Gaza Strip

More than 20,000 Israeli peace activists packed into Tel Aviv's main square Saturday night to protest a wave of vigilante raids by Jewish settlers in the occupied areas. Led by the Peace Now movement and dovish members of Parliament, including Labor Party members, they called on the government to crush what they called settler lawlessness. Military officials confirmed that the army plans to crack down on Jewish settlers who rampage through Arab areas and confront soldiers.

CAIRO - Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip remained closed Sunday as the families and colleagues of seven Egyptian soldiers who were kidnapped in the northern Sinai Peninsula last week continued a sit-in. A video was briefly posted on YouTube showing seven men identified as the abductees, imploring the government to secure their release. "Rescue us, Mr. President. We can't take it. Rescue us, people," the men plead, according to an Associated Press account. It was unclear who posted the video.

Israeli soldiers Sunday fatally shot two Palestinians during clashes in the occupied territories, a 12-year-old boy and a 60-year-old man, and Israeli sailors destroyed a rubber dinghy off the southern Lebanon coast, killing four Palestinian guerrillas headed toward Israel. Arab reports said 11 Palestinians were wounded in violence that came on the second day of a general strike in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the West Bank city of Hebron, a curfew was imposed after troops shot to death a 60-year-old laborer.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- With the Boston Marathon bombings on their mind, hundreds of Palestinian and international runners participated Sunday in what was billed as the first Palestinian marathon. The Right to Movement Palestine Marathon kicked off in front of the Church of the Nativity in the biblical city of Bethlehem in the West Bank. Before it began, Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, asked runners to bow their heads in silence for one minute in remembrance of the Boston Marathon victims.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Friday he rejects trading land for peace despite an earlier government statement that Israel is willing to discuss any option with the Palestinians. "I don't accept it. It is not necessary. It is not relevant," he told reporters upon his return to Israel from the United States. Shamir, 73, described his 10-day U.S. visit as a success and added: "There is an understanding between the U.S. and Israel about our four-point peace initiative." Shamir met last week with President Bush, who supported Shamir's idea for elections in the occupied territories but said the United States could not accept permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Riots broke out across the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Friday, leaving at least a dozen people dead, as Palestinians protested the dawn massacre by a Jewish settler of 48 Muslims as they prayed in a mosque in Hebron, south of Jerusalem. More than 300 people were wounded throughout the day, scores during the massacre at the mosque and the rest in clashes that followed there, in other West Bank towns, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem's Old City, according to figures compiled from hospital reports.

Hashemi Rafsanjani, Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Friday called on Palestinians to kill Americans and other Westerners to avenge their dead in the 17-month uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The call provoked an immediate reaction from Washington, where the Administration issued a worldwide alert to American diplomatic and military installations, warning of a possible renewal of terrorist attacks on U.S. targets. In an inflammatory declaration, Rafsanjani said that "the people of Palestine . . . must avenge the blood (of the reported 461 Palestinian deaths in the occupied territories)

The Bush Administration obtained advance support of American Jewish leaders before imposing new rules that had the effect of diverting most Soviet Jewish emigres from the United States to Israel, according to informed sources. Administration officials and Jewish leaders both said that the consultations defused what could have turned into a firestorm of controversy.

President Obama is visiting Israel this week, the first foreign trip of his second term. Some commentators have criticized the tour as a diversion from the president's intention to pivot toward the Asia-Pacific region. Why go to Israel now, they ask, and anger the Arabs at a time of rising Middle Eastern turmoil? Others claim that the trip is merely a maneuver designed to achieve some memorable photo-ops rather than to advance crucial American interests. Indeed, the president could have traveled farther east and to a less controversial country.

Palestinian looters took irrigation hoses, pumps and plastic sheeting from dozens of greenhouses Tuesday, a month after Jewish American donors bought more than 3,000 of the structures from Israeli settlers and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Police commanders complained that they did not have enough manpower to protect the prized equipment in several abandoned settlements. In some instances, police joined the looters, witnesses said. "We need at least another 70 soldiers.

ISTANBUL -- Secretary of State John F. Kerry has urged Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to delay a planned visit to the Gaza Strip, saying it could jeopardize efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Ending a two-day visit here, Kerry told reporters Sunday he believed that "it would be more helpful [for Erdogan] to wait for the right circumstance. ... We're trying to get off the ground, and we would like to see the parties with as little outside distraction as possible.

JERUSALEM - An Israeli investigation into the worst civilian tragedy of last November's Gaza Strip offensive - an attack that killed 10 members of a single family and two neighbors - concluded that soldiers bombed the home by mistake and should not face criminal charges or other disciplinary action. The Nov. 18 Israeli air strike was one of the most horrific and widely publicized incidents of the eight-day clash with the Gaza-based militant group Hamas. The military campaign, dubbed Operation Pillar of Defense, came after Gaza militants refused to stop firing rockets into southern Israel and Israel Defense Forces retaliated by assassinating the top Hamas military commander.

Unearthing the mystery of Pablo Neruda's death Monday, April 8 : Did famed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda die of cancer or was he poisoned? The remains of the Nobel Prize laureate will be exhumed Monday from his Isla Negra grave on the Chilean coast as authorities probe allegations that he was murdered in the wake of the 1973 military coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power. The cause of death was listed at the time as advanced prostate cancer. But Neruda's chauffeur and bodyguard, Manuel Araya Osorio, came forward two years ago with a report that the 69-year-old leftist had appeared well on the morning of his death and, after suddenly becoming feverish, told of being given an injection by a doctor the previous night.

JERUSALEM -- A widespread hacker attack targeting Israeli websites caused some disruption to government, academic and private sites Sunday. The extent of the damage was unclear at midday, but officials said strategic infrastructure appeared to have largely repelled the attacks, expected to increase later in the day as Israel begins to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.  Hundreds of websites have been attacked, and more than a dozen government sites have been temporarily disabled since the attack that threatened to "erase Israel from cyber-space" began.  The attack -- dubbed and tagged #OpIsrael by hackers affiliated with the shadowy group Anonymous -- was announced in advance and described by its organizers as an act of solidarity with Palestinians in retaliation for Israel's treatment of them, as well as for Israeli settlement activity and what is perceived as disrespect for international law. Several government websites, including those of the ministries of Education, Defense and Environmental Protection, were disabled overnight, defaced with anti-Israeli messages and loud music.

Fiery peppers and searing spices heat up Gaza Strip cuisine, a fitting metaphor, perhaps, for the enclave's place in the cauldron of Middle East strife. Israeli troops have imposed a tight cordon around Gaza border crossings, sea access and airspace since the strip's 2007 takeover by the militant Islamic group Hamas, crippling a fragile economy where nearly half the residents are jobless. That means Gazans are confronted with daily challenges to put their signature foods on the family table: Locally made olive oil has disappeared, the once-resplendent olive groves blasted by artillery exchanges.

JERUSALEM -- A 4-month-old cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip appeared to be collapsing early Wednesday after militants fired projectiles into southern Israel and the Israel Defense Forces responded with airstrikes against two targets in northern Gaza. No injuries were reported in either attack. The exchanges marked the first airstrike by Israel into Gaza since an eight-day offensive in November that led to the deaths of at least 168 Palestinians and six Israelis.

Israeli planes carried out airstrikes against targets in the Gaza Strip today, injuring seven people, Palestinian medical workers said. An Israeli army spokesman said the strikes had targeted two factories in central and northern Gaza used to make weapons and a smuggling tunnel under the border with Egypt. The spokesman said the airstrikes were in response to a rocket fired from Gaza Saturday. The rocket landed near the city of Sderot, causing no injuries or damage, he said.

ISTANBUL -- Secretary of State John F. Kerry has urged Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to delay a planned visit to the Gaza Strip, saying it could jeopardize efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Ending a two-day visit here, Kerry told reporters Sunday he believed that "it would be more helpful [for Erdogan] to wait for the right circumstance. ... We're trying to get off the ground, and we would like to see the parties with as little outside distraction as possible.

GAZA CITY  - The leadership council of Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza Strip, has reelected Khaled Meshaal to lead the militant organization for the next four years, a senior official with the movement said Monday. No official announcement was made of Meshaal's reelection during a secret vote by leaders in Cairo, and the senior official requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. However, the news was widely reported in the Arabic language media.