Israel will transfer security control over several West Bank towns to the Palestinians in coming days, Israel's defense minister said yesterday, hours after he met with a Palestinian negotiator to work out the details of Israel's troop redeployment.
A senior Palestinian security official said the first four towns -- Ramallah, Tulkarem, Qalqiliya and Jericho -- would be handed over on Wednesday.
The planned handover is the latest sign of rapid changes on the ground. It is accompanied by a rebuilding of trust after more than four years of fighting and a flurry of diplomatic meetings.
Israel has informed Palestinian officials that it is ready to withdraw "within a very short period of time" from all West Bank population centers and to return to positions it held before the outbreak of fighting in September 2000, said Hassan Abu Libdeh, a senior Palestinian official.
Such a withdrawal is part of the long-stalled US-backed "road map" peace plan, which both sides now say they are ready to implement.
Abu Libdeh said the pullback would include the removal of some of the roadblocks that now ring Palestinian towns and severely disrupt daily life in the West Bank.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat, meanwhile, said Feb. 8 is emerging as a target date for a summit between Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a crucial stop toward ending hostilities and resuming peace talks.
The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is to arrive in the region two days earlier, for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Abu Libdeh said the summit would be prepared in detail, and that a decisive meeting of Abbas and Sharon aides would be held later this week.
"We want a very successful summit that will end with results," he said.
Palestinian officials said they expect a wide-ranging agenda that will include the declaration of a formal truce, a large-scale release of Palestinian prisoners and the resumption of peace negotiations. Israel, however, appears reluctant to move from security concerns into political matters.
The renewed peace hopes came after a sharp drop in violence. Abbas has obtained a promise from armed groups to halt attacks on Israel, and has deployed Palestinian police across the Gaza Strip.
In response, Israel's army chief said he would halt military operations in Gaza and scale them back in the West Bank.
Yesterday, a 65-year-old Palestinian civilian was killed by Israeli army fire along the Gaza-Egypt border, Palestinian officials said. The military said the man was deep inside a no-go zone, close to an Israeli army post along a patrol road near the border, when troops shot him.
Late Saturday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz met for nearly five hours with Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Dahlan, a former Palestinian security chief, at a Tel Aviv to discuss a West Bank redeployment.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS