A Hamas official says the group has softened its demands for a ceasefire with Israel.
Spokesman Ghazi Hamad says Hamas is now prepared for a partial truce that would only include the Gaza Strip. Hamad says the proposal has been relayed to Egyptian mediators.
This is a dramatic departure for Hamas. The group previously has demanded the West Bank be included in any deal.
In return, Hamas wants Israel and Egypt to open their trade and passenger crossings with Gaza, which have been sealed since Hamas violently seized control of Gaza last June.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s state-run newspaper al-Ahram said yesterday that Egyptian negotiators had reached a preliminary agreement with Hamas on a truce with Israel.
“Egypt has reached a preliminary agreement with Hamas on the methods of achieving a period of calm with the Israelis, and [intelligence chief] Omar Suleiman will relay the results of these contacts and the principles of the agreement to Israel to reach a final agreement,” the paper said.
Al-Ahram attributed the information to “an informed source,” but the comments came in the context of comments by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to reporters accompanying him on a visit to France.
In related news, Israel said yesterday that a mission by former US president Jimmy Carter to work out a ceasefire with Hamas had failed.
Senior Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad said Hamas presented nothing new in its demands for a truce during Carter’s meetings over the weekend with Hamas officials in Damascus. Gilad told Israel’s Army Radio that Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal had not budged in his demands, and thus Carter had failed.
In other news, Israeli troops killed three Palestinian gunmen in the northern part of the Gaza Strip yesterday near the Erez border crossing with Israel, Palestinian officials and the Israeli army said.
Islamic Jihad and a militant group belonging to the Fatah faction said three of their fighters were killed while trying to attack an army base near the crossing.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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