Palestine

President Obama dispatched his special Middle East envoy on his inaugural peacemaking trip Monday, declaring that former Sen. George J. Mitchell would speak for the White House in a search for "progress, not just photo ops." Obama's public appearance with Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was his second in five days and placed a strong emphasis on the peacemaking efforts, which come when many analysts rate the chances for Arab-Israeli peace as the worst in decades.

It's always a sunny day on Sesame Street in the West Bank, where the neighbors are friendly and the muppets never see an Israeli army checkpoint. "Shara'a Simsim" teaches Palestinian children they can achieve an independent state through tolerance, education and national pride -- and not anti-Israeli violence. "Our problem is that for so long, we've been focusing on resistance, and we gave up on other things like culture, education and tolerance," said Daoud Kuttab, executive producer of the Palestinian version of the TV show.

Yossi Harel, 90, commander of the illegal Jewish immigrant ship Exodus whose attempt to bring Holocaust survivors to Palestine built support for Israel's founding, died Saturday of cardiac arrest at his home in Tel Aviv, according to his daughter Sharon. The Jerusalem-born Harel commanded four of the 66 expeditions that brought thousands of refugees to the shores of Palestine, his daughter said. But the best known was the Exodus 1947, a ship that left France in July 1947 carrying more than 4,500 people -- mostly Holocaust survivors and other displaced Jews -- in a secret effort to reach Palestine, which was then controlled by the British.

Nearly six years after it shut down the nation's largest Islamic charity for alleged ties to terrorism, the U.S. government begins the high-stakes prosecution this week of five top officials of the Holy Land Foundation, accused of funneling money to Palestinian militants. In a 2001 Rose Garden appearance shortly after Sept. 11, President Bush said the charity was among those that "do business with terror."

Sandy Tolan suggests in "The incredible shrinking Palestine" (Current, May 21) that the U.S. should be wary of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's plan for Israel to withdraw from territory in the West Bank. What does Tolan think would be a better plan -- to wait around and see what better solution Hamas proposes? Tolan states that it "is too early to be sure which direction the Hamas-run Palestinian government will take." How many times does Hamas have to state its intention to destroy Israel before Tolan will be "sure"?

Re "Residents Shut Out of West Bank," Oct. 21 Thank you for your report exposing continued practices of apartheid committed by Israel against the people of Palestine. All of us who follow this conflict know this is just another episode in Israel's Machiavellian plan to cleanse Palestine of its indigenous population so Israel can steal what little is left of the land of Palestine. It takes chutzpah for Israel to think it has the right to control every aspect of the daily lives of the Palestinians.

Israel said Sunday that it had called off a planned aerial bombardment of a Palestinian militant's home after about 200 of his supporters, in a new defensive tactic, rushed to form a human shield around the residence. The mass mobilization in the Gaza Strip is believed to be the first employed by Palestinians to prevent an Israeli airstrike. It is part of a growing use of civilians, including women and children, to counter an Israeli offensive aimed at halting rocket fire into Israel from Gaza.

Although Bush administration officials see the Palestinian election as an important opportunity to work toward Middle East peace, they will move cautiously until they are convinced that the new president can curb extremist violence, State Department officials said. The United States will focus its immediate efforts on supporting the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip planned for this summer, officials said. The U.S.

With limited exposure to the Middle East, Doug Suisman has drawn on his experience designing public spaces and transit systems for Los Angeles to help him with a daunting task: envisioning the new state of Palestine. In years past, the idea of an independent and economically viable Palestine seemed too far-fetched to contemplate.

It had been a week since Eyad Yousef was home and saw his family, which was hemmed in, along with the rest of the neighborhood, behind a cordon of Israeli tanks and soldiers. Yousef made it home Monday, after the soldiers pulled away, ending the six-day siege. The 32-year-old was greeted by flattened greenhouses, torn-up streets and a number of smashed buildings.