Bank And Gaza

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Fatah gunmen took aim at Hamas rivals in the West Bank yesterday, storming the Hamas-led parliament and ransacking offices of the Islamist group amid fears that last week's fighting in the Gaza Strip could trigger a wider reprisal campaign here. No deaths were reported during a series of incidents around the West Bank, which came despite Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to rein in militants affiliated with his Fatah party. Fatah still holds sway in the West Bank, but its forces were overpowered in the Gaza fighting, leaving Hamas in sole control of the seaside strip of land.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Suggestions that Hamas' violent takeover of the Gaza Strip has effectively divorced the Palestinians into two separate states - Gaza, controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank, dominated by Fatah - worry Raed Abu Rouk and his new wife, Hind Whaby. The newlyweds insist that whatever the political divisions, the two halves of the state that Palestinians yearn to create must remain united. If not, it might spell disaster for the Palestinian people as a whole. They should know: He is from Gaza.

MA'ALOT, Israel -- Peacemaking always requires forgiving and forgetting, on both sides. But in the case of Nayef Hawatmeh, one of the most notorious Palestinian terrorists of the 1970s, forgiving and forgetting are practically impossible.Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, hoping to bury the hatchet with old rivals within the Palestine Liberation Organization, wants to welcome Hawatmeh into the West Bank and Gaza so he can join the Arab consensus as final negotiations get under way with Israel.

JERUSALEM -- U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross concludes another apparently fruitless attempt to break the deadlock in the Middle East peace process today and the clock keeps ticking on an historic experiment that's set to end in another eight months.When that moment arrives in May, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has said he will declare an independent Palestinian state, a threat that has spawned a number of possible scenarios, ranging from the bizarre to the plausible:Israeli soldiers reoccupy Palestinian cities.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Maha Abu Dayeh-Shamas set out with dozens of other women more than a year ago to improve the legal status of women in Palestinian society. They wanted to reform laws that permit men to have more than one wife and require a woman to get her father's permission to wed.But the group ran into stiff opposition from Palestinian women, devout Muslims who believed that the proposed reforms defiled Islam and would lead to the breakup of the family."We were raising issues that deal with power centers in this society," says Abu Dayeh-Shamas, director of the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling.

JERUSALEM -- Three suicide bombers struck in the heart of Jerusalem's cafe district yesterday, killing four other people, injuring 192 and littering the stone pedestrian walkway with blood, glass and body parts.The terrorists -- who also died in the 3: 10 p.m. attack -- exploded their bombs within view of each other on Ben Yehuda Street.The injured included several American tourists, and the four Israelis killed were identified in radio reports as two 12-year-old girls, a 14-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man.The streetscape of coffeehouses, flower shops and Middle Eastern eateries has been a target of terrorists in the past; it is a popular shopping thoroughfare for Israelis and tourists.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Cabinet approved in principle yesterday a plan to give the Palestinians more West Bank rural land to control.But the Cabinet did not set a timetable for the removal of Israeli troops from areas of the occupied territories or define its scope -- two key issues for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his people. It also made the pullouts conditional on Palestinians containing terrorism more effectively.Palestinian officials, who expect to gain control of 20 percent to 25 percent of the West Bank through the redeployment of Israeli troops, had mixed reactions.

GAZA -- The Palestinians call this the "siege," evoking a medieval image of a desperate people cut off and surrounded, watching their supplies dwindle.The Israeli closure of the Gaza Strip has brought a modern update of that scene. Palestinians cannot get out, few supplies can come in, food is short, money is scarce. For lack of medical care, people have died.Israeli officials say it will not end soon."Israel will put constant pressure on Arafat until he sobers up and fights terror seriously," Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said last week, referring to Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian authority.

ARIEL, West Bank -- Ron Nachman, mayor of this Jewish settlement, spent the past four years battling Israeli officials for the chance to fill empty apartments, pave streets, even build sidewalks in this rocky hilltop town. Now, a new government is poised to give him that chance.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making good on his promise to settlers to increase their presence in the West Bank, which is also home to more than a million Palestinians.His Cabinet has streamlined the process for expanding settlements, and two new roads -- projects stalled under the previous government -- are being promoted by Netanyahu's bullish infrastructure minister, Ariel Sharon, who in the past has let neither money nor process interfere with his desires.

JERUSALEM -- Peace is bringing long-gone Palestinians -- and horrifying memories -- back to Israel's doorstep.Bloody attacks that fused the terms "terrorist" and "Palestinian" in the minds of Israelis and much of the world are being recalled by the possible return from exile of many of Israel's old foes.Israel has invited members of the old Palestinian parliament-in-exile to return to the West Bank and Gaza to ratify the peace process, a calculated move that is bringing scenes that many Israelis never imagined.

GAZA CITY - Psychiatrist Eyad el-Sarraj can be as caustic as any Palestinian in condemning Israel's 40-year occupation of the Gaza Strip. But he speaks with admiration approaching awe of Israelis' kindness during his own bone marrow treatment two years ago at Chaim Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, outside Tel Aviv. Other Palestinians there got similar attention, he says, adding, "This is something I will never forget." Business consultant Sami Abdel-Shafi has heard sentiments similar to Mr. el-Sarraj's from older laborers who used to be allowed to work in Israel.

BENNY GAON, 73 Israeli industrialist Benny Gaon, an Israeli industrialist and advocate of economic ties with Arabs, died Saturday of cancer at a Tel Aviv hospital, his office said. In recent years, he had been chairman and president of B. Gaon Holdings Ltd., a company he founded that promotes investments around the world. He was best known in Israel for rescuing Koor Industries Ltd. from the brink of bankruptcy in 1988. Mr. Gaon was known for his optimism about the prospects for peace.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ordered an overhaul of his security apparatus yesterday after an inquiry panel held 60 officers responsible for its collapse in factional fighting that gave Hamas control of the Gaza Strip. The reform aims to make the security forces more professional and strengthen them against any similar challenge by Hamas in the more populous West Bank. U.S. officials have pressed for such changes to advance the prospects for peace talks that Abbas and his secular Fatah movement are seeking with Israel.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Suggestions that Hamas' violent takeover of the Gaza Strip has effectively divorced the Palestinians into two separate states - Gaza, controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank, dominated by Fatah - worry Raed Abu Rouk and his new wife, Hind Whaby. The newlyweds insist that whatever the political divisions, the two halves of the state that Palestinians yearn to create must remain united. If not, it might spell disaster for the Palestinian people as a whole. They should know: He is from Gaza.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Fatah gunmen took aim at Hamas rivals in the West Bank yesterday, storming the Hamas-led parliament and ransacking offices of the Islamist group amid fears that last week's fighting in the Gaza Strip could trigger a wider reprisal campaign here. No deaths were reported during a series of incidents around the West Bank, which came despite Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to rein in militants affiliated with his Fatah party. Fatah still holds sway in the West Bank, but its forces were overpowered in the Gaza fighting, leaving Hamas in sole control of the seaside strip of land.

As she makes another effort to create a "political horizon" for Israelis and Palestinians, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would be well advised to take a good look at their states of mind. The picture that Ms. Rice is trying to draw, illustrating ways to resolve the core points of disagreement between the two peoples, cannot be an abstraction. It must be a vision that would reverse the confrontational dynamic. Most Israelis and Palestinians have experienced only a relationship of bloody conflict.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Seeking an end to the political deadlock that is impoverishing the Palestinian people and pushing them closer to civil war, President Mahmoud Abbas called yesterday for new presidential and legislative elections to be held as soon as possible. The announcement came as a direct challenge to Hamas, which won a landslide victory over Abbas' Fatah Party less than one year ago. Hamas officials immediately rejected the call for early elections as an illegal attempt by Abbas to mount a "coup."

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- To look a cancer patient in the eyes and tell her, `I am out of medicine' - this is the most difficult thing I have ever done as a physician," Dr. Isa Janina, medical director of the Palestinian Government Hospital in Bethlehem, told me. "Because both she and I know that this means she will die." Yet, for more than six months, physicians all over the West Bank and Gaza have been saying these words to their patients. The Palestinian health care system is in a crisis that is deepening daily, a crisis that is undermining not only patients' well-being but also U.S. interests in the region.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has something in common with his two nemeses, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Bashar Assad of Syria: All three nodded approvingly from the sidelines as their allies launched a fierce war across the Israeli-Lebanese border and in the Palestinian territories that has left hundreds of civilians dead amid scenes of destruction, dislocation and shattered lives. Mr. Bush, backing Israel, ignored the international clamor for a hasty cease-fire, encouraging Israel's two-front assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- When Ibrahim Alatrash finished his final accounting exam last week at Birzeit University, his friends and family gave him a bouquet of roses, lifted him up on their shoulders and carried him across the campus to the school cafeteria, where they danced on the tables in celebration. "It was the best day of my life," Alatrash said. One week later, Alatrash no longer has much to celebrate. Although he is newly graduated from the most prestigious university in the West Bank, his prospects for finding a job are slim.