King Abdullah of Jordan tells Netanyahu materializing Arab, Palestinian demands precondition to make peace

Fayyad-led unity govt. announcement postponed for days

Pope makes landmark visit to Jordan, occupied territories, Israel; calls for sovereign homeland for Palestinians

Pontiff criticizes separation wall, urges elimination of Muslim-Christian misunderstanding

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement said on Thursday it has asked the announcement of the new government to be delayed until a dialogue between Fatah and its bitter rival Hamas.

Azzam al-Ahamd, a Fatah official, said the postponement was made in order to prevent the formation of the government "from negatively reflecting on the process of the national dialogue" which will bring Hamas and Fatah together on Saturday in Cairo.

"We were afraid that Hamas would use the new government as a pretext to gamble the dialogue," al-Ahmad said.

Abbas requested his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to reshuffle his West Bank-based caretaker government and expand it. The new government had been expected to be sworn in on Tuesday, but was finally delayed.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, considered the formation of such a government as sabotaging the talks with Fatah to form a unity government.

Hamas said the new government means an early death announcement of the unity dialogue, the previous rounds of which failed in making Hamas and Fatah agreeing on a unity government since it was launched in March.

Earlier, sources said that Fatah blocked the announcement of the new government since the prime minister would be Fayyad who is not a Fatah member.

But Fayyad said his West Bank-based government will quit as soon as the Cairo dialogue succeeds in forming a unity government that would rule both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

A spokesman of the Palestinian Islamic Hamas movement had said on Wednesday it was still early to predict an agreement in the fresh round of inter-Palestinian dialogue slated for May 16 to 19 in Cairo.

"It is early to expect a final agreement in this round of dialogue," said spokesman Ismail Radwan in Gaza.

He added that the Hamas delegation will leave for Cairo on Friday, one day before the beginning of the dialogue with rival Fatah movement which is headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.

"Hamas and Fatah will meet alone on the first two days of the dialogue while an expanded meeting for all the factions will be held on the third day," Radwan said.

In previous rounds of dialogue, the factions failed to reach an agreement on a unity government and other outstanding issues. The trend is to keep the Hamas-run administration in Gaza and the Abbas-backed government in the West Bank until holding elections by January 2010.

"We hope the outstanding issues, especially the electoral law, the government's political platform and the security issues would resolve," Radwan said.

Fatah has emphasized that the would-be unity government must abide by international conditions and relevant peace deals but Hamas translates this as recognition of Israel and thus rejects it.

Since Hamas routed pro-Abbas forces and seized Gaza in 2007, Abbas consolidated his rule in West Bank by forming a Western-backed government while Hamas tightened its grip on Gaza through an internationally-isolated administration.

In Amman, Jordan's King Abdullah II on Thursday pressed visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a two-state solution as the path to peace with the Palestinians.

"The king demanded the Israeli government declare its commitment to the two-state solution, accept the Arab peace initiative and take practical steps to achieve progress," the palace said after the two leaders met in Amman.

"The international community has agreed there is no alternative to the two-state solution and any other solution is unacceptable because it will not achieve a just peace, creating more conflict," the palace said in a statement.

Netanyahu, who left Amman immediately after the talks, has so far refused to publicly endorse the idea of a Palestinian state, a bedrock principle of international plans to resolve the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The 2002 Arab initiative calls for Israel to withdraw from all Arab lands occupied in 1967 in exchange for a normalization of ties.

"The Middle East is going through a critical stage that requires a swift action to end the conflict," the king told Netanyahu, according to the statement.

The Israeli leader arrived earlier on Thursday on an unannounced visit to Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1994, ahead of his trip to the United States next week.

During the meeting, the king pressed Netanyahu, who was also in Egypt on Monday, to stop settlement building on Palestinian land.

"Israel must stop building settlements because such practices seek to change the reality on the ground," the king said. "Israel should seize the current historic opportunity to make peace with the Arabs."

An Israeli rights group said on Sunday the government has a secret plan to surround the Old City with "parks, trails and tourist sites under Israeli control, in a drastic change of the status quo in the city."

Jerusalem's status is one of the most sensitive topics in the decades-old Middle East conflict, with Israel claiming the city as its "eternal, undivided capital," a stand not recognized by the international community.

"Israel will never enjoy stability unless the Palestinians get their rights," the Jordanian monarch warned.

It was Netanyahu's second trip abroad since taking office last month and came just three days after he met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh.

But his visit was condemned by Jordan's Islamist opposition, which described Netanyahu as a "butcher."

"This terrorist butcher is trying to improve his government's image and visit Arab countries ahead of his trip to the United States," said the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood.

"He seeks to impose a new reality on Arab, strike suspicious deals and appear as a peacemaker."

Netanyahu's meetings with Israel's two peace treaty partners in the Arab world come before his trip to Washington for talks with President Barack Obama when he is expected to unveil his plan for regional peace.

On the other hand, source close to Netanyahu's office said that Israel will not withdraw from the disputed Lebanese town of Ghajar on the northern border until after elections in Lebanon this June, according to the AP news service. The report was based on testimony from an unnamed senior Israeli official.

According to the official, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are concerned over a possible Hezbollah takeover of the village after the elections. The Hezbollah-led opposition in Lebanon is in a close race with the current coalition majority for control of the country.

After the elections, Israel will ask the Lebanese government to ensure that Hezbollah will not seize control of the town, the source said.

The report, if true, may put Israel in conflict with the United States. U.S. officials have pressured Israel to withdraw from northern Ghajar prior to the elections, a move they hope will strengthen current Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

If Israel agrees to withdraw prior to the elections, the move could be complicated by the fact that many residents of northern Ghajar are against the withdrawal. Many of the residents say Ghajar is Syrian, and argue that turning the village over to Lebanon will turn its residents into unwanted refugees. The village should remain under Israeli control until it can be returned to Syria, they say.

Residents may appeal to Israel's Supreme Court, slowing the withdrawal process.

Ghajar became Israeli after the Six Day War. The village expanded northward into Lebanese territory in the years following the First Lebanon War (1982), when Israel occupied a security belt in southern Lebanon. Israel withdrew from that security belt in 2000.

The United Nations demanded that Israel withdraw from the northern part of Ghajar under Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War. The southern half of Ghajar is located within Israeli territory as defined by the UN, and will remain under Israeli control.

Meanwhile, in Bethlehem, Pope Benedict XVI of the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican held his hands out wide to greet a crowd of applauding Palestinian refugees in the afternoon sun. Behind him stood the most striking symbol of Israel's occupation: a paint-spattered military watchtower rising above the tall, concrete wall that presses on Bethlehem.

All around him were paintings, posters and graffiti proclaiming the Palestinian cause and their hopes from their papal visitor. From an apartment block to his left hung a poster in English and Italian: "We need bridges not walls." On a balcony beneath, a Palestinian couple sat with their children, looking down as the pope waved back to them.

The pope made his strongest call yet for a "sovereign Palestinian homeland". He said mass in Bethlehem's Manger Square and offered his "solidarity" to the Palestinians of Gaza, telling them he wanted to see the Israeli blockade of the coastal strip lifted.

Later, he was driven in to the UN school in the Aida refugee camp on the edge of Bethlehem, home to refugees who in 1948 were forced out or fled their homes in what is now Israel.

The pope acknowledged their "precarious and difficult conditions". Today 5,000 live on just 500 sq meters of desperately crowded land. Their homes are in the shadow of Israel's vast concrete and steel barrier, which stretches more than 400 miles across the West Bank. It was not there when his predecessor, John Paul II, visited nine years ago – its construction a sign of just how deeply the political climate has worsened since then.

"It is tragic to see walls still being erected," Benedict said. Wherever he went, the pope was welcomed with cheers and praise. A few thousand gathered early for the Manger Square mass, a sea of white and yellow caps, chanting "viva papa, viva Palestina" as they waited for him to appear. But even the pope himself acknowledged the thinly disguised frustration and bitterness that so many spoke of.

Yusuf Ibrahim, 67, left his farmland in a Christian village near Jenin before dawn dressed in a smart suit to make it to Bethlehem in time. It took him five hours. Like others, he talked of the decline of the Palestinian Christian community, which he said had little to do with pressure from Muslims and a lot to do with Israel's occupation.

"The situation is bad. We are besieged by the wall," he said. As a West Bank resident he can only travel to Jerusalem with a special permit from the Israeli military, which he only usually receives on Christian holidays, if at all. "The Israelis are stubborn," he said. "They will not change unless the Americans and the Europeans put real pressure on them."

Joseph Giacaman, 49, spoke of the struggling Bethlehem economy and the troubles of running his Christian souvenir shop on Manger Square. Most of his family have moved abroad. "People are closed up. It's very hard to go out," he said. "They need to try to open the roads, to give permission for people to work, to come and go. We hope sometime for a peace agreement, but it's not that easy."

It was the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Fouad Twal, who expressed their anger most pointedly when he welcomed the pope to Bethlehem with a plea for help. "Our people are suffering – suffering from injustice, from war, from occupation, from lack of trust and lack of hope for a better future," he told the pontiff.

The Christian community in Palestine was in decline, he said. "As long as we don't have peace and tranquility I am afraid this will continue. With the continuation of political instability, separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem and the rest of the world, we cannot find peace."

Palestinians laid on shows of dancing, singing and poetry readings and delivered the pope gifts, including a scarf woven in Bethlehem which was placed on his shoulders and which carried images of the star of Bethlehem, the Church of the Nativity, the Dome of the Rock and a set of keys, the symbol of the refugees who hope one day to return to their homes. Another gave him a slice of Tiberias stone shaped in a map of historic Palestine.

There was a strong round of applause from the crowd at Aida when the pope mentioned the people of Gaza. Home to 1.5 million Palestinians, Gaza has a small but dwindling Christian community. Around 250 of them had applied to the Israeli military for permits to attend the masses on the pope's tours but barely half received them.

At his mass in Bethlehem, Benedict singled out the people of Gaza, offering his "sorrow for the hardship and suffering you have had to endure" and highlighting the "immense work of rebuilding that lies ahead". He also said he was praying "that the embargo will soon be lifted".

Benedict acknowledged the need for a "just and lasting solution" to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians but grasped, too, the reality: "Your legitimate aspirations for permanent homes, for an independent Palestinian state remain unfulfilled," he said. "Instead you find yourselves trapped … in a spiral of violence, of attack and counterattack, retaliation and continued destruction."

In one of the apartments overlooking the UN school where Benedict spoke, Ayad Abu Akar said he hoped only that the Palestinian story would be better understood. His parents fled their village of Ras Abu Ammar in 1948 and Abu Akar, now 53, was born in Aida camp and has lived there all his life. All trace of his parents' village has been destroyed, replaced instead by Israeli towns. "We hope he will transfer the agony and suffering of the people in the camps to the outside world, and reflect the true picture of how the Palestinian people are living," he said. "Look at us, we don't have one meter to plant a tree."

Much has been expected of Benedict on his week-long pilgrimage to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Palestinians hoped for strong support for an independent state, although most accepted the pope himself could bring little direct influence to bear on what has become a drawn-out diplomatic stalemate.

They hoped too that he would visit Gaza, but he will not be going. Israelis hoped for strong words of condemnation over the Holocaust, long a matter of division between Israel and the Vatican. Several prominent Israeli figures said he had not gone far enough in his speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Benedict was scheduled to travel to Nazareth for the largest mass of his visit, addressing a congregation of perhaps 40,000 on Mount Precipice, most of them Arabs living in Israel.

Pope Benedict XVI has received some unusual gifts during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land this week. When he met Israel's president, Shimon Peres, he was given a bundle of wheat, which Peres told him was a newly engineered variety that doubled the yield and had been named after the pope.

He was also given a copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew printed on a nanotechnology particle the size of a grain of sand. It requires an electron microscope to read. From the Palestinians he has received a handwritten calligraphy of the gospel of Luke in Arabic, produced by a Muslim artist in Bethlehem. It took him two months to create and was the first time the calligrapher had read a New Testament text.

The pope also received a cream-colored scarf hand-woven with images of a Bethlehem star, the Church of the Nativity, the Dome of the Rock and a set of keys, underlining the cause of Palestinian refugees, and a piece of stone in the shape of a map of historic Palestine.