Free Republic

CAIRO, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Arab countries to refrain from establishing relations with Israel until it pulls out from territory captured in 1967. Speaking at a news conference Wednesday at the seat of the Arab League in Cairo, Abbas said, "Arab countries are sovereign states and act in a sovereign ways, but there are Arab agreements to which all Arab countries are committed." An Arab peace initiative launched at an Arab summit in Beirut in 2002 linked normalizing Arab relations with Israel to the latter's withdrawal from Arab territories captured in the 1967 war and...

Alert security guards and passengers prevented a possible hijacking Sunday evening of an El Al flight from Israel en route to Istanbul after an Israeli Arab tried to stab a stewardess and rush the cockpit. It is still unclear whether the man was simply an eccentric or if he did indeed intend to take over the plane. As a result, Ben-Gurion International Airport was temporarily closed Sunday night in order to re-assess the security situation and to determine how the man managed to smuggle a pocketknife past the stringent ground security checks. The airport was re-opened a short while later....