Shorts: Mideast

Israeli couple may have bought Arab baby

jerusalem (jta) | A childless Israeli couple is suspected of buying an Arab baby.

Police said this week that a religious Jewish couple from Jerusalem is believed to have paid $1,600 for the newborn son of an Arab woman from Jaffa six years ago.

The case came to light when the Interior Ministry reported irregularities in the couple's efforts to document the adoption.

An Israeli woman arrested on suspicion of brokering the deal is due to appear before Jerusalem District Court. According to media reports, the Jaffa woman decided to sell her son after her Jewish husband was murdered during a trip to Jordan in what appeared to be a family feud.




Did Yasser Arafat have Jewish doctor?

jerusalem (jta) | A Jewish doctor reportedly tended to Yasser Arafat on his deathbed.

Citing French government sources, the newspaper Ma'ariv said the unnamed physician was one of a select group of doctors who tended to the Palestinian Authority president at the military hospital outside Paris, where he died Nov. 11 of an undisclosed illness.

"He was called in to take care of Arafat on a purely professional basis," a French official was quoted as saying. "But this is a sensitive subject which does not bear discussion."

According to the official, the doctor is a supporter of Israel, but was not believed to have supplied Israeli officials with privileged information on Arafat's condition. There was no immediate comment from the Palestinian Authority.




Bush boosts Sharon

jerusalem (jta) | President Bush pledged in an Israeli newspaper to reach Israeli-Palestinian peace during his second term as U.S. president.

"I want you to know that I am going to invest a lot of time and a lot of creative thinking so that there will finally be peace between Israel and the Palestinians. I am convinced that, during this term, I will manage to bring peace," Bush told Israel's biggest newspaper, Yediot Achronot, in an interview published Dec. 19.




Hamas: War still on

jerusalem (jta) | Hamas said it would continue its war against Israel.

A spokesman for the Palestinian terrorist group was quoted by The Associated Press as rejecting a conciliatory speech by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in which he promised Palestinians an independent state in exchange for peace.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Sharon's other pledge, to annex large Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank, was a "war against the rights of the Palestinian people," and said that his group's war against Israel would continue.

Leaders of the Palestinian Authority said they were disappointed with Sharon's speech, but were ready to work with him.