A potential donation to a medical project in an Israeli settlement would not cross any red lines, a senior official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said, despite criticism from rights groups.
“We have not crossed any red lines, [and] that is our assessment,” Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Philippe Yen (顏嘉良) told a news conference in Taipei.
Taiwan and Israel are engaged in “exploratory” talks about providing humanitarian assistance to the occupied West Bank, Yen said.
Photo: Reuters
“No decision has been made and no plan is under way,” he said, effectively denying reports that Representative to Israel Abby Lee (李雅萍) had committed Taiwan to making a donation to the Nanasi Medical Center in Sha’ar Binyamin, in the occupied West Bank north of Jerusalem.
Yen confirmed that Lee had signed a “declaration of partnership” during a visit to the Binyamin Regional Council earlier this month at the invitation of Israeli Legislator Ohad Tal.
However, the declaration only outlined a mutual intention to engage in dialogue on medical issues, without mentioning any funding obligations, he said.
The international community generally regards Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal under international law, a position the Israeli government disputes.
In an advisory opinion issued in July last year, the International Court of Justice concluded that “all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
“They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” it said.
Yen said the advisory opinion was “nonbinding” and Taiwan’s potential engagement did not fall under its purview.
Nonetheless, reports about Taiwan’s potential aid have sparked an outcry from human rights groups, with Amnesty International Taiwan director Chiu E-ling (邱伊翎) saying that Taiwan’s involvement “could make it complicit in Israel’s violations of international law.”
“When Taiwan chooses to fund projects that exclusively serve Israeli settlers — Palestinians are barred from living in Israeli settlements — it contributes to legitimizing and maintaining Israel’s system of apartheid,” Chiu said in an op-ed for online magazine The Diplomat earlier this week.
Meanwhile, informal civic groups plan to protest outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday, calling on the government to immediately halt all financial support to Israel.
Yen said the government respected the groups’ right to freedom of speech and assembly.
He added that Taiwan provided assistance to Palestinians following the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023, donating US$500,000 to a US non-governmental organization delivering food, water, clothing, tents and other humanitarian aid to Gaza.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS