rivals are exchanging barbs again, less than a month after they pledged to bury their hatchets and form a unified government. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party is demanding an apology from Hamas after it prevented a high-level delegation from entering Gaza. Hamas, in turn, said Sunday one of the Fatah officials "cursed God" and was disrespectful toward Hamas security officers. Friday's visit to Hamas-ruled Gaza by the Fatah delegation was supposed to be part of reconciliation efforts, aiming to bring about new elections for a...