West Bank

The City of Philadelphia will release a master plan Thursday for six miles along the lower Schuylkill seen as ripe for job-generating industrial and commercial uses, new roads, more green space, and added bicycle and pedestrian trails. The blueprint envisions three districts along the river's banks, stretching from University City to Philadelphia International Airport. "The area accounts for 68 percent of the city's underutilized and vacant industrial land," said Alan Greenberger, deputy mayor for economic development.

JERUSALEM - Israel's decision to launch a pair of "Palestinian-only" bus lines in the West Bank on Monday - presented by the government as a goodwill gesture, assailed by critics as racism, and welcomed by Palestinian riders - is shining a light on the messy situation created by 45 years of military occupation and Jewish settlements in the area. While full and formal peace remains distant, the Jewish and Palestinian populations of the West Bank are so intertwined that daily routines are often shaped in mind-boggling ways.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad resigned on Saturday, leaving the Palestinians without one of their most moderate and well-respected voices just as the United States is launching a new push for Mideast peace. A statement from the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said President Mahmoud Abbas met with Fayyad late in the day and accepted his resignation, thanking him for his service. According to the statement, Abbas asked Fayyad to stay in his post until Abbas forms a new government.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas returned triumphantly to the West Bank on Sunday, receiving a boisterous welcome from thousands of cheering supporters at a rally celebrating his people's acceptance to the United Nations. An Israeli decision to cut off a cash transfer to the financially troubled Palestinian Authority, following an earlier decision to build thousands of new homes in Jewish settlements, failed to put a damper on the celebrations. But Palestinian officials acknowledged they were undecided on what to do with their newfound status, and were waiting for Israeli elections and new ideas from President Obama before deciding how to proceed.

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised Sunday to follow through with plans for settlement construction in a key West Bank area known as E-1 after police evicted scores of Palestinian protesters who had set up a tent camp there. "We will complete the planning, and there will be construction," Netanyahu told Army Radio hours after the eviction, but he cautioned that planning for the new development "will take time. " Netanyahu, who is in the home stretch of an election campaign, moved swiftly against the Palestinian encampment, a new form of grass-roots protest modeled after scores of wildcat outposts set up by Jewish settlers on West Bank hills without government approval.

It was just before 11 on a mild and sunny morning, not much more than two weeks since the end of war in the Persian Gulf, and life in this Israeli- occupied Palestinian city had the look and feel of prewar normality. The sidewalks were full of people, smiling and chatty. The shops were full of customers, buying blue jeans and sneakers, bread and sweets. The streets were full of Israeli soldiers, patrolling Ramallah in jeeps and armored vehicles, all covered with heavy wire mesh to protect against stones thrown by roving young men in black vinyl jackets.

The funerals of three Palestinian workers shot and killed by Israeli soldiers brought cries for vengeance yesterday from fellow Palestinians - and grim promises from Israel that force will be met with force. "Blood leads to blood!" white-scarved Palestinian schoolgirls screamed as they marched through the winding streets of Dura, the hometown of three laborers slain Tuesday night at an Israeli roadblock on their way home from jobs in Israel. The deaths set off the West Bank's worst day of violence in months, leaving 32 Palestinians and an Israeli border policeman hurt in clashes yesterday.

The tax man came calling on Jabra Salsaa yesterday. When he left, he took with him a television, a typewriter and the electric organ on which Salsaa has practiced his favorite arrangements of Bach and Haydn for the last 20 years. Like hundreds of other residents of this picturesque Palestinian town, Salsaa, 53, the organist in the local Roman Catholic Church, has refused to pay taxes to the Israeli military government for two years running. And like the other tax rebels, he has paid dearly for his defiance.

The attack against Libya excites praise and condemnation. But the United States would better serve the cause of peace by paying full attention to the matter of the West Bank of the Jordan River, home of Palestinians and at present very much a part of modern Israel. Unrest over the West Bank and Gaza is the basic underlying cause of antagonism between Islamic countries, Israel and the West, which erupts as terrorism. The Arab world may recognize Israel's right to exist if the West Bank can be restored to neutrality or independence with Palestinian residents returned to their homes.

The Palestinian mayor of the West Bank city of Nablus was shot early today by an unidentified gunman, Israel Army Radio reported. The radio said the mayor, Zafer Masri, was killed in the attack. Military sources who spoke on condition they not be identified said Masri was seriously wounded in the shooting, which they said occurred as he drove in his car through Nablus. A police spokesman said he could not immediately confirm the report because "it was a security matter.

The City of Philadelphia will release a master plan Thursday for six miles along the lower Schuylkill seen as ripe for job-generating industrial and commercial uses, new roads, more green space, and added bicycle and pedestrian trails. The blueprint envisions three districts along the river's banks, stretching from University City to Philadelphia International Airport. "The area accounts for 68 percent of the city's underutilized and vacant industrial land," said Alan Greenberger, deputy mayor for economic development.

JERUSALEM - A Palestinian stabbed a Jewish settler to death in the West Bank on Tuesday - the first fatal attack on an Israeli there in more than a year - and the killing triggered retaliatory violence in both the West Bank and Jerusalem, a police spokesman said. In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli air strike killed an Islamist extremist who allegedly was involved in the recent firing of rockets from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula toward the southern Israeli city of Eilat. The air strike was the first targeted killing in Gaza by Israel since a November cease-fire ended eight days of cross-border fighting.

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Wrapping up a 24-hour visit to Istanbul, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday sought to cement and speed up an improvement in relations between Turkey and Israel as well as explore new ways to relaunch Mideast peace efforts. President Obama has made both issues foreign policy priorities for his second term and Kerry was pushing them in meetings with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. On a trip to Israel last month, Obama secured a pledge from Turkish and Israeli leaders to normalize ties that broke down after a 2010 Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that killed eight Turks and a Turkish American.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad resigned on Saturday, leaving the Palestinians without one of their most moderate and well-respected voices just as the United States is launching a new push for Mideast peace. A statement from the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said President Mahmoud Abbas met with Fayyad late in the day and accepted his resignation, thanking him for his service. According to the statement, Abbas asked Fayyad to stay in his post until Abbas forms a new government.

JERUSALEM - Israeli forces have been holding a Palestinian American teenager in a military lockup for nearly a week after bursting into his family home and arresting him in an overnight raid after he allegedly hurled rocks at Israeli motorists in the West Bank, his father said on Thursday. The case highlights Israel's system of military detention for Palestinian minors, which has been frequently criticized, most recently by the United Nations, which said in March that an in-depth study showed it systematically and gravely violated their rights.

When Secretary of State John Kerry revisits Israel and the West Bank this week, he's unlikely to talk about what really needs discussing: What will Israel and the Palestinians do once the two-state solution dies? No one wants to discuss such a grim prospect, let alone admit that the peace process is over. Such an admission would have earthshaking repercussions not only for the Palestinians and Israelis, but for Washington and the entire Mideast. So the pretense continues that peace talks can be revived.

JERUSALEM - Thousands of Palestinians marched Thursday in funerals for a prisoner who died in Israeli custody and two teenagers shot by Israeli soldiers. The marches illustrated mounting tensions in the West Bank ahead of a visit this weekend by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to explore ways to revive peace talks. Scores of stone-throwing youths clashed with soldiers in the prisoner's home town of Hebron and at other West Bank flash points, reflecting Palestinian outrage over the deaths and a deepening rift with Israel, complicating Washington's efforts to prod both sides back to negotiations.

JERUSALEM - President Obama urged Israelis on Thursday to move decisively in a spirit of self-preservation and empathy to secure a lasting peace, but he delivered an even sharper ultimatum to Palestinians to drop conditions that have held up a new round of negotiations. His evening address at the Jerusalem International Convention Center signaled a shift away from the balance he has sought to maintain between Israeli and Palestinian leaders since taking office - and toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he has had a stormy relationship, at least until this trip.

Mary Robinson doesn't mind the tough stuff. As the United Nations chief advocate for human rights, she traveled the world in a hot-spot hopscotch - Rwanda, Chechnya, Dagestan, East Timor, the West Bank - for hard discussions with people who didn't necessarily want her around. No matter. "I've never found it difficult to stand up to bullies," says the former president of Ireland (1990-1997) and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002). It's a matter-of-fact statement, not a boast.

JERUSALEM - Israel's decision to launch a pair of "Palestinian-only" bus lines in the West Bank on Monday - presented by the government as a goodwill gesture, assailed by critics as racism, and welcomed by Palestinian riders - is shining a light on the messy situation created by 45 years of military occupation and Jewish settlements in the area. While full and formal peace remains distant, the Jewish and Palestinian populations of the West Bank are so intertwined that daily routines are often shaped in mind-boggling ways.