When I was three years old, my proud Mum and Dad asked the local Maidstone portrait photographer to take a picture of their dear son.

An essential condition for the liberation of Palestine is the unity of all Palestinian parties and factions, but this point seems to elude both Fatah and Hamas. The two have behaved recklessly and resorted to force in the wake of Hamas’s sweeping electoral win in January 2006.

The US has launched a new effort to finalise terms for fresh negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
In talks with Israeli leaders, US envoy George Mitchell has been discussing the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank - a key stumbling block.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.
Mr Netanyahu said work still needs to be done to narrow differences before peace talks can resume.

All of a sudden, we can say "racism." A shock wave has struck complacent Israeli society. A few dozen Ethiopian children were not accepted to religious schools in Petah Tikva. That is truly terrible, everyone tsked-tsked at the heart-rending picture of Aschalo Sama, a boy without a school. Even President Shimon Peres expressed shock. Everyone is permitted to be shocked; it is politically correct.

President Obama is trying to find a way out of the Israel-Palestine predicament. He can’t resolve it, because that is beyond anyone except Israelis, and they are not going to permit the problem to be dealt with in accordance with international law and human decency. Such a course would mean that Israelis would have to evacuate the 121 settlements, housing over a quarter of a million people, and scores of “outposts” they have built illegally on Arab-owned land.