Middle East, Israel | featured news

Resisting American pressure, President Mahmoud Abbas formally requested United Nations membership on Friday.

Wading into a tense foreign policy dispute, Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry and Mitt Romney on Tuesday criticized the Palestinian Authority's effort to seek a formal recognition of statehood by the U.N. General Assembly. The GOP rivals also used the jockeying at the U.S. to assail President Barack Obama's policy toward Israel.

The United States pressed ahead Monday with intensive talks aimed at averting a showdown over Palestinian statehood at the United Nations this week, asking key Muslim ally Turkey not to allow its rift with Israel to grow wider and hoping to coax cooperation from a noncommittal Russia....

Washington has launched an effort to avoid a clash stemming from plans by Palestinians to seek recognition as a state at the United Nations, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing senior US officials and foreign ...

Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador and said Friday it is cutting military ties with the country over its refusal to apologize for last year's raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that killed nine people.

A Palestinian attacker wounded seven Israelis near a Tel Aviv nightclub early Monday, hitting a police checkpoint with a stolen taxi and then stabbing others, police said. The attacker was a Palestinian in his twenties from the city of Nablus, according to Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri. Just before 2 a.m., the attacker stole a taxi in south Tel Aviv and then drove into a police checkpoint securing the street near a popular nightclub, she said.

Egypt welcomed a joint investigation with Israel on the killing of five Egyptian security personnel during an Israeli border operation, but said on Sunday the response was insufficient given the gravity of the situation.

Israel's military spokesman said Thursday that several attacks have been carried out by assailants.

Tens of thousands of people gathered across Israel Saturday to call for lower living costs in an effort to show the government their protest movement has countrywide support.

The Israeli government on Monday dropped a threat to issue lengthy deportation orders against journalists aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla, in an attempt to scale back a crisis with the international media.