Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a Monday speech at the opening session of the Knesset, slammed a United Nations report critical of Israel's tactics during its offensive into Gaza. The report, released last month, accused Israel of committing "actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity" during its military incursion into Gaza from December 27 to January 18. The report also accused Hamas of war crimes. Netanyahu told lawmakers, "We will not agree to a situation where the ...

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday defended a controversial decision to defer action on a United Nations report accusing Israel and Hamas of war crimes. Abbas said the draft resolution backing the so-called Goldstone report "did not gather the number of voices that we needed. We did not want this draft resolution to be turned into a number like all the other resolutions regarding Palestine that are still unimplemented." The report, written by South African Richard Goldstone who headed ...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with the top U.S. envoy to the Middle East on Friday was "useful and constructive," the Israeli leader's office said. Talks between American diplomat George Mitchell and Netanyahu focused on efforts to restart the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and the two men agreed to continue their discussions in the coming days, the minister's office said. Mitchell will meet Saturday with two of Netanyahu's advisers, Yitzhak Molcho and Mike Hertzog, the office said. He ...

President Obama on Tuesday prodded Israel and the Palestinian Authority to get moving on talks aimed at a permanent resolution of their decades-old conflict. "Simply put, it is past time to talk about starting negotiations. It is time to move forward," Obama told reporters before a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. "It is time to show the flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise that is necessary to achieve our ...

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has approved the construction of 455 housing units in the West Bank, his office said Monday. The move comes as Israel and the United States have been increasingly at odds over the settlement issue. U.S. President Barack Obama has insisted Israel freeze all settlement activity as a necessary step toward advancing negotiations with Palestinians. The Jewish settlements are spread throughout the Palestinian West Bank. Israel maintains the settlements are needed ...

Pakistan's military has declared that not only is it in contact with Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar but that it can bring him and other commanders to the negotiating table with the United States. The acknowledgment of on-going communication with Taliban forces using sanctuary in Pakistan to launch military strikes against U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan is part of a new diplomatic overture to help the Obama administration find an end to the long-running conflict. In a CNN exclusive ...

The office of Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas has a bank of six flat-screen televisions covering most of one wall, showing all the main international English-language news channels, and several local ones besides. This is one of the rooms where Pakistan's media war is being fought, and Abbas, the Pakistan army's main spokesman, is a key part of the battle. I kid with him that CNN isn't among the channels on his screens, and he seems slightly hurt, insisting it is. ...

Israel's new government is a headache the Obama Administration doesn't need. Compared with Tzipi Livni, the woman he narrowly beat out, and even Ehud Olmert, the man he succeeds, incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuis cool toward a Palestinian state. And although it includes the moderate Labor Party, Netanyahu's ruling coalition teems with right-wing figures like Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose call for a loyalty oath directed at Israel's Arab citizens dismays even Israel's staunchest friends. But if Israel's new ...

Pakistan's military continued its assault Thursday on militants in Taliban-held areas, its chief spokesman told reporters. So far, 14 militants have been killed in the past 24 hours, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said. The operation is still ongoing in the districts of Dir and Buner, which was recently seized by the Taliban in violation of an agreement with Pakistan's government. Pakistani forces have completely secured Daggar, the main town in Buner and the scene of heavy fighting on Wednesday, Abbas ...

Israel's election and the Gaza conflict have revealed the scale of the challenge facing U.S. President Barack Obama in jump-starting Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Israeli voters tacked to the right, and the government that results from Tuesday's poll will be, if anything, even less inclined to conclude a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinian leadership than the current government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been. Meanwhile, the Gaza war cemented the stature of Hamas as the dominant political force among Palestinians. Needless to say, there ...