News at a Glance

Jewish Telegraphic Agency
05-24-2004
Israel may compensate Palestinians who lost their homes in Israeli army
operations in Rafah. Israeli sources said Sunday that residents of the
refugee camp, in southern Gaza, could be eligible for reparations if they
prove ownership of property that was damaged during Israel's weeklong
counterterrorist operation there. Dozens of homes were demolished or
damaged during the Israeli operation that began May 17, which drew
international censure.

One in four Israeli teenagers wants to leave the country, a poll found.
According to an Israel Democracy Institute survey published over the
weekend, 27 percent of Israeli teenagers do not think they will remain in
the Jewish state, compared with 13 percent of adults.

Israeli troops foiled a West Bank suicide bombing. Military sources said
soldiers at a checkpoint outside a settlement in the Jordan Valley fired
warning shots in the air Saturday after their suspicions were raised by a
Palestinian who approached them clutching a box.

Sen. John Kerry called comments about Israel by one of his Senate
colleagues "absurd." The Massachusetts senator and presumptive Democratic
nominee for president said in a statement Friday that he disagreed with
comments by Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.), in which Hollings said
the United States went to war in Iraq because of Israel.

Israeli Labor Party leader Shimon Peres denied a report saying he is
considering joining the Sharon government. On Sunday, Peres rebutted the
Channel One television report, which said he had held secret talks with an
adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on forming a unity coalition
government between the Labor and Likud parties.

Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi walked out of an Arab League summit that
ended Sunday. Gadhafi walked out in part because the 22-member summit
refused to consider a proposal he made a few years ago that the Israelis
and Palestinians form a joint state called Israteen, The New York Times
reported.

Israel's raid on Rafah was reminiscent of the Holocaust, Justice Minister
Yosef "Tommy" Lapid said. "On television I saw an old woman rummaging
through the ruins of her home in Rafah, searching for her medication, and
she reminded me of my grandmother who was expelled from her home during the
Holocaust," the Hungarian-born Lapid, who came to Palestine in the 1930s
after fleeing the Nazis, told fellow ministers at Sunday's Cabinet meeting.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center called on the International Olympic Committee
to press Greece on anti-Semitism. The center made its call in a letter to
the president of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, two and a half months before the
2004 Olympic games are scheduled to get under way in Athens.

Dovish Israelis challenged the appointment of the former Israel Air Force
commander as deputy chief of staff. A group of conscientious objectors and
intellectuals petitioned the High Court of Justice on Sunday against the
promotion of Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz, who oversaw a 2002 airstrike on a Gaza
residential building in which Hamas military chief Salah Shehada and 13
other Palestinians were killed.

Two West Bank Palestinians were killed when explosives they were handling
went off prematurely. Palestinians initially blamed the blast in the city
of Nablus on an Israeli helicopter strike, but it quickly became clear that
the men apparently had detonated explosives they were loading onto a cart.

An Israeli movie won an award at the Cannes film festival. Keren Yedaya,
director of "My Treasure," took the Camera D'Or prize on Saturday --
awarded to the best full-length movie by a debut director. The film is
about the lives of an Israeli prostitute and her 17-year-old daughter, who
wants her mother to quit the street.

An Israeli author shook up a conference of European Jews with an appeal
for them to take the lead in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A.B. Yehoshua called on European Jews to help draw the new border between
Israel and a Palestinian state at the third General Assembly of European
Jewry, which took place May 20-23 in Budapest. Also, the General Assembly
elected Britain's Jonathan Joseph as the new president of the European
Council of Jewish Communities.

The American Jewish Committee launched an Internet radio station. The
station, available at www.ajc.org, features interviews with world and
Jewish leaders about anti-Semitism, terrorism and other issues facing Jews
around the world.

An Israeli man living in Canada applied for refugee status for his family
because of the danger they face at home from suicide bombers.

Yossef Makias, whose aunt was killed in a bus explosion and whose nephews
were paralyzed in a drive-by shooting, is appealing a recent decision of
the Immigration and Refugee Board not to accept the family as refugees on
the grounds that all Israelis face the same terrorist threat and a more
specific danger is required in order to qualify as refugees.

A lifelong learning school named after World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg
was dedicated in Buenos Aires. Following the May 14 dedication, there are
now Raoul Wallenberg Schools in four Latin American countries, including
Brazil, Uruguay and Ecuador.

An Israeli pop star published his army discharge form to prove that he did
not shirk national service. Singer-songwriter Aviv Geffen, whose
performances often target hard-line Israeli policies, has long been accused
of ducking his army service. But a military medical document Aviv posted
online Sunday cites "health reasons" as the cause for the 31-year-old
Geffen's discharge.

Article copyright the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.