The visit ... would have taken the children to Arab towns in Israel, southern areas targeted by militants' rockets in the conflict, a mixed-race school and the beach in Tel Aviv.  But Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, said the cancellation was justified to protect children from "the politics of normalisation" with Israel.

Hamas affiliated social media exploded Tuesday with violent and anti-Semitic cartoons praising the terrorist attack that killed four people Tuesday morning at a synagogue in Jerusalem.

The Palestinian president will ask donor countries for $4 billion for Gaza reconstruction after a summer war between Israel and Hamas damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes and more than 5,000 businesses, according to a report Mahmoud Abbas is to present to a pledging conference this month.

After surging during a 50-day war with Israel, Hamas' popularity among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank has fallen back and is now nearly even with support for the more moderate Fatah party, a new poll shows. 

 Standing at the front of a conference hall in Doha, the visiting sheikh told his audience of wealthy Qataris that to help the battered residents of Syria, they should not bother with donations to humanitarian programs or the Western-backed Free Syrian Army. “Give your money to the ones who will spend it on jihad, not aid,” implored the sheikh, Hajaj al-Ajmi, recently identified by the United States government as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

The group of neighbors surveyed the destruction wreaked on their residential complex by Israeli bombardment, with building after building flattened or punctured by shells. The men then began to voice something almost never heard out loud in Gaza: criticism of its Hamas rulers.

The Guardian has agreed to run an advertisement accusing Hamas of "child sacrifice" as another British newspaper, The Times, came under fire for refusing to print it. The ad, written by Nobel prize-winning author Elie Wiesel, calls on U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders to condemn Hamas' "use of children as human shields."