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A Palestinian court on Monday sentenced a father and son to death for helping Israel carry out a failed assassination attempt against a Hamas leader, Palestinian officials said. The Gaza criminal court earlier convicted Mohammed Abu Ganas, 53, and his son Rami, 22, of providing information to a foreign country and harming Palestinian interests. The father and son were arrested last December. In April, the court said, the two were heard confessing to a journalist that they aided Israeli intelligence in setting up an attempt on the life of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi on June 10, 2003. That attempt...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration is preparing with European allies to help the Palestinian Authority organize January elections and improve its security forces to crack down on terrorism, U.S. officials and diplomats said on Sunday. The immediate priority, they said, is getting funding, monitors and technical assistance to the Palestinians for the Jan. 9 presidential elections to choose a successor to Yasser Arafat, who died last week. President Bush is reconsidering redirecting millions of dollars in U.S. funding to nongovernmental organizations to help prepare for the elections and provide other support. As much as $75 million already is in...

Gunmen belonging to the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, Monday shot and killed two Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel. The group said in a leaflet distributed in the West Bank that the two, Fadel Odeh and Amjad Ajaj, had confessed to working for the Shin Bet and assisting in the killing of three Fatah fugitives. Odeh, 26, and Ajaj, 25, were kidnapped two weeks ago from their homes in the village of Saideh in the Tulkarem area. Their families said the kidnappers were members of the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades. Around noon Monday, the kidnappers brought Ajaj...

Palestinian officials said Sunday that they are ready for a cease-fire with Israel as a first step toward reviving the stalled road map peace plan. Militant groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas told Egyptian mediators they are ready to commit to a cease-fire, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Sha'ath said. Sha'ath said he made the cease-fire proposal during a meeting Saturday in Jordan with United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. "We told Powell that ... we are ready for such a cease-fire if the United States is able to bring an Israeli commitment to such an agreement," he said. Sha'ath said...

Yasser Arafat's PA condemned tonight the attack in Gaza by Israeli helicopters on the Hamas radio station. "This is a cowardly act by a war criminal," Voice of Palestine quoted a senior Palestinian official. The Voice of Palestine called the men who carried out the earlier attack today that left a pregnant mother and her four children dead "an act of heroic martyrdom". The radio station repeatedly used the term "is tish-had" (heroic martyrdom) and "mustash-hidin" (heroic martyrs) to describe the act committed by "two youths". After reporting the attackers names the radio repeated that they were heroic martyrs. The...

More than 1,800 West Bank farmers who were unable to sell their olive oil due to movement restrictions and closures have found a new buyer in the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). In April, the group used $1 million donated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to purchase 302 metric tons of the oil. In turn, WFP donated the product to needy families in Gaza and the southern West Bank. Working with the Ministry of Agriculture, WFP selected farmers from Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Salfeet and Qalqilya who had large families and lived under the poverty line...

The World Bank announced Tuesday that it was establishing a fund to aid the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority. In a news release, the World Bank said the "Public Financial Management Reform Trust Fund" was set up with the aim of "sustaining public services in the face of a severe fiscal crisis." More than three years of Mideast violence have devastated the Palestinian economy, but donors are wary of contributing additional funds to the Palestinian Authority, charging widespread corruption and inefficiency. The current Palestinian budget has a huge shortfall, and without foreign aid, payrolls will not be met, Palestinian officials warn. Palestinian...

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei on Monday said the Palestinian Authority can control the embattled Gaza Strip if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pushes ahead with his plan to withdraw from the Palestinian area. Speaking to reporters in Cairo after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Qurei also blasted Sharon's threats against Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, saying the Israeli government should "release Arafat from his confinement instead of assassinating him." Regarding Gaza, Qurei said the Palestinian Authority can control the battered Mediterranean coastal strip if given the chance to do so. "The Palestinian Authority will continue running Gaza (and) it...

A suspected Palestinian collaborator was executed Sunday evening in Kafr Rima near Ramallah on the West Bank. The suspected collaborator, Hassan Al-Azma, 29, was shot and killed by members of Yasser Arafat linked Fatah Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Ynet reported. Members of the terrorist group told Ynet that they had interrogated Azma for seceral hours, after which he confessed to collaborating with the Israel Defense Forces.

A federal judge in Rhode Island denied a third motion to dismiss a $250m. lawsuit against the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization for the 1996 murder of Yaron Ungar - a US citizen who was killed with his Israeli wife Efrat by Hamas. The PA and PLO's defense of sovereign immunity was originally denied in Nov. 2002 and a default was entered against them; however an appellate court allowed lawyers for the two to file another motion to dismiss in response to an amended complaint submitted after charges were dismissed against top PA officials including Chairman Yasser Arafat. In...

Gaza Palestine Satellite Channel Television in Arabic, official television station of the Palestinian Authority, and Gaza Voice of Palestine in Arabic -- Second Program -- official radio station of the Palestinian Authority broadcasting from Gaza -- at 0950 GMT on 16 April 2004 carry a 25-minute live sermon from Shaykh Zayid Mosque in Gaza. Shaykh Ibrahim al-Mudayris delivers the sermon. After praising God and His messenger, he says suffering leads to victory, citing relevant Koranic verses. Addressing Palestinians, he says 30 March is a national day for us "to declare loyalty to our land, our rights, and our brothers inside...

Israel will consider attacking Hamas' compound in Damascus should the organization move its main power base to Syria following the assassinations of its former leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, in Gaza. There is no proof at this stage that orders to carry out terror attacks are being delivered by Hamas leaders in Damascus to members of the organization in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. However, during meetings recently held by Israeli political and security officials, participants agreed that should intelligence information point to Damascus as Hamas' nerve center, the option of targeting the organization in Syria...

The State Department has been authorized to use $20 million to assist Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). According to a February 27 statement by State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher, President Bush authorized the funds in response to UNRWA's emergency appeal for $193 million to fund food, shelter, health, and other humanitarian needs of over 1.5 million Palestinian refugees. "The United States is the largest bilateral donor to UNRWA. We encourage other donors to contribute urgently to this emergency appeal," said the...

U.S. President George Bush said Syrian messages offering to renew peace talks with Israel were very interesting, and represent an encouraging sign. Bush stated, however, that he wanted to get a clearer idea of Syrian President Bashar Assad's intentions, Israel Radio reported on Thursday. Bush reiterated his demand that Syria cease funding Hezbollah, shut down offices of terror organizations in its territory and keep its border with Iraq impervious to Saddam loyalists and terrorists. Bush was speaking in a television interview to the Arab-language station that the Americans began operating in the Middle East. A spokesman in the Prime Minister's...

Source denies report www.spa.gov.sa/html/archive_e.asp?srcfile=616377&NDay=16/02/2004&wcatg=0 Riyadh, Feb. 16, SPA -- A source at the Ministry of Defense and Aviation has denied a report by Reuters that US officials believe China is cooperating with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia on acquisition of Chinese missiles and that the kingdom helped finance Pakistan's nuclear program hoping this will enable it to acquire a nuclear weapon. The source said these news and information are fabricated and totally incorrect stressing that the kingdom has been and is still calling for a Middle East free from weapons of mass destruction.

Alarmed by a rise in the number of attacks on journalists, the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate and human rights groups have once again appealed to the Palestinian Authority to take stiff measures against perpetrators. The journalists are also planning a one-day strike later this week to protest against the attacks, all of which have been carried out by Fatah gunmen. The most recent attacks took place last week in Ramallah and Gaza City. In the first case, three masked Palestinian gunmen carrying AK-47 assault rifles stormed the offices of the Ramallah-based Al-Quds Educational Television. Assistant manager Haroun Abu Arrah, one of...

Referred to by one international law expert as "the best international lawyer in the world," James Crawford will pose a difficult challenge for the Israeli legal team at the upcoming hearing on the security fence at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Crawford is chairman of the Faculty of Law at Cambridge University and the former director of the Lauterpacht Research Center for International Law. The latter is now headed by Israel's counsel, Cambridge law professor Daniel Bethlehem, who will square off against Crawford at the February 23 ICJ hearing. Crawford, said to be very committed to the...

The Palestinian Authority is considering declaring a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem if Israel tries to impose a boundary on the Palestinians, former PA minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said Monday. Zalman Shoval, a senior aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, warned Israel could annex disputed territories in response. The possibility of the declaration of a Palestinian state was raised at a meeting of Palestinian leaders over the weekend. Abed Rabbo, who is one of the Palestinian initiators of the Geneva Accord, said many of those present supported the idea, but did not say whether Yasser...

The Palestinian Authority on Saturday pressed charges against four Palestinians accused of involvement in an attack on a US diplomatic vehicle in the northern Gaza Strip on October 15. Three Americans were killed and another seriously injured when a roadside bomb was detonated by remote control near their vehicle. The four are Bashir Abu Laban, 41, Muhammed Asaliyeh, 26, Ahmed Safi, 24, and Naim Abu Ful, 43. They were arrested by the PA Preventative Security Force shortly after the attack. PA security officials said they belonged to The Popular Resistance Committees – the only group that had claimed responsibility for...

In the shadow of the horror of this morning's suicide terror in Jerusalem, PMW is distributing an op-ed article that gives insight into the mind of the suicide terrorist. The article was published today in the Jerusalem Post. All TV quotations cited below in the article have been posted on PMW web site and can be seen by clicking the link below. Jerusalem Post Op-Ed: January 29, 2004 It's Aspiration, not Desperation Understanding the Death Worship of the Palestinian Suicide Bomber by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook "I always wanted to be the first woman who sacrifices her life for...