Palestine Financial News

Akshaya Tritiya, which is on May 10, has always seen fervent gold purchases stemming from the belief that investments made on this day would never diminish, thus bringing everlasting prosperity. Over the past three to four months, gold prices have shown significant volatility, experiencing roller coaster-like movements.

Oil prices rose on Friday, continuing upwards trend on the signs of improving economy in China and as negotiations to halt hostilities in the stand-off between Israel and Hamas yielded no results. Brent futures rose 37 cents, or 0.4%, to $84.24 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude grew 41 cents, or 0.5%, to $79.64 at 0003 GMT.

Palestinian civilians. A senior U.S. official said this week that the administration had reviewed the delivery of weapons that Israel might use for a major invasion of Rafah, a southern Gaza city where over 1 million civilians have sought refuge, and as a result paused a shipment of bombs to Israel. Washington has long urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government not to invade Rafah without safeguards for civilians, seven months into a war that has devastated Gaza.

Norfolk Southern’s CEO will be under more pressure to improve profits after the railroad’s shareholders voted to elect three of the board members an activist investor nominated

Joe Biden on Wednesday publicly warned Israel for the first time that the U.S. would stop supplying it weapons if Israeli forces make a major invasion of Rafah, a refugee-packed city in southern Gaza. «I made it clear that if they go into Rafah ..., I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem,» Biden said in an interview with CNN. Biden's comments represent his strongest public language to date in his effort to deter an Israeli assault on Rafah while underscoring a growing rift between the U.S. and its strongest ally in the Middle East.

University of Chicago on Tuesday after administrators who had initially adopted a permissive approach said the protest had crossed a line and caused growing concerns about safety. University President Paul Alivisatos acknowledged the school's role as a protector of freedom of speech after officers in riot gear blocked access to the school's Quad but also took an enough-is-enough stance. «The university remains a place where dissenting voices have many avenues to express themselves, but we cannot enable an environment where the expression of some dominates and disrupts the healthy functioning of the community for the rest,» Alivisatos wrote in a message to the university community.

Gaza's vital Rafah border crossing on Tuesday in what the White House described as a limited operation, as fears mount of a full-scale invasion of the southern city as talks with Hamas over a cease-fire and hostage release remain on a knife's edge.

Israel carried out strikes on the Gazan city of Rafah overnight as it sought to put «pressure» on Hamas ahead of talks in Egypt on Tuesday aimed at sealing a truce proposal endorsed by the militants. After having vowed for weeks to push into the southern border town, Israel called on Monday for Palestinians in eastern Rafah to leave for an «expanded humanitarian area» ahead of a ground incursion. An AFP correspondent in the city reported heavy bombardment throughout the night, while the Kuwaiti hospital there said Tuesday in an updated toll that 11 people had been killed and dozens of others injured in Israeli strikes.

Pro-Palestinian protesters that had been blocked by police from accessing an encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday broke through fencing, linked arms and encircled tents that remained there, as Columbia University canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony following weeks of pro-Palestinian protests. Sam Ihns, a graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said the group has been at the encampment for the past two weeks and that they were calling for an end to the killing of thousands of people in Gaza. «Specifically, our encampment is protesting MIT's direct research ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense,» he said.

Oil prices ticked up early on Tuesday after Israel struck Rafah in Gaza while negotiations for a ceasefire with Hamas continued without resolution. Brent crude futures were up 46 cents, or 0.55%, at $83.79 per barrel at 0010 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 46 cents, or 0.59%, to $78.94 a barrel.

Rafah the way it is envisioned as of now. «We've made quite clear our position on Rafah for some time, which is that we cannot support an operation in Rafah as it is currently envisioned. We have made clear — the Secretary made this clear in his conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli Government last week — that we have not seen a humanitarian plan that is credible and that is implementable,» State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a press briefing on Monday (local time).

Gold prices edged up for a second session on Tuesday, after recent economic data boosted bets that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates later this year.

Hamas on Monday agreed to a Gaza ceasefire proposal from mediators, but Israel said the terms did not meet its demands and pressed ahead with strikes in Rafah while planning to continue negotiations on a deal. The developments in the seven-month-old war came as Israeli forces struck Rafah on Gaza's southern edge from the air and ground and ordered residents to leave parts of the city, which has been a refuge for more than a million displaced Palestinians.

Israel called on Palestinians to leave eastern Rafah Monday ahead of a ground invasion of the southern Gaza city, amid increasing global alarm about the consequences of such a move. The evacuation call followed disagreement between Israel and Hamas over the Palestinian militant group's demands to end the seven-month war, during weekend negotiations in Cairo.

Arvind Kejriwal while the Karnataka sexual abuse scandal dominated political discourse in some places. Several companies including Godrej Consumer Products and Bombay Dyeing declared fourth quarter results while the Bombay High Court granted Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal interim medical bail for two months. Thousands of Palestinians fled the south Gaza on Monday as the Israeli military prepared for a possible ground invasion.

Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday denounced international criticism of the country's war in Gaza. He was speaking at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem. The Israeli PM recalled the time when Nazis killed six million Jews during World War II, saying “no nation came to our aid" and “people were completely defenseless against those who sought destruction".

Israeli soldiers were killed in a rocket attack claimed by Hamas armed wing, near the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, where Palestinian health officials said at least 19 people were killed by Israeli fire on Sunday. Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility on Sunday for an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza that Israel said killed three of its soldiers. Israel's military said 10 projectiles were launched from Rafah in southern Gaza towards the area of the crossing, which it said was now closed to aid trucks going into the coastal enclave. Other crossings remained open.

By many measures, the new Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is just what the US and others want for a future Palestinian state that could extend its rule to a post-war Gaza: a modern, technocratic group focused on solving problems.

Top college campuses in the West have been in ferment over the past month as students agitate over Israel’s war in Palestine; however, far from these portals of protests, recruiters are taking note, and students should be worried. Simply put, global companies may think twice before recruiting students who join the ongoing unrest. Employers are concerned that such students may find it difficult to settle down or align with the broader company culture where individual viewpoints are often superseded by that of the group, and one must learn to keep opinions in check.

truce were expected to resume Sunday after Hamas rejected any deal that failed to end the war in the Palestinian territory and accused Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu of «personally hindering» an agreement. Negotiators seeking to halt the devastating seven-month war have proposed a 40-day pause in the fighting and an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, according to details released by Britain.

protesters who refused to remove tents from campus, and demonstrators at the University of Michigan chanted anti-war messages and waved flags during commencement ceremonies. In Virginia, student demonstrators began their protest on a lawn outside the school chapel Tuesday. On Saturday, video from WVAW-TV showed police wearing heavy gear and holding shields lined up on the campus in Charlottesville. Protesters chanted «Free Palestine,» and university police said on the social platform X that an «unlawful assembly» had been declared in the area. As police moved in, students were pushed to the ground, pulled by their arms and sprayed with a chemical irritant, Laura Goldblatt, an assistant professor of English and global studies who has been helping student demonstrators, told The Washington Post.