The Palestinian Authority on Thursday informed Israel it would no longer pay for electricity that the Jewish state supplies to the Gaza Strip, as a power crisis in the Hamas-run enclave deepened.

Without Israeli cooperation and other practical changes, foreign aid alone cannot rescue stagnant Palestinian economy, the World Bank says.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, fuel to power back-up generators at seven out of 13 hospitals in Gaza is expected to run out within three days.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is furious at Fatah activists who called for a Day of Rage five days before he is scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump.

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas said Wednesday it is to unveil an amended version of its 1987 founding charter next week, without detailing the change.

The US State Department on Wednesday defended the controversial Breaking the Silence NGO as fulfilling an “important” role in Israeli society in a briefing that addressed a wide range of issues pertaining to Middle East peace.

An advance team from Washington arrived on Thursday to discuss logistics of US President Donald Trump’s likely visit next month, amid reports that he will be coming to Israel on May 22 and staying for a single night.

US President Donald Trump will reverse longstanding US policy by officially recognizing the entire city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but will not implement his election campaign pledge to relocate the American embassy from Tel Aviv, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper claimed Thursday. There was no confirmation of the report.

Muzzle ‘awards’ take aim at those deemed encroaching on freedom of expression; lawmakers highlighted for stringent college campus clampdown.

Given an ultimatum of meeting with Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem or meeting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel very simply made the right choice to forego Netanyahu. And not in order to “defy” Netanyahu, as per a breathless Bloomberg headline, or to give any message at all.

“Any blowback Netanyahu receives after snubbing the German foreign minister will be short-lived: his base is behind him, he has the patronage of the U.S., and the status quo will remain exactly as it is,” writes Lisa Goldman.

Israeli leaders are applying a double standard when they insist that Jewish terror is a legitimate struggle for achieving national goals, while Palestinian terror is unacceptably brutal use of violence, Daniel Bar-Tal and Ilan Baruch.

A general strike was held across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem on Thursday, as thousands of Palestinians shut down their shops and businesses in solidarity with some 1,500 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike as part of the “Freedom and Dignity” strike, organized by imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi.

The unprecedented action is not just a bid for improved conditions, but a call for the most basic of human rights and treatment in Israeli prisons.

To one side loom towers manned by Israeli soldiers who keep watch from behind bulletproof glass. To the other stand concrete walls charred by fire bombs, pitted with bullet holes and scrawled with Palestinian graffiti. In between, barriers and steel fences block traffic or corral vehicles and pedestrians.

Settlers are caught on video throwing stones at a Palestinian school in Burin, and a settlement security guard fires his gun into the air. But the soldiers who arrive on the scene take no action against the attackers.