Gaza City - The radical Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has claimed to have had contacts with advisors

Ramallah - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday that Israel during its talks with him over the past year had proposed concessions to him regarding Jerusalem, but he rejected them because they were partial.

Abbas told tens of thousands of Palestinians who gathered at his Ramallah headquarters to mark four years since the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that he wants a full peace deal and will not accept a partial one.

"We rejected Israeli proposals that indicated making concessions including on Jerusalem and the refugees," he said.

Sharm el-Sheikh/Jerusalem - Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have made serious and intensive progress toward formulating a peace treaty, and the world community should not intervene in the talks, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

In a statement summing up Livni's remarks to the sponsors of the peace process at a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Livni was quoted as saying that to date, the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams had held hundreds of meetings and the sides believed the elements, the principles and the guiding principles for an agreement were in place.

Tel Aviv/Gaza - Israeli soldiers and militant Palestinians clashed briefly in the Gaza Strip border area on Saturday, amid conflicting accounts of where the clash took place.

Both the military and local Gaza eyewitness accounts agreed there was an exchange of fire when Israeli soldiers arrived at the border fence to carry out controlled detonations of explosive devices.

But an Israeli army spokeswoman, while confirming the exchange of fire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants, denied that the incident took place on Gaza territory.

Cairo, Gaza - Egypt announced on Saturday that crucial reconciliation talks between the Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah scheduled for Monday are to be postponed.

The decision came after Hamas officially told Cairo that it will not take part in the meetings, the Egyptian state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported.

In the Gaza Strip, the local Ramattan news agency quoted Palestinian officials as saying Egypt had informed them that the dialogue meeting was being postponed.

Gaza - Israeli forces on Saturday rolled into the southern Gaza Strip and Palestinian fighters engaged them, witnesses said.

A number of tanks and bulldozers entered the Khoza'a area in eastern Khan Younis city in the southern Gaza Strip. The bulldozers started to level the land, destroying fields and farms in the area, residents said.

The troops withdrew around the noon after Gaza militants said they exchanged fire with the forces. There were no reports on casualties.