NEWS
By Richard Boudreaux | January 19, 2009
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.
NEWS
By Richard Boudreaux | February 4, 2009
JERUSALEM - Less than a week before Israeli voters pick a new leader, the candidate most involved in negotiations with the Palestinians is on the defensive over newly reported details of an interim peace accord offered months ago by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the standard bearer of Olmert's centrist Kadima Party, was already trailing in the polls before the disclosures last week prompted the hawkish front-runner to accuse her of agreeing to "surrender" parts of Jerusalem for an independent Palestinian state.
NEWS
By Saree Makdisi | June 22, 2007
In the West, there's a huge sense of relief. The Hamas-led government that has been causing everyone so much trouble has been isolated in Gaza, and a new government has been appointed in the West Bank by the "moderate," peace-loving Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. So why, then, do Palestinians not share in the relief? Well, for one thing, the old government had been democratically elected; now it has been dismissed out of hand by presidential fiat. There's also the fact that the new prime minister appointed by Mr. Abbas - Salam Fayyad - has the support of the West, but his election list won only 2 percent of the votes in the same election that swept Hamas to victory.
NEWS
By John Murphy | June 14, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Seizing key roads and military compounds, and forcing the surrender of hundreds of their Fatah rivals, Hamas gunmen armed with rifles, mortars and grenades made substantial progress yesterday toward their apparent goal of conquering the entire Gaza Strip. Such rapid military progress by the highly organized and disciplined Islamic militant group raises the question of what a definitive Hamas victory in Gaza would mean for the Palestinians, the Israelis and the Middle East as a whole.
NEWS
By PAUL MOORE | November 25, 2007
Last Sunday, The Sun published a comprehensive article by Middle East correspondent John Murphy, reporting that since 2000 Israel has sent more than 5,000 Palestinian juveniles to jail under a largely concealed military justice system. Based on months of detailed work, Murphy documented how a number of juveniles have been arrested - often on trivial charges - and how they are receiving increasingly harsh sentences. Based on statistics from human rights organizations, Israeli military documents and his own reporting, Murphy showed that many of the juveniles are detained for throwing stones and lesser offenses such as membership in a "banned organization" - a charge that can stem from such nonviolent actions as setting up chairs for meetings or putting up posters for militant groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
NEWS
By John Murphy | May 14, 2007
NABLUS, West Bank -- At the Beit Furik checkpoint east of Nablus, a long line of Palestinians presses toward a pair of metal turnstiles, waiting for Israeli soldiers to let them through. The temperature has climbed to 99 degrees. Tensions are rising, too. A 50-year-old Palestinian woman in a black hijab wants to harvest her fields on the other side of the checkpoint, but the soldiers won't allow her to pass. Before the dispute escalates, two Israeli women rush forward, asking if they can help.
NEWS
By John Murphy | January 11, 2007
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.
NEWS
November 21, 2007
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.
NEWS
By Ken Ellingwood | February 27, 2007
JERUSALEM -- A Palestinian man was killed and another wounded yesterday as a major Israeli military raid in Nablus kept the heart of the West Bank city under curfew for the second consecutive day. The Israeli army said the incursion, the largest in Nablus in months, was aimed at armed militants and what it calls the "terrorist infrastructure" rooted in a city that has long been a hotbed for Palestinian fighters. Troops backed by armored vehicles and bulldozers operated in the Old City section, a cramped labyrinth of shops and apartments.
NEWS
By Maher Abukhater and Ken Ellingwood | June 17, 2007
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.