Israel is considering handing over millions of dollars in withheld Palestinian tax funds to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a move that could bolster him ahead of elections over his Hamas rivals, sources said on Wednesday.
Western diplomats and Palestinian sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the proposal under consideration called for releasing the tax money to Abbas in stages on the condition that it will bypass the Hamas-led government.
Transferring the funds would mark a shift in Israeli policy, and could allow the moderate Abbas to make payments to Palestinian civil servants, who have not received their full salaries since Hamas came to power in March.
Two sources said Israel was prepared in principle to transfer tax funds directly to Abbas once several technical and timing issues were addressed.
"No final decision has been made," an Israeli official said.
Olmert's office declined to comment on Israel's plans for the funds, which total about US$500 million.
"We have not been officially informed. We don't know how much the sum would be," top Abbas aide Rafiq Husseini said.
Another senior Abbas aide, Saeb Erekat, said Israel would not transfer the money directly to Abbas, but use it to pay Palestinian bills to Israeli utilities as it has in the past.
Abbas was expected to hold long-awaited talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the coming days, Palestinian officials said.
Olmert told reporters the meeting would be "very soon" but gave no date.
Abbas' call for new presidential and parliamentary elections has triggered fierce fighting in Gaza between his Fatah forces and those loyal to Hamas.
On Wednesday, Fatah and Hamas forces withdrew from the streets after a fresh ceasefire aimed at halting a slide into civil war took effect. The previous truce fell apart within 24 hours.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said that the ruling faction would prefer the tax money to go through the Hamas-led government.
"But under the current siege, if this money comes through any other channel, including the channel of the president, we have no objection as long as its final destination will be the employees and our needy people," he added.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
BIGGER ROLE: Beijing has said it maintains an impartial stance on the war in Ukraine, but by training Russian troops, China is far more involved than previously known China’s armed forces secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel in China late last year, and some have since returned to fight in Ukraine, according to three European intelligence agencies and documents seen by Reuters. While China and Russia have held a number of joint military exercises since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Beijing has repeatedly said that it is neutral in the conflict and presents itself as a peace mediator. The covert training sessions, which predominantly focused on the use of drones, were outlined in a dual-language Russian-Chinese agreement signed by senior Russian and Chinese officers in Beijing on
RSS