Day: June 9, 2024

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — At least 274 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more were wounded in the Israeli raid that rescued four hostages held by Hamas, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Sunday. The military said its forces came under heavy fire during the complex daytime operation deep inside the territory.

The killing of so many Palestinians, including women and children, in a raid that Israelis celebrated as a stunning success because all four hostages were rescued alive, showed the heavy cost of such operations on top of the already soaring toll of the 8-month-long war ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Scores of hostages are believed to be held in densely populated areas or inside Hamas’ labyrinth of tunnels, making rescue attempts extremely complex and risky. A similar raid in February rescued two hostages while leaving 74 Palestinians dead.

The operation deep into Nuseirat, a built-up refugee camp in central Gaza dating back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, was the largest rescue since Oct. 7, when Hamas and other militants stormed across the border, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage.

Israel launched a massive offensive that has killed over 36,700 Palestinians, according to the ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its counts.

It said nearly 700 people were wounded in Saturday’s raid. The ministry did not say how many of the casualties were women and children, but Associated Press reporters saw several being treated at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah in the aftermath of the raid.

‘MY BROTHER DIED OF GRIEF’

Israelis celebrated the return of Noa Argamani, 26; Almog Meir Jan, 22; Andrey Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 41, after Israeli forces raided two locations at once while under fire.

Argamani was one of the most widely recognized hostages after being taken, like the three others, from a music festival. The video of her abduction showed her seated between two men on a motorcycle as she screamed, “Don’t kill me!”

Her mother, Liora, who has brain cancer, had released a video pleading to see her daughter. Israel’s Channel 13 said Argamani was moved to the hospital where her mother is treated.

Meir Jan’s aunt, Dina, said his father had died on Friday, hours before the operation. “My brother died of grief, and he didn’t get to see Almog return,” she told Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.

Dr. Itai Pessach, a physician at Sheba Hospital where the freed captives were being treated, said none had serious physical injuries but that it would likely be days before they could be discharged.

“A lot of them have lost friends and family. Things happened in these eight months that they weren’t here. So (medical staff) have been assisting them in rebuilding the infrastructure of their life,” he told reporters.

SCENES OF HORROR AT GAZA HOSPITAL

In Gaza, medics described scenes of chaos after Saturday’s raid as wounded people overwhelmed hospitals that were already struggling to treat the wounded from days of heavy Israeli strikes in the area.

“We had the gamut of war wounds, trauma wounds, from amputations to eviscerations to trauma, to TBIs (traumatic brain injuries), fractures, and obviously, big burns,” said Karin Huster of Doctors Without Borders, an international charity working in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, one of the facilities that received dead and wounded.

“Kids completely grey or white from the shock, burnt, screaming for their parents. Many of them are not screaming because they are in shock.”

The Israeli military said it had attacked “threats to our forces in the area,” and that a special forces officer was killed in the rescue operation.

Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told reporters Saturday that the hostages were being held in two apartments, about 200 meters (219 yards) away from each other, in the heart of the Nuseirat camp. He said the forces had trained repeatedly on a model of the apartment buildings.

Hagari said the forces moved in simultaneously in broad daylight on both apartments, believing this ensured the best element of surprise. But he said the rescuers came under heavy fire as they moved out, including from gunmen firing rocket-propelled grenades from within the neighborhood. He said the military responded with heavy force, including from aircraft, to extract the rescuers and freed hostages.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz lashed out at critics of the operation in a post on X, saying “only Israel’s enemies complained about the casualties of Hamas terrorists and their accomplices.”

AROUND 120 HOSTAGES STILL MISSING

Of the 250 hostages abducted on Oct. 7, about half were released in a weeklong cease-fire in November. About 120 hostages remain, with 43 pronounced dead. Survivors include about 15 women, two children under 5 and two men in their 80s.

Saturday’s operation brought the total number of rescued hostages to seven, including one who was freed shortly after the October attack. Israeli troops have recovered the bodies of at least 16 others, according to the government.

The latest rescue lifted some spirits in Israel as divisions deepened over the best way to bring hostages home. Many Israelis urge Netanyahu to embrace a cease-fire deal U.S. President Joe Biden announced last month, but far-right allies threaten to collapse his government if he does. Thousands of Israelis again gathered Saturday night to protest the government and call for a cease-fire agreement.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will return to the Middle East this week, seeking a breakthrough. International pressure is mounting on Israel to limit civilian bloodshed in its war in Gaza. Palestinians also face widespread hunger because fighting and Israeli restrictions have largely cut off the flow of aid.

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Magdy reported from Cairo.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

On the campaign trail in 2020, President Biden was eager to distinguish himself from his opponent on immigration issues, promising to “restore our moral standing” while casting former President Trump’s policies as cruel and inhumane.

While border numbers have dipped, they still hover at historic highs. And with immigration a central issue in the 2024 contest, Biden has evolved in his approach, adopting hard-line policies that borrow elements from those used by his predecessor.

Biden’s latest executive order is one such example, restricting asylum protections for those who cross between ports of entry if average daily crossings exceed 2,500.

While using border metrics as a basis for asylum processing is new, the restrictions on the protections borrow from a policy first adopted by Trump. They’ve prompted advocates to pledge to sue, arguing the limitations are as illegal under Biden as they were when they were toppled under his predecessor.

Numerous immigrant rights groups invoked Trump in taking Biden to task over his latest policy.

“We’ve been here before. The policies announced today are near replicas of Trump-era asylum bans. Only now, they come from an administration that vowed to protect the right to seek protection and support immigrant communities,” the National Immigrant Justice Center said in a statement after the order was released.

While some have blasted the order as one of the most restrictive immigration policies rolled out by Biden, it’s one of several efforts aimed at getting a grip on border numbers that have shot up since the pandemic-era lows seen under Trump.

“President Biden took office on a promise to restore our asylum system. And while the administration has taken some positive measures, including significantly expanding access to asylum at ports of entry, it’s clear that this administration no longer believes in the universal right to seek asylum that they advocated for on taking office,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council.

“It’s very obvious that the administration views bringing down border encounters as more important than the abstract principle of keeping asylum alive. And I think that’s been something that many people have seen as very disappointing.”

Fresh off a campaign where Biden said he would offer a sharp contrast with Trump, his early days in the White House reflected those promises.

Biden, on his first day in office, lifted the Muslim ban. Shortly thereafter, his administration rescinded the Remain in Mexico policy requiring asylum seekers to await their case on the other side of the border. And he established a family reunification task force to reconnect children who had been separated from their parents under Trump.

But he also hesitated to lift Title 42, which used the pandemic as a guise for denying asylum. Biden ultimately removed more people from the U.S. under the policy than Trump, rescinding it more than a year after taking office.

The Biden administration has described their own its approach to immigration as a collection of carrots and sticks. 

Its immigration enforcement guidelines prioritize removal of those with serious criminal records rather than those who are undocumented but otherwise not deemed a threat. And it’s rolled out a program to offer temporary entrance to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua, if they can secure a U.S.-based sponsor. The administration has also invested heavily in Latin America in the hopes of stemming migratory flows.

But Biden officials have also borrowed from another Trump policy in seeking to limit asylum to those who first travel through other countries without asking for protection there, a policy known under Trump as the transit ban.

“Those are various tentacles of a significant rightward shift, which frankly I think should not be a surprise because Biden is himself a political creature of the 1980s and 1990s, when Democrats were quite aggressive in trying to outflank the Republican Party from the right on a host of issues,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an immigration law professor at Ohio State University.

“These are people who have a political sensibility about migration that was different from the one that we find ourselves in now. But it’s hard to step away from your upbringing. I think the Joe Biden of 2020, who was so critical of the Trump administration, was much more of a deviation than the Joe Biden that we’ve seen in the last 12 months.”

Biden and White House officials have been adamant about drawing a distinction between the president’s latest policy move and Trump’s record and rhetoric on immigration.

“There are several differences between the actions that we are taking today and Trump-era policies. The Trump administration attacked almost every facet of the immigration system and did so in a shameful and inhumane way,” a senior administration official told reporters before listing off a series of Trump-era immigration policies.

“The action will not ban people based on their religion. It will not separate kids from their mothers. There are also narrow humanitarian exceptions to the bar on asylum, including for those facing an acute medical emergency or an imminent and extreme threat to life or safety. And the Trump administration’s actions did not include these exceptions.”

Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has pledged to sue to block Biden’s order, said he’s “not one of those people that wants to equate President Trump and President Biden.”

But while he said while polling shows voters want action on the border, that doesn’t mean they prefer the draconian measures pushed by Trump.

“The fact that people are saying immigration is an important issue for them doesn’t mean they want to see one extreme or the other,” Gelernt said.

The order shows the tricky nature of immigration policy for Biden, who on Tuesday said that Americans’ patience is “wearing thin right now” and that “doing nothing is not an option.”

The order and accompanying rule are also full of complaints about congressional inaction.

Republicans unified against bipartisan Senate legislation that would have included a measure similar to the one included in Biden’s order, with GOP support all but evaporating once Trump came out against the measure.

The senior administration official speaking with reporters cast it as Trump working to deny Biden a legislative victory.

But polling also shows voters favor Trump when it comes to determining who better handles the border.

A Marquette University survey of registered voters nationwide conducted last month found 52 percent said Trump did a better job on immigration and border security, compared to 25 percent who said Biden did a better job.

“Some of the interest groups and progressives on the left are upset by Biden’s actions. He should lean into their opposition to hammer in the point that he’s governing from the middle,” said Jim Kessler, co-founder of the left-leaning think tank Third Way. 

“Nothing scares Trump more than Biden getting the jump on him on border security,” he added.

“The killing of the border bill opened the door for Biden to get a new hearing on the border. The executive order is the next step. But it only works if Biden makes the border a priority day after day.”

But few on the left see it as a middle ground, and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) warned the policy is sure to become a new baseline.

“Immigration and the border are perhaps the thorniest issues in American politics. Republicans use them to fearmonger; they use immigrants as political scarecrows to frighten voters. If this executive order goes into effect, it’s likely that every future president, especially Republicans, will use and expand it to choke off immigration and the right to asylum,” he said in a statement.

“The political pressure to keep the ban in effect will be too overwhelming.”

A Court of Appeal judge has told Prince Harry he cannot “jump the queue” ahead of his appeal against a High Court ruling.

The Duke of Sussex was this week granted permission to appeal against a decision made in February that backed the Government’s right to deny him automatic police protection.

Prince Harry had wanted the appeal to be heard by the end of July, partly due to fears that the ruling would influence the approach other countries take to his security.

He started the action after the Home Office decided in February 2020 that he would not automatically receive personal police security while in Britain.

In February, the High Court in London ruled that the decision was lawful and dismissed Harry’s case, and in April refused him permission to challenge that ruling in a higher court.

However, the Court of Appeal has now said it will hear his challenge following a direct application from Harry’s lawyers, who said Harry had been granted permission to appeal.

The Duke had argued that the litigation had already dragged on for two-and-a-half years and said his legal team would be busy with other matters from October.

However, while Lord Justice Bean allowed the appeal, he refused the application to expedite proceedings. The judge said: “It is rightly not suggested that the claimant is entitled to jump the queue because of his status.”

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Harry, along with other senior royals, had received full publicly-funded security protection before he stepped back from his royal duties and moved to California with his American wife Meghan in March 2020.

The Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known as RAVEC, then decided Harry would no longer receive the same level of protection.

Judge Peter Lane had concluded that RAVEC was entitled to reach this conclusion and ordered that he should pay 90 per cent of the Home Office’s “reasonable costs” in defending the case, though the government’s total outlay was not stated.

In granting permission for an appeal, Judge David Bean said he was persuaded, “not without hesitation”, that Harry’s challenge on the grounds that RAVEC had not followed its own stated policy had a real prospect of success.

Lord Justice Bean acknowledged that if the Duke were to win his appeal, the issue of costs would have to be revisited.

But he added: “As a free-standing ground of appeal this is hopeless. The judge was exercising a broad discretion. The claimant had failed to establish his case.”

He said Mr Justice Lane had decided what deduction should be made from the costs payable to the Government “because of the breach of the duty of candour”, adding that his decision was “unimpeachable.”