JERUSALEM, Jan 1 (AFP) - Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Tuesday it would be "a very good time" to start to implement a US-brokered ceasefire with the Palestinians if calm prevails for the next several days and amid a return to the region of US envoy Anthony Zinni.

"If calm continues for the next two or three days it would be a very good time to start the implementation of the Tenet plan," Peres told public television.

The Tenet understanding, named after US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George Tenet, sets out a

Middle East

Australia's bilateral program to the Middle East will continue to address the urgent social and economic situation in the West Bank and Gaza, through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and Australian and local Palestinian NGOs. In 2002, a new initiative with NGOs will increase food security and self-sufficiency. Beneficiaries will include farmers and their families in the poorest region in Gaza.

At the end of 2001, the year in which the Occupied Territories saw more fatalities than at any other time since the 1967 occupation, B'Tselem publishes the number of Israelis and Palestinians killed between January 1st and December 29th, 2001. (The numbers in brackets represent the total number of fatalities since the beginning of the intifada on September 29, 2000)
In the Occupied Territories

345 (582) Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli security forces. Of these, 79 (161) were minors under the age of 18, including 38 (69) were children under 15 years-old.

Background
During November and December 2001 UNRWA continued its emergency operations against the backdrop of continuing violence, obstacles to movement and destruction of property. While there was some lessening of violence during November in the West Bank, where Israeli forces withdrew from towns occupied the previous month, by the end of November UNRWA recorded 36 Intifadarelated Palestinian deaths and 196 injuries in the West Bank. Among the dead was a 12- year-old pupil in the UNRWA boys' school in Dheisheh refugee camp, Bethlehem, killed in the afternoon of 25 November.

by Claire Snegaroff

JERUSALEM, Dec 29 (AFP) - After 15 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence and with a political resolution only the faintest of hopes, the Oslo accords of 1993 seem a distant memory, though they made their mark in history.

For those who are opposed to the agreements ever seeing the full light of day, they remain unfulfilled, with little hope of success.

Responsibility for that rests first and foremost with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who bluntly declared in October that the (Oslo) agreements were "dead."

However, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian

by James Hider

JERUSALEM, Dec 25 (AFP) - An Israeli soldier and two Arab gunmen were killed in intense clashes on the Jordan border Tuesday, but the flare-up of violence did not stop a senior Islamic Jihad official announcing his group was signing up to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's ceasefire call.

Israel also lifted its suffocating blockade of the West Bank town of Jericho late Tuesday, opening a checkpoint in the south of the city which had stopped residents from travelling to Jerusalem.

In a further encouraging sign, the Palestinian

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Dec 24 (AFP) - The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) signed agreements Monday to provide the Palestinian Authority with 24 million dollars in grants and loans for essential services, a statement said.

Ten million dollars were provided as grants, including eight million from the Jerusalem Intifadah Fund, which was set up along with the Al-Aqsa Fund by Arab states in 2000 to back the Palestinian uprising.

The remaining 14 million dollars are soft loans for up to 25 years with five-year grace periods, the IDB statement added.

The aid was for development projects,

UNDP and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have launched a new phase of a joint project to provide small grants for community human rights initiatives in 21 countries.
The Assisting Communities Together (ACT) project offers grants up to US$5,000 to community organizations and individuals. The project funds activities that require little support but can nonetheless have a significant impact at the local level.

ACT emphasizes the role of civil society in promoting and protecting human rights. It aims to empower people at

JERUSALEM, Dec 23 (AFP) - The Palestinian Authority on Sunday dismissed a reported peace plan drafted by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres which would have allowed for a Palestinian state to be set up within eight weeks of a peace deal being signed.

"The ideas ascribed to Mr Peres do not entail any new element," said Palestinian information minister Yasser Abbed Rabbo in a statement.

"Rather these ideas constitute a means to transform the names of the cantons and isolated areas from an authority to a state," he said, adding that the ideas leaked in the