Israel will soon hold talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres said yesterday.
"In a very short while, we shall start to talk with him," Peres said in an interview with foreign media.
Peres said that Abbas, a moderate, was a viable negotiating partner who was legitimately elected by his people. He said Palestinians must choose between the path of compromise that politics offers, or the "uncompromising" road of religion.
PHOTO: AP
Abbas is locked in a power struggle with the Islamic group Hamas, which defeated his Fatah party in legislative elections in January. The dispute has triggered factional fighting.
Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, has refused to cave in to calls by Western donor nations to renounce violence and recognize Israel, despite growing hardship.
"Foreign support won't come to a party which opposes peace, which doesn't recognize Israel," Peres said on the eve of an international conference of heads of state and other leaders in Kazakhstan. Participants are expected to discuss security and other issues of mutual concern. A delegation from the Palestinian Authority is attending.
Visiting France this week, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would set its borders with the Palestinians unilaterally if peace talks stay stalled.
Abbas has pressured Hamas to accept a proposal that implicitly recognizes Israel. Abbas has endorsed the plan as a way to restart peace talks and lift the crippling international sanctions that have rendered the government unable to pay salaries that sustain one-third of the Palestinian population.
Meanwhile the Hamas government wants a ceasefire with Israel and is willing to ask Palestinian militants to stop firing rockets from Gaza into the Jewish state, a spokesman said on Thursday.
But Ghazi Hamad said Israel had to first stop military activity in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
"I spoke today with the prime minister and he said we definitely want quiet everywhere. We are interested in a ceasefire everywhere," Hamad, speaking in Hebrew, said in an interview on Israel Radio.
The Islamic militant group scrapped a 16-month truce with Israel last Friday and soon after launched a barrage of makeshift rockets at the Jewish state from Gaza.
Earlier this week a senior member of Olmert's party threatened Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas with assassination if the group resumed suicide bombings.
And Israeli media reports said the director of Israel's Shin Bet security service had warned Hamas, via Abbas aides, that its leaders would be targeted if rocket attacks continued.
Along the Israel-Gaza frontier, Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants who approached the Israeli-built border fence, Palestinian security officials said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said troops spotted the three men planting explosives.
"They were attacked, also from the air, and we saw they were hit," the spokeswoman said about the night-time encounter.
Earlier, commenting on prospects for a new ceasefire, Hamad said a truce would be conditional.
"We are ready to launch discussions with factions over stopping rocket firing but only if there is an Israeli commitment to cease all military attacks against all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank."
Israeli officials were not available to comment.
Hamad's remarks followed a sharp drop in militant rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
US ELECTION: Polls show that the result is likely to be historically tight. However, a recent Iowa poll showed Harris winning the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours. The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on election day today. Trump predicted a “landslide,” while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that “we have momentum — it’s
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
TIGHT CAMPAIGN: Although Harris got a boost from an Iowa poll, neither candidate had a margin greater than three points in any of the US’ seven battleground states US Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in the final days before the election, as she and former US president and Republican presidential nominees make a frantic last push to win over voters in a historically close campaign. The first lines Harris spoke as she sat across from Maya Rudolph, their outfits identical, was drowned out by cheers from the audience. “It is nice to see you Kamala,” Harris told Rudolph with a broad grin she kept throughout the sketch. “And I’m just here to remind you, you got this.” In sync, the two said supporters