Middle East, Palestine | featured news

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease-fire, the Egyptian foreign minister said Wednesday, ending eight days of fighting that killed more than 140 Palestinians and five Israelis. The cease-fire is set to start at 9 p.m. Cairo time (2 p.m. ET), Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr announced in a news conference alongside visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Palestinian militants for the first time targeted the holy city of Jerusalem on Friday with rocket fire as Israel and the Islamist group Hamas inched closer to all-out war.

The head of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has been killed during Israeli air and naval strikes in the Gaza Strip. Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari and another Hamas official died when the car they were in was hit in Gaza City. It follows a wave of rocket attacks against Israel from the territory.

Lifting a nearly 25-year veil of secrecy, Israel has admitted that it killed the deputy of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in a 1988 raid in Tunis.

A senior Palestinian official says Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is undermining hopes for peace and democracy in the Middle East. A senior Palestinian official says Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is undermining hopes for peace and democracy in the Middle East.

A new video clip of Republican US presidential challenger Mitt Romney shows him telling a private meeting of donors that the Palestinians have no interest in peace with Israel.

Attaf Abu Ali, who drives a taxi van, had a hand-lettered sign on his vehicle Thursday that said: “Car for sale, with driver.” “I can’t live off of this,” Abu Ali said of his work, ticking off a list of operating expenses, the most onerous among them the rising price of diesel fuel.

President Obama, seeking to quell a storm of criticism from Republicans and pro-Israel groups, directed the Democratic Party on Wednesday to amend its platform to restore language declaring Jerusalem the Israeli capital.

Prosecutors have opened a murder inquiry into the 2004 death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a judicial official tells the Sipa news agency.

Armed clashes erupted in at least three Syrian cities on Friday amid reports of a deadly mortar attack on a major Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, an event that threatened to draw Syria’s displaced Palestinian population into its civil war... Western nations, led by the United States, have accused Russia of helping to sabotage Mr. Annan’s diplomacy and have questioned the need for a United Nations monitoring presence in Syria if there is no viable peace plan to monitor.