URGENT STEP ONE:
Demand EMERGENCY MEDICAL TRANSFER & TREATMENT
FOR IMAM JAMIL
The Bureau of Prisons is denying medical treatment to Imam
Jamil Al-Amin, 81 years old, formerly known as H. Rap Brown.
He has a potentially life-threatening growth on his face, on
top of his multiple myeloma (cancer) & other significant
medical issues.
A civil and human rights leader, wrongfully imprisoned for
the past 24 years, he needs Your Help to avoid his
Death By Medical Neglect
CALL TUCSON COMPLEX 520-663-5000
EMAIL WARDEN Mark Gutierrez, mggutierrez@bop.gov
Give Name & Inmate Number: Jamil Al-Amin, #99974-555
Demand they grant Imam Jamil an EMERGENCY MEDICAL TRANSFER from United States Penitentiary (USP) Tucson to Federal Medical Center (FMC) Butner for his Immediate Medical Treatment NOW!!
***Deputy Director of BOP [Bureau of Prisons], (202) 307-3198
URGENT STEP TWO:
Tell his Congressional Delegation of his condition, Urge them to use their offices to inquire the BOP & demand that their constituent (Imam Jamil, West End Community Masjid, 547 West End Pl., SW, Atlanta) receive the emergency medical transfer, diagnosis & treatment.
- Email GA Cong. Nikema Williams PressGA05@mail.house.gov
- Email US Sen. Rafael Warnock press@warnock.senate.gov
- Email US Sen. Jon Ossoff press@ossoff.senate.gov
- Email Atlanta City Councilman Jason Dozier jdozier@atlantaga.gov
- Email GA State Rep Park Cannon park.cannon@house.ga.gov
- Email GA State Sen. Sonya Halpern sonya.halpern@senate.ga.gov
This is most urgent step before Step Three: campaigning for Medical Reprieve by the GA Bd. Of pardons & Parole, THE entity standing in the way of freeing Imam from his unjust conviction by granting a Medical Reprieve.
IMAM JAMIL ACTION NETWORK.ORG
216.296.4617
NATIONAL
347.731.1886
MEDIA
252.907.4443
SOUTHERN
347.731.1886
NJ/NY
202.520.9997
WASH., DC
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We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether!
—Bonnie Weinstein
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Live Updates: Allies, Foes and Palestinians Reject Trump’s Gaza Takeover Talk
Middle East partners, world leaders and Gazans swiftly opposed President Trump’s idea to force Palestinians out of the territory and take it over. Experts said the plan would violate international law.
By Qasim Nauman, Lara Jakes and Aaron Boxerman, Feb. 5, 2025
A Palestinian in the ruins of a building in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Wednesday. Credit...Hatem Khaled/Reuters
President Trump’s brazen proposal to move all Palestinians out of Gaza and make it a U.S. territory met with immediate opposition on Wednesday from key American partners and officials around the world, with many expressing support for a Palestinian state as experts called it a breach of international law.
The proposal also threatens a U.S. ambition for normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In a statement issued before 4 a.m. local time, Saudi Arabia expressed its “unequivocal rejection” of attempts to displace Palestinians and reiterated that it would not establish diplomatic ties with Israel in the absence of an independent Palestinian state.
Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a separate statement that aid and recovery programs for Gaza must begin “without the Palestinians leaving.”
Gaza has been devastated by Israel’s military campaign against Hamas since the militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Speaking alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump described Gaza as “a demolition site” that the United States would rebuild into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Hamas has ruled in Gaza for most of the past two decades and has begun re-establishing control there since a cease-fire took effect last month. The group immediately rejected the idea of a mass relocation of the territory’s roughly two million Palestinians, a politically explosive proposal in a region with a long and bloody history of forced displacement.
Riyad Mansour, the leader of the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations, said that world leaders should respect Palestinians’ desire to rebuild Gaza themselves. Those who want to send Gazans “to a happy ‘nice place,’” Mr. Mansour said, using language that Mr. Trump had employed, should “let them go back, you know, to their original homes inside Israel.”
The Geneva Conventions prohibit the forcible relocation of populations. The United States and Israel have both ratified the conventions.
Here is what else to know:
· Around the world: Mr. Trump brought together allies and adversaries alike in opposition to his proposal, though some sought to strike a balance by not criticizing him directly.
· Against the law: The proposition would unquestionably be a severe violation of international law, experts say. Forced deportation or transfer of a civilian population is a violation of international humanitarian law, a war crime and a crime against humanity.
· Swift rejection: Mr. Trump has floated the idea of Palestinians leaving Gaza multiple times in recent days, including a proposal to move them to Egypt and Jordan. That was rejected last week by a broad group of Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, in addition to Egypt and Jordan.
· Reaction in Israel: It was not clear whether Mr. Netanyahu was expecting Mr. Trump to announce such a proposal, but he smiled as the president talked about moving all Palestinians out of Gaza. Back home, far-right Israeli politicians celebrated Mr. Trump’s proposals as a vindication of their long-held dreams of the mass departure of Palestinians from Gaza. “It is now clear: this is the only solution,” said Itamar Ben-Gvir, until recently the country’s national security minister.
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2) Trump’s proposal puts Egypt and Jordan in an impossible position.
By Vivian Yee, Reporting from Cairo, Feb. 5, 2025
For decades, the question of whether and how Palestinians might build a state in their homeland has been at the center of Middle East politics — not only for the Palestinians themselves, but also for Arabs around the region, many of whom regard the Palestinian cause almost as their own. Forcing Palestinians out of their remaining territory, Arabs say, would doom that shared desire for Palestinian statehood and destabilize the entire region in the process.
So it was a nightmare for the Palestinians’ closest Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, and a dream come true for Israel’s far-right-dominated government, when President Trump proposed moving everyone out of the Gaza Strip and onto Egyptian and Jordanian soil, an idea he repeated in a White House news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Tuesday.
To the two Arab governments, it is not a matter of real estate or refugee camps, but of compromising their own long-held principles, angering their people, risking their own security and stability and perhaps paving the way for West Bank Palestinians to meet the same fate. They have responded with categorical “nos.”
That refusal has been backed up by politically independent and opposition figures in Egypt alongside mouthpieces for the country’s authoritarian government, underscoring how the Palestinian issue unifies even the bitterest political opponents in Egypt.
But Mr. Trump has shown little regard for the two countries’ concerns, their sovereignty or the idea of Palestinian statehood.
“They say they’re not going to accept,” Mr. Trump said of Egypt and Jordan during an earlier meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in the Oval Office. “I say they will.”
The president may have ways of bending them to his will. Egypt and Jordan are among the top recipients of American military aid worldwide; Mr. Trump has mentioned the funding in recent weeks, though without publicly threatening to pull it over the Gaza issue.
Still, analysts say the financial incentives of keeping that aid, which makes up a limited portion of each country’s budget, are minor compared to the two governments’ fears of alienating their populations by appearing complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and other anxieties. Though the rulers of both countries often brook little dissent on other matters, often using repression to silence internal criticism of their decisions, analysts say they know they cannot afford to ignore public opinion on such a crucial issue.
“It’s no joke going up against Trump, particularly for Egypt and Jordan,” said Paul Salem, the vice president for international engagement at the Middle East Institute. But since “this would really be a bridge way too far for much of public opinion,” he added, “there is no other option for an Arab leader. I don’t see what else they could do.”
For President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, the issue is particularly sensitive because he has tried to rally public support for himself at a time when Egyptians are enduring a prolonged economic crisis by painting himself as a champion of the Palestinians. Egypt also sees the possibility of Palestinians settling en masse in Egypt as a serious security threat, government officials, diplomats and analysts say: Officials worry that members of militant groups among forcibly displaced Palestinians could launch attacks at Israel from Egyptian soil, inviting Israeli military retaliation.
Jordan, with its far smaller population — many of Palestinian descent — and heavy dependence on U.S. support, is perhaps even more vulnerable. Far-right Israelis have long talked of Jordan as the place where Palestinians forced out of Gaza and the West Bank should make their home instead of their current territories, raising fears in Jordan that if people from Gaza are forced out, Israel will next drive Palestinians out of the West Bank and annex it.
Many, if not all, would likely be forced to go next door to Jordan, destabilizing a country already unsettled by tensions between citizens who are of Palestinian descent and those who are not, analysts say.
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3) Gazans condemn Trump’s proposal for a U.S. takeover.
By Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 5, 2025
Palestinians in Gaza expressed a mixture of condemnation and confusion on Wednesday over President Trump’s declaration that the United States should seize control of the devastated coastal territory and forcibly displace its entire population.
A number of Gazans said they found Mr. Trump’s comments reprehensible, noting they were in harmony with plans presented by far-right members of Israel's governing coalition. But while some rejected leaving Gaza under any circumstances, others said conditions were so unlivable after 15 months of Israeli bombardment that they would consider relocating.
“I need to stay in my land. My life, my family, and my memories are here,” said Mohammed Fares, 24, a resident of Gaza City who was displaced to the southern city of Khan Younis. “I have something in Gaza I can’t get anywhere else. I’ll stay, even through hell.”
Mr. Fares said he was staying at a relatives’ home in Khan Younis because his family’s home in Gaza City was in tatters and because there was little water available there.
About two million Palestinians remain in Gaza after a war that has reduced cities to rubble and killed tens of thousands of people. Israel waged a war against Hamas after the armed Palestinian group led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people.
Mr. Trump said that all Palestinians in Gaza should be moved to neighboring Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan because of the devastation wrought by the war.
Palestinians blasted the notion of forced displacement, though some said they would be open to finding a more stable life outside Gaza.
“It’s unacceptable to expel people from their homes,” said Mukhlis al-Masri, 33, a resident of the northern town of Beit Hanoun displaced to Khan Younis. “But I never thought I would get to this place, where everything is a struggle.”
If he were able to move outside Gaza, Mr. al-Masri said, he would.
“Do I want to live through a tragedy for another 20 or 30 years? Do I want to continue to live through hell? “I can't.”
Since a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas came into effect on Jan. 19, the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza has surged but residents have said restoring a relative degree of normalcy still feels years away. The simplest of tasks before the war — charging a phone or bathing — have become daily ordeals.
To take a shower, Mr. Mukhlis, his wife, and three sons lay out a sheet of plastic across a classroom at a United Nations school and dump glasses of water on themselves, he said.
Other Palestinians criticized Mr. Trump’s claim that they would live in “peace and harmony” in new places outside Gaza.
Some Arab countries have seriously restricted the rights of Palestinian refugees. For example in Lebanon, they are barred from working in several professions.
“Arab countries consider us 7th-class citizens,” said Abd al-Rahman Basem al-Masri, 27, a doctor from the central Gaza city of Deir al Balah. “Why should I leave the land of my fathers and forefathers for that?”
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4) A question surrounding Trump’s plan: Does he mean it?
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 5, 2025
President Trump’s plan to place Gaza under American occupation and transfer its two million Palestinian residents has delighted the Israeli right, horrified Palestinians, shocked America’s Arab allies and confounded regional analysts who saw it as unworkable.
For some experts, the idea felt so unlikely — would Mr. Trump really risk American troops in another intractable battle against militant Islamists in the Middle East? — that they wondered if it was simply the opening bid in a new round of negotiations over Gaza’s future.
To the Israeli right, Mr. Trump’s plan unraveled decades of unwelcome orthodoxy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, raising the possibility of negating the militant threat in Gaza without the need to create a Palestinian state. In particular, settler leaders hailed it as a route by which they might ultimately resettle Gaza with Jewish civilians — a long-held desire.
To Palestinians, the proposal would constitute ethnic cleansing on a more terrifying scale than any displacement they have experienced since 1948, when roughly 800,000 Arabs were expelled or forced to flee during the wars surrounding the creation of the Jewish state.
“Outrageous,” said Prof. Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian political analyst from Gaza who was displaced from his home during the war. “Palestinians would rather live in tents next to their destroyed homes rather than relocate to another place.”
“Very important,” wrote Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right Israeli lawmaker and settler leader, in a social media post. “The only solution to Gaza is to encourage the migration of Gazans.”
“Comical,” said Alon Pinkas, a political commentator and former Israeli ambassador. “This makes annexing Canada and buying Greenland seem much more practical in comparison.”
But it is the very outlandishness of the plan that signaled to some that it was not meant to be taken literally.
Just as Mr. Trump has often made bold threats elsewhere that he ultimately has not enacted, some saw his gambit in Gaza as a negotiating tactic aimed at forcing compromises from both Hamas and from Arab leaders.
In Gaza, Hamas has yet to agree to fully cede power, a position that makes the Israeli government less likely to extend the cease-fire. Elsewhere in the region, Saudi Arabia is refusing to normalize ties with Israel, or help with Gaza’s postwar governance, unless Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state.
Mr. Trump’s maximalist plans may have been an attempt to get both sides to shift their positions, Israeli and Palestinian analysts said.
Faced with a choice between preserving its own control over Gaza and maintaining a Palestinian presence there, Hamas might perhaps settle for the latter, according to Michael Milshtein, an Israeli analyst of Palestinian affairs.
And Saudi Arabia is being prodded to give up its insistence on Palestinian statehood and settle instead for a deal that preserves Palestinians’ right to stay in Gaza but not their right to sovereignty, according to Professor Abusada, the Palestinian political scientist.
Saudi Arabia swiftly rejected Mr. Trump’s plan on Wednesday, issuing a statement that underlined its support for Palestinian statehood. But some still think the Saudi position could change. During Mr. Trump’s previous tenure, in 2020, the United Arab Emirates made a similar compromise when it agreed to normalize ties with Israel in exchange for the postponement of Israel’s annexation of the West Bank.
“Trump is showing maximum pressure against Hamas to scare them, so they make real concessions,” Professor Abusada said. “I also think he is using maximum pressure against the region, so they would settle for less in exchange for normalization with Israel. Exactly like what the U.A.E. did.”
In turn, Mr. Trump has given the Israeli right a reason to support an extension of the cease-fire, Israeli analysts said.
For more than a year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing allies have threatened to collapse his coalition if the war ends with Hamas still in power. Now, those hard-liners have an off-ramp — a pledge from Israel’s biggest ally to empty Gaza of Palestinians at some point in the future.
Nadav Shtrauchler, a former adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, referring to those right-wing elements, said, “In time, they will need to see some evidence that it is actually happening.”
But for now, he added, “They will be more patient.”
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.
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5) Trump Brazenly Defies Laws in Escalating Executive Power Grab
In the radical opening weeks of his second term, President Trump has appeared to feel little constraint by any need to show respect for the rule of law.
By Charlie Savage, Feb. 5, 2025
Charlie Savage has been writing about presidential power and legal policy for more than two decades. He reported from Washington.
President Trump has encountered few obstacles so far in his second term’s assault on the federal government. Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
In his first term, President Trump seemed to relish ripping through the norms and standards of self-restraint that his predecessors had respected. Three weeks into his second term, hand-wringing about norms seems quaint.
Other presidents have occasionally ignored or claimed a right to bypass particular statutes. But Mr. Trump has opened the throttle on defying legal limits.
“We are well past euphemism about ‘pushing the limits,’ ‘stretching the envelope’ and the like,” said Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at New York University and the author of a casebook on separation-of-powers law. The array of legal constraints Mr. Trump has violated, Mr. Shane added, amounts to “programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness.”
Mr. Trump has effectively nullified laws, such as by ordering the Justice Department to refrain from enforcing a ban on the wildly popular app TikTok and by blocking migrants from invoking a statute allowing them to request asylum. He moved to effectively shutter a federal agency Congress created and tried to freeze congressionally approved spending, including most foreign aid. He summarily fired prosecutors, inspectors general and board members of independent agencies in defiance of legal rules against arbitrary removal.
More than two dozen lawsuits have been filed so far challenging moves by the Trump administration, though many overlap: At least nine, for example, concern his bid to change the constitutional understanding that babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents are citizens.
Courts have temporarily blocked that edict, along with his blanket freeze on disbursing $3 trillion in domestic grants from money Congress appropriated. And a federal judge has temporarily blocked the transfer of a transgender federal inmate to a male prison, pausing a move in line with one of Mr. Trump’s executive orders.
But those obstacles so far have been rare in Mr. Trump’s blitzkrieg, which has raised the question of whether, in his return to office, he and his advisers feel constrained by the rule of law.
This week, Mr. Trump moved to effectively dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and fold its functions into the State Department, making Secretary of State Marco Rubio its acting director. He had already crippled U.S.A.I.D. by imposing a “temporary” freeze on disbursing foreign aid that Congress appropriated, which as time passes is increasingly at odds with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
Since the first Congress, it has been the legislative branch — not the president — that decides how to structure the executive branch, creating departments and agencies, giving them functions and providing them with funds to carry out those missions. And Congress has enacted laws that say U.S.A.I.D. is to exist as an “independent establishment,” not as part of any executive department.
No matter. On Monday, Mr. Trump was asked whether he needed an act of Congress to do away with the agency. He dismissed that suggestion and insulted the officials who work there.
“I don’t think so, not when it comes to fraud,” Mr. Trump said. “If there’s fraud — these people are lunatics — and if — if it comes to fraud, you wouldn’t have an act of Congress. And I’m not sure that you would anyway.”
Rumors abound that Mr. Trump is weighing executive actions to at least partly dismantle the Education Department, another component of the government that Congress has mandated exist by law.
Mr. Trump and his appointees have also been firing people in naked defiance of statutes Congress enacted to protect against the arbitrary removal of certain officials, like civil servants or board members at independent agencies.
For example, Mr. Trump shut down three agencies by ousting Democratic members before their terms had ended. That effectively hobbled the agencies, the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, because they were left with too few officials to have a quorum to act.
Congress created those agencies to be independent of the White House, and all three have been understood to have forms of protections limiting the president’s ability to remove their leaders without a good cause, like misconduct, although only the labor board statute says that. Regardless, Mr. Trump flouted the limit.
In so doing, the Trump administration appears to be setting up test cases should those officials sue, that would give the Republican-appointed supermajority on the Supreme Court an opportunity to expand on the so-called unitary executive theory. That doctrine, developed by the Reagan administration legal team, holds that the Constitution should be interpreted to prohibit Congress from enacting laws that limit a president’s absolute control of the executive branch.
The Justice Department has fired most of the prosecutors who worked on the cases that led to two indictments of Mr. Trump, along with those who worked on cases against ordinary rioters from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault. Top career leaders across the F.B.I. have been fired as well, and on Tuesday the bureau turned over a list of the thousands of agents who participated in those investigations, raising fears that they, too, will be purged.
None of those firings have complied with laws aimed at protecting the civil service and its senior career officials from losing their posts without a good cause, a process that includes hearings before the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Peter L. Strauss, a professor emeritus of law at Columbia University who is a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, said the Trump administration had embraced lawlessness.
“President Trump and his friends are ignoring both federal law and the, to me, clear limitation of presidential power in Article II of the Constitution,” he said. “The Constitution did not imagine what we are seeing. All one has to do is to read the whole of Article II to understand that.”
Bulldozing Legal Constraints
It is not clear what lawyers Mr. Trump’s team has consulted for all his intended moves, although the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that the office of the White House counsel, David Warrington, approved the blanket spending freeze, which has now been suspended and enjoined by a court.
“White House Counsel’s Office believes that this is within the president’s power to do it, and therefore, he’s doing it,” she said at a news briefing last week.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump’s advisers made clear that they would use aggressively permissive legal gatekeepers in a second term.
And the Trump team has at least partly sidelined the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which is supposed to review proposed executive orders and substantive proclamations for form and legality.
During transitions, the normal process is for a career lawyer in that office, walled off from the exiting administration’s political appointees, to vet drafts of directives the president-elect is considering issuing upon taking office. But Mr. Trump’s transition team did not use that mechanism for his slew of early directives, instead vetting drafts with handpicked lawyers from outside.
Nothing suggests this practice of shopping around for outside legal advice has abated; the Office of Legal Counsel’s website lists no Trump political appointee currently filling the role of its acting chief. A person familiar with the matter said there is now one political appointee in the office.
Even before taking office, Mr. Trump challenged the rule of law by declaring he would nullify a statute barring TikTok from operating in the United States unless its Chinese owners sold it. He made the assertion even though the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law. And in his directive to the Justice Department forbidding enforcement, Mr. Trump ordered that TikTok and its support services be notified “that there has been no violation of the statute” if they defied it.
Even if that could be seen as a particularly aggressive example of prosecutorial discretion, presidents have never been understood to have the power to make acting contrary to a law not count as a violation of it.
Since then, Mr. Trump appears to have been basically operating with a philosophy that he will do whatever he wants despite any legal impediments, then fight in court if necessary.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump’s advisers outlined their hope to fundamentally overhaul the structure of the federal government to curb the civil service and expand presidential power. But it was not clear at the time that the incursion would be effectively outsourced to Elon Musk, the billionaire whom Mr. Trump has unleashed upon the executive branch in search of “efficiency.”
Mr. Musk and employees from his various companies have also been rampaging through the federal bureaucracy, including by seizing access to a Treasury Department system that handles federal payments and has sensitive information, like Social Security numbers, whose disclosure is limited by the Privacy Act. Mr. Musk’s team also got into a standoff with employees at U.S.A.I.D. over its demand for access to classified information.
Federal employees at both the Treasury and U.S.A.I.D. who resisted him were placed on administrative leave. Mr. Musk’s team also shut down U.S.A.I.D.’s headquarters overnight, emailing employees not to come in, and its website went dark.
The Trump team has been opaque about exactly what legal status allows Mr. Musk to be exercising executive power, even at Mr. Trump’s behest, but The New York Times reported this week that Mr. Musk has been deemed a “special government employee.”
The administration has not said when he acquired that status, nor whether or to what extent Mr. Trump has waived a criminal conflict-of-interest law that binds even special employees from touching government matters that could affect their personal interests. For Mr. Musk, that category is vast given how heavily his companies rely on federal contracts.
Meekness by Congressional Republicans
There were reasons to believe that Mr. Trump’s second term would be more radical than his first even before the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed supermajority last summer proclaimed a new constitutional doctrine that current and former presidents are largely immune from prosecution if they use their official powers to commit crimes.
Unlike last time, the advisers who stuck with him worked to ensure there would be no appointees around him inclined to check his impulses.
Mr. Trump also has little reason to fear impeachment, which he has already survived twice. He has tightened his grip on the Republican Party, which controls Congress and so far has put up scant defense of its institutional prerogatives.
No Republican joined Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a letter on Sunday warning Mr. Rubio that “any effort to merge or fold U.S.A.I.D. into the Department of State should be, and by law must be, previewed, discussed, and approved by Congress.”
A Virginia Democrat, Representative Don Beyer, echoed that point on Monday during a news conference outside the aid agency’s headquarters, calling what Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk were doing “illegal.” He added, “Stopping this will require action by the courts and for Republicans to show up and show courage and stand up for our country.”
Nor have congressional Republicans sharply pushed back against Mr. Trump’s summary firing of 17 inspectors general, the independent watchdogs Congress created to hunt for waste, fraud, abuse and illegality in the government. The firings defied a law that required him to give detailed, written justifications to lawmakers 30 days in advance.
For example, Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who leads the Judiciary Committee and styles himself as a champion of inspectors general, reacted mildly, issuing a statement and a letter to Mr. Trump that noted that the removals had not followed the law and asked for the rationale behind them. He has not demanded that Mr. Trump rescind the firings, nor unleashed tactics — like holding up cabinet nominees — that lawmakers can use as leverage.
In 1952, when the Supreme Court struck down President Harry S. Truman’s attempt to seize steel mills, Justice Robert Jackson observed that Congress has tools to resist presidential arrogation of its power. But in practice, he added, lawmakers may lack the political fortitude to prevent their authority from slipping through their fingers.
“I have no illusion that any decision by this court can keep power in the hands of Congress if it is not wise and timely in meeting its problems,” he wrote. “A crisis that challenges the president equally, or perhaps primarily, challenges Congress. If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that ‘The tools belong to the man who can use them.’”
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6) U.S. Postal Service Reverses Decision to Halt Parcel Service From China
The Postal Service will continue to accept parcels from Hong Kong and China despite a new executive order that will require greater inspection of packages.
By Keith Bradsher, Ana Swanson and Jordyn Holman, Published Feb. 4, 2025, Updated Feb. 5, 2025
Keith Bradsher reported from Bangkok, Ana Swanson from Washington, and Jordyn Holman from New York.
The United States Postal Service on Wednesday reversed its decision to temporarily stop accepting packages from mainland China and Hong Kong. Credit...Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The United States Postal Service on Wednesday said it would continue to accept packages from China and Hong Kong, reversing a decision to temporarily halt those deliveries after an order by President Trump took effect that ended duty-free handling of many smaller parcels.
Mr. Trump ordered on Saturday that all goods leaving China starting on Tuesday must follow the rules for higher-value shipments. Until the change, parcels worth up to $800 apiece were not required to include detailed information on their contents and were not subject to tariffs.
A spokesman for the postal service said that as of Wednesday, it “will continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong Posts. The USPS and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.”
The United States imports close to four million of such lower-value parcels a day with little or no customs inspection and no duties collected, with most of them coming from China.
The Trump administration and other critics have contended that allowing these packages into the United States has created a conduit for fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, and related supplies to enter the United States.
But the duty-free provision on lower-value parcels, known as the de minimis rule, has also been used by many e-commerce companies to bring regular consumer items from China into the United States without paying tariffs on them.
Private shipping companies including FedEx and UPS are also affected by the change in customs rules, as they move a large portion of the parcels, running frequent cargo flights from China to the United States. Neither company has responded yet to questions about how they will handle the new rules.
The de minimis provision was included in a broader order by Mr. Trump that imposed an extra 10 percent tariff on all imports from China.
Lower-value parcels from China, which previously were tariff-free, now face not only the 10 percent tariff but also the many complex tariffs on every category of goods that these shipments previously skirted entirely.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service did not respond to a question about whether stoppages were related to the change in trade rules, referring to a statement the service had released announcing the suspension.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which is responsible for inspecting imports and assessing tariffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately provide comment. Trade lawyers said the postal stoppage was caused by the executive order.
The rapid rollout of Mr. Trump’s trade orders left little time for postal and customs officials to prepare to scrutinize so many packages. Mr. Trump said on Jan. 22 that he would put tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1.
He added China to the list on Jan. 23, but did not say then that he would include a ban on duty-free handling of shipments under $800 from any of the three countries. He signed the executive orders on Feb. 1, including the de minimis ban for all three countries, to take effect just three days later. On Monday, he suspended the orders on Canada and Mexico, but left in place the tariffs and de minimis rule on China.
Supporters of de minimis have long said that eliminating the provision would increase the burden on U.S. customs officials. Customs and Border Protection is also the primary agency responsible for carrying out much of Mr. Trump’s enforcement actions at the border.
In an online event in October, Ralph Carter, the vice president of regulatory affairs at FedEx, observed that resources were stretched for U.S. customs officials and that a change to de minimis rules could lead to bottlenecks for shippers.
“If we convert these millions of shipments from de minimis into formal, informal clearances, we’re going to have serious supply chain backups, because there simply isn’t the resources to manage that,” he said. “And so that’s going to affect all importers, not just importers of de minimis.”
DHL, a global logistics company, said on Monday that applying tariffs to lower value shipments into the United States would require it to assess how it processes packages. The company said it was in discussions with U.S. customs officials.
Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail, a research and consulting firm, said that the decision to stop international packages coming from China and Hong Kong would have its greatest impact on marketplaces like Shein, Temu and to some extent Amazon.
“They are the ones putting millions of packages into the system each week,” Mr. Saunders said in an interview. “That route has now been cut off at least temporarily.”
Shein and Temu are two of the largest e-commerce companies that connect low-cost Chinese factories to millions of American households. Shein declined on Tuesday to comment on the new rules on small packages, while Temu has not yet responded to questions sent on Monday. Amazon also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Raising the duty-free minimum has allowed millions of American households to buy low-cost goods from China. But U.S. manufacturers in sectors like textiles and apparel have contended that the imports of small parcels have undermined their ability to stay in business.
The rapid expansion of e-commerce has for years posed a dilemma for Customs and Border Protection. Customs officials were already starting to be overwhelmed by small e-commerce parcels in 2016, when they persuaded Congress and the Obama administration to raise the minimum value for customs inspection and tariff collection to $800, from $200.
But with the increase in the duty-free limit, the number of duty-free parcels has risen tenfold since 2016. Congress has been debating for the past year how to change the rule on duty-free parcels.
Proposals in Congress had tended to focus on matching the policies of China, which discourages de minimis imports. China restricts de minimis imports to a few kinds of products, closely checks what is imported and sets very low limits on the value of each parcel — for many products, less than $100.
The end of the American de minimis rule for goods from China could particularly complicate American imports of clothing. American law bars the import of any goods produced with forced labor in Xinjiang, a region of northwest China where Beijing has ordered a far-reaching crackdown on Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities.
The legislation requires importers to prove that goods with any content from Xinjiang did not involve forced labor — a hard legal standard to meet because China does not allow independent labor inspections there. And Xinjiang produces much of China’s cotton.
The de minimis imports skirted those rules. The suspension of de minimis rules may make it harder for companies to ship such goods from China.
Traditional retailers with stores, like Gap, ship their merchandise in bulk from overseas and pay tariffs on it, and already must comply with legislation against forced labor. So they may be affected much less by the rule change than e-commerce companies.
Peter Eavis contributed reporting.
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7) Trump’s Gaza Plan Reflects Broader Push for Annexation of Palestinian Land
Right-wing officials in Israel, evangelical Christians in the United States and Trump appointees have become increasingly outspoken in calling for Israel to take more territory.
By Mark Mazzetti and Patrick Kingsley, Feb. 6, 2025
Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and Patrick Kingsley from Jerusalem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/us/politics/trump-gaza-israel-annexation-palestinian.html
The aftermath of an attack in August by Jewish settlers on the village of Jit, in the occupied West Bank. Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
President Trump’s statements on Tuesday about an American takeover of the Gaza Strip and displacing millions of Palestinians were immediately dismissed by many as reckless and half-baked pronouncements, a provocative threat that Mr. Trump was unlikely to enforce.
At the same time, his comments are the latest example of how government officials on the right in both the United States and Israel now speak publicly about a shared goal: the takeover of Palestinian land.
The question of whether the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — territories captured and occupied by Israel in 1967 — might become the foundation of a future Palestinian state has been at the center of decades of failed diplomacy, bedeviling American presidents, Palestinian leaders and Israeli prime ministers.
While the prospects for this future dimmed long ago, Mr. Trump’s election has newly emboldened right-wing ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and some of Mr. Trump’s own appointees, to speak publicly about Israel’s right to fully take over the West Bank.
“It’s the most right-wing government that we’ve ever had in Israel — and there never was a U.S. administration that shared these views to this extent, either,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington.
Days after Mr. Trump’s election, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, whom Mr. Netanyahu has given broad authority over the West Bank, said Mr. Trump’s return to the White House meant that “the year 2025 will, with God’s help, be the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical name for the territory that makes up the West Bank.
During his news conference with Mr. Netanyahu on Tuesday, Mr. Trump was asked directly whether he supported Israeli annexation of the West Bank. He declined to answer, saying that his administration would have an announcement in “four weeks.”
But he has already appointed at least two people to his administration — Elise Stefanik, his choice to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, and Mike Huckabee, who has been nominated by Mr. Trump to be ambassador to Israel — who hold views similar to Mr. Smotrich and his allies.
During her confirmation hearing, Ms. Stefanik was asked by Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, whether she shared Mr. Smotrich’s view that Israel had a biblical right to the entire West Bank.
She said she did.
In an interview, Mr. Van Hollen said that “there is a very dangerous alignment right now” between American and Israeli officials on the issue of Palestinian self-determination.
“Now we have someone in the White House who wants to greenlight the dreams of far-right extremists like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir,” he said, referring to Itamar Ben-Gvir, who recently resigned as Mr. Netanyahu’s national security minister over the cease-fire deal in Gaza.
On his first day in office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order reversing the Biden administration’s sanctions against a group of Israeli settlers responsible for violence and land grabs against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Israeli annexation of the West Bank is a goal shared by both ultranationalists in Israel and many evangelical Christians, including Mr. Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, who see the conflict in the Middle East — and the power struggle over the land itself — as a sign of the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Mr. Huckabee has said that “there’s no such thing as a West Bank.” He said that Israeli settlements in the territory, which are considered illegal under international law, are not settlements but “neighborhoods.”
“There’s no such thing as an occupation,” he said during a visit to the West Bank in 2017.
An American or Israeli takeover of Palestinian land would all but scuttle the chances of another diplomatic prize that Mr. Trump said he seeks: the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government has said that Israel must take concrete steps toward an independent Palestinian state if there is any chance for the kingdom to officially recognize Israel.
Hours after Mr. Trump’s news conference, the Saudi foreign ministry issued a statement saying that “the establishment of the Palestinian state is a firm, unwavering position” of the kingdom.
With Mr. Trump’s ambitions for the region in possible conflict, Mr. Rabinovich, the former Israeli ambassador, said he thought the president could ultimately be persuaded to block an Israeli push toward West Bank annexation.
“If he wants a Saudi deal, then he won’t go along with annexation,” Mr. Rabinovich said.
Since returning to office in 2022, Mr. Netanyahu has become increasingly blunt about his opposition to Palestinian sovereignty. After years of equivocating on the issue, he boasted last year that “my insistence is what has prevented, over the years, the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel.”
As his coalition prepared to enter office in December 2022, it issued a declaration of the Jewish people’s “exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel” and pledged to bolster Jewish settlement in all areas, including the occupied West Bank.
Since then, Mr. Netanyahu has made good on that pledge by granting Mr. Smotrich vast new powers over West Bank governance. Critics denounced the move — which gave Mr. Smotrich, a civilian, authority over matters previously overseen by the military — as a form of de facto annexation.
And Mr. Smotrich himself described the move last year as an attempt to seal Israel’s control over the territory without being accused of formally annexing it.
Analysts see Mr. Netanyahu’s most recent appointments to government as an effort to cement that opportunity. His new ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, is a West Bank settler who had been a spokesman for the settler movement.
Caroline Glick, an adviser to Mr. Netanyahu appointed in recent days who accompanied the prime minister to Washington this week, has long pushed for Israel to annex the West Bank and rejects Palestinian statehood.
And, even though he recently left Mr. Netanyahu’s government, Mr. Ben-Gvir remains an influential voice among the prime minister’s supporters. Shortly after Mr. Trump’s statements on Tuesday, Mr. Ben-Gvir took to social media to give his enthusiastic support.
“Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” he wrote.
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