Israel arrests 120 Hamas members

The move came just hours after the faction s Gaza branch fired rockets into Israel, Palestinian police said.

Police sources said troops fanned out across the area in an overnight operation which kicked off just hours after Hamas s armed wing in Gaza fired rockets into southern Israel, lightly wounding two children.

Among those arrested early on Sunday was Hamas MP Mohammed Motlaq Abu J heisha, the sources said.

“Between 100 and 120 people have been arrested,” Samira Halaika, a Hamas MP from Hebron said. “In terms of size, there has never been such an arrest operation on this scale in the Hebron area before.”

Mushir al-Masri, another Hamas MP who lives in Gaza, said initial information showed at least 80 of the group s members had been arrested in a move which he said demonstrated Israel s “criminal mentality” towards the Palestinians.

Leaks Show Palestinians Giving Much Ground to Israel

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JERUSALEM: Palestinian negotiators secretly told Israel it could keep swathes of occupied East Jerusalem, according to leaked documents that show Palestinians offering much bigger peace concessions than previously revealed.

The documents, obtained by the Al Jazeera television channel, could undermine the position of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose public declarations about Jerusalem are at odds with what his officials were promising in private.

Equally sobering for the Palestinian people, who want to create a state on land Israel seized in a 1967 war, is the fact that Israel offered nothing in return for the concessions and turned down their offer, saying it did not go far enough.

The leaked minutes of a 2008 meeting between Palestinian, U.S. and Israeli officials showed a senior Palestinian proposing that Israel annex all but one of its major Jerusalem settlements as part of a broad deal to end their decades-old conflict.

Al Jazeera said Sunday it had other documents that it would publish shortly showing the Palestinians were also ready to make other massive concessions on the hugely sensitive issue of the right to return for Palestinian refugees.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat went on the defensive, dismissing the documents as “a bunch of lies” during an appearance on Al Jazeera shortly after they were released.

In a heated exchange, Erekat was confronted by critics including Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based al -Quds al-Arabi newspaper, who asked him who had authorized him or the Palestinian leadership “to give up Islamic holy sites.”

One document quoted Erekat as telling an Israeli official: “It is no secret that …we are offering you the biggest Yerushalayim in history.” He used the Hebrew word for Jerusalem.

Ahmed Qurie, the lead Palestinian negotiator in 2008, was quoted as proposing that Israel annex all Jewish settlements in Jerusalem except Har Homa. He also said Israel could keep control of a part of the Old City of Jerusalem.

“This is the first time in history that we make such a proposition,” the document quoted Ahmed Qurie as saying.

He added that the Palestinians had refused to make such a concession during negotiations led by the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in 2000.

Swift action’ needed for peace: Jordan

AMMAN: Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Wednesday urged “swift action” to help push forward the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, warning against wasting more time, a palace statement said.

“Efforts for having serious and effective peace talks should continue, based on a two-state solution, which is the only way to achieve regional stability and security,” the statement quoted the king as telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the telephone.

“The deadlocked peace process threatens the entire region.”

The king, whose country signed a 1994 peace treaty with Israel, said “practical steps are needed to remove obstacles facing the peace process,” the statement said.

Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the first for nearly two years, began in Washington on September 2 but quickly stalled when a 10-month Israeli settlements

Gaza: Two Palestinians killed by Israeli forces

Two Palestinians have been killed in a firing attack from Israeli forces in the Gaza border area.

There is still no let up in the Israeli torture on the innocent Palestinians in the occupied parts of their homeland.

Israeli forces spokesman said an Israeli had been injured due to firing by two suspected Palestinians, whereas both Palestinians were killed in retaliation.

Palestinians question US ability to forge peace

JERUSALEM: A top Palestinian official on Wednesday questioned Washington’s ability to forge Middle East peace after a new breakdown in American attempts to revive negotiations.

The U.S. failure to persuade Israel to renew a limited freeze on construction in West Bank Jewish settlements, announced late Tuesday, was the latest setback for the Obama administration in its quest to broker a peace deal by next September. That goal, a top priority of the president, appears increasingly in doubt.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinians were assessing their options before responding to the American announcement. While accusing the Israelis of being intransigent, he also voiced disappointment with the Americans.

“We will assess if the U.S. would be able … to achieve success in its upcoming efforts,” Abed Rabbo told

Palestinians criticise US, peace process in crisis

RAMALLAH: The Palestinians said on Wednesday “Israeli obstinacy” made Washington give up on efforts to freeze Jewish settlement and questioned whether the United States could ever help them attain independence.

Senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said that with its bid to revive direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations now at a dead-end, the United States was proposing a return to indirect

talks to try to unstick a peace process in deep crisis.

The Palestinians had demanded a halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem before agreeing to resume direct talks in pursuit of the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Under U.S. stewardship, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders held three rounds of talks in September. But the Palestinians pulled out when Israel’s 10-month freeze on West Bank

Protests after Israel demolishes E.Jerusalem home

JERUSALEM: Palestinians protested in east Jerusalem on Tuesday, throwing rocks and setting several cars on fire, after Israeli forces demolished a home in the Arab neighbourhood of Issawiya.

Israeli police and the local officials confirmed that a home and a small room housing a printing press next door had been demolished in Issawiya, in occupied east Jerusalem.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the building was demolished because it was built illegally.

Locals clashed with police brought in to protect the workers carrying out the demolitions, local Palestinian leader Darwish Darwish told AFP.

He said five Palestinians were injured, four by rubber bullets and one by a police dog that bit him.

The demolition came a year and half after a court ruled that the home, which was not yet inhabited, had been built

Israeli govt seen accepting new settlement freeze

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will probably win narrow approval from his coalition government for a U.S. proposal to extend a freeze on West Bank settlement building, Israeli political sources said on Sunday.

The Palestinians halted peace talks after the 10-month Israeli moratorium on settlement construction expired in September. The Obama administration has offered Israel diplomatic and defence perks to renew the freeze for 90 days.

Netanyahu, who visited the United States last week, convened his cabinet to outline the proposal, which he said was still being drafted with the Americans. Once ready, it would be put to a vote in Israel’s 15-minister security cabinet, he said.

“In any event, I insist that any proposal meet the State of Israel’s security needs, both in the immediate term and vis-a-vis the threats that we will face in the coming

Ousted Israel MP vows to work for peace coalition

JERUSALEM: An influential Israeli opposition lawmaker lost his seat in parliament after an eight-year trial on Tuesday but he said he was determined to pursue efforts to revive peace talks with the Palestinians.

Tzachi Hanegbi, a senior member of the centrist Kadima party but also a confidant of Likud prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was convicted of perjury in July.

An additional court ruling on Tuesday said this verdict amounted to “moral turpitude”. Under Israeli law, this meant that he automatically had to step down from public office.

Hanegbi was often seen as the man most likely to help Netanyahu create a broad government of national unity, a step that many political analysts believe is needed if Israel is going to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Rumours about the creation of such a coalition often bubble up in the Israeli media and

Israeli envoy says only peace can halt settlements

UNITED NATIONS — Israel will only stop its disputed settlement building when the Palestinians make a peace agreement, its UN ambassador said ahead of new Security Council talks Monday on the Middle East conflict.

But Israel would be concerned if Arab nations pressed ahead with a campaign to get United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state before any accord, the envoy, Meron Reuben, told AFP in an interview.

Reuben will face new international pressure when he appears before a UN Security Council meeting on Israeli-Palestinian hostilities. The United States and most world powers have backed Palestinian demands that Israel renew a freeze on settlement building in the occupied territories.

“People understand,” Reuben declared. “I don’t think they agree with the way we are going, but they definitely understand the fact that settlements are not a burden on the

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