Palestinian Authority

I know a Palestinian woman in East Jerusalem who every week crosses the city into West Jerusalem to visit her ancestral home, now owned by Israelis. She stands outside the gate in a vigil of memory, refusing to accept her family's loss. Recently, during renovations, she found discarded tiles that her father had installed; she carted them away and laid them in the courtyard of her house.

In a sign of apparent progress in the deadlocked peace talks, Israel said Monday that it has agreed in principle to turn over an additional 13% of West Bank land to the Palestinians, the figure specified in a months-old U.S. peace initiative. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which had said it could not accept the 13% figure without endangering Israeli security, has told U.S.

He's been feted from Tehran to Khartoum. He's made virulently anti-Israeli statements and reportedly collected pledges worth millions of dollars for his militant Palestinian organization. Now, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder and charismatic spiritual leader of the Islamic group Hamas, is coming home to the Gaza Strip, his stature enhanced by a triumphal, four-month tour of the Middle East. And he is likely to pose new challenges both for Israel and for Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

The radical Islamic group Hamas said Saturday that it is weighing an invitation to join the government of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Hamas, which bitterly opposes the peace accords between the Palestinians and Israel, has never before sought an official position in the Palestinian Authority. Representatives of Hamas were asked to meet Tuesday with Arafat to discuss participation in the next government, Hamas spokesman Mahmoud Zahar said in the Gaza Strip.

Despite a Palestinian police roundup of leaders of the opposition Islamic movement Hamas, Israel remained on high alert Sunday, amid fears that the arrests have given the group's military wing new incentive to attack the Jewish state. "Hamas is in a struggle with the Palestinian Authority, and when they want to score against the Palestinian Authority, they hit Israel," said Ziad abu Amr, an independent member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and an expert on the Islamic opposition.

Israeli forces went on high alert Tuesday after police shot and killed a Palestinian driver who they said had ignored an order to stop at a Jerusalem checkpoint. The victim's family disputed the police account. Stone-throwing clashes broke out late Monday in several Arab neighborhoods of the city after the shooting of Mohammed Salaimi, 25. Arab residents also stoned buses and police cars, burned tires and threw a firebomb.

Shouting for revenge against Israel, thousands of Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank and Gaza Strip vented their rage Friday over the death of a Muslim militant bomb maker. "Dear Qassam, blow up Tel Aviv," crowds chanted, urging the military wing of the Hamas group to avenge Mohiedin Sharif's death.

Early on a Saturday morning, Saleh abu Laban steps onto the land his Palestinian grandparents once owned in this hillside village and picks up a shriveled pomegranate. But his presence soon rousts the Israeli who owns it all now. In fluent Hebrew, Abu Laban tells the pajama-clad Israeli that his family lived in Zekharya half a century ago. His mother planted the tree whose fruit he holds; his grandparents' home was the empty, one-room house that stands nearby. He has come to visit his roots.

The police and army are moving around town, stopping cars, patrolling heavily trafficked corners and crossings into the Palestinian east side. Army vehicles ply the city's roads. Traffic at the checkpoints goes nowhere, as Palestinians offer their documents up for inspection by skeptical Israeli soldiers. We're on high alert, or, as one observer here said last week "real high alert."

The master bomb maker for the militant wing of Hamas was killed by fellow members of the Islamic group in an internal power struggle, Palestinian officials declared Monday, exonerating Israel of involvement in his death. An investigating committee has identified the killer and some of the accomplices in the death of Mohiedin Sharif, said Nabil Shaath, a Palestinian Authority Cabinet minister and peace negotiator. "They are people inside Hamas.