Watching her blind aunt and uncle struggle to navigate the steep slopes and scant sidewalks of this hilly city, one Palestinian girl decided to reinvent the stick.

Armed with spare parts that are hard to find in the West Bank, Asil Abu Lil and two classmates patched together an obstacle-detecting cane that has won them a trip to San Jose, California, for Intel Corp.'s international youth science fair.

The three girls are the first Palestinians to participate in the prestigious event.

"Of course, I want to go to America, but this project is important for the blind and we want it to help them," Asil said.

Students from more than 50 countries will compete in next month's International Science and Engineering Fair, vying for the grand prize of $75,000.

The 14-year-old girls built the beeping walking stick for a class project at their United Nations-funded girls' school. The cane uses two infrared sensors, one front-facing and one in the tip of the cane, to detect obstacles and drop-offs.

The students produced two prototypes after making multiple trips to Ramallah, about 45 minutes away and past two Israeli checkpoints, to scour electronics stores for proper circuits and sensors.

Although various types of laser canes have existed since the early 1970s, the girls' design resolves a fundamental flaw in previous models by detecting holes in the ground, said Mark Uslan, director of the American Federation of the Blind's technology division.

The cane beeps when it passes over a hole or steps going downward.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency provides schooling to more than a quarter million children in Gaza and the West Bank, often in crowded schools that run two shifts of students a day.

"These girls are the Albert Einsteins of tomorrow," said Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the agency. "We need to teach the next generation rational thought, to think through problems and talk about problems. "It's a microcosm of the peace process, if you like, and we need to spend time and invest in education because that is the peace dividend of tomorrow."

The girls beat dozens of contestants in the West Bank to win the prize. But even after that, they ran into one last obstacle: There was only enough prize money to allow two girls to make the trip. After drawing lots, Asil was to be left behind as her classmates headed to San Jose.

UN workers heard this and pooled money last week to purchase an additional ticket. When Asil heard the news on Monday, she broke into tears, leaping up from the table to embrace her classmates.

"Even when I'll be old, I will remember this time forever," Asil said

Amnesty International is accusing Israel of pumping disproportionate amounts of drinking water from an aquifer it controls in the West Bank, depriving local Palestinians of their fair share.

The London-based human rights group also said in a report released Tuesday, that Israel has blocked infrastructure projects that would improve existing water supplies to Palestinians, both in the West Bank and those living in the Gaza Strip.

"This scarcity has affected every walk of life for Palestinians," Amnesty's researcher on Israel, Donatella Rovera, told The Associated Press in an interview Monday, ahead of the report's release. "A greater amount of water has to be granted to them."

The report especially focuses on the so-called Mountain Aquifer in the West Bank. It says that Israel uses more than 80 percent of water drawn from the aquifer and while the Jewish state has other water sources, the aquifer is the West Bank's sole supply of water.

Government spokesman Mark Regev called Amnesty's claims "completely ludicrous". He said Israel holds the legal right to the aquifer since it was the first to discover, develop and pump from it.

Regev said Israel pumps less water from the Mountain Aquifer today than it did in 1967, and Palestinian consumption of fresh water has actually tripled in that time.

He blamed the Palestinians for not investing in development in the West Bank and said they have failed even to drill wells that have already been approved.

But Amnesty charged that Israel routinely denies Palestinians permits to launch desperately needed water sanitation and infrastructure projects in the West Bank.

90-95% of Gaza's water contaminated

Israelis use more than four times the amount of water per person on average than do Palestinians, whose consumption falls far below the minimum amount recommended by the World Health Organization, the report said.

The 450,000 Israelis who live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem use more water than the 2.3 million Palestinian residents, Amnesty said.

Shaul Arlosoroff, a leading authority on water acquisition and use, said Israeli restrictions in the West Bank are meant to protect an already taxed aquifer from overpumping.

In the report, Amnesty also cited serious problems with water supply to the Gaza Strip.

Since Hamas seized control of the coastal territory in 2007, Gaza's long-standing problems with sewage and water sanitation facilities have deteriorated, Rovera said. During Israel's offensive in Gaza last year, water and sewage pipes suffered severe damage.

Rovera said the water situation in Gaza had reached a "crisis point," with 90 percent to 95 percent of the water supply contaminated and unfit for human consumption.

An Israeli blockade of Gaza has halted any repairs to the strip's overburdened sewage and water networks, preventing materials and equipment to repair the infrastructure from getting in, Rovera said.

"This is a false, manipulative report whose results were predetermined," Tsviki Bar Hai, head of Har Hevron Regional Council, said in response.

"This is demonstrated by the report saying there are 450,000 settlers, when the actual number is 300,000. in the past few years, he added, "There has been an increase in water theft by Palestinians. Over three million cubic meters of water were stolen in the Hebron area alone in the past year."

Israel on Monday deported a former U.S. congresswoman, a Nobel peace prize laureate and other activists who were arrested and jailed after trying to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli navy commandeered their boat last week as it tried to sail from Cyprus to Gaza. It was the latest in a series of trips by activists trying to bring attention to the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt on the territory after the Islamic militant Hamas seized power there two years ago.

There were 21 passengers and three tons of medical aid on board, and most of the activists were quickly expelled. But Nobel laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire and former U.S. congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, along with six other activists, remained in Israeli custody while the government arranged flights for them, according to Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad. They were deported by late Monday afternoon, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Israel says the embargo is a response to Hamas' hostility toward the Jewish state, including attacks by Gaza militants against crossings used to deliver cargo into the coastal strip.

The blockade has caused significant economic hardship in Gaza, sparking widespread criticism and growing international calls to ease the closure. Gaza suffers shortages of many basic items, such as cooking oil, diapers and construction materials needed to rebuild the area following an Israeli military offensive early this year.

McKinney is a former representative from Georgia and was the Green Party's candidate for president in 2008. Long a controversial figure in U.S. politics, McKinney drew fire for suggesting the administration of President George W. Bush might have known in advance about the Sept. 11 attacks and profited from them.

The Anti-Defamation League, a U.S. Jewish anti-racism group, decried anti-Semitic comments made by some of her supporters after her defeat in a 2006 Democratic runoff election. The ADL criticized her for not distancing herself from those statements or from a statement by her father blaming Jews for her congressional defeat in 2002.

In a statement written in jail and posted over the weekend on the Web site of the Free Gaza movement, the sponsors of the ship, McKinney complained that she had been arrested "because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza."

"If Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state," she wrote.

Maguire, who won the 1976 Nobel peace prize for her work among Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, has long been a pro-Palestinian advocate. She was wounded by an Israeli rubber bullet during a protest against Israel's West Bank separation barrier in 2007.

Israel has allowed several of the protest boats to dock in Gaza but has blocked others. Last year, one of the boats was damaged in a collision with an Israeli naval vessel.

Israel says the aid supplies on board the most recent boat will be transferred to Gaza after being cleared by authorities.

Progress in peace negotiations must come before Arab recognition of Israel, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview with Israel TV broadcast late Tuesday.

Mubarak also addressed American suggestions that the 2002 Arab initiative, offering Israel normal relations with the Arab world if Israel withdraws from all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and Golan Heights, could be amended. He categorically rejected that idea and said the only road to peace is the creation of a Palestinian state.

Mubarak met Israel's new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheik. Netanyahu has not endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state, preferring economic development first.

In the TV interview, Mubarak said he believes the Israeli leader wants peace, but stressed that he must accept the idea of a Palestinian state or terrorism and violence would take hold. The interview was aired on Israel TV's main evening newscast while Egypt's official MENA news agency carried a transcript.

Netanyahu, Mubarak and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are heading to Washington later this month for separate meetings with President Barack Obama.

Arab diplomats have said that Washington asked Arab countries to amend the Arab initiative to make it more palatable to Israel. The plan offers Israel collective Arab recognition, peace and normal relations in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territory it occupied in the 1967 Mideast war, the establishment of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees.

"Obama is very precise in all what he does. He acts rationally and logically, after he listens to his advisers well, and listens to the opinions of the countries he deals with," Mubarak said.

Mubarak said Arab countries will not normalize relations with Israel until there is progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

"You shouldn't say normalization (with Arab countries) and then we make progress (on peace). No. You make some great progress and encourage Arab countries," he said. "If we reach a solution on the peace question, the Arab countries will be ready to have relations with Israel."

Israel has said that since it was not a party to drawing up the initiative, it does not have to endorse it and instead proposes negotiations based on the initiative. Among other problems, Israelis are concerned that the Arab proposal can be interpreted to endorse the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees and millions of their descendants to Israel — a prospect Israel has always rejected.

Several diplomats have said that the Americans are asking Arab nations to drop demands for a right of return for Palestinian refugees and agree to either resettle them in the host countries or in the Palestinian territories.

Mubarak ruled out amending the initiative.

"Don't keep asking for an amendment. It will not be amended so long as you ask for it. All the countries are not approving the amendment," he said.

In Sharm el Sheik, Netanyahu sought Egypt's help in building a coalition of Arab nations against Iran, according to Israeli officials. He has sought to redirect the Middle East agenda by focusing on Iran as the key threat to stability, framing the Middle East conflict as one between moderates and extremists.

Mubarak said in the interview that Egypt's views on the threat Iran poses are different from those of Israel.

He also said Egypt favors a Middle East without nuclear weapons, broadly hinting that he meant eliminating Israel's stockpile of nuclear bombs. Israel does not confirm or deny possessing nuclear weapons.