A Palestinian Cabinet member died shortly after he and other protesters scuffled with Israeli troops near a West Bank village. The forces also fired tear gas close to the demonstrators, witnesses said.

A Palestinian cabinet member has died shortly after he and other protesters scuffled with Israeli troops near a West Bank village.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Hamas and the Islamic State group (IS) are “branches of the same poisonous tree,” both bent on world domination through terror, just as the Nazis were.

Hamas has signed a pledge to back any Palestinian bid to join the International Criminal Court, two senior officials in the group said today.

Israeli aircraft have struck 30 houses in the Gaza Strip, killing a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group and two of his sons.

The Gaza-based Islamist group Hamas and president Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) have agreed to a unity pact, both sides announced in a joint news conference yesterday.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned to death in 2004 with radioactive polonium, his widow Suha said yesterday after receiving the results of Swiss forensic tests on her husband’s corpse.

The double explosion at the Boston Marathon is the latest in a number of terrorist attacks on sporting events.

The supreme leader of the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas is to step down, clearing the way for the movement to choose a new head for the first time in more than 15 years, senior officials said.

A meeting of international envoys due to be held in the West Bank in support of the Palestinian leadership was axed yesterday after Israel refused to admit attendees from four countries, Palestinian officials said.

ISRAEL said yesterday it was rethinking its threat to bar foreign journalists from entering the country for 10 years if they board a new aid flotilla that plans to challenge the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The West Bank Palestinian leadership formally decided to press ahead with efforts in September to win United Nations recognition of a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians are ready to end all historic claims against Israel once they establish their state in the lands occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War, President Mahmoud Abbas said.

The Palestinians will study alternatives to peace talks with Israel in the coming days, a top PLO official said , after the Jewish state gave the green light to build 238 new houses on war-won land.

THE Palestinians want peace talks with Israel to continue, US envoy George Mitchell said in Cairo yesterday, a day after the Palestine Liberation Organisation urged president Mahmoud Abbas to quit the negotiations.

Dozens of senior Palestinians backed President Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to negotiate with Israel as long as it builds in West Bank settlements.

Dozens of senior Palestinians today backed President Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to negotiate with Israel as long as it builds in West Bank settlements.

Israel’s prime minister has demanded that any future Palestinian state be demilitarised and recognise Israel as the Jewish homeland, as he set out his starting position for new Middle East peace talks this week.

Indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are underway today after months of diplomacy by Washington's special Middle East envoy.

Britain announced the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat today after concluding Tel Aviv forged the UK passports used by the killers of a Hamas commander.

A SCEPTICAL Palestinian leadership agreed yesterday to hold US-mediated peace talks with Israel for four months, effectively ending a 14-month breakdown in communications between the two sides.

Mahmoud Darwish, the world’s most recognised Palestinian poet, whose prose gave voice to the Palestinian experience of exile and infighting, died today in Houston, Texas. He was 67.

George Habash, a long-time rival of Yasser Arafat who led the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s second-largest faction which pioneered aeroplane hijackings, died today in Jordan. He was 81.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today endorsed the idea of early elections, deepening animosities with Hamas following the Islamic militant group’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip.

A group representing Israeli victims of Palestinian violence is mounting a court challenge against the planned release on Friday of 256 prisoners.

Israel will release from prison this week a confidant of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Palestinian newspaper reported today.

Hamas fighters overran one of the rival Fatah movement's most important Palestinians security installations in the Gaza Strip today.

ISRAEL formally declared last year’s fighting with Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas a war yesterday, but it is searching for a name for the 34-day conflict.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today found her plans to lead a symbolic Middle East peace summit eclipsed amid uncertainty and disagreement over how to handle a power-sharing deal to end internal Palestinian fighting.

Rival Palestinian leaders have signed an agreement on a power-sharing government in Saudi-brokered talks.

Rival Palestinian delegations met in the dark hours of the morning as they prepared for crucial talks in the Saudi holy city Macca today on ending their bloody street battles and resuming the peace process with Israel.

Saudi Arabia brought the two main Palestinian leaders to Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, today for a last-ditch attempt to end their bloody conflict and complete a power-sharing agreement on a coalition government.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said today he will not allow internal fighting to continue and called on Palestinian factions to respect each other.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has called for an early election to end his violent clash with Hamas, in a gamble that banks on the support of Palestinians as he seeks to weaken the Islamic militants, avoid civil war and continue peace overtures with Israel.

PALESTINIAN negotiators last night said a deal on a unity government could be days away, but that it might be delayed by difficulties in working out a parallel prisoner swap with Israel.

The Hamas-controlled Palestinian government will resign within two or three days to make way for a new unity government that could help end a punishing Western aid boycott and resume long-frozen peace talks with Israel, a senior Palestinian negotiator said today.

President Mahmoud Abbas’ efforts to set up a Palestinian government acceptable to the West suffered a new setback when the prime minister from the Islamic militant Hamas group said he would not lead a coalition that recognised Israel.

President Mahmoud Abbas’ bumpy efforts to set up a Palestinian government acceptable to the West suffered a new setback today, after the prime minister from the Islamic militant group Hamas said he would not lead a coalition that recognises Israel.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations today that the planned national unity government would recognise Israel.

Hamas officials today gave Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas the go-ahead for negotiations with Israel, a major shift in the militant Islamic group’s position toward the Jewish state as it worked to end its international isolation.

The top Palestinian Fatah guerrilla leader in Lebanon, facing a death sentence passed in absentia, today surrendered to a military court, which quickly retried him and found him innocent.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today called for secret negotiations with Israel and predicted that such talks could produce a peace agreement within a year.

Militant Islamic group Hamas risked world isolation today after the movement’s shock victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections.

A leading Norwegian pro-Palestinian activist today claimed she infiltrated the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad as a double agent in the 1980s.