Israel dismissed yesterday a Hamas proposal for a six-month Gaza Strip truce during which an embargo on the territory would be lifted, saying the Palestinian Islamists wanted to prepare for more fighting rather than peace.
The Hamas offer, issued on Thursday following talks with Egyptian mediators, departed from previous demands by the group that any ceasefire apply simultaneously in Gaza and the occupied West Bank — the territories where Palestinians want statehood.
Hamas said Egypt would raise the truce idea with Israel next week and that it expected a more binding Israeli decision then.
PHOTO: EPA
Israel has been reluctant to enter into any formal agreement that could shore up Hamas against their West Bank-based rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as he pursues US-sponsored peace talks with the Jewish state.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signaled flexibility last month by saying attacks on Gaza would cease if its Hamas rulers stopped cross-border rocket salvoes.
“Israel is interested in peace. Unfortunately, Hamas is playing games. Hamas is biding time in order to rearm and regroup,” David Baker, an Olmert spokesman, said.
“Israel will continue to act to protect its citizens,” Baker said. “There would be no need for Israel’s defensive actions if Hamas would cease and desist from committing terrorist attacks.”
In fresh violence, a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli guards near the West Bank boundary in an attack claimed by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group. Islamic Jihad also fired four rockets into Israel from Gaza, causing no casualties.
Hamas was unfazed by Baker’s comments, saying that an Egyptian mediator, Omar Suleiman, would visit Israel next week to take up the Gaza truce idea with Olmert.
“We will then get the Israeli response,” Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar told reporters on returning to Gaza from Egypt.
Sources in Olmert’s office and the Israeli Defense Ministry said they had no knowledge of a visit by Suleiman next week.
Meanwhile, the UN called yesterday on Israel and Hamas to find a solution to the fuel crisis in the Gaza Strip, saying the former had to restore supplies to the salient and the latter had to ensure it was properly distributed.
The UN said it had stopped delivering food aid to hundreds of thousands of people in the Gaza Strip and would be unable to make regular food deliveries until it received more fuel.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
RSS