A Hamas delegation was due in Cairo yesterday for talks on a fragile three-week-old Gaza truce as Israel said it would reopen its borders with the territory at the Egyptian mediator’s request.
The delegation was to discuss details of the truce and what Hamas says are Israeli violations, as well as proposals for the reopening of a border crossing with Egypt — Gaza’s only one that bypasses Israel.
The truce was meant to lead to a gradual easing of a year-old blockade of Gaza imposed after Hamas seized power in June last year, but Israel yesterday temporarily resealed the territory for the fourth time since the ceasefire went into effect on June 19.
Israel said it was closing the border crossings in retaliation for a mortar round fired from Gaza on Monday in breach of the truce.
But “following a special request by the Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the reopening of the crossings at about noon ,” Barak’s office said in a statement.
Since the truce went into effect, Israel has responded to rocket and mortar attacks by sealing off the overcrowded territory where a majority of the 1.5 million population depends on food aid.
Hamas has said its own fighters are adhering to the truce and insists it is doing its best to crack down on individuals and smaller armed groups who violate it.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
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
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS