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      Rubio boasts of canceling more than 300 visas over pro-Palestine protests

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      The US state department is undertaking a widespread visa-review process, revoking hundreds of visas and placing hundreds more under scrutiny, targeting mostly foreign nationals engaged in pro-Palestine activism, according to official statements.The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, confirmed the scale of the crackdown, announcing that he has canceled visas for more than 300 people he called “lunatics” connected to campus pro-Palestine protests in the US, with promises of action to continue daily.Asked by reporters during a visit to Guyana in South America to confirm reports of 300 visas stripped, Rubio said: “Maybe more than 300 at this point. We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics.”One recent example of the policy’s implementation has been US immigration authorities detaining Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University on a Fulbright scholarship, in broad daylight by masked agents in plainclothes.Her arrest and visa revocation came after she voiced support for Palestinians in Gaza in an op-ed she co-authored in her student newspaper. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas”, a justification being denounced as a direct assault on academic freedom and the erosion of free speech and personal liberties.In addressing her case specifically, Rubio said: “We revoked her visa … once you’ve lost your visa, you’re no longer legally in the United States … if you come into the US as a visitor and create a ruckus for us, we don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country.”But the visa-revocation campaign is just part of a broader, more aggressive deportation enforcement strategy that extends far beyond protest-related actions.The Trump administration has simultaneously implemented other restrictive measures, including pausing green card processing for certain refugees and asylum seekers and issuing a global directive instructing visa officers to deny entry to transgender athletes, of which there are very few.In a statement to Fox News, the state department claimed that it had “revoked the visas of more than 20 individuals”, and said hundreds more were under consideration under the banner of what they call “national security concerns”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Overall, we continue to process hundreds of visa reviews to ensure visitors are not violating terms of their visas and do not pose a threat to the United States and our citizens,” the statement said.The state department did not return a request for comment on whether these revocations were student visas, work visas or otherwise. More

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      The Trump team group chat news is obscuring an essential question | Mohamad Bazzi

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      The revelation that top members of Donald Trump’s administration disclosed secret US military plans against the Houthi militia in Yemen in a private group chat that included a prominent journalist has generated predictable outrage in Washington. Democrats are calling for a congressional investigation and the resignation of some of the officials involved in the breach, including the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz.In an article published on Monday, the Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, outlined how he was able to follow the conversation among members of Trump’s cabinet over two days leading up to a series of US airstrikes on 15 March. But in the widespread outrage over the sharing of military information on a Signal chat, one essential question is getting lost: why is Trump bombing Yemen in the first place? Five consecutive US presidents and administrations (George W Bush, Barack Obama, the first Trump administration, Joe Biden and the second Trump administration) have ordered military attacks on Yemen, which is the poorest country in the Middle East.Collectively, these leaders have continued more than two decades of failed US policies toward Yemen, centered on repeated bombings, counter-terrorism operations and support for a dictator who ruled the country for decades. Trump, who portrayed himself throughout the last presidential campaign as “the candidate of peace”, appears almost eager to repeat past US mistakes in Yemen. During Yemen’s long civil war, years of intense bombing by two US allies – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – failed to dislodge the Houthis from power. By the end of 2021, the UN estimated that the Yemen conflict had killed 377,000 people – nearly 60% of whom died not in fighting but from indirect causes, including famine, cholera outbreaks and destruction of the health system. And while Yemeni civilians suffered, the Houthis emerged stronger after each military confrontation.Why aren’t Democrats and other critics of the Trump administration asking this basic question: what have two decades of regular US attacks on Yemen achieved, beyond more death and misery in a country where Washington already helped instigate one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters? Anyone interested in real accountability for US policymaking should see this as a far bigger scandal than the one currently unfolding in Washington over the leaked Signal chat.The Trump administration says the latest US strikes on Yemen are intended to pressure the Houthi militia to stop attacks on international shipping lanes in the Red Sea. After the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza, the Houthis began firing missiles and drones at commercial vessels sailing around the Bab el-Mandeb strait, where the Red Sea comes closest to Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen. The Houthis said they were acting in support of besieged Palestinians and pledged to stop targeting shipping lanes once Israel ended its war on Gaza.The attacks disrupted global shipping, as companies rerouted hundreds of vessels around South Africa, which can add thousands of miles to a freighter’s journey between Asia and Europe. In January 2024, the Biden administration, along with Britain, launched missile strikes against dozens of targets in Yemen. But Houthi leaders did not back down, and they stepped up their attacks on shipping vessels and continued to fire drones and missiles at Israel, most of which were shot down before reaching Israeli territory. Starting in July 2024, Israel carried out four rounds of airstrikes against Yemen, including attacks on the international airport in Sana’a, power stations and several ports.For more than a year, Biden avoided the most clear-cut path to stopping the Red Sea attacks and US escalation against the Houthis: his administration failed to apply pressure on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to end Israel’s assault on Gaza and accept a ceasefire with Hamas. Biden refused to withhold billions of dollars in US weapons or to stop providing political cover for Israel at the UN security council and other international bodies. Instead, the Biden administration continued to insist that it could bring the Houthis to heel by force.Biden’s strategy failed to secure international shipping in the Red Sea. And the Houthis, who were losing support inside Yemen before the Gaza war, turned US attacks into a public relations bonanza. Houthi leaders portrayed themselves as one of the few movements in the Arab world willing to defend the Palestinian cause and fight Israel and its western allies – in contrast to Arab governments that stayed on the sidelines and occasionally issued statements condemning Israel’s war. The Houthis also used the Gaza conflict to elevate their profile within the so-called “axis of resistance”, a network of regional militias supported by Iran. Two of the main factions in this alliance, Hamas and the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, were decimated by the Israeli military over the past 18 months, providing a new opening for Houthi leaders to enhance their popularity throughout the Middle East.The Biden administration – along with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy – finally persuaded Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas, which took effect on 19 January, a day before Trump’s inauguration. After the truce in Gaza, the Houthis stopped their attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea, as they had promised for more than a year. But as the ceasefire’s first phase expired on 2 March, Netanyahu refused to start the second phase of negotiations, which required a complete Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza and talks over a permanent truce. Instead, with the Trump administration’s support, the Israeli government imposed a new siege on Gaza, banning all food and other aid deliveries. Netanyahu backed out of the deal he had initially agreed to, and tried to pressure Hamas into accepting a six-week extension of the ceasefire’s first phase.By 18 March, Israel resumed its brutal war on Gaza with airstrikes that killed more than 400 Palestinians in a single day. In the days leading up to the ceasefire’s collapse, Houthi leaders warned that they would restart their attacks on shipping vessels if Israel resumed its war. And that’s when the Trump administration began threatening renewed US military strikes against Yemen.Trump is now repeating the same failed approach to Yemen as Biden and previous US presidents. In the Signal group chat messages revealed this week by the Atlantic’s editor, Trump cabinet members – who included the vice-president, JD Vance; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe – expressed disdain for European allies and debated the timing of US attacks on the Houthis. But none of these top officials raised the possibility that pushing for a renewed ceasefire in Gaza would remove the Houthis’s rationale for their aggression against commercial shipping in the Red Sea.The most senior officials on Trump’s national security team did not seem to consider the idea of taking the Houthi leaders at their word: that they would cease disrupting global trade once Israel stops bombing Gaza, as they had done in January. Instead, the US security establishment continues bombing Yemen as it has done for two decades – and somehow hoping for a different outcome this time.

      Mohamad Bazzi is the director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern studies and a journalism professor at New York University More

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      Trump wants a Nobel peace prize. Here’s how he can earn one | Ken Roth

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      Donald Trump’s instinctive deference to the Israeli government is at odds with his self-image as an expert dealmaker. Much as it may seem laughable that the president wants the Nobel peace prize, his quest may be the best chance we have for securing any US government regard for the rights and lives of Palestinians in Gaza.Trump currently seems to endorse the strategy of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of trying to pummel Hamas into accepting defeat. To force Hamas to release its remaining hostages and to disband its diminished military force, Netanyahu has resumed Israel’s strategy of starving and bombing Palestinian civilians. In less than a week, about 600 Palestinians have already been killed.The second phase of the ceasefire was supposed to have led to the release of Hamas’s last hostages in return for the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and a permanent end to the fighting. Instead, the Israeli government has unilaterally changed the terms. It wants the hostages released and Hamas dismantled without committing to end the war. Hamas has rejected that one-sided ultimatum, evidently worried that Netanyahu would then resume attacking Palestinian civilians unimpeded.This is not an idle fear. The point of the renewed attacks may not be simply to wrest concessions from Hamas. The vast majority of the hostages freed so far have been released after negotiations rather than by military action, and most families of the hostages, prioritizing survival of their loved ones, want a negotiated solution.Rather, Israel’s aim may be to advance the project of expelling Palestinian civilians from Gaza, the longtime dream of the Israeli far right. Already the defense minister, Israel Katz, is threatening to seize and annex parts of Gaza, and Netanyahu is reportedly planning a new and larger ground invasion. Now that Trump has endorsed the forced permanent deportation of 2 million Palestinians from Gaza – a massive war crime and crime against humanity – Netanyahu may feel he has a green light to pursue that callous strategy.Tellingly, the far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir has rejoined Netanyahu’s governing coalition as police minister now that the temporary ceasefire, which he opposed, has ended. Head of the pro-settler, nationalist-religious Jewish Power party, Ben-Gvir has long been unabashed about his desire to “solve” the conflict in Gaza by getting rid of the Palestinians. And we should recognize that Gaza would most likely be just a prelude to the occupied West Bank.In these circumstances, a deal with Hamas seems unlikely. Why would Hamas capitulate if that would permanently separate the Palestinian people from their homeland?Netanyahu and Trump may calculate that overwhelming military force, if applied with sufficient brutality, would force Hamas’s hand. That has long been the Israeli strategy. Trump has even resumed delivery of the enormous 2,000lb bombs that Joe Biden had suspended because Israel was using them to indiscriminately decimate entire Palestinian neighborhoods.The international criminal court prosecutor has already hinted that this indiscriminate bombardment may be the next focus of his war-crime charges. Trump himself would be at risk of being charged for aiding and abetting these atrocities – an eventuality that would not lead to his immediate jailing but would severely limit his ability to travel to the 125 governments that as members of the ICC would have an obligation to arrest him. (Trump might ask Vladimir Putin about how it felt not to be able to attend the August 2023 Brics summit in South Africa for fear of arrest.)Hamas has so far shown no inclination to succumb to this war-crime strategy, and the surrounding Arab states have rejected becoming a party to another Nakba, the catastrophic forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948. The big question is whether Trump comes to recognize that a deal, not forced surrender, is the most likely way out of the current horrors in Gaza that he had vowed to end.For now, Trump’s deference to Israel seems firm, but one should never take anything for granted with Trump. If there is any constant to his rule, it is that his self-interest overcomes concern for others.That’s where the Nobel prize comes in. If Trump wants to be known as the master of the deal, it won’t be by underwriting more Israeli war crimes.Trump alone has the capacity to force Netanyahu to adopt a different approach. Despite Israel’s dependence on US military assistance, Netanyahu got away with ignoring Biden’s entreaties to curb the starvation and slaughter of Palestinian civilians because the Israeli leader knew that the Republican party had his back. But Trump has become the Republican party. If he pressures Israel, Netanyahu has nowhere to the right to turn.That is how Trump played a decisive role in securing the temporary ceasefire that began shortly before his 20 January inauguration. He could do the same thing now to force Netanyahu toward a more productive, less inhumane path.What might that look like? The best option remains a two-state solution – an Israeli and Palestinian state living in peace side-by-side. The main alternatives would be rejected by Israel (recognition of the “one-state reality” with equal rights for all) or most everyone else (the apartheid of endless occupation).The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has said that he will not normalize relations with Israel, which Trump craves, without a Palestinian state. Both the Saudis and the Emiratis have also insisted on a state as a condition for financing the rebuilding of Gaza.But wouldn’t a Nobel peace prize for Trump be preposterous? No more so than the one granted, however controversially, to Henry Kissinger. He had directed or approved war crimes or mass atrocities in Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Bangladesh and Chile, but the Nobel committee honored him nonetheless for concluding a peace deal with Vietnam and withdrawing US forces. A Trump pivot away from Netanyahu’s endless war would be no more surprising than Kissinger’s about-face.Admittedly, it would be foolhardy to bet on Trump becoming an advocate for a Palestinian state, but it is worth recognizing that his personal ambitions could lead him in that direction. It speaks to the topsy-turvy world of Trump that the Palestinians’ best hope in the face of an Israeli government that respects no legal bounds is to play up what it would take for Trump to secure his coveted Nobel. We must persuade Trump to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

      Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs, was recently published by Knopf and Allen Lane More

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      The US government has sent Columbia University a ransom note | Sheldon Pollock

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      On 15 March, Columbia University received what can only be described as the most dangerous letter in the history of higher education in America. The sender was the United States government. Like a ransom note, the government letter insists that Columbia comply with a list of Trump administration demands in order to even have a chance at recovering the $400m in federal funding for scientific research that the government canceled on 7 March.Oddly, one of the specific targets identified in the letter was Columbia’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (Mesaas), a small humanities department devoted to studying the languages, cultures and history of those regions. The government demanded the Mesaas department be put into “receivership” – basically, be taken over by the University – as a precondition to further negotiations.The battle against the authoritarianism taking hold in Washington now appears to turn in part on the fate of Mesaas.Why Mesaas?The Trump campaign to destroy the independence of American higher education began when an obscure federal agency, the General Services Administration (GSA), in collaboration with the Departments of Health & Human Services and Education, coordinated the extraordinary move to rescind $400m in federal funding for scientific research at Columbia, since Columbia “has fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment”.After threatening some 60 other universities with the same fate, on 13 March the government sent their ransom note to Columbia alone. Their conditions were to be met within seven days, and not in return for the release of the funds, but merely as “preconditions”. Further demands would then be presented for “formal negotiation” – which would not be an actual negotiation, because the GSA would continue to hold back the university’s money, like a mobster.The preconditions concern mainly the policing of student protest on campus. Their imposition likely violates both federal law and the US constitution, as Columbia law faculty have made clear. But in a startling and equally unlawful move the Government took another hostage in its letter: Mesaas. For a period of five years, Columbia must place the department in academic receivership. The university was given the same seven-day ultimatum by which to specify “a full plan, with date-certain deliverables” for enforcing the receivership.This is an unparalleled attempt to seize control over people and ideas in an American university. Universities do find it necessary sometimes to place an academic department in receivership, typically when the department’s self-governance breaks down. Normally the administration will appoint as chair a member of another department, for one academic year. Mesaas’s current self-governance is outstanding, and there have been no problems in all the years that that I chaired the department.For the United States government itself to intervene directly in faculty governance – specifying the extraordinary five-year period, and with “deliverables” on whose performance the future funding of the entire university might depend – is without precedent in the history of American higher education.Why has the government chosen to single out this department?The answer is clear: because its faculty have not voiced steadfast support for the state of Israel in their scholarship. The US government stands almost alone in the world in its unwavering ideological and financial support for the violence of the state of Israel against the people of Palestine. Most recently it has provided the consent, the justification and the arms for Israel’s destruction of Gaza. (Just this week, the destruction was relaunched, to condemnation from around the world but not from Washington, which alone gave its support.)In contrast, academic research by prominent scholars in the field of Middle Eastern studies, including those in Mesaas, has reflected deeply on the complexity of the situation and has long since questioned the versions of history and racial ideas fueling Israel’s actions. Mesaas professors ask hard but entirely legitimate questions about Israel – and our government wants to ban that.The Mesaas department played no role in organizing student protests for Gaza. But Washington has decided that in addition to dictating how a university should govern political protest, it should control how the University governs academic research –intensifying a broad attack on research on the Middle East across US universities.With its demands to essentially seize control of Mesaas, the federal government is undermining two fundamental principles of the American university: the right of academic departments to self-government and the freedom of members of the faculty to express their views, without fear, both as authorities in their fields of inquiry and as private individuals.Columbia is required to decide by Thursday 20 March how to respond to this ransom note, with the government threatening to cut off two of the university’s fingers: academic freedom and faculty governance. If the Columbia administration capitulates, it will mark the beginning of its own destruction and that of the American university as such – precisely what the American Enterprise Institute, which supplied the template for the note, has called for.The courts have so far paused more than 40 of the administration’s initiatives, though it remains unclear if the mob boss will obey. So long as we do have a functional judicial system, however, Columbia’s answer to Trump can only be: see you in court.

      Sheldon Pollock FBA is the Arvind Raghunathan professor emeritus of South Asian studies at Columbia University and former chair of the Mesaas department. He currently has no role in department or university administration and writes only in a personal capacity. More

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      The Guardian view on Israel breaking the ceasefire: destroying hope along with lives | Editorial

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      In shattering the two-month ceasefire that had brought a fragile peace and relief to Gaza, Israel has also smashed the faint hopes that a resolution might just remain within reach. This was one of the deadliest days since the early months of the conflict, sparked by the lethal Hamas raid of 7 October 2023. Israel says it was attacking “terror targets”, but health authorities in Gaza say that 174 children and 89 women were among the more than 400 dead. Evacuation orders issued by the military suggest that a renewed ground offensive may be on its way for traumatised and repeatedly displaced Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu warned that it was “only the beginning” and the military issued new evacuation orders to traumatised and repeatedly displaced Palestinians. Families of the remaining Israeli hostages are terrified and angry too, attacking the government for choosing to give up on them.Horror is piling upon horror. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since the war began, and the numbers grew even during the ceasefire, many due to Israel’s blocking of aid. The British foreign secretary, David Lammy, belatedly acknowledged that as a breach of international law on Monday – only for the prime minister’s spokesperson to rebuke him. A UN report last week said that Israel’s attacks on women’s healthcare in Gaza amounted to “genocidal acts”, and that security forces had used sexual violence as a weapon of war to “dominate and destroy the Palestinian people”. A previous UN commission found that “relentless and deliberate attacks” on medical personnel and facilities amounted to war crimes.Building on the ceasefire always looked difficult. Negotiations never seriously began for the second phase that was supposed to bring about a permanent cessation of hostilities, the release of all hostages, and the total withdrawal of Israeli forces – never mind consideration of the hypothetical third phase, Gaza’s reconstruction.Mr Netanyahu, who blames Hamas’s intransigence in refusing to release all the hostages now for the end of the ceasefire, is kept in power by endless conflict. The Israeli prime minister was due to testify in his corruption trial on Tuesday but cancelled, citing the renewed offensive. He needs support to pass a budget by the end of the month or his government will be dissolved. Resuming air strikes has brought back one of his far-right coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and should prevent the other, Bezalel Smotrich, from jumping ship. Israelis challenging, as authoritarian, his attempts to dismiss his internal security agency chief, Ronen Bar, can be accused of undermining the patriotic cause. Yet most Israelis wanted to move to the second phase of the ceasefire, according to a recent survey. The testimony of returned hostages has refocused attention on the plight of those still held.The renewed attack has been widely and rightly condemned in Europe and the Arab world. But Israel, which was undeterred by Joe Biden’s feeble scoldings, is now dealing with a US president who told it to pause for a beat but is happy to give it the green light to resume and urge it to go further. Donald Trump has repeatedly promoted the forced displacement of Palestinians – another war crime. The US and Israel have reportedly contacted officials in Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland about resettling uprooted Palestinians. These plans are no more tolerable for being far-fetched. The Arab peace plan was a clear statement that there is a better alternative. But for Israel’s right, which will not tolerate Palestinian aspirations to statehood, the destruction of hope is not merely a result of this war, but the goal. It must not succeed.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Netanyahu will never accept peace. Where will his perpetual war lead next? | Simon Tisdall

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      The first and last rule of Benjamin Netanyahu’s doctrine of perpetual warfare is brutally to the point: peace cannot and must not be allowed to last. As indiscriminate, deadly fire once again descends upon the defenceless people of Gaza, unleashed on the orders of Israel’s bellicose prime minister, an anguished cry is heard. Is the precious two-month-long ceasefire with Hamas definitively over? To which comes the dismaying answer: it barely matters. This truce, now shattering into a million pieces, was but a brief, deceptive pause in a war that never stops.It doesn’t stop because Netanyahu is sustained in office by the unceasing state of national emergency that he and his supporters have nurtured and prolonged since the 7 October 2023 terrorist attacks. The war doesn’t stop because Netanyahu’s overarching aim – the destruction of Palestinian hopes of nationhood – is doomed to fail. It does not stop because those, inside Israel and abroad, who criticise Israeli government actions face being dismissed and abused for supposedly acting not in good faith and out of alarm at the human toll, but from antisemitic motives.Most of all, perhaps, the war that the terrorists triggered 18 months ago continues, and threatens once more to expand, because Netanyahu and his far-right Jewish nationalist and ultra-religious partners have found in it a vehicle to pursue the larger goal of a greater Israel. They and their violent settler allies use it as an excuse to expand land grabs and intimidate Palestinian residents in the occupied West Bank. New areas of Syria’s Golan Heights have been seized. Resettlement of Gaza itself is another stated objective.Perpetual warfare can only be sustained if the other “side” continues to fight. So degraded are Hamas’s forces, it almost seems unable to do so any longer. The lack of an immediate armed response to the Israeli strikes that began on Monday night speaks to relative weakness. And yet Hamas is not vanquished. Each time a hostage was handed over, its black-hooded fighters made a great show of militant defiance. As long as any credible, agreed “day after” plan is lacking – and absent a ground invasion and full-scale, long-term occupation – Hamas will remain in effective charge in Gaza. And so the war goes on.Netanyahu did not want the ceasefire in the first place and has constantly sought a breakdown he could blame on others. He only consented to stop shooting on 19 January under pressure from Donald Trump and his ubiquitous envoy, Steve Witkoff. Due to be inaugurated the following day, Trump was imperiously demanding an end to the conflict his predecessor, Joe Biden, failed to halt. Loth to rain on Trump’s parade, and eager to win favour, Netanyahu agreed, fingers crossed tightly behind his back.Yet even then, with more than 48,000 Palestinians dead, tens of thousands injured or traumatised and most of Gaza’s 2 million population homeless, Netanyahu was not ready to stop. He knew that far-right cabinet ministers would not tolerate peace for long. One, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had already resigned in protest. Others were threatening to do so, thereby potentially collapsing his government. He knew, though for him this has been a secondary consideration throughout, that many Israeli hostages remained in captivity – 59 at the last count, alive and dead.Netanyahu never seriously intended to honour the second phase of the ceasefire, which was supposed to begin on 1 March and which calls for full Israeli military withdrawal. He blocked humanitarian aid; he cut water and electricity supplies; he delayed second-phase implementation and obstructed talks to get it back on track. He waged war by other means. And when these provocations failed, he insisted, in breach of the ceasefire deal, that Hamas unilaterally liberate more hostages while offering only limited prisoner releases and a temporary truce extension in return.Perpetual warfare, even when undeclared, is difficult to justify and Netanyahu, indicted for war crimes by the international criminal court and widely condemned in Europe and the Arab world, is desperately short of backers. His predicament has worsened of late. Accused of a growing authoritarianism, he is embroiled in a row over his bid to sack the Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar. A new corruption scandal involving Qatari money also swirls around him. In this context, a Gaza “distraction” may be considered timely.“Netanyahu is waging a holding action on every possible front – against early elections, against a state commission of inquiry [into the 7 October attacks], against a deal that would bring back the 59 remaining hostages, living and dead,” wrote Haaretz’s Amos Harel. “The prime minister is acting like someone who has nothing left to lose. Intensifying the battle to the point of chaos serves him.”With more than 400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, killed so far, and with Israel threatening continuing and expanding strikes, cries of anger, horror and dismay from the Palestinians, the UN, international aid agencies and foreign governments echo like ghostly laments across the devastated Gazan wasteland. They are as familiar as they are futile and disregarded.A far from chastened White House, proudly confirming complicity in the Israeli strikes, appears keen they continue. The January ceasefire process appears dead. Trump’s absurd plan for a Gaza Riviera is nowhere to be seen or heard now. Thwarted, he hits back vicariously, egging on Netanyahu. Yet it would be naive not to see a broader, schematic Trump connection. In recent days, he has rattled sabres in Iran’s face, demanding Tehran resume talks on curtailing its nuclear programme or face military action. At the same time, he launched huge airstrikes on Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen.In Trump’s simplistic, zero-sum world, it’s all the same deal. “As President Trump has made clear, Hamas, the Houthis, Iran – all those who seek to terrorise not just Israel but the US – will see a price to pay, and all hell will break loose,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said. Is Yemen an early warning? Is Trump moving to defend Israel against Iranian attack – a possibility relentlessly rehearsed by Netanyahu to justify his unending state of war? Or is Trump actually preparing the ground for an Israeli-US strike going the other way, as many in Tehran believe?Like some previous US presidents, and oblivious as ever to history, Trump believes he can remake the Middle East almost by an act of imperial will. But unlike Barack Obama, who dreamed in Cairo in 2009 of a democratic renaissance, Trump is remodelling by diktat, backed by the use or threat of brute force. Palestine is the benighted place in which Trump’s messiah complex and Netanyahu’s doctrine of perpetual war collide. Where next? And who now will help those who cannot help themselves?

      Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator More

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      US rebuts Hamas’s ‘entirely impractical’ ceasefire demands

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      The Trump administration has accused Hamas of making “entirely impractical” demands and stalling on a deal to release a US-Israeli hostage in exchange for an extension of the Gaza ceasefire.“Hamas is making a very bad bet that time is on its side. It is not,” the office of Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and the US national security council said in a statement. “Hamas is well aware of the deadline, and should know that we will respond accordingly if that deadline passes,” it said, adding that Trump had already vowed Hamas would “pay a severe price” for not freeing hostages.A week ago Trump repeated a threat to destroy Hamas in a “last warning” to release the hostages, but it is unclear exactly to which of several potential deadlines the new statement referred.The US appears to have brushed aside an offer made earlier on Friday by the militant Islamist organisation to free Edan Alexander, an Israeli-American hostage who was abducted while serving as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces during Hamas’s surprise raid into Israel in October 2023, and the remains of four other Israeli-Americans who have died in captivity in Gaza.“Unfortunately, Hamas has chosen to respond by publicly claiming flexibility while privately making demands that are entirely impractical without a permanent ceasefire,” the statement added.The reaction from the US dashed any hopes of sudden progress in continuing indirect negotiations in Qatar over the fragile ceasefire in Gaza but will comes as a relief to the Israeli government.The initial phase of the ceasefire in the devastated territory came into effect in January but lapsed almost two weeks ago. In recent statements, Hamas has said it wants Israel to implement the second phase of the ceasefire, which was supposed to definitively end the conflict.Israel has so far refused to move to the second phase, and is calling for an extension of several weeks to the first phase instead, leaving open the possibility of a new offensive in the months to come.Witkoff has presented a “bridge” proposal in Qatar to extend the first phase of the truce to mid-April if Hamas releases living hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.“Hamas was told in no uncertain terms that this ‘bridge’ would have to be implemented soon – and that dual US-Israeli citizen Edan Alexander would have to be released immediately,” the statement said.After the Hamas statement, Netanyahu’s office said Israel had “accepted the Witkoff outline and showed flexibility”, but said “Hamas is refusing and will not budge from its positions”.“At the same time, it continues to use manipulation and psychological warfare – the reports about Hamas’s willingness to release American hostages are intended to sabotage the negotiations,” the prime minister’s office said.It added that Netanyahu would convene his ministerial team on Saturday night to receive a detailed report from the negotiation team and “decide on the next steps for the release of hostages”.Netanyahu has consistently opposed any permanent end to the war in Gaza, in part due to domestic political considerations. However, the Israeli leader has made it clear that maintaining good relations with the White House is a priority.After more than 16 months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt, Washington recently opened a direct channel of talks with Hamas with the aim of freeing US citizens abducted by the organisation during its raid into Israel.Hamas abducted 251 hostages during its attack and killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.In a social media post earlier this month, Donald Trump said there would be “hell to pay” if all the 58 hostages still in Gaza were not released. Fewer than half are thought to be still alive.In an attempt to pressure Hamas, Israel has cut off all supplies of goods to Gaza and on Sunday stopped any remaining electricity supplies from Israel to the territory.Almost the entire population of Gaza was displaced by Israel’s military offensive, which killed 48,500 people, mostly civilians, and reduced swaths of the territory to rubble.The six-week first phase of the ceasefire led to the exchange of 25 living Israeli hostages and the remains of eight others, in return for the release of about 1,800 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. It also allowed much-needed food, shelter and medical assistance to re-enter Gaza.Official reaction from the Israeli government to the news last week of direct talks between the US and Hamas was limited to a single terse statement by the office of Netanyahu acknowledging the negotiations, but the mass-market newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said Israel had been “stunned to discover that, behind its back, Trump’s envoy had flirted for weeks in Doha” with a senior Hamas official. More

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      There can be no ‘Israel exception’ for free speech | Kenneth Roth

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      The Trump administration’s threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil seems to reflect a dangerous disregard for freedom of expression – a blatant example of official censorship to curb criticism of Israel.Khalil was a recent graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He holds a green card, giving him permanent residence status, and is married to a US citizen. They are expecting their first child soon. Immigration agents arrested him last week in his university housing and sent him for detention from New York City to Louisiana. He had been a leader of protests against Israeli war crimes in Gaza.Beyond that, the facts are contested. His friends called him “kind, expressive and gentle”. A Columbia professor described him as “someone who seeks mediated resolutions through speech and dialogue. This is not someone who engages in violence, or gets people riled up to do dangerous things.”But Donald Trump, hailing his arrest, suggested Khalil was among students “who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”. The administration has presented no facts to back up these assertions, but even were it to do so, the suggestion that permissible speech can be a basis for deportation is deeply troubling. Trump vowed more such deportation efforts.Ordinarily, the first amendment protects even offensive speech. Although the government retains greater latitude to deport non-citizens, Trump’s rhetoric suggests an intention to step way over the line of propriety. What does it mean to be “anti-American”? As we saw during the McCarthy era, people can face that accusation for a wide range of legitimate political views. Such campaigns are the antithesis of the free debate that is essential for US democracy.As for the charge of “antisemitism”, Trump seems to be fueling a disturbing tendency to use claims of antisemitism to silence criticism of the Israeli government. Antisemitism is a serious problem that threatens Jews around the world. But if people see accusations of antisemitism as mere efforts to censor critics of Israel, it would cheapen the concept at a time when the defense against real antisemitism is urgently needed.Even Trump’s unsupported suggestion that Khalil is “pro-terrorist” needs unpacking. To begin with, opposing Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on Palestinian civilians, as well as its starvation of them, does not make anyone pro-terrorist. Israel is required to carry out its military response to Hamas’s appalling murders and abductions of 7 October 2023 in accordance with international humanitarian law. War crimes by one side never support war crimes by the other. Pointing that out, if that’s what Khalil did, does not make him “pro-terrorist”; it makes him pro-civilian.The Trump administration’s retaliation against Khalil is part of its larger attack on campus protests against Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Just days earlier, the administration announced the withdrawal of $400m in federal funding from Columbia for supposedly failing to protect Jewish students and faculty during anti-Israel protests, the vast majority of which were entirely peaceful. Other universities have now been threatened with a similar suspension of their funding.Coincidentally, I spoke on the Columbia campus days before Khalil’s detention. As a Jew, I did not feel the least bit threatened. Indeed, many of the protesters against Israeli atrocities have been Jewish. Again, Trump’s pretext for censoring critics of Israel is transparently thin.If we tolerate an Israel exception to our rights of free speech, we can be sure that other exceptions will follow. Trump likes to half-jokingly refer to himself as a “king”. Are we heading toward a Thailand-style lèse majesté under which criticism of the king is criminalized?But censoring criticism of Israel is a poor strategy even for protecting Israel. Trump’s plan to “solve” Israel’s Palestinian problem by forcibly deporting millions of Palestinians would be a huge war crime; it has been rightly rejected by the Arab states that Trump envisioned receiving the refugees or later paying to rebuild Gaza.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFailing that plan, the Israeli government would prefer the status quo – endless occupation – but the world increasingly rejects that option as apartheid, as did the international court of justice in July. Another option would be to recognize the “one-state reality” created by Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, but the Israeli government refuses to provide equal rights to all residents. Roughly the same number of Jews and Arabs like between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, so Israel would lose its Jewish majority.The most realistic, legal and enduring option remains a two-state solution, an Israeli and Palestinian state living side by side in peace. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has devoted his political career to avoiding a Palestinian state, but it is the best prospect for lasting peace.In pressing Netanyahu to agree to the current temporary ceasefire in Gaza, Trump showed his capacity to exert pressure on the Israeli government to take steps toward peace that it resists. He could do the same for a two-state solution.But to build a political support for this important step, we need free debate in the United States. Trump’s efforts to censor criticism of Israeli misconduct is a recipe for endless war and atrocities. Free speech is required if we hope to do better. Trump should reverse his misguided effort to deport Khalil.

      Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book Righting Wrongs was just published by Knopf More