Palestinians Los Angeles

An immigration appeals board has ruled that the constitutional rights of eight Los Angeles-area immigrants accused of belonging to a Marxist faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization were not violated during the course of their deportation proceeding here and that the suspended hearing should resume. A unanimous four-member Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va.

Abdallah Hjazin, a 26-year-old Palestinian in Los Angeles on a student visa, has been held for more than a month by U.S. immigration authorities on a $75,000 bond following receipt of an anonymous letter charging that he was planning to assassinate President Bush. The case has become a cause celebre in the Arab-American community in Southern California, based on a belief that Hjazin, like other Palestinian suspects in the past, is being singled out because of his ethnicity.

President Bush announced a four-year reprieve Friday for hundreds of Kuwaiti residents who were evacuated to the United States last year during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait but faced possible deportation from this country after the expiration of their temporary visas in December. The presidential order, similar to one issued for Chinese students after the Tian An Men Square crackdown in 1989, will allow most of the former Kuwait residents to live and work in the United States until Jan.

Awni Said Rayyis had two passions--his job and his people. On Monday, as he had done for years, he tried to juggle both. A senior waste inspector for the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, Rayyis, 59, had headed several investigations against large companies suspected of illegally dumping hazardous wastes. He had planned to use his lunch hour this day to join fellow Palestinians in front of the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson said Friday that he was "inclined" to allow lawyers for a group of Los Angeles-area immigrants begin discovery proceedings to determine whether they are unable to obtain fair hearings in Immigration Court proceedings after the nation's top Immigration Court appellate official participated on a secret government committee that shaped plans to apprehend and deport alien terrorists.

Whether the discussions were among Muslims or Jews, the same amalgam of hope and worry emerged Monday as Israeli and Palestinian representatives signed a historic peace pact.

In stunning and unprecedented appeals, rabbis and other leaders in American Judaism called Wednesday for U.S. government aid and private financial support to Palestinians to build self-rule on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

On a rain-soaked Saturday afternoon nearly two decades ago, a handful of young Palestinians gathered at the Glendale Civic Auditorium to prepare for an evening fundraiser. The event -- a night of ethnic food, folk dances and political speeches delivered in Arabic -- would be attended by an estimated 1,200 men, women and children, most of them immigrants from the Middle East.