Israeli

Jerusalem - Declaring Hamas "badly beaten," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered a unilateral halt to Israel's punishing offensive in the Gaza Strip starting yesterday. But he said Israeli forces will stay in the Palestinian territory for now, and Hamas threatened to keep fighting until they leave. Israel's decision, which took effect at 2 a.m., could bring relief to the battered coastal enclave after 22 days of airstrikes and a thundering ground offensive that killed more than 1,200 people and reduced entire residential city blocks to rubble.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama, underscoring a commitment to more aggressive U.S. diplomacy, named two Democratic heavyweights yesterday as administration envoys to two of the world's most troubled regions. Obama appointed former Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, a Maine Democrat, as special envoy to the Middle East and former U.S. Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Appearing before an audience of senior diplomats at the State Department, Obama said his administration would "actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace" in the Middle East, though "no one doubts the difficulty of the road ahead."

JERUSALEM -- As a piece of engineering, the Palestinian-made Qassam rocket is like a bad high school science project. A thin steel tube with four metal fins, propelled by a mix of sugar and fertilizer, it carries a crudely fashioned warhead. With no guidance system, the rockets are so inaccurate that they are often dismissed as nothing more than "flying objects." But as a weapon against Israel, the Qassam is worthy of a top prize. Cheap and plentiful, the homemade rockets - though rarely deadly - have proven to be highly effective at forcing thousands of Israelis from their homes, throwing the Israeli government off balance and leaving the modern, high-tech Israeli military helpless to stop them.

MASKIOT, West Bank -- It took thousands of Israeli soldiers and police armed with riot gear and bulldozers to pull Yosi Hazut and hundreds of his neighbors from their hard-line Jewish settlement of Shirat Hayam during Israel's tumultuous and expensive withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Now Hazut and other former Gaza settlers want to build again in the Palestinian territories. This time they plan to construct a settlement in the cinnamon- colored hills of the Jordan Valley in the West Bank.

To advance a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, President Bush needs the support and involvement of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis last week cautiously expressed interest in attending a regional peace conference Mr. Bush had proposed for the fall, provided the meeting tackles the core issues dividing Israel and the Palestinians. The Saudis haven't done Mr. Bush any favors. A dialogue that would bring them to the table would have to include the status of Jerusalem and the future of Palestinian refugees, and the Israelis are resisting a discussion of either at this time.

JERUSALEM -- Israel declared the Hamas-run Gaza Strip to be "hostile territory" yesterday, setting the stage for possible cutoffs of fuel and electricity, and overshadowing a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to prepare for a November peace conference. Israel did not say when it might cut the flow of power or fuel to the impoverished coastal enclave. A statement from the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his government would study the legal ramifications before imposing such sanctions and seek to avoid a humanitarian crisis.

JERUSALEM -- An Israeli government investigation into Israel's war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon harshly criticizes Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for many of the military campaign's failures, raising doubts about his ability to stay in power amid increasing calls for his resignation. The much-anticipated report, which was released yesterday, accuses Olmert of "serious failure" for leading the country "hastily" into an over-ambitious, ill-conceived and costly conflict that left more than 1,000 civilians and combatants dead, most of them in Lebanon.

It won't be a one-day wonder. But if supporters of next Tuesday's peace summit in Annapolis can keep Israeli and Palestinian leaders talking and committed to resolving the core issues that divide them, then the conference won't be a waste of time. Without talks, there can be no negotiated settlement and the preferred resolution to this conflict - a secure Israel, an independent Palestine - will remain no more than an ideal. The decision to reduce the summit to one day was a disappointing acknowledgment of the difficulty in staging these talks and finding agreement on substantive issues.

TEL AVIV, Israel -- The super-hero of Israel's strident secularists is an irreverent, rotund pundit who parlayed public outrage over the increasing power of ultra-Orthodox Jews into a surprising electoral success in last month's election.Yosef "Tomy" Lapid skewered Israeli politicians in newspaper columns and on raucous talk shows for almost 40 years. Now, he's one of them. The 67-year-old dean of Israeli talk-show personalities won election to Israel's parliament May 17 and resurrected a moribund political party in the process.

JERUSALEM -- Samuel Sheinbein, the Maryland teen-ager who fled to Israel after the grisly slaying of a friend, pleaded not guilty yesterday to the killing but acknowledged his role in dismembering and burning the victim's body.Sheinbein, an 18-year-old former Wheaton resident, is being tried in Tel Aviv in the 1997 killing of Alfredo E. Tello Jr., 19, because Israel could not legally extradite him to the United States."This creates a logistical nightmare. We expected him to plead guilty because we have a mountain of evidence against him. But now we have to have a full trial in Israel," said Douglas F. Gansler, the Montgomery County state's attorney responsible for the case in the United States.

JERUSALEM - -When President Barack Obama announced efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program through diplomatic engagement, the concern in Israel was that open-ended talks would allow the Islamic republic time to continue toward its suspected goal of developing a nuclear weapon. But as that engagement took its first major step Thursday in meetings in Geneva, the Israelis are tempering their doubts. The recent disclosure of a second Iranian uranium-enrichment plant appears to have stiffened the resolve of the United States and other Western powers, Israeli officials and analysts said.

Monday's meeting between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is critical for both nations. U.S.-Israeli relations are in danger of deteriorating to the lowest point since Dwight Eisenhower ordered Israeli troops to evacuate Sinai in 1956 - an event that contributed to the 1967 Six-Day War. The summit may define relations between these two democracies for the duration of the Obama administration and beyond. The White House seems to be intentionally slighting Israel in advance of the summit, even as it raises the stakes.

JERUSALEM -Benjamin Netanyahu, taking office as Israeli prime minister Tuesday amid heckling by leftist and Arab lawmakers, offered to seek a "permanent arrangement" for limited Palestinian self-rule. "We do not wish to rule another people," the conservative leader declared in a speech to the Knesset, Israel's parliament. Without endorsing the goal of sovereignty for the Palestinians, he said he favored an accord giving them "all the powers necessary to rule themselves, except those that would threaten Israel's existence and security."

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert defended yesterday his country's 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip and pledged to defend the military against international calls for an investigation of potential war crimes. "The soldiers and commanders who were sent on missions in Gaza must know that they are safe from various tribunals and that the State of Israel will assist them on this issue and defend them," Olmert said before his weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, in comments released by the government.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama, underscoring a commitment to more aggressive U.S. diplomacy, named two Democratic heavyweights yesterday as administration envoys to two of the world's most troubled regions. Obama appointed former Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, a Maine Democrat, as special envoy to the Middle East and former U.S. Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke as special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Appearing before an audience of senior diplomats at the State Department, Obama said his administration would "actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace" in the Middle East, though "no one doubts the difficulty of the road ahead."

Jerusalem - Declaring Hamas "badly beaten," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered a unilateral halt to Israel's punishing offensive in the Gaza Strip starting yesterday. But he said Israeli forces will stay in the Palestinian territory for now, and Hamas threatened to keep fighting until they leave. Israel's decision, which took effect at 2 a.m., could bring relief to the battered coastal enclave after 22 days of airstrikes and a thundering ground offensive that killed more than 1,200 people and reduced entire residential city blocks to rubble.

JERUSALEM - After 19 days under Israeli military assault and Egyptian diplomatic pressure, Hamas softened its terms for a cease-fire yesterday as fighting in the Gaza Strip pushed the death toll past 1,000. The militant Palestinian group altered its stance in talks with Egyptian mediators in Cairo. It was the first sign of progress toward a deal to end the punishing offensive and halt rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel. Israel announced that it would send an emissary, Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad, to Cairo today to discuss a cease-fire proposal with the Egyptians.

JERUSALEM - Israel yesterday faced a growing confrontation with aid groups alarmed by the toll its offensive against Hamas is taking on civilians, while the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution early today calling for an immediate and durable Gaza cease-fire. Israel and Hamas are not party to the agreement - which was passed by a vote of 14-0 with the U.S. abstaining - and it will be up to them to stop their military activities. But the resolution, which followed three days of intense negotiations between ministers from key Arab nations and Western powers, would allow for the opening of border crossings to Gaza.

JERUSALEM - Israel and Hamas scaled back their fighting in the Gaza Strip yesterday and considered a cease-fire proposal from Egypt and France, even as Israeli leaders weighed a deeper assault into the Palestinian militant group's urban strongholds. Fighting on the 12th day of the air, land and sea offensive all but halted for three hours during a unilateral Israeli pause. Israeli officials said they wanted to give diplomacy a chance, but they indicated that a decision to end or intensify the operation, aimed at halting rocket fire into Israel, could come by week's end. "From Israel's perspective, there's no contradiction between pursuing the military targets in Gaza and working in parallel on the diplomatic track," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev.

The overnight summary of the Israel Defense Forces operations in the Gaza Strip highlights the targets successfully hit: a senior Hamas leader and architect of the group's rocket groups, several gunmen, two weapons factories and 13 storage sites, two smuggling tunnels and the homes of four Hamas commanders. What the combat tally omits is the 58 Gazans killed yesterday and the scores of women and children wounded in punishing air strikes now in their 11th day. Israel's military objective, the legitimacy of its cause - to defend its people and halt Hamas' terrorizing rocket attacks on Israeli cities - is being eclipsed by the devastation experienced by Palestinian civilians who are trapped in an impoverished peninsula with no escape.