Israel and Hamas yesterday announced a deal allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, while offering Gaza residents a four-day truce after weeks of war.
In the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the war, Palestinian militants were to release 50 women and children kidnapped during Oct. 7 raids into southern Israel.
“We are very happy that a partial release is pending,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum group said in a statement. “As of now, we don’t know exactly who will be released when.”
Photo: AFP
After weeks of Qatar-brokered negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet approved the truce accord at the end of an almost all-night meeting, with the leader telling ministers that this was a “difficult decision, but it’s a right decision.”
The Cabinet’s sign-off was one of the last stumbling blocks after what one US official described as five “extremely excruciating” weeks of talks.
Hamas welcomed the “humanitarian truce” and said it would see 150 Palestinians released from Israeli jails.
“The resistance is committed to the truce as long as the occupation honors it,” a Hamas official told reporters.
The war started after Hamas militants on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli government.
Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups also took an estimated 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage, among them elderly people and young children.
Israel declared war on Hamas, vowing to bring the hostages home and to destroy the group.
It launched a major bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which, according to the Hamas government, has killed 14,100 people.
Israel said that to facilitate the hostage release it would initiate a four-day “pause” in its air, land and sea assault of Gaza.
However, it added that the agreement did not spell the end of the war.
For every 10 additional hostages released, there would be an extra day’s “pause,” the Israeli government said.
Sources from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group had earlier told reporters that the truce would include a ceasefire on the ground and a pause in Israeli air operations over southern Gaza.
The negotiations have involved the CIA, Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Egyptian intelligence and leaders in Doha, Cairo, Washington, Gaza and Israel.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS