Palestinian Leaders

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- The Palestinian leadership convened yesterday without Yasser Arafat in the chair for the first time in years, making a show of stability while he was undergoing medical tests in France. Arafat's usual chair at the head of the conference table was left empty, while his deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, convened the highest-ranking committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Abbas stayed in his seat to Arafat's right, in the office in the Ramallah headquarters compound.

An Israeli military court on Sunday convicted a Palestinian protest leader of urging youths to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers, ruling in a case that sparked international criticism of Israeli practices in the West Bank. Bassem al-Tamimi — a symbol of Palestinian opposition to Israeli military rule praised by the European Union as a human rights defender — was convicted largely because of a confession by a 15-year-old interrogated without a lawyer. The veteran activist has led weekly marches in his West Bank village of Nabi Saleh to protest Jewish settlers seizing a nearby well for...

JERUSALEM -- The second summit in a month between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, encouraged by US officials as a way to nurture their fledgling dialogue, produced little progress yesterday. A Palestinian participant called it "difficult. " In the only concrete result, an Israeli official said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel pledged to keep the vital Karni cargo crossing between Israel and Gaza open for longer hours to allow more goods to enter and exit the seaside territory.

The Palestinian president says his people "will not be quiet" if any harm comes to a group of Palestinian hunger strikers held by Israel. Hundreds of prisoners are striking, including two men who have not eaten for 73 days. The strikers want better conditions and an end to an Israeli system of holding them for months without charge. President Mahmoud Abbas told a West Bank rally on Thursday that if anyone is harmed, "we will not be quiet ever. " He did not elaborate. Palestinian activists say the men are in dire condition and may not survive much longer.

TEL AVIV - Israeli and Palestinian activists yesterday unveiled the most detailed vision yet of what a peace deal could look like - more than 400 pages crammed with maps, timetables for troop withdrawals, and even a list of weapons a nonmilitarized Palestine would be barred from having. The manual has no official standing, but has generated interest among Israeli and Palestinian leaders and is meant to show it’s still possible to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel, despite many setbacks, said those involved in the drafting.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — A senior Palestinian official condemned Qatar-based Al-Jazeera yesterday and a crowd of protesters vandalized the satellite channel’s West Bank offices after it reported on leaked documents that purportedly said Palestinian leaders offered large concessions in peace talks with Israel in 2008. The angry outburst followed the airing late Sunday of what Al-Jazeera said were internal Palestinian documents showing that Palestinian leaders had offered broad concessions on two of the thorniest issues in negotiations with Israel: Jerusalem and...

AMMAN, Jordan - George Habash, whose radical PLO faction gained notoriety after the simultaneous hijackings of four Western airliners in 1970 and the seizure of an Air France flight to Entebbe, Uganda, died Saturday in Jordan. He was 81. The former guerrilla leader, whose rivalry with Yasser Arafat spurred him to start the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, died of a heart attack in Amman, said Leila Khaled, a longtime PFLP member. Born to a Christian Arab family, Mr. Habash opposed Arab-Israeli peace talks.

BEIRUT — Lebanon expanded employment rights for 400,000 Palestinian refugees yesterday, changing a decades-old law that many have criticized for keeping the community impoverished and excluded from Lebanese society. Palestinian leaders in Lebanon and human rights workers welcomed the move, but said it is only a first step toward improving the lives of stateless refugees who have been banned from all but the most menial professions for decades. “I was born in Lebanon and I have never known Palestine,’’ said Ahmad al-Mehdawi, 45, a taxi driver who lives in Ein...

PARIS -- Newly armed with Yasser Arafat's medical dossier, his nephew pinned blame on Israel for the late Palestinian leader's death and refused yesterday to squelch rumors of poisoning -- although he acknowledged that doctors found no known poisons. Nasser al-Kidwa, who is also the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, said the files are inconclusive on the cause of Arafat's death, but "I believe the Israeli authorities are largely responsible for what happened.

ABU DIS, West Bank - The Palestinians are ready to yield parts of the West Bank to Israel if compensated with an equal amount of Israeli territory, the lead Palestinian negotiator said in an interview yesterday. Ahmed Qureia, a former prime minister who has dealt with five Israeli prime ministers during 14 years of failed peacemaking, is trying again with another leader, Ehud Olmert. Qureia voiced optimism on the process, saying the US-hosted Mideast conference in Annapolis, Md., tentatively set for Nov. 26, is a "very, very, very important opportunity.

CAIRO - Rival Palestinian leaders yesterday held their first detailed talks on reconciliation since the Islamic militant Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip more than four years ago, declaring they made progress toward sharing power but failed to resolve key issues. Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal talked for two hours in Cairo but did not reach agreement on touchy matters such as the composition of an interim unity government and a date for elections.

JERUSALEM - International mediators met with Palestinian and Israeli officials in Jerusalem yesterday in the hope of finding a formula to restart deadlocked peace talks. But in a telling commentary on the beleaguered state of peacemaking, they huddled separately with officials from each side and will not be meeting with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. The mission by the Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators comes after the Palestinians asked the United Nations last month to recognize an independent state of...

JAMES CARROLL is right in asserting that the "principle of Palestinian independence is not radical" ("Israel's opportunity to stop a train wreck," Op-ed, July 18). In fact, Israelis overwhelmingly support a two-state solution that would allow for a permanent peace with their Palestinian neighbors. Unlike Carroll, however, most Israelis also have to consider a number of difficult realities before they agree to withdraw to national boundaries that will be as narrow as 9 miles and no more than 60 miles at their widest.

AMMAN, Jordan — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sought to defend his new unity government with the militant Hamas movement yesterday, saying criticism by President Obama represented a “wrong understanding’’ of the deal. Abbas’s comments followed talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in the Jordanian capital and were noted in a royal palace statement. They were his first remarks on major speeches the US president delivered in recent days. Last week, Obama outlined his policy on the Middle East, roiled by popular Arab uprisings, and endorsed Israel’s 1967 boundaries as the basis of...

JENIN, West Bank — The Palestinian prime minister appealed yesterday to the rival Hamas group to join him in a united government, offering to allow the Islamic militants to retain security control of the Gaza Strip until elections later this year. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s proposal to his Islamic militant rivals reflected the Palestinians’ deep frustration over Washington’s handling of Middle East peace efforts. That anger was underscored over the weekend when the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have condemned...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Thousands of cheering Hamas supporters in Gaza burned effigies yesterday of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior aides in the rival Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, denouncing them as traitors. The protests were a response to reports by Al-Jazeera satellite TV about leaked documents from a decade of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Al-Jazeera, which has been releasing the documents gradually this week, says they show that Abbas made far-reaching concessions on Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has told Israeli and Palestinian leaders they will need to show progress in their secret talks soon, or risk a potentially fatal erosion in public support for a process now in its sixth month without any obvious successes. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice passed that message during meetings with both sides a little more than a week ago, according to Arab, US, and other Western diplomats. Rice was reacting mainly to the increasingly pessimistic Palestinian assessments of the talks, but she warned that confidence was fragile among Israelis, too. ...

JAMES CARROLL is right in asserting that the "principle of Palestinian independence is not radical" ("Israel's opportunity to stop a train wreck," Op-ed, July 18). In fact, Israelis overwhelmingly support a two-state solution that would allow for a permanent peace with their Palestinian neighbors. Unlike Carroll, however, most Israelis also have to consider a number of difficult realities before they agree to withdraw to national boundaries that will be as narrow as 9 miles and no more than 60 miles at their widest.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — A senior Palestinian official condemned Qatar-based Al-Jazeera yesterday and a crowd of protesters vandalized the satellite channel’s West Bank offices after it reported on leaked documents that purportedly said Palestinian leaders offered large concessions in peace talks with Israel in 2008. The angry outburst followed the airing late Sunday of what Al-Jazeera said were internal Palestinian documents showing that Palestinian leaders had offered broad concessions on two of the thorniest issues in negotiations with Israel: Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian...