Israeli

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Rami Fadayel traveled yesterday from one world to another, from an Israeli prison cell to this scene in the West Bank: celebratory gunfire by Palestinian police, children waving Palestinian flags, roses from his mother, a kiss from his fiancee and a hero's welcome from hundreds of fellow Palestinians. For the 25-year-old former prisoner, it was a new day in the Middle East, and the events were repeated many times as Israel released 500 Palestinian prisoners, loading them on buses and transporting them to drop-off points in the West Bank and Gaza, where they were reunited with crowds of family and friends.

JERUSALEM - Calling himself "an Israeli at heart," Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, told Israeli legislators yesterday that the burden for achieving peace here rested with the Palestinians, who he said must eradicate violence against Israel. Speaking a day after President Bush met at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, DeLay said Bush "made clear that the prospects of peace are the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority," which must "fight terror and dismantle terrorist capabilities."

JERUSALEM -- Meeting for the second time this month as part of a new U.S.-influenced peace effort, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators bogged down again yesterday over familiar issues: proposed Israeli construction in areas that the Palestinians claim for a future state and Israel's demand that the Palestinians crack down on armed groups. The two sides have made no apparent progress since President Bush convened the peace conference last month in an effort to revive serious peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

JERUSALEM -- Two Hamas militants were killed in an Israeli airstrike yesterday in the northern Gaza Strip after the Palestinian group claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on southern Israel that left an Israeli severely injured. Israel's military said its aircraft targeted fighters who were preparing to launch a Kassam rocket. Militants fired more than two dozen salvos during a day of stepped-up violence. One of the projectiles hit a college campus in Sederot, an Israeli town that is frequently the target of Palestinian rockets, and wounded a 60-year-old worker.

JERUSALEM -- The killing of Mahmoud Abu Hanoud was swift and precise, with at least seven laser-guided missiles fired into his yellow taxi from Israeli Apache helicopters hovering out of sight on a dark, overcast night in the West Bank. To Israeli officials, the assassination Friday of the elusive militant leader of the radical Islamic group Hamas was an important strike against terror -- as much symbolic as practical -- to prevent more suicide bombings. Hanoud is one of up to 65 suspected terrorists killed by Israel in the past 14 months, but he stands out as a member of an elite subgroup -- a popular leader whose death decapitates the military wing of the Hamas militia.

JERUSALEM -- The deadline set by Palestinian militant groups holding an Israeli soldier for Israel to begin releasing Palestinian prisoners or "bear all the consequences" passed early today without any word on the fate of the 19-year-old captive. Abu Muthana, a spokesman for one of the Hamas-linked groups holding Cpl. Gilad Shalit, said that because Israel had ignored their deadline, the militants won't release any information about the soldier. He declined to say whether Shalit is alive.

JERUSALEM -- A U.S.-arranged bid to prevent a dangerous escalation of fighting in south Lebanon collapsed yesterday after a guerrilla rocket attack killed an Israeli soldier, the seventh this year. Immediately after the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak halted Israel's participation in a five-nation meeting intended to restrain the war inside Lebanon between the Jewish state and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. The meeting, the product of intense U.S. efforts after a week of rising violence in south Lebanon, was intended to reaffirm 1996 rules aimed at limiting casualties and damage from the fighting there.

JERUSALEM -- In a rare breach of Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, two heavily armed Palestinians scaled a 25-foot wall yesterday, opened fire on an army outpost and eluded capture for nearly a half-mile before soldiers tracked them down and killed them, Israeli officials said. The incident was part of a surge in violent clashes along the Israel-Gaza border and in the West Bank that left 21 Palestinians dead during the week, one of the summer's bloodiest. Four of the dead were noncombatants.

YOU COULD say the Camp David talks failed because of divisions over Jerusalem, refugees, or water, but the real reason is that neither side prepared its constituents for peace. This is especially true for Israel, which holds most of the cards. Israel's political leaders must take the plunge and courageously admit, "We took their land, and now we must give it back." Most Israeli Jews sense the occupied territories are not really theirs, but they have never been told so by their own leaders.

JERUSALEM - During 11 days of fighting in the West Bank, the Israeli army has unleashed a military campaign of controlled fury across a volatile urban battlefield of ancient cities and teeming refugee camps. President Bush and other world leaders have demanded that the operation end immediately, now that it has devastated the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority, forced tens of thousands of fearful civilians to remain in their homes and left Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat isolated in his ruined compound in Ramallah.