Palestinians

Israeli forces staged their deadliest raid into the Gaza Strip in more than a year Tuesday, killing a Hamas firebrand's son and 17 others and provoking threats by the Islamic group to escalate the conflict just as peace talks between Israel and a secular Palestinian faction are starting. The violence erupted days after President Bush visited Israel and the West Bank, and it underscored the fragility of the peace effort he is promoting on his trip to the Middle East.

A right-wing party quit Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's governing coalition Wednesday in protest of the revived peace talks with the Palestinians, but the move poses no immediate threat to his rule. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the hawkish Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) faction, said he opposed an approach that sought peace through territorial concessions. "Negotiations on the basis of land for peace are a crucial mistake," he told reporters.

The Gaza Strip's only electric power plant shut down Sunday evening after Israel halted the shipment of diesel that fuels it, plunging most of this city into darkness and threatening such vital services as hospitals, bakeries, water supply and sewage. Many of Gaza City's 400,000 inhabitants rushed to stock up on candles, batteries and bread, trudging up and down stairs as elevators ground to a halt, and then shivered through a night of temperatures in the low 50s.

Israel agreed to allow limited supplies of fuel, medicine and food into the Gaza Strip today, easing a blockade that left large parts of the Palestinian territory without electricity and drew international protests. The promise of relief also followed a sharp decline in the rocket attacks from Gaza that had prompted Israel to halt the shipments Thursday. Residents of Gaza City spent a second night in cold, dark homes after the coastal enclave's only power plant shut down Sunday.

Comic Ray Hanania nervously paced backstage at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies and occasionally peeked around the velvet curtains to gauge the mood of the school's packed theater. The downtown audience -- Arab businessmen, a Palestinian professor, Jewish students and Israeli families -- glanced curiously at one another and quietly chatted in their seats. Some fidgeted nervously. "Think it'll be like Tel Aviv?"

Masked gunmen used explosives to blow holes in the Gaza Strip's border fence early today, enabling thousands of Palestinians to pour into Egypt to buy food, fuel and other supplies that had been cut off because of an Israeli blockade, witnesses said. Egyptian and Palestinian border guards did not resist the mass crossing at the Rafah terminal.

The collapse of Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday altered the region's political and security landscape as suddenly as it changed the fortunes of Palestinians who poured out of the enclave to stock up on goods made scarce by an Israeli blockade.

Egypt deployed hundreds of riot-equipped guards Friday to seal off the Gaza Strip, but abruptly withdrew them after defiant Palestinian militants bulldozed new breaches in a border fence. A surging Palestinian crowd that had been pushed away from Egyptian soil cheered as a yellow front-end loader, escorted by black-clad Hamas gunmen, punched through three sections of a concrete barrier topped by chain-link fencing.

The Egyptian government Saturday abandoned its sporadic efforts to seal off the Gaza Strip but tightened a cordon around this border city, restricting the availability of goods in order to dissuade Palestinians from flocking here to shop. Police used armored personnel carriers to block roads leading deeper into Egypt from Rafah and turned back hundreds of Palestinians. Authorities instructed hoteliers in El Arish, 25 miles southwest of here, not to lodge Palestinian travelers.

Malah abu Lashin lay in the intensive care unit of Nasser Children's Hospital here Sunday, her frail 20-month-old body attached to a ventilator, an oxygenator and an intravenous pump. The lifeline that kept those devices functioning was equally fragile: a tenuous flow of electricity from a generator with just enough diesel in the tank to last 10 hours. "If the power goes off, we can pump those machines by hand," said Anwar Sheikh Khalil, the hospital's director.