Israel will keep all access to the Gaza Strip closed Tuesday, said an Israeli spokesman.

“This decision has been taken by the Defence Minister Ehud Barak because of the continued Palestinian rocket fire at southern Israel,” Peter Lerner, of the office handling Israeli activities in the Palestinian territories, told AFP.

Six rockets fired from the Gaza Strip on Monday came down in the Negev desert, southern Israel, without causing any casualties, police said.

The attacks were the latest in and around the besieged Gaza Strip where Israeli forces and Palestinian militants have engaged in almost daily tit-for-tat attacks since November 4.

Food distribution to half the Gaza Strip’s 1.5 million population was to resume on Tuesday but the United Nations fears supplies will soon run out unless Israel eases its crippling blockade.

“Distribution will go on of the very small amount we brought in on Monday,” said UN Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) spokesman Chris Gunness.

“The supplies will last days, not weeks,” he told AFP.

Amid mounting pressure from the international community, Israel last week allowed some industrial fuel to be delivered to Gaza’s sole power plant and on Monday it let in 33 truckloads of humanitarian and other basic supplies.

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during talks on Monday to release 250 Palestinians prisoners next month, a spokesman for Olmert said. ‘The 250 prisoners will be released in advance of the upcoming Muslim holiday,’ said the spokesman, describing the move as a goodwill gesture towards Abbas, who revived peace talks with Israel after breaking with Hamas rivals last year.

GAZA CITY: Four armed Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, Israeli and Palestinian sources said. ‘There was an aerial attack against a (rocket) launching squad in the northen Gaza Strip a few minutes ago,’ an Israeli military spokesman said. ‘The force identified hitting them.’ Doctors at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City said they had received four bodies.

Palestinians said the operatives were from the Hamas-allied Popular Resistance Committees. A spokesman for the group calling himself Abu Attaya said the four were firing mortar shells into Israel when they were killed.

Five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli military operation in Gaza, in the most serious incident since a June truce, Palestinian medical sources said Wednesday. Four Palestinians were killed in two Israeli air raids near the towns of Dir el Balah and El Bureij, the sources said. An Israeli military spokesman confirmed the raids, adding that they targeted armed groups firing mortars.

Israeli troops killed a Hamas fighter and wounded three others on Tuesday, Palestinian medics said, in the first armed clash in the Gaza Strip since a ceasefire was declared in the territory in June. An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops had entered the coastal enclave to destroy a tunnel that Gaza militants had dug under the border to try to abduct soldiers.

GAZA: A Hamas policeman was killed and three others were wounded when an explosive device went off in a police station in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, a spokesman for the force said.
Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan said the device was found earlier in the day in the Hamas-controlled territory and was taken to the police station to be dismantled. While security men were taking the bomb apart, it exploded, causing several secondary blasts, Shahwan said. It was not immediately clear where the explosive device was found and why it had been taken inside the police station instead of being detonated outside.

An Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Gaza’s Islamist rulers has been in place since June. But internal tensions, between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah faction, remain high. Hamas seized control of the coastal strip last year after routing Abbas’s forces.

Accordingt to Reuters, earlier on Thursday, Hamas released 17 jailed Fatah members, saying it set them free as a goodwill gesture before reconciliation talks between the rivals in Cairo on Nov. 9.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Militants from the Gaza Strip fired a rocket into southern Israel on Thursday in violation of a ceasefire and Israel temporarily closed its borders with the Hamas-controlled territory in response, officials said.

The rocket landed near the city of Sderot but there were no casualties or damage, police said. Shortly after, Israel’s defense ministry ordered the closure of all border crossings with the Gaza Strip.

Defense officials did not say when they would be reopened.

The rocket fire came in violation of a June ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Islamist Hamas group. Hamas had agreed to halt rocket attacks in return for the gradual lifting of a blockade Israel imposed on the Gaza Strip two years ago.

The truce has largely held, though Palestinian militants have occasionally fired rockets into Israel, spurring the Jewish state to temporarily close its border with the coastal enclave.

JERUSALEM: Israeli leaders are seriously considering a dormant Saudi plan offering a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for lands captured during the 1967 war, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday.
Barak said it may be time to pursue an overall peace deal for the region since individual negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians have made little progress.
Barak said he has discussed the Saudi plan with Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni, who is in the process of forming a new Israeli government, and that Israel is considering a response.
Saudi Arabia first proposed the peace initiative in 2002, offering pan-Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Arab lands captured in 1967 - the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

The 22-member Arab League endorsed the plan last year.
The Israeli government has in the past described the plan as a good basis for discussion, but expressed some reservations.

Source and full article: dawn.net

RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank: Israeli troops shot dead an 18-year-old Palestinian near a Jewish colony in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, Palestinian medics said. An army spokeswoman said soldiers lying in ambush under cover of darkness opened fire on three men they believed were preparing to throw petrol bombs. They hit one and two fled.

JERUSALEM: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction has rejected a request by Hamas rivals to meet separately ahead of multi-factional reconciliation talks next month in Cairo, Fatah officials said on Tuesday. ‘Hamas has tried to change the Egyptian plan by requesting a bilateral meeting with Fatah which excludes the other 11 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) factions,’ a senior Fatah official told Reuters by telephone from Amman.

Source: dawn