Reports and Commentary

Amira Hass: The affair of the rapist president Moshe Katsav is always associated in my mind with my limitations as a journalist. And the mention of the week in which the affair became public (after July 8, 2006 ) brings to mind the Israeli expulsion bureaucracy.

Israeli forces overnight Sunday raided the homes of seven prisoners freed as part of the Oct. 18 prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel, a Ma'an correspondent reported.

An American badly injured by the Israeli military during a pro-Palestinian demonstration will have his first day in an Israeli court.

Representatives of the Mideast Quartet -- the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia -- are expected to meet with both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on Monday, in a bid to renew long-stalled peace talks between the PNA and Israel.

Barak Ravid: Israel's cabinet met on Monday to discuss the possibility of unfreezing tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, the transfer of which was halted after UNESCO granted the Palestinians full membership.

Ali Sawafta: Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad signaled on Monday he is ready to step aside to help reconcile the two rival factions of the Palestinian national movement and pave the way for presidential and parliamentary elections.

Rob Lever: It may seem like a case on dull passport rules, but lawyers told the US Supreme Court Monday the question of whether Israel is listed on a passport of a person born in Jerusalem raises key issues on foreign policy and separation of powers.

Daniella Cheslow: Dozens of Palestinians who lost relatives in an Israeli military offensive in Gaza three years ago have been forced to put their compensation claims on hold, saying Israel has placed near-impossible barriers to proceeding with their cases.

Joel Greenberg: When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas returned home to a hero's welcome after applying for United Nations membership for a Palestinian state, Hurriyah Ziada was not moved to join the celebration.

Israel's Jerusalem municipality plans to build more than 50,000 new homes in the city's occupied eastern sector over two decades, Israeli media reported on Sunday.

Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip killed an Islamic Jihad militant and wounded three other Palestinians on Saturday, Palestinian medics and witnesses said.

Tom Perry: The Palestinians will not accept anything less than full U.N. membership and do not want an upgrade to an observer state in the world body, their foreign minister said on Thursday.

Israel has carried out its threat to suspend transfer of tax payments totaling some $100 million to the Palestinian Authority to protest this week’s admission of Palestine to the United Nations’ cultural agency, officials said Thursday.

Isabel Kershner: The Israeli military intercepted activists sailing toward Gaza on Friday, boarding their two small boats in international waters and leading them instead to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

John Dugard: This week, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will consider the question of whether Israel's practices in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) constitute the crime of apartheid within the meaning of the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

Harriet Sherwood: Medical professionals in Israel are being accused of failing to document and report injuries caused by the ill-treatment and torture of detainees by security personnel in violation of their ethical code.

Laila el-Haddad: Most analyses of the Hamas-Israel prisoner exchange have focused on the benefits and challenges for the Hamas-led Gaza government, Israel, and the Ramallah-based, Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA). But the prisoner exchange should also be seen against the backdrop of how each actor is seeking to position themselves in the region’s shifting geopolitics, with a view to the future.

Israeli settlers have cost Palestinian farmers over $500,000 this year by destroying olive trees in the West Bank, Oxfam and local organizations warned Thursday.

Ahmed Moor: It’s not true that Palestinians and Israelis don’t agree about anything.

Mouin Rabbani: News that Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) had reached agreement on a prisoner exchange instantaneously displaced the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) bid for full United Nations membership from the headlines in mid-October.