The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed almost 8,900 lives in two decades, the vast majority of them Palestinians, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said in a statement published yesterday.
Israeli forces killed 7,398 Palestinians, including 1,537 minors, both in Israel and the Occupied Territories during that period, while Palestinians killed 1,483 Israelis, including 139 minors, B’Tselem said.
Among the Israeli victims, 488 were police or military troops, and the remaining 995 were civilians killed in attacks in Israel or in the Occupied Territories, it said.
This year, marked by Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, was the bloodiest in the past two decades for Palestinians.
A total of 1,033 Palestinians, including 315 minors, have been killed this year, most of them during the Gaza war, the report said, adding that a total of 1,387 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli offensive.
Thirteen Israelis were killed, including four soldiers by friendly fire, in the three-week-long war launched on Dec. 27.
For Israel, 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, was the deadliest year, with 420 people killed, including 269 civilians, of whom 47 were minors, the statement said.
The statement, which marks the 20th anniversary of B’Tselem, also said 335 Palestinians are being held without trial under Israeli military orders. In 1989 the number reached 1,794.
It also said Israeli authorities tore down 4,300 Palestinian homes over the past 20 years.
Israel justifies the demolitions by saying the houses lacked the necessary permits, but Palestinians and human rights groups say the documents are virtually impossible to obtain.
In addition, B’Tselem estimates that 6,240 houses were destroyed during military operations in Gaza, including 3,540 during the December and January offensive that Israel said it launched to halt rocket attacks from the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave.
The group took out a full-page ad in the Haaretz daily that read: “The B’Tselem organization regrets to announce that it has reached 20.”
“We are fed up and people are fed up of us, but 4 million people living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are to this day deprived of their most basic human rights and they are even more fed up than we are,” it said.
RESILIENCE: Deepening bilateral cooperation would extend the peace sustained over the 45 years since the Taiwan Relations Act, Greene said Taiwan-US relations are built on deep economic ties and shared values, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene said yesterday, adding that strengthening supply chain security in critical industries, enhancing societal resilience through cooperation and deepening partnerships are key to ensuring peace and stability for Taiwan in the years ahead. Greene made the remarks at the National Security Youth Forum, organized by National Taiwan University’s National Security and Strategy Studies Institution in Taipei. In his address in Mandarin Chinese, Greene said the Taiwan-US relationship is built on deep economic ties and shared interests, and grows stronger through the enduring friendship between
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,
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
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
RSS