Middle East calls for de-escalation and G7 summit wraps
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Middle East Eye
2 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
Majority of Americans believe US should act to help starving Palestinians in Gaza
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the US should take action to help Palestinians facing starvation in Gaza, according to the results of a new poll released on Wednesday. The vast majority of respondents, 65 percent, believed that the US should help Palestinians, in contrast to 28 percent who disagreed in the Reuters/Ipsos poll. Republican voters made up almost half (41 percent) of the 28 percent polled who did not think the US should help people in Gaza. Palestinians are currently facing a famine due to Israel's blockade which only allows limited quantities of food, water and fuel into the Strip, in what has been widely condemned as a genocide by human rights organisations, including the United Nations. An Amnesty International report released on Monday said that Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in Gaza, systematically destroying the health, well-being and social fabric of Palestinian life. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters The poll was conducted within a few weeks of France, Malta, Australia, Canada and the UK announcing that they planned to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September. When asked about the recognition of a Palestinian state, more than half of Americans, 58 percent, believe that every country in the United Nations should recognise Palestine as a nation. A third of respondents, 33 percent, did not believe that UN members should recognise a Palestinian state. Nine percent opted not to respond to the question. Israel deliberately starving Gaza, Amnesty International says Read More » The UK's recognition of a Palestinian state has been made contingent on whether a ceasefire is achieved in Gaza. Hamas has accepted the latest proposal set out by mediators, but Israel has not yet submitted an official response. The proposal is essentially the same as the one Hamas accepted on 1 June before US negotiators pulled out. Israel is said to be reviewing Hamas's response to the deal, which would include a 60-day truce and the release of half of the Israeli captives still alive in Gaza. A majority of Americans, 59 percent, also believe that Israel's military response in Gaza has been excessive, while 33 percent of respondents disagreed with this assessment. The numbers show a steady increase in the number of people who believe that Israel's military response has been disproportionately violent in response to the October 7 attacks since the beginning of the year. In a similar Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in February 2024, 53 percent of respondents believed that Israel's response had been excessive, compared to 42 percent who disagreed. Israel's war on Gaza has killed well over 62,000 Palestinians, while just under 270 have died from starvation. The Reuters/Ipsos survey gathered responses from 4,446 US adults online across the country over six days. Reuters/ Ipsos said the poll had a margin of error of around two percentage points.
Middle East Eye
2 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
Targeted for Gaza protests: The Palestinian still in US custody
Of all the high-profile, pro-Palestine, non-US citizen arrests linked to campus protests made by the Trump administration's immigration authorities earlier this year, Leqaa Kordia is the only one still languishing in a detention centre in Alvaredo, Texas. On Monday, the 32-year-old's lawyers filed an updated petition in her federal lawsuit seeking her immediate release from the Prairieland Detention Facility based on new evidence unearthed last month in a separate case. The case in question is American Association of University Professors (AAUP) v. Rubio, which sought to challenge Secretary of State Marco Rubio's policy of what the plaintiffs describe as a "policy of ideological deportation". It was during the AAUP v. Rubio trial that government officials revealed they leaned on the pro-Israel doxxing site Canary Mission to target particular students for immigration detention. "The evidence shows that the administration's policy of targeting, investigating, surveilling, arresting, confining and seeking the deportation of noncitizens who have expressed support for Palestinians extends to anyone involved in protests on or near campuses, irrespective of affiliation with a campus or immigration status," a statement from Kordia's legal representatives at the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), Muslim Advocates (MA), and the CLEAR Project at the City University of New York (CUNY) said. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters "This new evidence makes clear that Ms Kordia's targeting is part and parcel of the same, suppressive policy the administration has weaponised against so many others, including Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi, whose release federal courts have compelled under the First Amendment," the statement continued. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attempted to strip Khalil, Ozturk and Mahdawi of their legal status in the US at the time they were taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE). For Kordia, the DHS maintains that she was already out of status at the time she was arrested in New Jersey, and issued a statement on 14 March insisting she was "overstaying her expired F-1 student visa", which was terminated on 26 January 2022 for "lack of attendance". US federal judge grants bail to Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk Read More » The DHS also cited Kordia's arrest by the New York Police Department in April 2024 during a protest against Israel's war on Gaza, organised by Columbia University students. The police, however, had arrested several students at the time, and Kordia was eventually let go after charges against her were dropped. "It is true that at that time she did not have lawful status," Amal Thabateh, a staff attorney at CLEAR who is working on Kordia's case, told Middle East Eye. She thought she was close to becoming a lawful permanent resident because her US citizen family had filed for such a status on her behalf, Thabateh explained. But upon receiving "faulty advice" from a mentor, Kordia voluntarily signed a termination notice, withdrawing from the F-1 visa program, leaving her out of status entirely. "We all know based on how other cases have gone, and just routinely [that] this happens all the time where people have losses in status," Thabateh told MEE. "They're in transition periods... and that's quickly solved and fixed." 'Forgotten prisoner' But that wasn't the case in what is now the era of enforcement under US President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown targeting pro-Palestine voices. "The ways in which the government has criminalised the visa overstay is just another attempt to target Palestinian rights activists," Thabateh said. "The question is not whether overstaying a visa is criminal or a violation, but instead it's whether the ways in which Leqaa has been punished and targeted, whether that is a justification for very innocently following false advice about her immigration status." Kordia arrived in the US from the occupied West Bank in 2016 on a Palestinian Authority passport, was initially a visitor before adjusting her status to a student as she began learning English. Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil files $20m claim against Trump administration Read More » She has lost 200 extended family members to Israel's genocide in Gaza. Thabateh told MEE that Kordia voluntarily went to meet with immigration agents to find out what was happening after learning that people who knew her were being questioned about her life, and that agents had also approached her home. It was during that meeting in Newark, New Jersey, that she was served with a notice to appear in court, and then taken away overnight to the Texas facility. Kordia has frequently described poor and discriminatory treatment at the Prairieland Detention Facility to her legal team, but they say that she's persevering. "I think that her spirits are strong, but the conditions she's enduring are not easy," Golnaz Fakhimi, the legal director at Muslim Advocates, told MEE. Authorities interfered with her ability to observe Ramadan and did not provide accommodations so she could carry out her five daily prayers as a Muslim, Kordia had told renowned Muslim scholar and civil rights activist Omar Suleiman, who was granted a visit with her in May. He had called her "the forgotten prisoner" in an op-ed published earlier this year. "In litigation, the government has taken the position that that her confinement is based on having overstayed a visa, [but] the authority that the government has asserted... is a discretionary authority," Fakhimi said. "She is not someone who, by law, has to be confined." "The underlying policy of the administration to target non-citizens - according to the government's own officials who testified - really zeroed in on association with viewpoints supportive of Palestine," she added. "I think it's pretty clear what there is to see when you read between the lines. They're confining her because they have marching orders to do that pursuant to an umbrella-level policy." On 27 June, US Magistrate Judge Rebecca Rutherford recommended to the federal judge in the case filed against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem - Kordia v. Noem - that Kordia should be released, given the main threat present is one to her own liberty. She remains in custody after a government appeal.
Zawya
4 hours ago
- Zawya
Trump calls on Fed Governor Cook to resign
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook to resign, intensifying his effort to gain influence over the central bank on the basis of allegations made by one of his allies about mortgages Cook holds in Michigan and Georgia. U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte alleged in a post on X earlier on Wednesday that Cook had designated a condo in Atlanta as her primary residence after taking a loan on her home in Michigan, which she also declared as a primary residence. Loans for a primary residence can carry easier terms than for second homes or investment properties. Pulte said the loans date to mid-2021, before Cook was appointed to the Fed by former President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate the following year. She is a native of Georgia and at the time was an economics professor at Michigan State University. Pulte asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate, and Trump quickly amplified the allegation. The Justice Department was taking the matter very seriously, a department official told Reuters. Spokespersons for the Fed and for Cook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. "Cook must resign, now!!!" Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, his latest remarks aimed at reshaping the make-up of the U.S. central bank, a body designed to set benchmark interest rates independent of White House influence. Cook is one of three Biden appointees to the Fed whose terms extend beyond Trump's time in office, complicating the president's efforts to get more control by appointing a majority of its seven-member board. Currently two of the Fed's remaining six board members were appointed by Trump, Governor Christopher Waller and Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman. Trump has repeatedly blasted Fed Chair Jerome Powell over benchmark rates that he wants sharply reduced, calling for his resignation while acknowledging that the Fed's unique status in U.S. governance prevents him from firing Fed board members over monetary policy disputes. Trump can name a new chair when Powell's term ends in May, but claiming a majority on the board may take more time. Powell could continue serving as a governor until 2028, near the end of Trump's term, should he buck convention and continue sitting on the board under a new chair. Until Powell's departure, Trump at this point has only one other seat to fill, vacated recently by the surprise resignation of former Governor Adriana Kugler. Earlier this month Trump nominated Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Stephen Miran to serve out the rest of her term. (Reporting by Susan Heavey and Howard Schneider; Additional reporting by Dan Burns and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
