Israel will not impose a complete halt on settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land as demanded by the US, a senior official said yesterday.
“Israel will not freeze natural growth and will not suffocate the life of 300,000 Israelis who live in settlements in all legality,” Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told public radio.
The international community considers all settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem illegal, saying they violate international law under which an occupying power cannot transfer part of its population to the land it occupies.
Israeli media has said hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was willing to consider a three-month construction freeze, but would exclude east Jerusalem from the moratorium, as well as the 2,000 to 3,200 private homes being built in the West Bank.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak had said on Wednesday that Israel would consider a limited moratorium on new construction in Jewish settlements, linking the step to US efforts to bring Arab states into a broad peace process.
In a TV interview, Barak said a construction freeze was “part of a much wider issue, whether together with the United States and our Palestinian and Arab neighbors, we can launch an original peace initiative to be led by the president of the United States”.
In an interview with Israel Radio, he said Israel hopes to persuade the US to accept a continuation of existing building projects to meet the needs of the growing population in settlements Israel hopes to keep in any future peace deal with the Palestinians.
“Do you think someone in America thinks that pregnancies can be stopped or that nursery schools shouldn’t be built?” Barak asked.
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
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
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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