Report: Israel’s Olmert offered Palestinians land near Gaza, West bank for settlement blocs

Report: Israel’s Olmert offered land swap

JERUSALEM — Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered to swap Israeli territory near the Gaza Strip and West Bank in exchange for settlement blocs in the West Bank, the Haaretz newspaper reported Thursday, in the most detailed account of the former Israeli leader’s proposed peace offer to the Palestinians.

20 Palestinian women prisoners, to be freed in swap with Israel, returning to changed worlds

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Women make up only a tiny minority of more than 7,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, but they often pay a high personal price for what has largely been a supporting role in the Palestinian uprising.

Netanyahu’s ‘economic peace’ yields first fruits for Palestinians, but still has a way to go

NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he wants to make “economic peace” with the Palestinians, and the first fruits are already being seen in eased Israeli restrictions that are stoking a retail and entertainment boom in the West Bank.

Exhausted by conflict, Palestinians seek diversion in movies, concerts, shopping

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Middle-class matrons shop for imported furniture in a marble-and-glass emporium. A new movie house is screening “Transformers.” Teens bop to a Danish hip-hop band performing on their high school basketball court.

Palestinian factions arrest rivals to strengthen their grip on the West Bank, Gaza

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ security forces have significantly widened a crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank in the past month. They have doubled the number of detainees and are increasingly targeting the wives of activists, school teachers and others on the fringes of the Islamic militant group, Hamas officials say.

Netanyahu rejects US calls for West Bank settlement freeze as ‘unreasonable’

HAVAT GILAD, West Bank — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday rejected President Barack Obama’s demand for a freeze on West Bank Jewish settlement construction, but his government’s move to dismantle some squatter camps set off a rampage by Jewish settlers against Palestinians.

Netanyahu dismisses US calls for West Bank settlement freeze as ‘unreasonable’

HAVAT GILAD, West Bank — Israel’s prime minister on Monday dismissed the U.S. demand for a settlement freeze as unreasonable, moving closer to a collision with the Obama administration, while mobs of Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian laborers and burned West Bank fields.

Israeli settlers attack Palestinian laborers and burn land in West Bank rampage, 6 hurt

NABLUS, West Bank — Mobs of Jewish settlers went on a rampage in the West Bank Monday, attacking Palestinian laborers and setting fire to agricultural land to protest against an Israeli government crackdown on unauthorized outposts in the territory.

5 Palestinians hospitalized after West Bank clash with masked Jewish settlers, Israeli army

NABLUS, West Bank — Jewish settlers, Israeli troops and Palestinian villagers clashed with guns, rocks and tear gas, leaving five Palestinians hospitalized Saturday, hospital officials said.