Ramallah - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has sacked Palestinian Intelligence Chief Tawfiq Tirawi, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported Wednesday.

Abbas issued a presidential decree, ending Tirawi's tenure as head of the Palestinian General Intelligence and appointing him a security advisor to the president instead, Wafa said.

He informed the general of the decree Tuesday night.

Tel Aviv - Pales

Cairo - Palestinian Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said on Tuesday that his group will do everything it can to ensure the success of the Palestinian national dialogue to be held in Cairo on November 7-9.

"We will work hard to ensure the success of the dialogue and the reconciliation," Zahar said when he arrived in Cairo from Damascus late Tuesday.

Cairo - US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welsh on Tuesday urged the Arab countries that have no diplomatic ties with Israel to establish relations with it.

"We would like to see some action taken by Arab countries, which do not have relations with Israel, to establish ties with it," he said, in remarks after his meeting with Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa. "We would also like to see Israel do the same thing and get closer to Arab states, as peoples on both sides are willing to live in peace."

Ramallah - The world financial crisis is not expected to leave much of an impact on the emerging Palestinian economy, officials, business executives and economists agree.

They said during a luncheon to discuss the world economic crisis that due to the small size of the emerging Palestinian economy, the world financial crisis is not expected to leave any permanent or even short term scar on it.

Cairo - Egyptian authorities made an exception late Thursday and opened the Rafah crossing to allow Palestinian patients coming from Egyptian hospitals to cross the border into the Gaza strip, according to sources.

A source at the crossing told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that "32 Palestinian patients and their attendants crossed the Rafah border Thursday evening."