THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012
PAGE 3
NEWS OF THE WORLD
Associated Press
MIDDLE EAST
Gaza's Hamas rulers say calm will come when Israel opens its gates
ASSOCIATED PRESS
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gaza's Hamas rulers are aiming high in the conditions they place on stopping rocket fire into Israel in indirect cease-fire talks launched this weekend. Emboldened by Arab support and confident in their arsenal, the Islamists say calm can only come if Israel opens the gates of the tiny, closed-off territory.
The question is how far Hamas will go to reach that long-sought goal, which Israel opposes out of fear of an influx of weapons to Gaza militants.
in Gaza and Israel is threatening to escalate its military offensive.
For now, public opinion in Gaza appears to support continued rocket attacks on Israel. However, Israeli aircraft have already struck hundreds of Hamas-linked targets
The indirect contacts between Israel and Hamas began Sunday, the fifth day of Israel's massive bombing campaign meant to halt more than a decade of intermittent Gaza rocket attacks on Israel.
tacks on Gaza, including targeted killings of the movement's leaders. The assassination of Hamas' military chief last week after days of smaller exchanges between the two sides marked the start of the Israeli offensive, the most intense since a three-week-long war four years ago.
Hamas' demands, as presented by Mashaal, include open borders for Gaza and international guarantees that Israel will halt all at-
An Israeli envoy was whisked from the tarmac at Cairo's international airport to talks with senior Egyptian security officials. The top Hamas leader in exile Khaled Mashaal held talks with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who also spoke by phone with the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh.
Israeli soldiers gather with their armored personnel carriers in a gathering area near the Israel Gaza Strip border, in southern Israel yesterday.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Islamists view the current round of fighting as an opportunity to pry on the borders of Gaza, which slammed shut in 2007, after Hamas wrested control of the territory from its political rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. In response to the takeover, Israel and Egypt — then under Morsi's pro-Western predecessor Hosni Mubarak — sealed off Gaza to disrupt Hamas rule.
"We will not accept a cease-fire
until the occupation (Israel) meets our conditions," said Izzat Rishaq, a senior Hamas official who is involved in the cease-fire efforts in Cairo.
The current round of fighting will eventually grind to a halt, but it's unlikely the two sides will emerge with a durable cease-fire, said Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher.
"Both sides will have to come down from their lofty demands, and it will require some heavy pressure," he said.
EUROPE
Serbians react to UN war crimes court ruling
BELGRADE, Serbia — Serb nationalists burned a Croatian flag Saturday to protest a decision by a U.N. war crimes court overturning guilty verdicts against two Croatian generals, and the prime minister called the decision a blow to reconciliation in the postwar Balkans.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Protesters burn a Croatian flag during the protest in front of the presidency building in Belgrade, Serbia on Saturday.
Many in Serbia are furious that appeals judges at the Netherlands-based tribunal on Friday freed Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, who had been previously sentenced to lengthy prison terms for killing and expelling Serbs from Croatia during an offensive in 1995.
"This will have serious consequences at reconciliation in the region." Serbia's premier Ivica Dacic said. "How
can someone demand that we condemn all crimes if others are allowed not to condemn the crimes against Serbs?"
tims in the Balkan conflict. The two generals received state honors and a hero's welcome on Friday.
Croatians, meanwhile, consider the decision proof that they were the vic-
CARIBBEAN
Associated Press
'Traitors' allowed back in Cuba
ASSOCIATED PRESS
HAVANA — Sydney Gregory has never met her father, an Olympic silver medalist in fencing who defected from the Cuban team at a tournament in Lisbon in 2002 when she was 15 days old. But he recently rang from Italy with good news: Papa's coming home to visit.
"I'm very happy," the 10-year-old girl said, smiling in her school uniform with a headband holding back her jet-black hair. "My father called me on the phone and told me he's going to come. I'm going to meet him!"
Under Cuban law, those who abandoned their homeland have had to apply for permission to
return, even for the kind of brief family visit Elvis Gregory hopes to make. Many high-profile people considered deserters have had their requests to return rejected by a communist-run government that complained about the large financial investment it made in their careers. Some didn't even bother to ask, knowing their petitions would be turned down.
But a change taking effect in January will make it simpler for Cubans to visit the homeland they abandoned. It essentially establishes a single set of rules governing the right of return that will apply to everyone who left illegally, no matter what the circumstances of their departure.
The new rules could potentially affect many leading cultural and athletic figures, from musicians and doctors to ballet dancers and former Yankee pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez. Tens of thousands of people once considered traitors could now be welcomed home.
Cuba is "normalizing the temporary entrance into the country of those who emigrated illegally following the migratory accords of 1994 if more than eight years has gone by since their departure," Homero Acosta, secretary of the governing Council of State, said in a recent TV program examining the changes announced last month.
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