US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was meeting Israeli leaders on Tuesday on her first official visit to the Middle East, pledging “aggressive diplomacy” to revive the hobbled peace process.
But her hosts are hoping to focus her attention on Iran, which Israeli leaders consider the key threat to the Jewish state.
Clinton met Israeli President Shimon Peres and was due to hold talks later with outgoing Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as well as Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-winger charged with forming the next government.
PHOTO: AP
Clinton arrived in Israel from Egypt, where she outlined her Middle East strategy at a conference on the reconstruction of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip following Israel’s devastating three-week war in December and January.
“The US is prepared to engage in aggressive diplomacy with all sides in pursuit of a comprehensive settlement that brings peace and security to Israel and its Arab neighbors,” she said at a press conference.
She pledged more than US$900 million to the Palestinians, out of a total of US$5.2 million promised by international donors at the conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh and in earlier commitments.
“Our response to today’s crisis in Gaza cannot be separated from our broader efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace,” she said at the aid forum. “By providing humanitarian assistance to Gaza, we also aim to foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realized.”
Clinton urged all parties to work towards a lasting truce in Gaza, and condemned continuing rocket attacks on Israel.
As the world’s top diplomats pledged billion of dollars for Gaza in Egypt on Monday, ordinary people in the territory said they would rather have open borders than handouts.
Even some tunnel smugglers who profit from Gaza’s blockaded borders say they’d rather import legally through open crossings than risk Israeli bombing raids and shaft collapses.
“I want a ceasefire and open borders. Crossings are better than tunnels,” 22-year-old smuggler Abu Mahmoud said.
In Gaza City, car parts dealer Nayef Masharawi, 60, said the blockade has been bad for business. He said a gallon of Egyptian motor oil bought from tunnel smugglers costs nearly twice as much as the superior product he used to import from Israel.
The elderly shopkeeper said he had fond memories of the 1970s, when he would drive from Gaza City to his Mercedes supplier in the Israeli port city of Haifa without borders or checkpoints.
However, housewife Sulafa Ayyad said she was hoping to claim compensation for damage to her two-story home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. The house, built with savings from her husband Ibrahim’s years as a laborer in Israel, was hit by bullets and shrapnel.
Ayyad, 33, said that so far, the family has received only US$200 from a neighborhood welfare committee.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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