Israel’s ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman yesterday questioned whether Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas represents all Palestinians, given his lack of authority in the Gaza Strip.
“Our Palestinian partner Abu Mazen [Abbas] is problematic. Does he represent all of the Palestinian people? It is clear that he does not represent Gaza and that his legitimacy in the West Bank is in doubt,” Lieberman said.
“To sign an accord with Abu Mazen would be to sign a deal with the leader of Fatah,” the Palestinian president’s political party, he said. “That said, I hope there will be a meeting with Abu Mazen. It is important that there be political negotiations, and we are ready for that — as long as there are no preconditions.”
“We don’t have to buy an entry ticket for talks,” Lieberman said of the Palestinian demand that peace negotiations can only resume if there is a total freeze on Jewish settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were suspended a year ago in response to the Jewish state’s war on the Islamist Hamas movement ruling the Gaza Strip.
“National honor is an important value in the Middle East and the time for obsequious attitudes is over. We have no need to adopt false pretenses in a bid to please,” Lieberman said.
On Thursday, Abbas’ Fatah, in a statement ahead of the movement’s 45th anniversary, vowed to step up its struggle against the Israeli occupation with both demonstrations and diplomacy.
Fatah went on to say that it “would not spare any effort in restoring Palestinian national unity and returning the Gaza Strip from the hands of those who have taken it hostage,” referring to its Hamas rivals.
The two main Palestinian movements have been divided into geographically separated hostile camps since the Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing