Damascus  - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was expected to arrive in Syria Sunday for talks on the prospects of reconciliation talks with the Hamas militant movement but he had no plans to mee

Ramallah - Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiators will meet in Washington in ten days with US administration representatives attending the meeting, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday.

Spokesman Nabil Abu Rdineh said the meeting was intended to give a stronger push to the peace talks between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel.

There's not much time to reach an agreement before the end of the year, Abu Rdineh said.

The parties hope to reach a deal paving the way for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel before US President George W Bush leaves the White House in January.

Ramallah - Israeli forces arrested seven Palestinians in the West Bank early on Saturday, Israeli and Palestinian security sources said.

Damascus  - A senior official with the radical Palestinian group Hamas said in an interview Friday that the group had temporarily broken off talks with Israel on a prisoner exchange involving captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Mussa Abu Marsuk, deputy politburo chief of Hamas, told the London-based pan-Arab paper Al Hayat that the move was taken after Israel had on several times closed the border crossing with the Gaza Strip in violation of the two sides' ceasefire agreement.

Hamas had now called off a round of negotiations which was to have taken place next week in Egypt, he added.

Al-Arish, Egypt - Hundreds of Palestinians stormed Egypt's border crossing with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and threw rocks at police in protest at slow entry procedures a day after the border was

Gaza City  - Palestinian factions argued Saturday they had the right to respond to Israeli violations of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire which took hold in the Gaza Strip nine days ago.

The argument intensified after Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, criticized two other groups for firing rockets into Israel in defiance of the ceasefire.

The small armed Islamic Jihad and another group claiming to be affiliated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement fired the rockets on three occasions in recent days to retaliate for an Israeli military action in the West Bank.

The West Bank has not been included in the ceasefire.