The BBC has upheld a complaint that Jeremy Paxman failed to challenge adequately the Labour MP, Louise Ellman, after she accused Hamas of using children as suicide bombers.

Andy Bell, complaints director of the BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit, apologised for a "lapse in editorial standards" in the BBC2 airing of Newsnight on February 14.

The former Israeli ambassador to Britain, now serving as his country's envoy to the United Nations, has launched an attempt to highlight the recent onslaught of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Ron Prosor emphasised that the attacks were deliberately targeting Israeli civilians and represented "a serious danger to the population".

Almost six years since Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip, nothing there is what it seems.

A Hamas junta rules, but the civilian government departments are run from the PA in Ramallah, financed by money Israel allows to go through.

A blockade is ostensibly in place, but hundreds of lorries go through the crossings from Israel every day, carrying almost everything except what is now a limi

A PR stunt publicised by an Israeli government staffer has been criticised because it featured an Israeli actor posing as a gay man involved in pro-Palestinian activism.

A deal to secure the freedom of Sergeant Gilad Shalit has been accepted by Israel, but not by Hamas, German officials have confirmed.

The comments by German government spokesman Steffen Seibert supported a claim by Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday about a German-brokered deal to return the soldier home more than five years after he was captured by Hamas.

Human rights groups and Jewish organisations have reiterated calls for Hamas to release an Israeli soldier kidnapped five years ago.

Palestinian activists have set up a Facebook campaign to "abduct a partner for Shalit".

The page, set up earlier this week, calls for the capture of a female prisoner to use as bait so that the Israeli authorities will release Palestinian prisoners.

The group's profile photograph has been edited to show an Israeli soldier chained and held by an armed woman in a veil.