Israeli plans to ease a military crackdown in the West Bank were on hold yesterday after a double Palestinian suicide bombing killed three people and wounded 40 others in Tel Aviv, the Defense Ministry said.
The attacks less than a minute apart on Wednesday followed a Palestinian bus ambush which killed seven Israelis near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Tuesday, shattering a month of relative calm and undermining hopes of reviving peacemaking.
PHOTO: AFP
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer's office said plans had been drawn up to lift some of the restrictions imposed on Palestinian civilians since the army reoccupied seven West Bank cities last month but that they had now been frozen.
"Israel is striving to ease the conditions as much as possible for the broader Palestinian population but the Palestinian terror is continuing to perpetuate the suffering [of the population]," it said in a statement.
The army reoccupied seven of the eight Palestinian cities in the West Bank a month ago after back-to-back suicide bombings killed 26 people in Jerusalem, saying the aim was to stop such attacks since a 21-month-old uprising against occupation began.
The attacks in Tel Aviv were the first Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel for a month.
They dispelled hope among Israelis that the army crackdown had ended such attacks and raised the possibility of the army toughening rather than easing its measures.
The fate of talks between Israel and the Palestinians was unclear. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met moderate Palestinians last week in the sides' first high-level contacts for four months, but follow-up meetings have been postponed.
International efforts to revive peacemaking after 21 months of conflict have made little headway beyond demanding sweeping reforms of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian presidential and parliamentary elections now set for January.
The two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a foreign workers' neighborhood of Tel Aviv.
Police said two foreign workers were among the three people killed by the bombers, but did not say where they were from. Many of the wounded were also foreign workers.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique