Palestinian Authority

With Israel and Hamas both claiming victory in the Gaza Strip, there is one clear loser: the U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority, which desperately wants a peace accord with Israel and a unified Palestine in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel's 22-day assault on Hamas-ruled Gaza made the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority look ineffective and marginalized, unable to stop the carnage. Popular support for its peace talks with Israel, already declining, now seems weaker than ever.

A 45-foot-high artificial Christmas tree towers over Manger Square, and downtown Bethlehem is festooned with sparkling decorations. There's even a picture of a saxophone-playing Santa Claus. But Nabil Giacaman, co-owner of a souvenir shop called Christmas House, isn't feeling the holiday spirit. The third-generation woodcarver, who sells handmade likenesses of baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary, sees as many as 200 tour buses arrive every day from Israel to visit the Church of the Nativity, just a few steps from his store.

Representatives of the Palestinian Authority and its chief rival, the Muslim radical movement Hamas, embarked Monday on their first official reconciliation talks since PLO leader Yasser Arafat made peace with Israel in 1993. The Palestinian Authority hopes to persuade Hamas to declare a formal end to the guerrilla war against Israel and to take part in Palestinian elections scheduled for Jan. 20.

After a successful Palestinian bid to join the U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, Israel said Tuesday that it would retaliate by issuing tenders for about 2,000 new housing units on land it seized during the 1967 Mideast War. After meeting with his top advisors, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would order construction of apartments in the Jerusalem area and the West Bank settlements of Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumim. Officials said about 1,650 units would be built around Jerusalem and the rest in the West Bank.

A year ago, Palestinian Authority employee Fida Jiryis took out a $100,000 mortgage to purchase an apartment in Ramallah, one of thousands of first-time Palestinian home buyers to benefit from a recent push to improve the West Bank economy in preparation for eventual statehood. But several weeks ago, the 36-year-old copy editor sold her property in a panic when the Palestinian Authority cut June salaries by half and warned that it would be unable to meet July's payroll at all. Though the authority eventually paid full July salaries after workers threatened a general strike, officials say future paychecks remain at risk.

Israeli forces bore down on Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority on Thursday, moving armor to within easy shooting range of his headquarters as fighter aircraft pounded this and other Palestinian cities late into the night. Armored Israeli bulldozers demolished Palestinian television and radio transmission facilities in a bid to silence the Voice of Palestine. Troops occupied towns across the West Bank and searched Palestinian homes.

The Palestinian Authority on Sunday returned a videotape it had confiscated two days earlier from Associated Press, but portions showing a militant Islamic rally were deleted. About 1,500 Palestinians, many supporters of the militant Islamic group Hamas, marched in a Gaza Strip refugee camp on Friday, burning Israeli flags and carrying a poster of Osama bin Laden, named by the American government as the leading suspect in the terror attacks in the United States.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced today that he would not seek reelection next year, citing a lack of U.S. support for his conditions for resuming peace talks with Israel. In a televised speech, the 74-year-old Palestinian leader said the move was not a tactic to bring more pressure on Israel, although his language appeared to leave room for a change of heart. Visibly tense, Abbas spoke hours after the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee heard his decision in a closed-door meeting and urged him to reconsider.

The Palestinian Authority released human rights activist Iyad Sarraj on Wednesday morning, his brother said. "They released him at 4 a.m. and dropped all charges against him," Hakim Sarraj, 34, said. Khaled Kidra, Palestinian prosecutor general, refused to comment. The self-rule authority had laid charges against Sarraj ranging from drug possession to assaulting a police officer.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday underscored the complexity of resolving the Gaza Strip crisis when he insisted anew that his administration alone should be responsible for the coastal enclave's border crossings.

When East Jerusalem teachers ask students to open their history books these days, pupils are wondering: Which one? Two sets of textbooks are vying for the formative minds of thousands of Palestinian students in Arabic-language schools in East Jerusalem. One was written by the Palestinian Authority, and the other is a revised version reprinted by Israeli authorities. It's a textbook war that underscores the long-running battle of narratives in the Mideast conflict, where the fight over the future is often rooted in understanding of the past, and schoolbooks can play a critical role.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was touring Latin America this week, his second visit to the region in less than a year as part of a worldwide lobbying effort to gain recognition for a Palestinian state. Abbas met officials in the Colombian capital of Bogota on Monday, a day after announcing with President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador plans to establish diplomatic ties there. Until recently, El Salvador was one of Israel's closest allies in Latin America. "We are very interested in developing our relations with all the countries of the American continent," Abbas said in San Salvador, according to a Spanish translation of his remarks.

Israelis and Palestinians are struggling to respond to the latest international peace initiative, with each side embracing parts they liked and dismissing those they didn't. More than a week after the group known as the Mideast quartet launched its effort to get the two sides back to the bargaining table, neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority has formally accepted or rejected the initiative as a whole, reflecting an apparent desire to avoid alienating the body, which is composed of the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia.

As Israel considers its reaction to the Palestinian drive for recognition of statehood at the U.N., officials are weighing calls for swift retaliation against fear that tough measures could be counterproductive. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is evaluating Israel's next step. But key members of his right-wing coalition are pushing for a firm response, which they say would discourage Palestinians from pursuing their strategy of gaining United Nations recognition or taking other unilateral steps away from the negotiating table.

Diplomats on Tuesday raced to nail down a plan to deflect the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations, crafting a face-saving formula that could lessen the immediate prospect of a Security Council veto, which the Obama administration desperately sought to avoid. Under the plan, the council decision on the application for recognition, which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas plans to make Friday, would be put off indefinitely. That would buy time for the U.S. to try to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and would keep $600 million a year in American aid and other international assistance flowing to the Palestinians.

In Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," the heroine falls down a rabbit hole into a confusing fantasy world. Writing today, Carroll might have placed Alice in the 66th General Assembly of the United Nations, where Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas plans this week to seek U.N. recognition of statehood. If Alice was perplexed by the Mad Hatter or the Queen of Hearts, it would be interesting to see her reaction to a president whose mandate has long expired applying for statehood over territory, part of which he is too afraid to visit.

JERUSALEM -- To the outside world, Hamas is synonymous with murderous hostility to Israel, consecutive suicide bombings and religious militancy. Many people also know that Hamas is a powerful social and political movement, deeply rooted in Palestinian society, primarily among the destitute refugees.

Recent college graduate Reem Qadan is exactly the kind of young, energetic West Bank resident the Palestinian Authority hopes will hit the streets this week when it makes its historic case for U.N. membership and statehood recognition. But rather than use her Facebook page to coordinate plans with friends to join the rallies, the 21-year-old is posting critical messages dismissing the United Nations bid as a "tale of collective mismanagement" by Palestinian leaders. Many of her Facebook friends echoed the sentiments and said they planned to skip the rallies.

Rebuffing international pressure to soften their positions and return to the negotiating table, Israelis and Palestinians announced separately Thursday that they were moving forward with an expected diplomatic battle next week at the United Nations. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will address the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 23, after which he will submit a formal application to admit Palestine into the international body as a state, according to his foreign minister, Riad Malki.