PARIS, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - French police have identified a 55 year-old Palestinian man now living in Canada as the suspected perpetrator of a bomb attack at a Paris synagogue that killed four people in 1980, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The man, who was not named in the report, was traced after German intelligence officials acquired a memebership list of the now-defunct extremist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- Special Operations (PFLP-OS), Le Figaro said.

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Oct 3, 2007 (AFP) - The main donors to the Palestinian Authority plan to meet in Paris in mid-December to coordinate a three-year aid programme, a Palestinian government spokesman said on Wednesday.

The donor conference was decided earlier this month in New York during a meeting of the Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC), a 12-member panel that acts as the main aid mechanism for the Palestinians, Riyad al-Maliki said.

The meeting, which will have 'massive participation,' is planned to take place on December 15, probably in Paris, he told reporters.

LONDON, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - Thousands of Palestinian refugees in Iraq have been ill-treated, with many of them abducted, tortured and murdered by armed Shiite Muslim groups, Amnesty International said in a report published Monday.

The London-based human rights group issued an urgent appeal to the Shiite-led Iraqi government, US-led coalition and international community to take concrete steps to protect the Palestinians.

GAZA, Sept 29, 2007 (AFP) - Clashes between Fatah and Hamas members in Gaza late Saturday left 10 people wounded, two of them from gunshots, witnesses said.

The confrontation occurred in Khan Yunes following a Hamas announcement saying a local pro-Fatah imam had been replaced by one loyal to its movement.

Fistfights broke out, leaving eight people hurt. One person then opened fire, prompting Hamas-aligned police to intervene, shooting two.

NEW YORK, Sept 28, 2007 (AFP) - Israel and the Palestinians could sign a peace deal within six months of an international peace conference scheduled for November, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas told AFP on Friday.

The US-sponsored conference should define the groundwork for settling questions over the final status of the Palestinian territories, Abbas said in an interview in New York, where he is attending the UN General Assembly.

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 28, 2007 (AFP) - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called Friday for the world to seize the opportunity at a US-sponsored peace conference in November to work towards the creation of a Palestinian state.

'It is time to seize the opportunity for action by the international community to relaunch the peace process and transform the international meeting,' Abbas said in his address to the United Nations General Assembly.

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon, Sept 28, 2007 (AFP) - Aid organisations were working on Friday to disinfect and shore up buildings still standing in north Lebanon's Nahr al-Bared refugee camp after a 15-week army siege of Islamists left most of it in ruins.

'We hope that a first group (of Palestinian refugees) may return in two days. That depends on the speed of restoration of the buildings that are still upright,' Khalil Mekkawi, head of the Committee for Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue, told AFP.

NEW YORK, Sept 28, 2007 (AFP) - Israel and the Palestinians could sign a peace deal within six months of an international peace conference scheduled for November, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas told AFP Friday.

'The meeting in November should define the principles settling the questions over the final status (of the Palestinian territories),' Abbas said in an interview in New York, where he is attending the UN General Assembly.

NEW YORK, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - Israel should freeze construction of Jewish settlements and a separation barrier in the West Bank to prove its 'seriousness' ahead of a Middle East peace summit, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said Wednesday.

In a news conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly here, Saudi Prince Saud al-Faisal also continued to refuse to confirm his country's participation in the US-sponsored summit expected in November.

BOURNEMOUTH, England, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - Britain's foreign minister warned Tuesday that 'contagion' could spread from Iraq across the Middle East, urging the West to talk to all the country's neighbours to head off the threat. Foreign Secretary David Miliband also underlined the need for an urgent solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict to remove an 'excuse' for Al-Al Qaeda to foment unrest in Iraq and elsewhere.

NEW YORK, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush promised to strive for the creation of a Palestinian state, after meeting with the head of the Palestinian Authority Mahmud Abbas Monday over a planned peace summit.

'The United States of America will work as hard as we possibly can to help you achieve the vision' of a two-state solution to the Palestinians' historic conflict with Israel, Bush told Abbas at a news conference after their talks.

NEW YORK, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush met with the Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas Monday to discuss a planned peace conference aiming to map a future Palestinian state, the White House said.

Abbas' Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was also at the planned hour-long talks, held at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel on the eve of the United Nations General Assembly in the city, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

WASHINGTON, Sept 21, 2007 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush will meet Monday with Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair, a close friend, one day after holding talks with Palestinian leaders, the White House said Friday.

Bush is to sit down in New York Monday with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, ahead of addressing the UN General Assembly, said a top US National Security Council official, Michael Kozak.

COPENHAGEN, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - The trial of seven Danes accused of supporting 'terrorist' organisations by selling T-shirts in aid of Colombian and Palestinian extremists opened Thursday in Copenhagen.

They were indicted in March for 'attempting to collect money with a view to aiding groups which commit or intend to commit terrorist acts under article 114 of the penal code on terrorism.'

GAZA CITY, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - Politics usually comes to the doctors at Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital on bloody stretchers -- bodies torn apart by Israeli airstrikes or shot down in the streets by rival clans or factions.

But ever since the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of the territory by routing their secular Fatah party rivals in mid-June in a week of bloody street clashes, Gaza's doctors have been drawn into the factional divide.

NABLUS, West Bank, Sept 15, 2007 (AFP) - A foreign peace activist and a Palestinian protester were wounded on Saturday as the Israeli army fired rubber bullets to break up a protest in the West Bank, witnesses said.

An Israeli military spokesman, confirming the incident, said seven protesters were detained.

About 100 demonstrators, including foreign pacifists, tried to get past an Israeli army fence blocking access to the village of Kutzin, east of the city of Nablus, according to witnesses.

The army fired rubber bullets to disperse the demonstrators.

BEIRUT, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) - There are few signs now to recall the horrors of the massacre, but those Palestinians who survived the Christian militiamen's slaughter during Israel's invasion of Lebanon 25 years ago cannot forget the corpses, the screams and the gunfire.

The small cemetery bears insignificant witness to the nightmare of those three days of slaughter in Sabra and Shatila, now impoverished shantytowns where barefeet chidlren run through narrow alleys at the southern entrance of Beirut, the Lebanese capital.

GAZA, Sept 10, 2007 (AFP) - Ousted former Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya is prepared to meet with president Mahmud Abbas in Saudi Arabia, Haniya's Islamist Hamas movement said on Monday.

Haniya told Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz in a telephone call that he was 'ready to meet Mahmud Abbas to try and resolve the dispute between Palestinian brothers based on the Mecca accord,' Hamas spokesman Taher al-Nunu told AFP.

Abbas, head of Hamas's rival Fatah movement, is due to meet Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Tuesday.

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sept 5, 2007 (AFP) - A US envoy for Middle East affairs met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday to discuss a planned peace conference and a visit by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice later this month, an official said.

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch met the Palestinian leader amid a flurry of diplomatic visits aimed at preparing for an international Middle East peace conference later this year.

GAZA CITY, Sept 5, 2007 (AFP) - The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) unveiled a new multi-million-dollar plan on Wednesday aimed at shoring up the beleaguered education system in the Gaza Strip.

The plan comes after recent tests revealed an 'alarming failure rate' among primary and secondary school students in maths and Arabic, according to John Ging, the head of the agency's Gaza office.

GAZA CITY, Sept 1, 2007 (AFP) - One Palestinian was killed and six more were wounded on Saturday when Hamas paramilitaries opened fire to disperse protesters trying to dash across the border into Egypt, witnesses said.

Ahmed Eqdeh, 16, was mortally wounded and died after being taken to hospital. Two others hit by bullets had light wounds, a medical source said.

Four more demonstrators suffered fractures, he added.

GAZA CITY, Sept 1, 2007 (AFP) - Seven Palestinians were wounded on Saturday when Hamas paramilitaries opened fire to disperse protesters trying to dash across the border into Egypt, witnesses said.

One of the injured, a teenager, was taken to a hospital in a serious condition, doctors added, after members of the Islamist movement's Executive Force opened fire.

A doctor treating the seriously wounded youth, who had been shot, described his condition as 'extremely critical.' Two others hit by bullets had light wounds, he added.

GAZA CITY, Sept 1, 2007 (AFP) - Five Palestinians were wounded on Saturday when Hamas paramilitaries opened fire to disperse protesters trying to dash across the border into Egypt, witnesses said.

One of the wounded, a teenager, was taken to a hospital in a serious condition, doctors added, after members of the Islamist movement's Executive Force opened fire.

Thousands of Hamas supporters had been demonstrating to urge the Egyptian authorities to reopen the sole crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, at the border town of Rafah.

GENEVA, Aug 30, 2007 (AFP) - The economy of the Palestinian territories is increasingly tied to Israel as poverty, violence and occupation restrict the prospects for independent growth, a United Nations report said on Thursday.

CAIRO, Aug 2, 2007 (AFP) - Around 2,400 Palestinians out of 6,000 stranded in Egypt for weeks have made it back to Gaza since Israel started allowing them passage last week, a Palestinian security source told AFP.

On Thursday, 800 Palestinians reached the Al-Oja (Nizana) cargo crossing on the Egypt-Israel border, south of the divided town of Rafah, the official said, the latest batch since the first Palestinians went home on Sunday.

CAIRO, Aug 1, 2007 (AFP) - Nearly 1,600 Palestinians out of 6,000 stranded in Egypt for weeks have made it back to Gaza since Israel started allowing them passage last week, an Egyptian security source told AFP.

On Wednesday, 574 Palestinians reached the Al-Oja (Nizana) cargo crossing on the Egypt-Israel border, south of the divided town of Rafah, the official said.

Israel initially only approved the entry of 627 Palestinians, of which 413 crossed Sunday and Monday, before agreeing to allow in another 1,000.

MOSCOW, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Russia said Tuesday it was reducing contacts with Hamas but would maintain some ties with the Islamist movement in order to promote 'dialogue' in the Palestinian conflict.

Moscow also affirmed its support for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, leader of Hamas rival Fatah, who held talks in the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

'I want to assure you that we will support you as the lawful leader of the Palestinian people,' Putin told Abbas at the start of the talks. 'We are certain that you will do everything to secure unity.'

RAMALLAH, West Bank, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - A Palestinian minister on Tuesday accused Israel of 'medical negligence' over the death of a Palestinian prisoner in one of its jails.

Minister for penal affairs minister Ashraf Ajrami said Shadi Said Suleiman al-Saidi, 28, died after being transferred from Nafkha prison in Israel's Negev desert to hospital in the southern town of Soroka with a kidney infection.

'We consider this death is due to medical negligence,' Ajrami told a news conference.

MOSCOW, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Tuesday in Moscow that dialogue with the militant group Hamas would not be possible until the group gave up control of the Gaza Strip.

'The situation must return to what it was ahead of the coup before there can be a normalization' of contacts, Abbas said after talks with President Vladimir Putin.

Hamas 'should recognize its guilt and apologise for its crimes,' he said.

MOSCOW, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Russia vowed Tuesday to keep diplomatic ties with Islamist movement Hamas for the sake of Palestinian 'dialogue' as Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas met President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

'We maintain contacts with them with one practical, pragmatic goal -- to establish dialogue among the Palestinians. That's our only goal,' Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov said on the sidelines of the talks.

MOSCOW, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced support on Tuesday for efforts by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to end a bitter stand-off in the Palestinian territories.

'I want to assure you that we will support you as the lawful leader of the Palestinian people. We are certain that you will do everything to secure unity,' Putin told Abbas at the start of key talks in the Kremlin.

MOSCOW, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced support for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Tuesday and said he was certain Abbas would do 'everything' to secure Palestinian unity.

'I want to assure you that we will support you as the lawful leader of the Palestinian people. We are certain that you will do everything to secure unity,' Putin told Abbas at the start of key talks in the Kremlin.

'We have consistently defended the legitimate interest of the Palestinian people in the creation of a single state,' Putin said.

MOSCOW, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas prepared to meet in Moscow on Wednesday over the bitter Palestinian stand-off that Moscow insists only dialogue will solve.

Abbas said Tuesday he was 'eager' for the talks with Putin, who has carved out a unique position in Middle East diplomacy by maintaining contacts with both Abbas' Fatah party and its rival militant Islamist group Hamas.

MOSCOW, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas prepared to meet in Moscow on Wednesday over the bitter Palestinian stand-off that Moscow insists only dialogue will solve.

Abbas said Tuesday he was 'eager' for the talks with Putin, who has carved out a unique position in Middle East diplomacy by maintaining contacts with both Abbas' Fatah party and its rival militant Islamist group Hamas.

MOSCOW, July 30, 2007 (AFP) - Russia on Monday called for dialogue between Fatah and Hamas as the two warring Palestinian factions separately sought Moscow's help in resolving their stand-off.

At a meeting with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov 'stressed the need to restore Palestinian unity through dialogue between all political forces,' the ministry said in a statement.

MOSCOW, July 30, 2007 (AFP) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pledged his support for president Mahmud Abbas on Monday as 'the lawful leader of all Palestinians' as key talks aimed at narrowing differences began in Moscow.

Abbas arrived Sunday for three days of negotiations he hopes will win the support of Russia in a bitter dispute between his Fatah party, which controls the West Bank, and rival Hamas, which controls the Gaza strip.

MOSCOW, July 30, 2007 (AFP) - Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas prepared to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Monday at the start of a three-day visit Moscow hopes will boost its role in the Middle East peace process.

Abbas was also set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin during the visit, where Moscow's efforts to raise its profile on Middle East issues may run up against the serious differences between the two presidents.