The US on Tuesday stepped up pressure on visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt Jewish settlements as a step toward reviving the peace process with the Palestinians.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a press conference to drive home the US position on settlements in the West Bank, and the issue was raised directly with Netanyahu by Senator John Kerry during a visit to the US Congress.
“The president [Barack Obama] was very clear yesterday in his statement that he wants to see a stop to the settlements,” Clinton told reporters. “I hosted a dinner for Prime Minister Netanyahu later in the day at the State Department and we reiterated that that is the position and policy of the United States government.”
She said the US was “committed to a two-state solution and obviously underlying that commitment is the conviction that the Palestinians deserve a viable state.”
“And therefore nothing should be done to undermine the potential resolution of the peace effort that could prevent such a two-state solution from taking hold,” Clinton said.
After meeting with Kerry, Netanyahu said he wanted to renew the Palestinian peace process “immediately,” in tandem with an effort to gain backing from Arab states for efforts to counter Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“We have a unique historical circumstance in that Israel and many of our Arab neighbors understand the threat posed by Iran’s quest to develop nuclear weapons capabilities,” Netanyahu said.
“We intend to pursue the peace track independently of what happens in Iran, but in point of fact ... it should be done in parallel,” he said.
Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was encouraged by the meeting, but emphasized the issue of Jewish settlements.
“I re-emphasized to the prime minister the importance of Israel moving forward, especially in respect to the settlements issue,” Kerry said with Netanyahu at his side.
The Israeli prime minister made the rounds of Congress a day after a White House meeting with Obama in which the two appeared at odds in their approaches to Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The prime minister said he would pursue “the advancement of peace between us and the Palestinians” — omitting talk of a Palestinian state — as well as normal relations with the broader Arab world.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes bombed a Hamas security outpost and tunnels by the Gaza border with Egypt on Tuesday, after a rocket fired from the coastal territory struck an Israeli town, Israeli and Hamas sources said.
It was the first time Israel has attacked the Islamic militant group since a Jan. 18 ceasefire took effect.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS