Israeli-Palestinian peace talks will proceed this week despite a shooting attack at a Jerusalem religious seminary that killed eight Israelis, Israeli officials said. Police across the country were on alert yesterday for possible additional attacks, and security was high in public areas and at schools.
Israeli officials confirmed on Saturday that the talks would continue, but spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no official announcement. Hours earlier, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Israel not to abandon peace efforts despite a recent escalation of violence.
The shooting attack in Jerusalem on Thursday, combined with relentless violence in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel, have threatened the US-backed talks, meant to bring a final peace agreement by the end of the year.
PHOTO: AP
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said yesterday that officers across Israel were maintaining "a high level of security in general around public areas -- bus stations, centers of cities, market areas," malls and schools. Security forces had no information on specific attack plans, Rosenfeld said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in his first response to the shooting attack, called it "horrible" and said it was carried out in "cold blood."
Militants launching rockets from Gaza and those involved in the shooting attack had the same purpose, Olmert said on Saturday.
He said that "The perpetrators of both intend to make our lives unbearable," speaking at an international women's day event outside Tel Aviv. "This won't happen."
Israel will use both "military and diplomatic tools" to ensure its existence, Olmert said. He did not speak directly about the peace talks with the Palestinians.
Last week, Abbas briefly called off negotiations after more than 120 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians, were killed in Israeli military operations in Gaza against rocket squads operating from the Hamas-controlled territory. But he resumed talks under pressure from visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and on Saturday he urged that negotiations continue.
"Despite all the circumstances we're living through and all the attacks we're experiencing, we insist on peace. There is no other path," Abbas said in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Abbas did not mention the Jerusalem attack, which he had condemned earlier.
Israel did not officially announce that talks would continue, but several officials said privately over the weekend that negotiations would proceed as planned. Yesterday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was due to meet with James Jones, a retired US general who is Washington's security envoy to peace talks.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israel and the Palestinians would meet on Thursday with another US general assigned to monitor peacemaking progress.
Israel and Abbas' West Bank government renewed negotiations, frozen seven years earlier, at an international conference in November in Annapolis, Maryland. Government spokesman Mark Regev said on Saturday that Israel "remains committed to the Annapolis framework" -- another indication talks would go on.
Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier wounded by Gaza militants in a border ambush on Thursday died yesterday, the military said. He was the second soldier to die from the attack, and the fourth soldier killed in Gaza this month.
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
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
RSS