Negative Blogs

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Egypt Monday to discuss with President Hosni Mubarak plans to resume Mideast peace talks later this week.

The two leaders met in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. No details were released about the 90-minute meeting. A statement from Mr. Netenyahu’s office says it took place “in a positive and constructive atmosphere.”

The discussions were expected to focus on preparations for the beginning of indirect U.S.-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians.

Monday’s meeting comes ahead of a visit by U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, who is due to arrive in the Middle East this week. He will meet separately with Israeli and Palestinian officials with the goal of getting both sides to agree to direct negotiations.

The U.S. has called on Arab countries to help restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, saying Palestinians must have a state of their own. The Arab League has expressed support for such negotiations.

Direct negotiations stopped after Israeli forces entered the Gaza Strip in December, 2008 to stop cross-border rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.

A plan to begin U.S.-brokered indirect talks in March collapsed when Israel announced plans to build new housing for Jews in East Jerusalem, an area captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, right, meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the red sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, 3 May 2010.

Recent Palestinian attacks have ratcheted up tensions.

GAZA - Israeli warplanes bombed the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Friday, following a rocket attack on southern Israel a day earlier.

Three children were reported injured by flying debris after the air raids that came in the early hours of Friday in eastern Gaza City, al-Jazeera reported.

The Israeli military said the air strikes targeted four weapons factories, BBC News reported. There was confusion about the number of strikes with reports ranging from seven to 13.

Reuters witnesses said four of the air strikes took place near the central town of Khan Younis, the site of a deadly clash last week between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen. A fifth air strike rocked Gaza City.

Hamas security officials said 10 sites were hit: a cheese factory, a movie-making complex built by the territory’s Islamic militant Hamas rulers and open areas where militants train.

Rocket fire
The Israeli military said the air strikes came in response to a rocket attack Thursday, which caused no injuries.

“The strikes are in response to the rocket firing on Thursday,” the Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement on its Web site.

“Nearly 20 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip during March, killing one man … and doubling the number of rockets fired this year.”

More than 40 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel since the beginning of the year, the IDF statement said.

A string of recent Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel has ratcheted up tensions. Last year, Israel conducted a bruising war in Gaza after years of rocket attacks.

A Palestinian man walks through a destroyed workshop at the scene of an overnight Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Friday.

A U.S. envoy’s postponement of his Mideast trip appeared Tuesday to deepen one of the worst U.S.-Israeli feuds in memory — even as Israel’s foreign minister signaled his government had no intention of curtailing the contentious construction at the heart of the row.

Hundreds of Palestinians hurled rocks at police and set tires and garbage bins ablaze across the holy city’s volatile eastern sector, where the construction is planned. Plumes of black smoke billowed and the air reeked of tear gas in the heaviest clashes in the city in months.

Youths in one east Jerusalem neighborhood hoisted a giant Palestinian flag and shouted, “We’ll die in Palestine, Palestine will live.”

Thousands of police, including anti-riot units armed with assault rifles, stun grenades and batons, were deployed across east Jerusalem to stifle the unrest. No serious injuries were reported.

The diplomatic crisis erupted last week after Israel announced during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden that it would build 1,600 apartments for Jews in disputed east Jerusalem, the sector of the holy city that the Palestinians claim for a future capital.

The announcement enraged Palestinians, who have threatened to bow out of U.S.-brokered peace talks that were supposed to begin in the coming days. The Obama administration, fuming over what it called the “insulting” Israeli conduct, has demanded that Israel call off the project.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio that demands to halt Israeli construction there “are unreasonable” and predicted the row with the U.S. would blow over, saying neither side had an interest in escalation.

But Washington notified Israel early Tuesday that envoy George Mitchell had put off his trip indefinitely. Mitchell had planned on coming to wrap up preparations for relaunching Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But now it’s not clear when the indirect talks, to be mediated by Mitchell, will begin.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apologized for the timing of the project’s approval, but he has not said it would be canceled. On Monday, he defended four decades of Jewish construction in east Jerusalem and said it “in no way” hurts Palestinians.

The feud is feeding already high tensions in east Jerusalem, where Jews and Palestinians live together uneasily.

The violence also threatened to spread to the West Bank. At the main checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem, dozens of Palestinian teens threw rocks and a few firebombs at Israeli troops, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

In east Jerusalem, security forces, some on horseback, charged a group of more than 100 youths, who had set garbage bins afire and lobbed rocks at police. Palestinian merchants shuttered their stores, and Palestinian schools in the city were closed.

The Palestinian rescue service said six people were lightly injured. Israeli police said 39 people were arrested, including eight minors.

Palestinian officials called on the public to defend Muslim religious interests in Jerusalem following the rededication Monday of a historic synagogue in the Jewish quarter of the Old City.

The rededication has stoked recurring but unsubstantiated rumors that Jewish extremists are planning to take over the hilltop shrine at the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The site, known to Jews as Temple Mount, was home to the biblical Jewish temples and is Judaism’s holiest site. Muslims call it the Noble Sanctuary and it hosts the Al-Aqsa mosque complex, Islam’s third-holiest shrine.

But the outbreak of violence also appeared to reflect deeper frustration amid a yearlong standstill in peace efforts.

Palestinians, who number about 250,000 in east Jerusalem, see the building of new settlements and the presence of some 180,000 Jews there as a grave challenge to their claims to the territory.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem after capturing it from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war. Most Israelis accept the Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem as part of Israel, and previous peace proposals have allowed them to remain in Israeli hands. Hard money training.

Hamas claimed Friday that two ex-officers from the rival Fatah organization were involved in the assassination of a Hamas operative in Dubai, and Fatah shot back by insinuating Hamas members were the ones who collaborated with the killers.

The slaying of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a luxury Dubai hotel room last month has widely been blamed on Israel’s Mossad spy agency but it also has sparked bitter recriminations among the rival Palestinian factions, which have long competed for influence in the Palestinian territories.

Dubai police unveiled 11 suspects — 10 men and one woman — who apparently traveled to Dubai on European passports with real names and authentic data, but possibly altered photos.

Dubai also said police had two Palestinians in custody for alleged involvement in the murder of al-Mabhouh, whose body was found on Jan. 20. The two were arrested in Jordan shortly after the killing, then sent back to Dubai.

A Hamas Web site, the Palestine Information Center, said those two men were former Fatah security officers and current employees of a senior Fatah official, who was not identified. Dubai authorities have not identified the two Palestinians and would not comment Friday.

Hamas stopped short of accusing Fatah of collaborating with the Mossad, however. Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’ leadership in Damascus, told The Associated Press on Friday that Hamas is “not accusing any party” other than Israel, though he said the agents might have used “small collaborators for logistic issues.”

The Hamas Web site identifies the two men as Anwar Shheibar and Ahmad Hassanain. It says they served in Fatah’s security services in Gaza, fled the territory in 2006, and currently work for a construction company owned by a high-ranking Fatah official, Mohammed Dahlan.

Fatah denies connection
Dahlan denied any connection to the men or to the killing.

“I don’t have any companies in Dubai and I don’t know these people,” he told The Associated Press by telephone from Amman, Jordan.

“Only Hamas knew he (al-Mabhouh) was in Dubai, so it’s their fault, not the Palestinian Authority’s,” he said. “For political reasons Hamas is blaming us for its own internal problems.”

A Fatah spokesman also denied the charge. “Hamas is trying by these accusations to cover up the security flaws in the first lines of its leadership,” said Adnan Damiri, a spokesman for Palestinian security forces in the Fatah-ruled West Bank. “Hamas is the only one to know the movement of Al-Mabhouh, and from there the information went to the Israelis.”

Officials of the Fatah-affiliated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank city of Ramallah said the two men are former members of Fatah who later joined Hamas security forces in Gaza. They said the men were sent to Dubai on Hamas business last month but had no further details. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been given permission to comment publicly.

Israel mum
Israel has refused to comment on accusations it was behind the killing, with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman saying Wednesday that “Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies.”

Hamas and Fatah have been trading accusations over the affair for days, but Friday’s allegations were the first time names were used. Each side has made attempts to tone down the rhetoric — perhaps to avoid destroying prospects for reconciliation between the rivals who control separate territories on opposite sides of Israel.

The Western-backed Fatah and the Islamic militant Hamas fought a bloody civil war in 2007 that left Hamas in charge of Gaza and Fatah in control of the West Bank. Palestinians hope to establish a state in both areas. Hard money training.

It was supposed to be a pleasant surprise, but turned into the shock of a lifetime.

A woman in Tel Aviv, Israel, gave her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise gift, throwing out the old tattered bed her mother had slept on for decades. The gesture ended up bankrupting Annat’s mother, who had stuffed her savings of nearly $1 million inside her old bed for decades, Annat told Israel Army Radio.

A massive search is under way at the city dump, where security has been beefed up to keep out treasure-seekers who have heard Annat’s story in Israeli media.

Annat, who did not want to reveal the rest of her name, told Israel Army Radio that she woke up early Sunday to get a good deal on a new mattress as a surprise for her mother.