Israel's Defense Ministry has recommended a partial lifting of the embargo on Gaza as a goodwill gesture toward the Palestinians to spur along talks to free a long-held captive soldier, an Israeli news site reported Friday. Israel has been linking the opening of Gaza's borders to the release of Sgt. Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas militants for three years. Hamas has been pushing for a deal to trade him for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. 

A U.N. human rights investigator on Thursday called Israel's seizure of a ship carrying relief aid for the Gaza Strip "unlawful" and said its blockade of the territory constituted a "continuing crime against humanity". Israeli authorities on Tuesday intercepted the vessel, which was also carrying 21 pro-Palestinian activists, and said it would not be permitted to enter Gaza coastal waters because of security risks in the area and its existing naval blockade. 

Israel has pledged to pay compensation for material damage it caused by shelling UN property during its Gaza offensive more than six months ago, a UN official said on Friday. A UN inquiry said in May that Israel's armed forces damaged UN property on seven occasions during the December-January offensive, including an incident involving a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school in Jabalya. 

The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, and George J. Mitchell, the Obama administration’s Middle East envoy, will confer Monday for the second time in a week to pursue regional peace efforts, a senior Israeli official said Friday. The two met for four hours in New York last Monday. The meeting this Monday is to take place in London. 

Rafah crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border opened briefly on 25, 26 and 27 June allowing Gaza patients in need of emergency care, students, and foreign visa holders to exit. Rafah has been almost completely closed since Hamas took over in Gaza in June 2007, according to Hamada Al-Bayari from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza. 

Israeli Housing Minister Ariel Atias on Thursday warned against the growth of the country's Palestinian minority, according to news reports. "I see [it] as a national duty to prevent the spread of a population that, to say the least, does not love the state of Israel," Atias said at an Israel Bar Association meeting, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. 

Americans may seem to instinctively support what they regard as plucky little Israel besieged by terrorism, and Congress may still be the Jewish state's best political shield. But even in the US there are not many who are prepared to publicly defend the ever-expanding Jewish colonies annexing chunks of the West Bank and sealing off East Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied territories as Israel seeks to put its control of the city beyond negotiation.  

A Palestinian girl was killed and and her brother was injured by Israeli shelling in the central Gaza Strip on Thursday evening, medics told Ma'an. Medical sources at Al-Aqsa Hospital identified the slain girl as Hiam Abu A'yesh, 17, and reported that her 24-year-old brother Husam was also injured by shrapnel that struck the family's home in the Juhor Ad-Dik neighborhood.