CAIRO Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have set a three-month timetable to form a unity government and organise elections, officials from both sides said on Wednesday.The agreement came during a meeting late Tuesday between Fatah’s official in charge of reconciliation affairs, Azzam ...

GAZA CITY  - Gaza’s Hamas rulers urged the UN to reconsider its suspension of food aid for Palestinian refugees, imposed after protesters stormed a UN depot. The UNRWA stopped food deliveries after dozens of Gazans forced their way into the field office, demanding reinstatement of a ...

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Khaled Meshaal’s reelection as head of the Hamas movement was officially confirmed on Tuesday, drawing a cautious welcome from the rival Fatah movement which rules the West Bank.The reelection of the charismatic 56-year-old as the overall head of the Palestinian movement ...

GAZA CITY  - Veteran Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal is set to be elected to a new term as head of the Palestinian movement, party officials said on Monday. There had been speculation that Meshaal, who is based in exile, would be forced aside by the movement's powerful leaders in the Gaza Strip, ...

GAZA  - New rules from the Education Ministry of the Islamist Hamas movement ruling the Gaza Strip will bar men from teaching at girls’ schools and mandate separate classes for boys and girls from the age of nine.The law, published on Monday, would go into effect next school year and ...

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Hamas on Thursday invited the Palestinian electoral commission chief to come to Gaza to discuss restarting voter registration, in a key step towards Palestinian reconciliation. Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya “called Central Elections Commission chief Hanna Nasser and ...

GAZA CITY - Hundreds of thousands of supporters of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party on Friday held their first mass rally in Gaza since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007, according to a Fatah spokesman.Hamas, in a sign of reconciliation with Fatah, permitted the ...

GAZA CITY  - Exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal left the Gaza Strip on Monday after a historic and jubilant first visit to the tiny Palestinian enclave that enraged Israelis."Abu al-Walid (Meshaal) left the Gaza Strip through the Rafah terminal this afternoon after his historic visit," interior ...

GAZA CITY  - Hamas leader in exile Khaled Meshaal made his first visit to Gaza on Friday, kissing the ground and saying he hoped he would one day die a ‘martyr’ in the Palestinian territory.After his seven-vehicle convoy swept across the border from Egypt, Meshaal got out and ...

CAIRO - An Israeli delegation was to arrive Monday in Cairo for indirect talks with Hamas on easing the Gaza blockade, the Palestinian faction’s number two said, warning his group may act if there is any delay.Mussa Abu Marzuk said Hamas did not commit to stop arming itself in truce talks ...

GAZA CITY - Israel killed a top Hamas military commander in a targeted strike on Gaza City Wednesday, prompting outrage from fighters who said the Jewish state had opened “the gates of hell.”Israel confirmed it had targeted Ahmed Jaabari in an air strike on a car, warning it was only ...

TEHRAN - A senior Hamas figure in Gaza, Mahmud Zahar, is visiting Tehran for meetings with top Iranian officials, media reported on Thursday. Zahar’s trip was taking place shortly after Gaza militants and Israel agreed a fragile truce that ended four days of deadly cross-border violence. ...

AZA CITY - A reconciliation deal between rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas must be implemented in a “thorough and honest” way, members of Hamas’s leadership said on Wednesday. “We stress the need for thorough and honest implementation of the reconciliation agreements ...

CAIRO - Senior Hamas official Mahmud Zahar slammed a Palestinian unity deal as a "mistake" that has thrown the movement into crisis, in an interview with Egypt's official MENA agency published on Sunday. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal signed an agreement with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas earlier ...

TEHRAN  - Hamas “will never recognise Israel,” its Gaza prime minister said Saturday in a speech in Iran that is likely to complicate Palestinian efforts to form a unity government in the teeth of opposition from the Jewish state. “They want us to recognise the Israeli ...

Iran's supreme leader has urged the Hamas prime minister of Gaza to continue the Islamist militant group's resistance against Israel. Iranian state TV quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as telling Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday that people expect Hamas to continue its fight against Israel. Khamenei said that ...

GAZA CITY - Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who survived a 1997 Israeli assassination bid, has confirmed he wants to step down after eight years in the post, the Islamist movement said Saturday.“Political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal has notified Hamas’s consultative council that he does ...

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories  - Fatah envoy Azzam al-Ahmed said on Wednesday he would meet with Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in Cairo in a bid to advance the Palestinian reconciliation process.Speaking to Voice of Palestine radio, Ahmed said he and Meshaal would meet later on Wednesday to ...

Listen to the Article - Powered by Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas political wing, told Newsweek on October 14 that there is a position and program that all Palestinians share. To accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital. With the right of return. And this ...

GAZA CITY (AFP) - The Palestinian movement Hamas on Thursday banned men from working in womens beauty salons in the Gaza Strip. (Police) will go after anyone who violates this decision, and they will face questioning and legal accountability, the Hamas-run Gaza police said on their website. In ...

DUBAI (AFP) - A Hamas leader killed in his Dubai hotel room was drugged and then suffocated, police said Sunday, giving further details of the Cold War-style hit allegedly carried out by Mossad agents. The killers used the drug succinylcholine to sedate (Mahmud) al-Mabhouh before they suffocated ...

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya on Monday told tens of thousands of Hamas supporters his group remains committed to the elimination of Israel, on the 22nd anniversary of its founding. We will never give up on Palestine from the river to the sea, Haniya told the crowd, referring ...

KHARTOUM (AFP) - The political supremo of the Palestinian movement Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, said his group produces and smuggles weapons, during a visit to Sudan on Wednesday. Your brothers in Palestine, despite the blockade and the closing of border passages ... despite the fleets from east and ...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbass Fatah group accused rival Hamas of arresting dozens of Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip on Monday. The recriminations threaten to derail Egyptian-mediated efforts to reconcile the two Palestinian groups. A Hamas spokesman said there had been ...

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Exiled Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal has been re-elected head of the Palestinian Islamist movements politburo, according to a statement from the group in Damascus. Mahmud Zahar and Khalil al-Hayya, both senior leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, were also elected members of the ...

RAMALLAH, West Bank, (AFP) - Israel launched a new crackdown on Hamas on Thursday, rounding up top leaders in the West Bank after the failure of efforts to secure the release of a soldier held by the rulers of the Gaza Strip. Security forces seized 12 senior Hamas leaders in pre-dawn raids in the ...

GAZA CITY (AFP) - The armed branch of Hamas blamed Israel on Wednesday for the collapse of prisoner swap talks and warned it could hike its demands in return for freeing a soldier captured almost three years ago. "We put the entire responsibility for blocking a deal on the enemy government," ...

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) - Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas is leading a chorus of opposition to calls by rival Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal for a new leadership to replace the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The Damascus-based Meshaal this week said that the PLO " which has long been ...

KARACHI - Noted Iranian Islamic Scholar Prof Dr Hassan Rahimpur Azghadi has said that the dilemma of Pakistani nation is that they merely know the name of Allama Mohammad Iqbal but oblivious of his pure Islamic ideology and philosophy. He said that religion was the basis of the foundation of ...

CAIRO (AFP) - Hamas rivals Fatah called Monday for the forming of a national unity government acceptable to the international community before Gaza's crossings open, a position in apparent conflict with that of Hamas. "We want a government of national unity which will supervise reconstruction and ...