PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Google launches local search engine

Google, one of the top search engines in the world, launched a local Arabic search engine for the Palestinian territorities Thursday, which will enable Palestinians to access more relevant data based on their searches, the Lebanese daily The Daily Star reported Friday.

Localized searches will also enable more effective targeted advertising via Google's AdWords software, which places ads using search terms and location based on IP address.

MIDDLE EAST: Daily headlines from Gaza, Israel, Iran in your mailbox

The Los Angeles Times issues a free daily e-mail newsletter with the latest headlines from the Middle East and the Muslim world.

It includes stories from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as links to articles about the frictions and encounters between Islam and the West in the United States and Europe.

The newsletter also includes links to the latest Times editorials and opinion pieces about the Middle East, Islam and national security.

You can subscribe by logging in or registering at the website here, clicking on the box for "L.A. Times updates," and then clicking on the "World: Mideast" box.

— Los Angeles Times staff

ISRAEL: Pope gets a glimpse of competing claims to Jerusalem

Pope Benedict XVI’s arrival in Jerusalem set off a scramble among Israelis and Palestinians to demonstrate their claims to the city, an issue on which the Vatican is neutral; it favors an international protectorate in the city to safeguard the sites holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews

Benedict landed by helicopter Monday in East Jerusalem to a ceremonial greeting staged by Mayor Nir Barkat to emphasize Israel's control over the entire city. In Hebrew, he welcomed the pope to "the capital of Israel," a status that does not have international recognition. His remarks in English omitted that label.

As dozens of Christian, Jewish and Muslim schoolchildren cheered and waved at the helipad on Mount Scopus, loudspeakers played "Jerusalem of Gold," a song commemorating Israel's capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War.

Benedict did not speak at the ceremony. But he accepted Barkat's gift of an etching that reproduced an ancient map depicting Jerusalem at the center of the world.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority, which wants East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, set up a media center in a hotel in the city’s eastern part for journalists covering the pope's pilgrimage. Israeli police, empowered by law to ban Palestinian Authority gatherings in the city, closed down the center and seized media material as Palestinian officials were about to begin a news conference.

Later, at a gathering of participants in an interfaith forum, a Palestinian Muslim cleric commandeered the microphone and made an unscheduled speech denouncing Israel. He began by welcoming the pope to “Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Palestine.”

— Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem

Full coverage: Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

LEBANON: Mughniyah's shadow over Israel

Hours after the shooting of two Israeli policemen on Sunday near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, an obscure militant organization called Martyr Imad Mugniyah’s Group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Speculation runs high about this group. Is this just a small group of zealous Palestinians trying to win prestige by associating itself with the enigmatic military commander of Hezbollah killed in a bomb attack in Damascus last February? Is Hezbollah seeking revenge for his killing?

The Lebanese Shiite militant group has accused Israel of assassinating Mughniyah, who was sought by several secret service agencies for his alleged involvement in infamous attacks in various parts of the globe in the 1980s and 1990s.

Hezbollah repeatedly vowed to avenge the killing of Mughniyah.

WEST BANK: Rounded up in a Hamas crackdown

By Ashraf Khalil in Ramallah

An overflow crowd packed the streets surrounding the Hamas-identified Gamal Abdel Nasser Mosque, just off of Manara Square in downtown Ramallah. Worshippers spread prayer rugs on the sidewalks as an array of uniformed police officers and alert-looking men in civilian clothes with hand-held radios wandered the crowd.

The chants started as soon as prayers let out, and it became obvious very quickly that the Hamas supporters had a 3-1 advantage. It also became obvious that they were angry and ready for a rare West Bank show of force.

Dozens of green flags came out and the crowd shouted a simple message: "Revenge! Revenge!"

The Fatah party, which lost control of the Gaza Strip last year and now controls only the West Bank, has outlawed the display of any flag other than the Palestinian national flag. Any glimpse of Hamas green is an invitation for a fight.

The originally planned demonstration, approved by Fatah and led by independent politician Moustafa Barghouti, was nearly dwarfed as the contingents tried to out-shout each other in mid-march.

ISRAEL, WEST BANK: Neither side expecting a major Obama effect

Everyone is intrigued.

But Israelis aren't exactly panicking and Palestinians aren't exactly dancing in the streets.

Both sides seem to accept that Barack Obama's ascension to the White House won't mean an immediate change either way in the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic.

Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American living on the West Bank whose efforts to vote this year were chronicled in a previous post, said he was fielding congratulatory calls from Palestinian friends all day.

“I feel a buzz in the air,” said Bahour, who remains a little skeptical how much Obama will really shake up America's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

"I think I'm less excited than most," he said.

WEST BANK: Palestinian Americans struggle to vote

Sam Bahour waited months for his absentee ballot to arrive at his home in Ramallah, but it never came. The reason: a side effect of Israel's 41-year occupation of the West Bank.

"Our postal system is as occupied as our streets are," said Bahour, a 44-year-old Palestinian American business consultant who moved to the West Bank 15 years ago.

Postal service on the West Bank exists, but just barely. All mail coming and going passes through the Israeli mail system -- which with security checks and general delays usually adds up to three months to the delivery time. That delay left many Palestinian Americans in the West Bank struggling for ways to make their voices heard this election year.

Bahour, a Youngstown, Ohio, native, finally contacted the the Trumbull County registrar's office online and was able to vote by sending in a fax.

"I know Ohio is a swing state. That's one of the reasons I went that extra mile," Bahour said.

WEST BANK: Fireworks after the feast?

Things have been quiet on the Palestinian end lately, thanks to Ramadan.

The Muslim holy month of fasting usually means shorter days, lower energy levels, lots of cheap plastic lanterns and a host of nightly social obligations. As a result, most serious  business  simply gets pushed until after the Eid al Fitr celebration.

The Eid started Tuesday, and many are predicting that events will begin to ramp up on the Palestinian end soon after. But just what direction those events will go depends on whom you ask.

Egypt plans to resume its on-and-off efforts to bring the feuding Palestinian factions together. A delegation from the Islamic group Hamas, which defeated its rival Fatah faction in January 2006 parliamentary elections, will travel to Cairo on Oct. 8 for talks expected to continue through the month.

Hamas and Fatah coexisted for several months in a unity government that collapsed last summer, leaving Hamas running a pariah ministate in the Gaza Strip and Fatah controlling the West Bank and Palestinian Authority with U.S. and Israeli backing.

IRAN: Warming up to once-despised Jimmy Carter

The Iranian government has officially and regularly decried former President Jimmy Carter since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. 

But it looks like some within official Iranian circles are willing to let bygones be bygones, especially now that Carter has defied the Bush administration by meeting with the Palestinian militant group and Iranian ally, Hamas.

Iran's animosity toward Carter stretches back decades. He was, after all, the U.S. commander in chief who toasted deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi months before a popular 1978 uprising against his rule, briefly offered the monarch sanctuary in America and dispatched an ill-fated rescue team to free American diplomats and embassy employees being held hostage in Iran.

But politics makes for strange bedfellows.

ISRAEL: A day of protests

Extra police deployed throughout Israel and the West Bank Sunday as Palestinians marked the annual protest known as Land Day.

Thousands of demonstrators turned out in several cities to decry what they say is the ongoing Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land and homes.

In the northern Arab town of Sakhnin a vigil marked the first Land Day in 1976 when Israeli police killed six protesters.

A 2,000-strong march took place Saturday in Jaffa — a coastal Arab city that has become a focal point for tense land disputes. Rights groups there are protesting eviction and demolition orders on hundreds of homes on the grounds of construction violations.

Dov Khenin, a leftist Israeli Knesset member, said the event serves as an annual reminder of the plight of Palestinian communities deep inside Israel.

"Land Day is more relevant than ever,” he said.  “The entire Israeli public should assist the Arab community in their struggle for equality in their homeland."

Israeli troops used tear gas to disperse a protest near Nablus, but there were no serious injuries reported.

— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

Photo: Palestinian children stage a sit-in to mark "Land Day" at the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al-Hilweh near the southern Lebanese coastal city of Sidon, on Monday. Land Day commemorates the killing of six Israeli-Arabs during a 1976 protest against Israeli land confiscations. Credit: MAHMOUD ZAYAT/AFP/Getty Images