MAP News provides latest round the clock updates of all major stories that impact on the lives of Palestinians across the Middle East. Will staff on the ground in offices in Beirut, Ramallah, Gaza and London we are able to provide expert analysis and comment on events.

Settlers defy peace talks with new construction across West Bank

2 September 2010
Haaretz - Yesha council says settlers will start building in at least 80 settlements, breaking a government freeze that ends on September 26. Hours before peace talks were set to...

UN: refugee camps have higher jobless rates than Palestine

2 September 2010
Daily Star - BEIRUT/GENEVA: Unemployment among Palestinians continues to be a crippling problem in the Occupied Territories but is still significantly lower than the rate among refugees in Lebanon,...

Barack Obama urges Mid-East leaders to take opportunity

2 September 2010
BBC - US President Barack Obama has urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders not to let the chance of a permanent peace deal "slip away". "This moment of opportunity may not...

Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad signals make or break for two-state solution

31 August 2010
Guardian - The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, warned today that a "moment of reckoning" was approaching as Israel and the Palestinian Authority prepare to embark this week on...

Gaza hospital chief warns fuel crisis imperiling lives

30 August 2010
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The director of Gaza City's Dar Ash-Shifa Hospital warned Monday that dozens of patients in the hospital's care could die as a result of a...

Gov't won't increase electricity to Gaza

27 August 2010
Jerusalem Post - Vice premier Shalom refuses Blair's request to increase output. Israel has balked at a request to boost the amount of electricity it supplies to the Gaza Strip...

Mired in poverty: Palestinian refugees in Lebanon see little hope in new law

25 August 2010
Guardian - Standing in the narrow streets of Shatila refugee camp, south Beirut, as battered mopeds speed past and electrical wires dangle messily overhead, seven-year-old Hasan Hameid is clear...

Gaza official says power crisis has worsened

24 August 2010
(Ma'an) -- A Gaza official said Monday that despite media reports to the contrary, the electricity crisis in Gaza has worsened. Kin'an Obed, vice president of the Energy Authority in...

Almost 95 percent of the water pumped in the Gaza Strip is polluted and unfit for drinking

24 August 2010
(Reliefweb) Almost 95 percent of the water pumped in the Gaza Strip is polluted and unfit for drinking. This warning was recently issued by the UN Environment Programme, the...

Missed opportunities for a peaceful Middle East

24 August 2010
(The Guardian) Ron Prosor's defence of Israel's continued blockade of Gaza (Before we talk to Hamas, August 20) is deeply flawed. Based on research published by The Lancet-Palestinian Health...

Palestinians: No talks if settlement freeze ends

23 August 2010
AP -RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinian leader has warned President Barack Obama that he will pull out of upcoming peace talks if Israel ends a slowdown on West...

UN urges Israel to loosen Gaza restrictions

20 August 2010
BBC - A UN report says the Israeli military has increasingly restricted Palestinian access to farmland in the Gaza Strip and fishing zones along its shore. The Office for Co-ordination...

Quantities fall slightly at Gaza crossing

18 August 2010
Maan News - Israeli authorities opened one crossing into Gaza Wednesday for the limited transfer of aid and commercial goods. Israeli officials told told Radio Israel the week earlier that...

Lebanon grants Palestinian refugees right to work

17 August 2010
AP -BEIRUT - Lebanon's Parliament passed a law Tuesday allowing the country's Palestinian refugees the right to work in the same professions as other foreigners, lifting a ban that...

Gaza schools, clinics face closure due to UN budget crisis

17 August 2010
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories - The UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Monday that it is running an 84-million-dollar deficit that could soon force it to shut schools...

The girl who became the only fisherwoman in Gaza

16 August 2010
The Independent - With an invalid father and a family to feed behind the blockade, 16-year-old Madeleine Kulab has learnt to brave dangerous waters. Catrina Stewart reports As the waves...

PA health system to be self-reliant

16 August 2010
(Jerusalem Post) Transfer of Palestinian patients to Israel for medical treatment will soon come to an end in order to keep funding inside the Palestinian Authority, according to the...

Searching Borj Al-Barajneh

13 August 2010
Al-Ahram - Two young girls stood, as if frozen, staring below them at an ever-vibrant Beirut. Their balcony, like the rest of their house and most of their refugee...

Al Jazeera: Expired medicine donated to Gaza

12 August 2010
Al Jazeera - There is no doubt that hospitals in the Gaza Strip are in dire straights, desperately in need of medicine and technology. However, millions of dollars worth of...

Israel's Gaza blockade: Millions of dollars worth of aid piles up in warehouses

12 August 2010
(CSM) Ashdod, Israel -In a half-dozen warehouses in this southern Israeli port, refrigerators and roofing materials for Israeli homes share space with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of...