Muhammad Al-Daya, a longtime bodyguard of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, told an interviewer on BBC Arabic last week that his boss’s condemnations of terror were insincere and issued only in response to pressure. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated a segment of the interview dealing with Arafat’s...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday instructed high-level government officials to limit cooperation with Palestinian counterparts to security concerns and peace negotiations, a move that an Israeli government official told Reuters was in response to “the Palestinians’ grave violation of their commitments in the framework of the peace talks”: Israeli government...

The State Department went on offense late Tuesday to correct what spokeswoman Jen Psaki underlined was wrongheaded media coverage of Congressional testimony given earlier in the day by Secretary of State John Kerry, in which statements by Kerry were widely described as having blamed Israel for the breakdown in peace talks between...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday revealed that extensive efforts to extend Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were in progress when Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas announced – in what the Associated Press described as a “hastily convened” press conference – that he would be turning to the United Nations and seeking to ascend...

On Friday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat declared that Hamas, the Islamist organization that rules Gaza, is not a terrorist organization. Speaking at a conference held at the Masarat think tank in Ramallah, an institution dedicated to Palestinian reconciliation, Erekat said, “Hamas is a Palestinian movement, is not and will...

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday rejected a request from Secretary of State John Kerry to reverse his position – announced earlier this week at what the Associated Press described as a “hastily convened” press conference – to turn to the United Nations and join 15 international treaties as the “State of Palestine”:...