Witnessing a row of women weeping openly at the Western Wall, Deirdre Reynolds couldn’t help but wish she had some of their faith on a trip the Holy Land.

Israel’s opposition leader has conceded defeat in the country’s election.

The Israeli military has found the bodies of three missing teenagers, just over two weeks after they were abducted in the West Bank, allegedly by Hamas militants.

Pope Francis navigated the minefield of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict yesterday and humbly bowed to kiss the hands of Holocaust survivors on the last day of a Mideast trip laden with bold personal gestures.

Pope Francis has honoured those killed in the Holocaust as he capped his three-day Middle East trip with poignant stops at some of the holiest and most haunting sites for Jewish people.

Israeli police have arrested five women who were praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for performing religious rituals that ultra-Orthodox Jews say are reserved for men.

US presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke aggressively yesterday about protecting Israel from Iranian nuclear threats and suggested that he was open to breaking with US policy dating to 1967 by moving the United States embassy to Jerusalem if the Israelis asked.

Mitt Romney has tried to pull back from making new American policy on Iran, distancing himself from an adviser’s assertion that the US presidential candidate would “respect” an Israeli decision for unilateral military action to prevent Tehran from gaining nuclear capability.

Jerusalem's Western Wall has been declared off limits to the faithful on the holiest day of the week because of security cameras that are blamed for desecrating the Sabbath.

Crowds of Palestinian youths went on the rampage in east Jerusalem today as a sudden burst of violence clouded fragile peace efforts.

JUDAISM’S holiest prayer site has entered the Twitter age.

Pope Benedict XVI assured his followers in the Holy Land that peace is possible, as he ended his Middle East visit today by putting aside the contentious issues he has confronted and coming as a pilgrim to the site of Jesus’ crucifixion.

The pope took his message of peace to the most disputed site in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today, urging both sides to engage in “a sincere dialogue aimed at building a world of justice and peace”.

Israelis put aside their many divisions today to remember more than 22,000 fallen soldiers and terror victims, mournfully aware that the strife that led to those deaths is far from over.

DEVOUT Jews around the world yesterday observed a ritual performed only once every 28 years, saying their morning prayers under the open sky in a ceremony called the “blessing of the sun”.

The trouble is because Obama has set himself up as no mere politician, his willingness to make a casual promise he cannot keep makes voters doubt all his other promises.

Arab leaders and international envoys are preparing for a conference on peace in the Middle East today.

Gala celebrations will mark the 40th anniversary of the moment many Israelis see as their most glorious – the dramatic unification of Jerusalem under their control in the 1967 Middle East war.

The Jerusalem municipality will submit new plans for a walkway leading to a disputed holy compound, a city spokesman said today.

Palestinian teenagers threw rocks at Israeli police and attacked a Canadian tourist bus today in a new wave of protests against ongoing Israeli construction near a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.

The supreme leader of Iran has called on Islamic nations to retaliate against Israel over excavations being carried out near a hotly disputed holy site in Jerusalem.

Latin pop hunk Enrique Iglesias caused a frenzy in Jerusalem, Israel, on Thursday when he visited the Western Wall.

The centrist Kadima Party dropped in opinion polls today, a day before Israel’s elections, a sign acting that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert might have difficulty forming a coalition that will back his plan to withdraw from parts of the West Bank and draw Israel’s final borders by 2010.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underwent an additional brain scan today as doctors prepared to assess how much damage the Israeli leader has suffered from his severe stroke.

With Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recovering from emergency brain surgery today, his doctors said it was still too early to assess how much damage the Israeli leader has suffered from a massive stroke. Independent experts said the prognosis remained grim.

The evacuation of settlers from the Gaza Strip has been completed, and only one family remains with the permission of the military, a police official said.

Tens of thousands of opponents of Israel’s pullout from Gaza and part of the West Bank gathered in downtown Tel Aviv this evening for their last large-scale demonstration before the withdrawal is to begin.

US First Lady Laura Bush said today she was not surprised to be met by protesters during her tour of Mideast holy sites and pledged the United States will do all it can to help resolve age-old conflicts.

Laura Bush met with the wife of Israel’s president today, as part of a Middle East tour meant to promote women’s rights and help defuse growing anti-American sentiment in the region.

Pop diva Madonna made a midnight pilgrimage to a Jerusalem cemetery early today, holding a mystical candlelit ceremony at the grave of a Jewish sage.

The Material Girl was flying to the Holy Land today on a spiritual quest.

Tens of thousands of Israelis linked hands today in a human chain in a protest against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to dismantle the Jewish settlements and withdraw the army from the Gaza Strip.

A note is seen placed at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. From this week notes can be sent by e-mail.

Three Palestinians were killed and 20 other people wounded by Israeli gunfire when tanks and armoured vehicles entered the Rafah refugee camp on the Gaza-Egypt border today, hospital officials said.

EGYPTIAN Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher was attacked by Muslim extremists as he prayed yesterday at one of Islam’s holiest sites, the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Two years of talks between former Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have produced a 50-page peace deal that could be the basis for eventual official negotiations, even though it has no formal standing, participants said today.

PALESTINIAN Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas convened an emergency cabinet meeting yesterday to respond to a Hamas suicide bombing that killed 20 people.

Security was stepped up across Israel today after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus packed with Jews returning from evening prayers, killing at least 20 people.

A suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus packed with Jewish worshippers returning from the Western Wall in Jerusalem, killing at least 18 people, including five children.

A SUICIDE bomber blew up a bus packed with Jews returning from the Western Wall last night, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 100 in one of the deadliest bombings in the past three years of fighting.

A suicide bomber blew up a bus packed with Jews returning from the Western Wall tonight, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 100 in one of the deadliest bombings in the past three years of fighting.

Israeli officials have shown little enthusiasm for a Palestinian peace proposal which appears to soften long-standing territorial demands and offers Israel sovereignty in parts of the Old City of Jerusalem.

An explosion ripped through a shack in the West Bank today, killing six Palestinian activists in Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement in one of the deadliest single episodes in 10 months of Mideast violence.