Israel and its Hezbollah guerrilla foes staged a long-awaited prisoner swap yesterday that freed hundreds of jailed Arabs in return for a kidnapped Israeli and three dead soldiers.
The key to the German-mediated deal, three years in the making, was the identification at a Cologne air base of the bodies of the troops abducted at the border in 2000 and handed over by Hezbollah with businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum.
Shortly after the identification, Israel began releasing 400 Palestinian prisoners at five checkpoints into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. About 30 Arab prisoners from elsewhere were waiting at the German airport to fly home under the exchange.
"Thank God for our freedom. We hope that all prisoners will be released," said Mohammed Abu Hadas, who served 14 months for belonging to an Islamic group as he returned to Gaza. There are some 7,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
"We are happy, but our present happiness will be completed when all prisoners in Israeli jails are released."
In the West Bank, motorists blared their horns and people on the street waved as buses carried the prisoners past Israeli checkpoints.
The majority had been seized during three years of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Most of the Arabs flown from Israel were Lebanese expected to return home later in the day. A German convert to Islam jailed in 1997 as a Hezbollah agent was also freed. In addition, Israel sent bodies of some 60 guerrillas back to Lebanon.
Tannenbaum said he had gone to Lebanon to seek information on Israeli air force navigator Ron Arad, who bailed out during a mission in 1986, as well as for business.
Also see story:
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
‘COMING MENACINGLY’: The CDC advised wearing a mask when visiting hospitals or long-term care centers, on public transportation and in crowded indoor venues Hospital visits for COVID-19 last week increased by 113 percent to 41,402, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, as it encouraged people to wear a mask in three public settings to prevent infection. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said weekly hospital visits for COVID-19 have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks, and 102 severe COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths were confirmed last week, both the highest weekly numbers this year. CDC physician Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) said the youngest person hospitalized due to the disease this year was reported last week, a one-month-old baby, who does not
RSS