The armed branch of Hamas blamed Israel yesterday for the collapse of prisoner swap talks and warned it could hike its demands in return for freeing a soldier captured almost three years ago.
“We put the entire responsibility for blocking a deal on the enemy government,” Ezzedine Al-Qassam said in a statement. “If we have to change our position, it will be to increase our demands and not the other way around.”
The statement came a day after outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would not accept terms Hamas set for a prisoner swap, saying the Islamists had hardened their stance and made extreme demands in the last days of the Egyptian-brokered negotiations.
PHOTO: EPA
“We have been generous in our conditions and we will not free other prisoners than those we agreed to release,” Olmert said in a statement broadcast live on Israeli TV and radio stations on Tuesday.
“In the name of the state of Israel and its government, I declare that there are red lines that we will not cross ... We will not cave in to the demands of a terrorist group,” he said.
Olmert said efforts would continue, but his tone indicated that there was no chance for a deal while he is in office. Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is putting together the next government, which is expected to be a hard-line team less sympathetic to Hamas demands.
Two main disputes apparently sank the deal — the number of Palestinians Israel would free in return for its soldier Gilad Shalit, seized by Gaza militants in June 2006, and how many of them would be allowed to return to their homes in the occupied West Bank.
Israel said it agreed to release 320 of 450 Palestinians Hamas wants freed including some responsible for attacks that killed Israelis, something that Israel normally refuses to do.
Egypt has been brokering efforts to reach a deal between Israel and Hamas, since the two sides will not talk directly.
After Olmert spoke, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said Hamas had never changed its demands and was not concerned about the incoming Israeli government.
“It is going to be no different, and no change and no compromise on our demands,” he said.
A message on a Hamas Web site Tuesday threatened abduction of more Israeli soldiers “to release our prisoners.”
A disappointed Noam Schalit, father of the soldier, said after a briefing from Olmert, that he hoped the contacts would provide “a basis for the next government to continue the efforts.”
Israel TV broadcast Olmert’s statement on a split screen with Olmert on one side and the soldier’s parents watching on the other from their protest tent outside Olmert’s residence.
Netanyahu was moving ahead with efforts to form a broad-based coalition, a deputy with his right-wing Likud party said yesterday.
“There are differences between [centrist party] Kadima and Likud, but we want to form as large a government as possible and contacts to that end continue,” Gilad Erdan told public radio.
Kadima leader and outgoing Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has repeatedly rejected Netanyahu’s offers to join his coalition.
Netanyahu was hoping to form a Cabinet by the end of this week to avoid seeking a two-week extension to cobble together a union.
That goal however looks increasingly unlikely as he has so far signed just one coalition agreement, with the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion