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.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
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
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two