The Hamas militant group yesterday brushed off a threat by US President Donald Trump and reiterated that it would only free the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas accused Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to back out of the ceasefire agreement they reached in January last year.
The agreement calls for negotiations over a second phase in which the hostages from Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, would be released in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners, a permanent ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Photo: AP
Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua said that the “best path to free the remaining Israeli hostages” is through negotiations on that phase, which were supposed to begin early last month.
Only limited preparatory talks have been held so far.
On Wednesday, Trump issued what he said was a “last warning” to Hamas after meeting with eight former hostages.
Meanwhile, the White House confirmed that it had held unprecedented direct talks with the militant group, which Israel and Western countries view as a terrorist organization.
“Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted!”
Hamas is believed to still have 24 living hostages taken in the 2023 attacks that triggered the war, including Israeli-American Edan Alexander.
It is also holding the bodies of 34 others who were either killed in the initial attack or in captivity, as well as the remains of a soldier killed in the 2014 war.
Hamas released 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight others in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in the first, 42-day phase of the ceasefire, which ended on Saturday.
Israel supports what it says is a new US plan for the second phase in which Hamas would release half the remaining hostages immediately and the rest when a permanent ceasefire is negotiated.
Hamas has rejected the proposal and says it is sticking with the agreement signed in January last year.
Israel has cut off the delivery of food, fuel, medicine and other supplies to Gaza’s roughly 2 million Palestinians in an attempt to pressure Hamas into accepting the new arrangement.
It has threatened “additional consequences” if Hamas does not resume the release of hostages.
It was unclear if the US-Hamas talks made any progress.
The Trump administration has pledged full support for Israel’s main war goals of returning all the hostages and eradicating Hamas.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS