Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has denied requests from representatives of the Palestinian faction Hamas to visit “political” detainees held in West Bank prisons. The West Bank is controlled by Abbas’s own Fatah faction. The move was denounced by senior Hamas representative Aziz Dweik, who is viewed by Hamas as...

Analysis to the effect that political responsibility over the Gaza Strip would moderate the Iran-backed Islamist terror group Hamas — a mainstay of certain strains of foreign policy reasoning — were undermined this week when the group sought to enforce gender segregation on boys and girls starting in grade four....

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah II have signed an agreement pledging to cooperate on protecting Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. The agreement will be read against a series of moves by Abbas to implicitly and explicitly declare that Israel is endangering Muslim holy sites in...

An internationally funded NGO founded and chaired by prominent Palestinian legislator and media personality Hanan Ashrawi is struggling to regain its credibility after accusing Jews of using the blood of Christians as part of Passover rituals, then defending the blood libel, then removing the accusation, and now finally apologizing. In...

The Palestinian Authority and the Fatah faction that controls it are facing mounting human rights criticism after a West Bank court upheld a one-year prison sentence for a Bethlehem journalist convicted of defaming PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Mamdouh Hamamreh posted the photo of Abbas to Facebook in 2010, alongside the image...

Palestinian human rights groups are blasting Hamas for banning several members of the rival Palestinian Fatah faction from traveling outside the Gaza Strip. The Iran-backed terror group has controlled the territory since it expelled most Fatah officials from it in a bloody 2007 battle. The Fatah officials who stayed inside the...