Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday urged US president-elect Barack Obama to get involved in Middle East peacemaking immediately after becoming US president, and to endorse a pan-Arab plan that offers Israel recognition in return for a withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.
The “Arab Peace Initiative” was first proposed in 2002 by dozens of Arab countries that didn’t have ties with Israel. It requires Israel to leave the lands it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.
“We ask Obama to become immediately involved in the peace process, and to adopt the Arab initiative,” Abbas said at a conference in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Palestinians fired three rockets from Gaza at Israel after dark on Saturday, but one fell back on the Palestinian side of the border and the other two landed in open ground, causing no casualties, the military said.
Hamas security officials said an Israeli surface-to-surface missile struck waste ground in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun shortly afterward, but caused no injuries. The military said troops fired at, and hit, a squad of Palestinians that had already fired at least one rocket and was preparing to launch more. The army did not divulge the type of fire it used.
There has been a spate of Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes since a truce between the sides started unraveling on Nov. 4.
Since then Israel has shut its crossings with Gaza, causing shortages of basic goods and fuel for Gaza’s 1.4 million Palestinians. It says the closure will continue until the militants halt their fire.
Abbas’ appeal to Obama came after he took his case for a peace deal directly to the Israeli public. On Thursday, he ran full-page Hebrew-language newspaper ads telling readers the Arab plan would bring peace to the region.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the chief negotiator with the Palestinians over the past year, has welcomed the plan as a positive gesture but says its positions on key issues such as final borders, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees are unacceptable.
Of the Arab countries that border Israel, only Egypt and Jordan have so far recognized Israel. Accepting the Arab plan, Abbas said, would give Israel full recognition by 57 Arab and Islamic states.
“Instead of living in an island of peace it will live in an ocean of peace,” he said.
However, a year of negotiations between Palestinians and Israel has not brought tangible results.
Abbas appeared unusually bitter on Saturday, saying that Israel’s actions, such as continued construction of settlements and the West Bank separation barrier, contradict Israel’s declared willingness to make peace.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS