JERUSALEM _ Plumes of smoke engulfed a neighborhood east of Gaza City on Wednesday as Israel’s leaders considered a peace plan put forth by France and Egypt on the 12th day of their campaign to stop rocket fire into Israel. Sounds of heavy gunfire engulfed the Zeitoun neighborhood east of Gaza City and Israel said it struck 40 Hamas targets … Read More
EREZ CROSSING, Israel (AP) —Israel allowed several hundred Palestinians with foreign passports to flee Gaza on Friday, even as its warplanes bombed a mosque it said was used to store weapons and destroyed homes of more than a dozen Hamas operatives. The evacuees told of crippling shortages of water, electricity and medicine, echoing a U.N. warning of a deepening humanitarian … Read More
ASHKELON, Israel (AP) — Israel’s crushing aerial assault on Gaza has caused a significant shift in the country’s mood, replacing lingering helplessness and frustration over Hamas rocket attacks with a sense of might and vindication. Leaders who were unpopular only a week ago have suddenly surged in the public’s esteem. But that could change quickly if the fighting drags on … Read More
ASHDOD, Israel (AP) – As rockets from Gaza reach deeper into Israel than ever before, they may be weakening what has long been a cornerstone of Middle East peace efforts — the prospect of exchanging land for peace. Israeli hard-liners have warned for many years that any territory Israel vacates will be used to attack it. Now they can point to … Read More
SDEROT, Israel (AP) — This working-class border town has been pounded with several thousand missiles fired out of Gaza since 2001. Now anxiety is mixed with satisfaction that Israel’s military is finally getting even with its tormentors. “It’s about time,” said Victor Turjeman, a 33-year-old electrician. “We’ve been waiting for this for eight years.” In that time, rockets have killed eight … Read More
ASHKELON, Israel (AP) — The largest hospital on Israel’s southern coast has gone underground. Wary of a missile strike against it from the nearby Gaza Strip, Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital has moved its most essential departments into an underground bomb shelter. The threat is a real one: In February a rocket from Gaza landed adjacent to the hospital’s helicopter pad and … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) –Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip will pay a “heavy price” if they continue to target Israel, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned today, as the Israeli military wrapped up preparations for a possible invasion of the coastal territory. In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak urged Israel to show restraint in a meeting with visiting Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi … Read More
JERUSALEM — The star of Israel’s election campaign seems to be Barack Obama. A religious party has translated “yes we can” into Hebrew. Front-runner Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s Web page looks a lot like Obama’s, and a candidate for Parliament has his own version of an “Obama-girl” Internet ad. As for Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, vying with Netanyahu for the … Read More
TEL AVIV, Israel — After three grueling years of compulsory service in the Israeli military, 21-year-old Arbel Altschuler is heading for some peace and quiet in what has become the most popular haven for thousands of recently discharged Israeli soldiers — India. Even after last week’s deadly attacks in Mumbai, where the 171 killed included six people at a Jewish … Read More
TEL AVIV, Israel — A bomb exploded in a car carrying one of Israel’s top mafia kingpins on Monday, killing him and threatening to unleash an all-out war in Israel’s increasingly violent underworld. Israeli police officials identified the dead man as Yaakov Alperon – known informally as “Don Alperon” – the head of one of the country’s most powerful crime … Read More
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, once one of Israel’s leading hawks, is leaving office an outspoken dove. Forced out by corruption charges, Olmert is saying something that used to be fringe opinion among Israelis – that to make peace with the Palestinians, Israel must make sweeping territorial concessions, including Arab parts of Jerusalem. “We must relinquish … parts of … Read More
JERUSALEM (AP) — It took time, but Israeli police detectives have finally cracked one of the country’s greatest crimes — the legendary heist of a priceless clock collection from a Jerusalem museum a quarter century ago. The 1983 theft, the costliest in Israel’s history, saw 106 timepieces worth millions of dollars disappear from the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art. … Read More
ASHKELON, Israel (AP) — Bettina Goering ran away from home at 13, lived on a promiscuous commune in India and later fled to the U.S. and had herself sterilized. It was all part of an attempt to escape the legacy of her last name. Her great-uncle was the infamous Nazi leader Hermann Goering. Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command, he headed the vaunted … Read More
TEL AVIV, Israel — Melissa Schwab is no Zionist zealot. She’s not an Orthodox Jew seeking to be nearer to God. She didn’t flee anti-Semitism. So why move nearly 9,000 miles from her home in Hawaii and settle in life-on-the-edge Israel? Because, she says, she likes a lifestyle that is “secular and normal” while offering something “a bit more meaningful.” … Read More
GONDAR, Ethiopia — Sitting in a leaky, flyblown hut, a few dozen Ethiopian villagers are anxiously waiting to be transported to another world. They have just been given word that their years of waiting are over, and that soon they will make a 2,000-mile journey by land and air with what is probably the last wave of Ethiopian immigrants to … Read More