内容摘要：The White House said on Thursday that Israel had "signed off" on US envoy Steve Witkoff's plan and that it was waiting for a formal response from Hamas.

The White House said on Thursday that Israel had "signed off" on US envoy Steve Witkoff's plan and that it was waiting for a formal response from Hamas.

In recent years, Lee's political ambitions have been saddled with even more pressing controversies - including the ongoing legal cases that continue to hang over him, threatening to hamstring if not scuttle his chances at election.One of these concerns a string of high-profile charges, including corruption, bribery and breach of trust, associated with a land development project in 2023.

Another, perhaps more critical legal battle concerns allegations that Lee made a knowingly false statement during a debate in the last presidential campaign.During the debate, which aired on South Korean television in December 2021, Lee had denied personally knowing Kim Moon-ki, a key figure in a corruption-ridden land development scandal who had taken his own life just days earlier.Prosecutors allege that claim was false, thus violating the Public Official Election Act, and in November 2024 Lee was convicted of the false statements charge and given a one-year suspended prison sentence.

Then, in March, an appeals court cleared him of the charges – only for that ruling to be overturned by South Korea's Supreme Court. At the time of writing, the case is still awaiting a verdict.Other threats against Lee's future political ambitions posed a more fatal danger.

In January 2024, while answering questions from reporters outside the construction site of a planned airport in Busan, Lee was stabbed in the neck by a man who had approached him asking for an autograph.

The injury to Lee's jugular vein, though requiring extensive surgery, was not critical - but he now campaigns behind bulletproof glass, wearing a bulletproof vest, surrounded by agents carrying ballistic briefcases.But because he has already served seven years due to a previous conviction for the rape and sexual assault of four children, he may be eligible for parole by 2032.

His lawyer, Maxime Tessier, pointed out that saying Le Scouarnec could be released then was "inaccurate", as parole is not tantamout a release.Now, his victims - many of whom assiduously attended the three-month-long trial in Vannes, northern France - are lamenting the sentence.

"For a robbery you risk 30 years. But the punishment for hundreds of child rapes is lighter?" one victim told Le Monde.The president of a child advocacy group, Solène Podevin Favre, said that she might have expected the verdict "to be less lenient" and to include a post-sentence preventive detention.