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A group of bipartisan US congressmen is urging reform in UNRWA, the UN body that deals exclusively with Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and calling for alternative solutions to the containment of refugees in squalid camps. "The Palestinian refugees have been used as political pawns for the past 60 years by people who don't want peace in the Middle East," said Congressman Eliot Engel (D-New York) at a meeting of international parliamentarians hosted last week by the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, a bipartisan pro-Israel parliamentary group. "The UN has been part and parcel of this conspiracy," he said. Engel, who...

A few days ago an Israeli air strike killed a member of a Palestinian missile team that had been firing rockets from Gaza. Now the United Nations has come out with an unusual statement of bewilderment and utter shock as the truth has come out. The dead man, Awad al-Qiq, was a U.N. employee and headmaster of a top prep school in Gaza. He was also the chief rocket-maker for Islamic Jihad. Mr. Al-Qiq — not surprisingly, a science teacher — worked for one of the schools run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the...

BY DAY, Awad al-Qiq was a respected teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad. The Israeli air strike that killed the 33-year-old last week also laid bare his apparent double life and embarrassed a UN agency that has long had to reject Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted guerrillas fighting the Jewish state. Students and colleagues, as well as UN officials, denied any knowledge of Qiq's work with explosives. And his family denied he had any militant links, despite a profusion of Islamic Jihad posters...

The US government has pledged 148 million dollars this year to the UN refugee agency to aid Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and neighboring countries, both said Wednesday. The UN Relief and Works Agency said the amount includes 91 million dollars to UNRWA's fund for refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria as well as 57 million dollars to its 2008 West Bank and Gaza emergency appeal. The statement on the UNRWA website follows a similar one on the US State Department's website. "This support is essential for improving the daily lives of Palestine...

Gaza looks just about hopeless these days, and indeed, President Bush basically wrote it off while he was in the region. But the problem of Gaza cannot be wished away and we are not comfortable consigning the Palestinians to life behind bars while Hamas takes Iranian money and works on bigger and more precise missiles with which to destroy Israel. Nor are we comfortable with ongoing military incursions and the social service "squeeze" that Israel has been forced into - even though we know the Israelis are doing their very best to limit the humanitarian crisis. The time has come,...

The Phony "Right of Return" Under international law, there is no such thing as a right of return. If your ancestors left France, or Russia, or anywhere else (regardless of whether they were forced out, or they just wanted to live somewhere else), then you have no right of return to France or Russia. Nor do your grandchildren. Nevertheless, UNRWA tells the "refugees" that they have a "right of return"” to Israel—that the grandchild of someone who moved to Tel Aviv to work as a janitor from 1946 to 1948 has a right to live in Israel, and to take...

There is a bit of perverse poetry in the fact that the Annapolis conference is taking place the same week as the 60th anniversary of the UN General Assembly's resolution recommending that the British Mandate of Palestine be partitioned between a Jewish and Arab state. What the confluence of events serves to show is just how little has changed in the past 60 years. Both the 1947 UN resolution and the Annapolis conference are dedicated to the task of forcing the Jewish people to compromise their rights in a bid to appease Israel's neighbors who still 60 years on maintain...

On September 11 2005, Israel left the Gaza Strip. The next day, four synagogues went up in flames. A cheering alliance of young men from Hamas and Fatah hailed these desecrations as bonfires celebrating the future of an independent Palestine. Eighteen months later, fighters from the two organisations were still co-operating in attacks on their hated neighbour. By June 2007 their Kassam missiles had killed 11 Israelis. In that same period, some 600 Palestinians became victims of internecine warfare. Thousands more were wounded and half the population traumatised by a relentless chain of revenge slayings. Hidden behind masks, even brothers...

This week, Hamas TV introduced children to a new character, Nahoul the honey bee, which it will use to indoctrinate innocent Palestinian youth to hate, violence and suicide bombing. Two weeks ago Farfour, Hamas' abhorrent radical Mickey Mouse clone, signed off: He was beaten to death by an actor portraying an Israeli soldier. The bee, apparently his predecessor's cousin, dedicated himself to, in his own words, "continuing the path of Farfour - the path of Islam, of heroism, of martyrdom, and of the mujahedeen." The sickening lengths to which terrorists will go to encourage Palestinian children to kill themselves as...

Jun. 13, 2007 13:43 | Updated Jun. 13, 2007 17:23 UNRWA to scale back Gaza mission The United Nations decided Wednesday to immediately scale back its operations in the Gaza Strip after two Palestinians who worked for a UN agency were killed in the rampant fighting there, a UN spokesman said. "In view of the increased threats to our staff, UNRWA has no choice but to scale back its operations in Gaza with immediate effect," UN spokesman Christopher Gunness said, referring to the UN agency that deals with Palestinian refugees. The agency said it would continue to provide essential medical...

In a galaxy far, far away ... (Oops, wrong anniversary) Asked by a reporter about "foreigners" in the Palestinian camp where the Lebanese Army has been engaged fighting military forces dug into civilian neighborhoods, an UNRWA representative said "a large group of foreigners had entered the Tripoli camp months earlier armed with mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons but that bureaucratic restraints had prevented the UN from doing anything about it." Egad! That is an admission UNRWA NEVER made regarding West Bank or Gaza camps from which terrorists went to Israel. But the reporter was so excited about...

Despite their rhetorical pledges of support for the Palestinians, the Arab states are providing an increasingly smaller amount of aid to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), prompting the UN agency to step up efforts to solicit more funds from Arab regimes throughout the region. At a press conference held Wednesday in Manama, the Bahraini capital, UNRWA representative Peter Ford issued a plea to Arab countries to increase their donations on behalf of Palestinian refugees, asserting that UNRWA is facing "a financial crisis." Over the past two decades, Ford noted, Arab states have provided a...

JINSA Online, October 10, 2006 UNRWA Must Be Brought in Line with UN High Commissioner for Refugees JINSA Hosts Capitol Hill Forum, Sen. Coleman and Rep. Kirk Speak Arabs who fled the territory that became Israel in 1948 have been long exploited by the surrounding Arab states. Their status as unsettled refugees, passed down to their children and grandchildren, provFFides the basis for ongoing and irresolvable hostility toward Israel. JINSA convened a forum for House and Senate staff members to better understand this key issue and concomitant concerns regarding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has come...

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) does not check agency beneficiaries against a list of known terrorists identified by the police or Israeli government, US Congressmen Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Steven Rothman (D-NJ) told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a letter released for publication on Thursday. In the letter, Kirk and Rothman cited a recently released United Nations Board of Auditors report that included a harsh assessment of UNRWA's management, efficiency and security. Additionally, Kirk and Rothman called on Rice to do more to ensure UNRWA is complying with federal anti-terrorism laws. UNRWA...

Follows flow of weapons to Hezbollah, calls by Abbas' party to join fighting HAIFA, Israel – For the first since the Jewish state began its military campaign against Hezbollah last month, Israeli gunboats last night shelled the headquarters of a Palestinian militia in south Lebanon. Military officials here said the target of the attack was Fatah, which maintains a military camp in the Ein el-Hilweh village, the largest so-called Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, located on the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon. The Israeli attack follows a WND article last week in which a senior Lebanese political...

Assem Hammoud, 31, the architect of a plan to bomb New York tunnels, was trained and directed by Al Qaida to strike by the end of this year, U.S. and Lebanese officials said. "Security forces were able to track e-mails and conversations on an extremist Islamic website used to recruit terrorists," the Lebanese Internal Security Forces said in a statement. Hammoud, nicknamed the "Andalusian prince" in an apparent reference to Islamic emirs who once ruled Spain, was trained in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein Hilwe near Sidon, the ISF statement said. Ein Hilwe has long been a hotbed of...

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) will continue to provide assistance to Palestinian refugees without regard to the new Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government. In a press conference in Gaza City Tuesday, UNRWA director Karin Abu-Zaid said that she had not received any instructions to cease cooperation with Hamas officials in the PA, Israel Radio reported. Abu Zaid said that the agency would work as usual with the Hamas government to find a solution to the Palestinians' humanitarian needs. On Tuesday, a UN spokesman in New York said that official contact with the Hamas government would be approved as...

The current debate over cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority is a classic case of good news and bad news coming together in the same package. The good news is that the United States appears to be holding firm on its refusal to keep money flowing to the PA once the recently elected Hamas terrorists are in charge. Though many thought Washington would quickly fold on this issue, the administration is sticking to its hard line against sending a cent to Hamas. And Congress is poised to enact aid restrictions that may act as a break on any State...

  Victim hood works. The Palestinian PM designate, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader of the new government in Ramallah, some would call it Hamastan, is spewing “taqiyyah,” religiously condoned lying by Muslims to “trick” western unbelievers. He says that the PA would recognize Israel if it gave up all of Samaria, Judea and east Jerusalem and let 3.5 million plus Palestinian refugee "victims" get their rights of return “honored.” Israel promptly rejected these destructive conditions and his lying proposition. Ibrahim Hooper of the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), those wonderful folks who want to replace our Constitution with Shari’a...

Now that Israel has withdrawn from Gaza, leaving Arab governments and their intellectual apologists in the West without a scapegoat, attention is finally turning to the real problems that are plaguing the Palestinian Territories. A consensus is emerging that the next step toward solving problems like Gaza's 50% unemployment rate would be to open the borders into Israel, a view voiced recently both by the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and the Quartet's chief representative, James Wolfensohn. But they, and like-minded diplomats, are missing the point. The chief impediment to Palestinian economic development is not Israel or its border policy....

The UN Relief and Work Agency, UNRWA, will expand its operations in the Gaza Strip now that Israel has withdrawn and will focus on job creation and house reconstruction for Palestinian refugees. The newly-appointed commissioner-general of UNRWA, Karen Abu-Zayd, promised that the organization was making a serious effort to ensure that no staff members in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would have any ties to terror organizations, in accordance with demands put out by the US administration and Congress. "We have now a Gaza Strip which is free of Israelis, so we can move from south to north...

...The U.N. took on the Mideast as one of its first big projects after World War II and, unfortunately, has never left. After granting Israel statehood in 1948, the U.N. turned to the Arabs the Israelis had defeated in battle. Under Resolution 302, the General Assembly in 1949 created the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Today, it is the largest U.N. bureaucracy, with 25,000 employees providing health care, schooling and social services to some 4 million Palestinians in 59 refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza. The...

We Are the Next Target Terrorism and the Betrayal of Israel (Transcript, Audiotape documentary, Inside Story Communications, April 1994) Side B When Karl Marx wrote his book, A World Without Jews, he permanently set the tone for Communist anti-Semitism. He called for “the emancipation of mankind from Judaism” and for the end of all religious faith.59 V. I. Lenin applied this principle against the Jewish longing for Israel in 1903, declaring that “this Zionist idea is absolutely false and essentially reactionary.”60 The Communist drive to abolish Judaism took on a special urgency after World War I, when Jewish settlement in...

It's time the media and the world face the facts, set the record straight and tell the truth. United Nations corruption favors and includes an anti-Israel bias. This is why I propose renaming the morally and politically bankrupt organization a more accurate and honest moniker. Let's call it what it is. The United Nations Against Israel (U.N.A.I). The U.N.A.I is an international forum dedicated to Israel-bashing and Israel-smashing. Various and sundry branches of the United Nations Against Israel have consistently and continually endorsed Arab "Palestinian" attacks against Israel (or in U.N.A.I terminology, the use of "available means, including armed struggle"...

JERUSALEM - The international media this week buzzed with the news that Israel had accused the UN of allowing its ambulances in Gaza to participate in terrorist activities, only to back down when local representatives of the world body fought back. But far less attention was given to the fact that the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) in the Gaza Strip openly admitted Monday to having Hamas members on the payroll.

Bush forces UN refugee chief to go Israeli pressure backed by conservative and Jewish groups in US stops reappointment of controversial head of relief agency Chris McGreal in Gaza City Thursday January 20, 2005 The Guardian The Bush administration has blocked the reappointment of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency chief, Peter Hansen, after a campaign by conservative and Jewish groups in the US, and the government in Jerusalem which accused him of being an "Israel hater". Some European and Arab governments were keen for Mr Hansen to stay on at the end of his nine-year tenure but the US supported...

The former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations says the global body, through several of its agencies, is funding terrorist organizations. Citing documents captured by Israeli Defense Force personnel, Ambassador Dore Gold says funds flowed from the United Nations Development Program, or UNDP, to two leading Hamas front organizations. In a column slated to be published today in the Wall Street Journal, Gold said donations of between $4,000 and $10,000 went to the Tulkarm Charity Committee and the Jenin District Committee for Charitable Funds. "Receipts and even copies of thank you notes to UNDP were discovered," he writes. Gold says...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dore Gold, Israel’s U.N. ambassador from 1997 to 1999. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Hatred’s Kingdom and of the new book, Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos. FP: Mr. Gold, welcome to Frontpage Interview. It is a privilege to have you with us. Gold: Thank you, in the last years I have enjoyed the articles which Frontpage brings to the attention of the public. FP: What motivated you to write Tower of Babble? Gold: During the period, when I served as Israel's ambassador to the...

The UN Relief and Works Agency is sometimes compared to Frankenstein's monster. Russian-speaking Israelis, however, would probably argue that UNRWA more closely resembles Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharik, the protagonist of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel Heart of a Dog. In both classics a well-intended creation goes awry. Sharik, though, is a more subtle character. Adapting to his authoritarian environment, the half-dog, half-man undergoes a moral decay while stridently claiming to be a model citizen. Likewise, as Hamas causes the inner rot, UNRWA continues to declare its integrity. Much ink has been spilled about UNRWA's pro-Palestinian bias. Of course, it's biased. Today UNRWA is...

Do the Palestinian run the U.N.? There is a curious omission in the 129-page report on United Nations reform recently produced by a 16-person panel "of eminent and experienced people" at the request of Secretary General Kofi Annan. The U.N.'s own website, under "Main Bodies," lists the General Assembly, the Security Council, and directly below, the "Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People." But nowhere does the reform report mention this committee. The omission goes to the heart of what's really ailing the U.N. For the past four decades the United Nations has become the personal propaganda machine...

"The greatest obstacle to peace in the Middle East" it turns out is not Jewish "settlements," but the United Nations, and specifically one of its agencies, UNRWA. This was the conclusion of experts at last week's Jerusalem Summit, an annual conference that brings together important thinkers from around the world on issues relating to Israel. Established shortly after the Israeli-Arab armistice in 1950 to assist Arab refugees exclusively, UNRWA's mandate was specifically designed to perpetuate their status as refugees, in order to further the Arab agenda of destroying Israel. For half a century, UNRWA has funneled billions of dollars to...

The United Nations' Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) is refusing to give into salary demands of its employees in the West Bank, who are striking since October 11. The strike of the agency's 4,000 employees in the West Bank has closed down schools and clinics and is felt mostly in the refugee camps, run by UNRWA. The agency's workers in the Gaza Strip have not joined the strike. "We've told them that we've conducted a salary survey, which shows that in comparison [to the rest of the West Bank] they receive 25-30 percent more," UNRWA spokesperson Paul...

UN's Hanson Admits Hamas on UNRWA Payroll October 06, 2004 UNRWA Terrorist Activity Under-Reported The top UNRWA official in Gaza, Peter Hansen, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, admitted that Hamas terrorists are on the payroll of the supposedly neutral body - but the world media are ignoring the story. A significant news item reported by Arutz-7 yesterday has received little coverage in the international media: The top UNRWA official in Gaza admitted that Hamas terrorists are on the payroll of the supposedly neutral body. Peter Hansen, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA in Gaza, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation two days ago that...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Israel is holding 25 U.N. employees in the Palestinian West Bank or Gaza but has not charged any with a crime or even told the United Nations (news - web sites) of their detention, U.N. officials said on Wednesday. The officials spoke a day after an Israeli officer in Jerusalem said Israel had arrested 13 employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and planned to indict them for "suspected links to terrorism." Israel linked the U.N. employees to "terrorism" shortly after backing away from an accusation that Palestinian militants transported a rocket to be...

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Sunday, demanding the dismissal of Peter Hansen from his position as commissioner-general of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency), the organization that administers the Palestinian Arab refugee camps, under the premise and promise of the “right of return” to the homes and villages their ancestors left in 1948. In addition, Gillerman called for the United Nations to conduct a full investigation of UNWRA. A videograb showing, according to the IDF, Palestinians loading a Qassam rocket into a vehicle marked UN. (IDF Spokesman's...

Israel claims video shows rockets being loaded on UN ambulances SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COMMonday, October 4, 2004TEL AVIV – Israel has released video footage which it says shows Kassam-class, short-range missiles being loaded into an ambulance of the UN Relief and Works Agency in the northern Gaza Strip. The footage, taken last week, showed the ambulance with the Kassams driving off, purportedly to deliver the weapons to Hamas gunners. Israel has demanded a UN investigation of the incident. Israeli officials said the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has also called for the dismissal of UNRWA commissioner-general Peter Hansen....

The head of the UN administration in the West Bank and Gaza admits Hamas members are on his payroll. Media outlets ignore it. Peter Hansen (pictured at right), Commissioner-General of the UN agency in Gaza and the West Bank, made a startling admission in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday (10/4): I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime... we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another. With this statement, Hansen verified what Israel has long contended ¯...

NEW YORK- The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is urging the Bush administration to halt U.S. aid to UNRWA - more than $100-million annually - because of that U.N. agency's aid to Palestinian Arab terrorists against Israel. Palestinian Arab terrorists were this week videotaped loading what appears to be a rocket into a UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) vehicle in Gaza. It was the latest in a long series of instances in which UNRWA was found to be collaborating with the terrorists against Israel. ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: "UNRWA's long record of collaborating with the...

The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) confirmed in a television interview that his group employs Hamas members in Gaza. "I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime," UNRWA head Peter Hansen told Canada's CBC television Sunday. Hamas has been declared a terror organization by the US and Canada, as well as the European Union. "Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against...

Peter Hansen:"am sure Hamas members on UNRWA payroll - don't see that as a crime" Canada looking at UN agency over Palestinian connection www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2004/10/03/unwra041003.html Last Updated Sun, 03 Oct 2004 22:03:01 EDT JERUSALEM - The federal government is promising to look into the possibility that a United Nations agency Canada backs is employing members of Hamas, a Palestinian group Canada has defined as terrorists. Israel said Sunday that the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) supports Hamas and demanded the UN investigate the agency and its head, Peter Hansen. Hansen has "for years...

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on Sunday demanded an apology from Israel over accusations that Gaza militants used a UN vehicle to transport a homemade rocket. The world body refuted the charges at a news conference in Gaza on Sunday. It showed what it said was the ambulance seen in footage released by the Israel Defense Forces and presented its driver and rescue workers to reporters. Rescue worker Wahel Ghabayen, 38, said he had run with a stretcher to a school in Jabalya on Friday after he heard that someone there may have been wounded. The wounded...

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gilerman, will send a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Sunday, demanding the dismissal of Peter Hansen from his position as commissioner-general of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency). The letter will communicate Israel's claim that Hamas is using UN ambulances as a means of smuggling arms and terrorists through the Gaza Strip. UNRWA on Saturday denied Israel's allegations. Israeli representatives intend to screen a short film with aerial photos taken from an unmanned reconnaissance plane that provides proof of the use of UN ambulances for transporting Qassam rockets. Last Wednesday...

The Israel Defense Forces released video footage Friday taken by an unmanned aircraft showing what appeared to be Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip loading rockets into a vehicle marked "UN." The black-and-white footage, taken by a drone - or unmanned aircraft - flying over the Gaza Strip, showed the militants driving off in the white van, with "UN" marked in black on its roof. Israel has often accused militants of using United Nations vehicles and headquarters to launch attacks. UN officials were not immediately available for comment. Israel has also accused officials from the UN Relief and Works Agency,...

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan dug his head deeper into the sand last week during the first-ever United Nations Conference on Anti-Semitism. He opened the conference by calling on the United Nations to pass a resolution condemning racism, and by stating that the United Nations should be a place in which all Jews can feel at home. Who does Annan think he is kidding? He is, after all, the leader of a world body that has made a habit for decades of being anti-Semitic. This is the same organization that for 15 years propagated the anti-Semitic maxim that Zionism is...

The United Nations and Red Cross have been providing cover for terrorists -- literally. And American taxpayers are footing some of the bill. Last week, an Israeli television station aired footage of armed Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an ambulance owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on May 11. The footage shows two ambulances with flashing lights pull onto a street. Shots and shouts ring out during the nighttime raid. A gang...

UN says IDF troops raid UN office in Jenin By The Associated Press Israel Defense Forces troops raided the office of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the West Bank town of Jenin, threatened a UN official and detained him for three hours, an UNRWA statement said Sunday. UNWRA is the UN agency in charge of providing aide to Palestinian refugees. According to the statement, IDF troops broke into the UNRWA office for the Jenin Camp Reconstruction Project on May 20, and fired a shot in the direction of the senior project manager, Paul Wolstenholme. Soldiers then blindfolded,...

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz announced today (Sunday) that UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) ambulances were used to steal and transport body parts of Israeli soldiers killed in last Wednesday’s bomb attack on the Philadelphi route in southern Gaza. The senior minister called upon UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan to address the disturbing phenomenon. At today’s cabinet meeting, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said that the UN ambulance, which had also been used to transport terrorists, had been captured by security forces near the Philadelphi area. He said that only after intense diplomatic pressure did UNRWA announce that...

Around 50 retired US diplomats have written to US President George Bush to complain about America's policy towards the Middle East. The letter is similar to one written by 52 former British diplomats to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair last week. The former US diplomats complained that President Bush's approach is losing the US "credibility, prestige and friends". They criticised what they say is Washington's unabashed support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The American diplomats said they were deeply concerned by Mr Bush's endorsement last month of Mr Sharon's plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza. 'Great danger' They were...

The top figures in the militant group Hamas after the assassination Sunday of its leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. _Mahmoud Zahar: A Hamas spokesman, the 53-year-old Zahar is considered a hard-liner. Zahar was the personal physician of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was killed by the Israelis on March 22. Zahar served as Hamas' liaison with the PLO in the mid-1990s but now opposes compromise with the Palestinian Authority. Zahar has been imprisoned by Israel and has been jailed repeatedly by the Palestinian Authority. _Ismail Hanieh: A top aide to Yassin and like Zahar he is a member of Hamas'...