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Middle East Eye
35 minutes ago
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Judge orders immediate release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil
A US federal judge has ordered the release of Mahmoud Khalil from immigration custody as his legal fight continues to play out. The Trump administration's deportation case against the Palestinian activist and US green card holder is not over yet, but now that he will be out on bail, Khalil will be able to hold his newborn son for the very first time. The decision is a landmark victory for rights organisations that said Khalil's constitutionally protected freedom of speech was not just trampled upon, but he was "punished". Judge Michael Farbiarz said on Friday that the Trump administration was unable to make its case that Khalil would be a danger to the public or a flight risk if released from an immigration detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he was secretly transferred after his arrest. Farbiarz, a New Jersey district court judge who is overseeing Khalil's case, last week ruled it was unconstitutional to detain and deport Khalil, a lawful permanent resident, for supporting Palestinian human rights, and that he should be released from detention. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters The court gave the government until Friday morning to appeal. The government then told the court on Friday that it would continue to detain Khalil in Louisiana, saying that Khalil had omitted information on his green card application. "There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish the petitioner (Khalil)," Farbiarz said, adding that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter is unconstitutional. While Farbiarz acknowledged that the government virtually never detains anyone on 'misrepresentation' charges, he said he would uphold their appeal, and did not grant Khalil's release. The government will continue to try to deport Khalil as the case continues. Who is Mahmoud Khalil? When the student protests began at Columbia University following the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel and the subsequent war on Gaza, Khalil functioned as an intermediary between students and university administrators over the student movement's demands for university divestment from weapons companies profiting from Israel's war on Gaza. Khalil did not participate in the encampments himself, opting instead to negotiate with administrators and offer guidance to the students. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained Khalil on 8 March. His wife, Nour Abdalla, was eight months pregnant. He became the first of a string of international student arrests outside their homes, often by plainclothes masked agents who would not tell them why they were being taken away, or to what location. The one thing they all had in common, despite not knowing one another, is that they opposed the war in Gaza in a public forum or had significant ties to someone who did. Khalil has been held at an ICE prison facility in Jena, Louisiana, since early March. His lawyers believe the Trump administration finds immigration judges in the south to be more favourable to the US government. In April, one of those judges said that Khalil could be deported even though he was a permanent US resident through his wife, an American citizen. According to the Associated Press, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had insisted that Khalil's "presence or activities would compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest'. Marc Van der Hout, one of Khalil's lawyers, said in a statement issued after that ruling that Khalil had been 'subject to a charade of due process', adding his deportation order was 'a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponisation of immigration law to suppress dissent'. Van der Hout then turned to Farbiarz to put a stop to that order. The immigration court's refusal to allow Khalil to attend the birth of his son was a double blow to his family.
44 minutes ago
- Health
Gaza faces a man-made drought as water systems collapse, UNICEF says
Gaza is facing a man-made drought as its water systems collapse, the United Nations' children agency said on Friday. Children will begin to die of thirst ... Just 40 per cent of drinking water production facilities remain functional, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva. We are way below emergency standards in terms of drinking water for people in Gaza, he added. UNICEF also reported a 50 per cent increase in children aged six months to five years admitted for treatment of malnutrition from April to May in Gaza, and half a million people going hungry. It said the U.S.-backed aid distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was making a desperate situation worse. A boy sits under a broken UNICEF sign as Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City on Oct. 19, 2024. (Mahmoud Issa/Reuters) Photo: (Mahmoud Issa/Reuters) On Friday, at least 25 people awaiting aid trucks or seeking aid were killed by Israeli fire south of Netzarim in central Gaza Strip, according to local health authorities. On Thursday, at least 51 people were killed by Israeli gunfire and military strikes, including 12 people who tried to approach a site operated by the GHF in the central Gaza Strip. Elder, who was recently in Gaza, said he had many testimonials of women and children injured while trying to receive food aid, including a young boy who was wounded by a tank shell and later died of his injuries. He said a lack of public clarity on when the sites, some of which are in combat zones, were open was causing mass casualty events. There have been instances where information [was] shared that a site is open, but then it's communicated on social media that they're closed, he said. But that information was shared when Gaza's internet was down and people had no access to it. On Wednesday, the GHF said in a statement it had distributed three million meals across three of its aid sites without an incident. EARLIER | In March, officials said Palestinians could run out of water: Début du widget Widget. Passer le widget ? Fin du widget Widget. Retourner au début du widget ? Gaza water plant running on backup power as Israel cuts electricity Palestinian officials say people in Gaza could soon run out of clean drinking water. After Israel cut off the electricity supply to Gaza this weekend, a desalination plant in Deir al-Balah has been running at about 30 per cent capacity on backup generators. On Friday, at least 12 people were killed in an airstrike on a house belonging to the Ayyash family in Deir Al-Balah, taking the day's death toll to 37. The war was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 55,600 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, while displacing almost the entire population of more than two million and causing a severe hunger crisis. Thomson Reuters
NBC News
4 hours ago
- Health
- NBC News
Wounded Gaza children find respite from war at Ohio summer camp
BUTLER, Ohio — Their bodies are maimed or burned. Their childhoods have been shattered. And their futures are filled with uncertainty as war rages in Gaza. But for one week, three dozen wounded Palestinian children and members of their families have found a respite from the fighting at a summer camp in Mohican State Park, just an hour north of Columbus. Thanks to HEAL Palestine, a nonprofit group that aids the youngest victims of the Gaza war, children like 7-year-old Qamar Alkordi, who uses two-hand crutches to walk, have been able to play in a safe place with other wounded children and feel less alone. "There's other kids, they have the prosthetic, they are walking, and this is, like, it makes me happy to see this," her mother, Huda Alkordi, said about the sleepaway camp, where Qamar played in an inflatable pool and sprayed other kids with water. "And I really hope that Qamar, one day, she gonna walk, inshallah [God willing]." HEAL runs field hospitals and food kitchens in Gaza and runs educational programs for children who haven't been inside a school since Israel Defense Forces invaded the crowded Palestinian territory after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage. "A lot of them are facing a future of near illiteracy," said a HEAL co-founder, Dr. Zeena Salman, referring to how schools have largely ceased functioning in the shattered enclave. In the 19-plus months since Israel began bombing Gaza and with most of its 2 million residents forced from their homes, Gaza has become an especially dangerous place for children. About 1,309 children have been killed and 3,738 have been injured since the end of the ceasefire in March, UNICEF said in a report last month. Overall, more than 55,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the conflict began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Realizing that they were confronted with "the largest population of child amputees in modern history," Salman said, she and her cohorts came up with the idea of a summer camp for the dozens of children they have been able to bring to the United States for specialized care. "Some of them have lost four limbs, and we as individuals are not able to stop this from happening, but at HEAL Palestine, we can start to give them back a little bit of what was taken from them," Salman said. That means a summer camp with ramps so kids who rely on wheelchairs and walkers and prosthetics can get around and play. "We brought them to a camp that's very accessible, where they can play wheelchair basketball or can do art with, like, adapted paintbrushes, you know, for kids who don't have fingers," Salman said. "We want every child to feel whole." When camp is over, many of the children are sent back to Egypt, where they are living temporarily because Gaza's borders are closed, HEAL officials said. Qamar was badly injured when her home was bombed two months after the war began. It was Dec. 4, 2023, Qamar's birthday. But with the fighting getting closer and closer to their home, Huda Alkordi purposely did not make plans to celebrate. "I decided not to tell her that it's her birthday, just in case if something bad happened," she said. And something bad did happen. Both of Qamar's siblings were hurt in the attack, as were several of her cousins. But Qamar was the most badly wounded, and after a week in the hospital she developed an infection that the doctors were unable to treat. "They decided to amputate her leg because of infection that happened with her leg," her mother said. Watching her daughter play, Huda said she knows this is only a temporary break from the chaos in Gaza. But she said her daughter, even without one leg, is luckier than many other injured children still back in Gaza. "I had the chance to take my daughter out and give her that treatment," she said. "All of them, they deserve to get treatment." At age 18, Sara Bsaiso is one of the oldest campers. She, too, was injured in the early days of the war when her grandmother's home was hit by a missile in an airstrike that killed one of her brothers, mortally wounded another and set her ablaze. The brother who initially survived died days later while waiting for help. Bsaiso sustained third-degree burns over much of her body and went weeks with only limited medical care before she was able to be medically evacuated to the United States. She is staying in New Jersey. Being at the camp and being able to interact with so many other young people who went through similar ordeals has been healing, she said. "I'm so grateful to be here, and I'm so happy to see you bring in all of these amazing children together," she said. Bsaiso said that as she was growing up in Gaza, she and her family often went to the beach and swam in the Mediterranean Sea. Since she has been at the camp, she has had the chance to do something she hadn't done since she was injured. "I haven't been able to swim until now," she said. Bsaiso said she was living in what she called a "cozy house" in the Rimal section of Gaza City with her parents, four brothers and three sisters when the war started. "I was in law last year of school, and I remember when I'm preparing to go to school, and then suddenly everything went crazy," she said. "We didn't understand. We didn't understand. We thought first probably it's raining, but it wasn't." It was the start of the Israeli offensive. Bsaiso, who has undergone multiple operations and skin grafts, said she thinks about her family back in Gaza every day. "For sure, I'm hoping for the ceasefires," she said. "And there's my dad and two brothers and two sisters' sons stuck in Gaza. And yeah, I hope the ceasefires happen and the borders open and everything will be good." In the meantime, she said, she is using her time at summer camp to mend, both outside and in.
Shafaq News
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Shafaq News
Redrawing the map: How Iran–Israel war is reshaping the Middle East
Shafaq News/ Since the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, the Middle East has experienced an unrelenting chain of upheavals. What began as a sudden and devastating incursion into Israeli territory evolved into a regional conflagration, drawing in state and non-state actors, shaking the core of long-standing alliances, and dismantling the fragile stability that once defined the post-Arab Spring order. At the center of this transformation stand two arch-rivals: Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The escalation that erupted in June 2025 between Israel and Iran is not an anomaly, but the culmination of years of covert hostilities, diplomatic friction, and strategic miscalculations. The events now unfolding in open warfare—including cross-border missile strikes, drone swarms, and targeted assassinations—are radically reshaping the Middle East's power dynamics and redrawing the region's strategic map. For decades, Iran and Israel conducted their confrontation through proxy wars, espionage operations, and cyberattacks. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen became arenas of indirect competition. Israel systematically targeted Iranian positions in Syria and covertly sabotaged elements of Tehran's nuclear and military infrastructure, while Iran, through its so-called "Axis of Resistance," leveraged Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi factions to pressure Israeli and American interests. This dynamic persisted until the tectonic rupture of October 2023. Hamas' surprise attack on Israel—aided, according to Israeli and Western intelligence assessments, by Iranian logistical and strategic backing—reignited full-scale war in Gaza and set the stage for broader regional confrontation. Israel's overwhelming military response in Gaza led to tens of thousands of casualties, prompting Iran-aligned actors to escalate operations from Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. By early 2024, Israel and Iran had entered a new phase: one of sustained, direct, though still largely deniable attacks. Israeli airstrikes intensified against Iranian commanders in Syria and Iraq, while suspected Mossad operations targeted nuclear scientists and IRGC personnel deep within Iranian territory. Iran, in turn, increased its support to regional players and expanded its drone and missile programs, preparing for a scenario where deterrence might fail. That failure came on June 13, 2025, when Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, striking multiple Iranian nuclear and military sites, including Natanz, Fordow, and Tehran. The operation resulted in the deaths of senior IRGC commanders, nuclear experts, and political figures. Iran's airspace was sealed, and retaliatory planning began immediately. 'This is not a spontaneous conflict,' said Dr. Haitham al-Hiti, professor of political science at the University of Exeter. 'It's part of a broader regional restructuring—starting with Hezbollah assassinations, now moving through Iran's command structure, and possibly reaching Iraq and Lebanon.' Iran's counter-operation, dubbed True Promise 3, marked a turn with Tehran directly fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones at Israeli territory. Civilian and military targets were hit in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Bat Yam, and the Gush Dan area. Israeli casualties surpassed two dozen, while Iran reported more than 200 fatalities from the initial strikes. Beyond the destruction, what sets this confrontation apart is its regional resonance. Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar launched urgent diplomatic initiatives. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned that the conflict could 'drag the entire region into the fire,' and began intensive phone diplomacy with key Arab and Iranian leaders. 'Israel's aggression could ignite a devastating regional war,' Erdogan said, noting the potential for refugee flows, economic collapse, and the collapse of security arrangements in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Saudi Arabia, historically cautious in its dealings with Iran, sought to reclaim its role as a balancing force. A diplomatic source told Shafaq News, 'Riyadh is seeking to reclaim its place as a regional anchor, stepping into a mediation role once held by Qatar and Oman.' Yet these efforts have yielded little. The collapse of traditional deterrence and the erosion of international diplomatic credibility have allowed the military logic to dominate. The Muscat channel between Tehran and Washington was suspended. UN efforts were paralyzed by US veto power and a lack of consensus among major powers. 'The UN doesn't have the freedom to act without US approval,' said Lebanese analyst George Alam. 'That makes any international initiative vulnerable to paralysis.' Meanwhile, Iran has framed its retaliation as part of a broader realignment. 'These focused and retaliatory operations will continue until the Zionist entity is eliminated,' the IRGC declared after confirming the death of Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi, head of its Intelligence Organization. Egyptian expert Mounir Adeeb emphasizes that the conflict has exposed the fragility of the global system, 'Major powers, led by the United States, were direct enablers of the Israeli strike,' he said. 'They turned a blind eye to violations of international law and allowed red lines to be crossed. The result was war.' Internally, Iran now faces the twin challenges of sustaining a long war and containing potential unrest. Kurdish movements in the northwest and Ahvazi activists in the southwest are reportedly organizing demonstrations amid the crisis. Israeli analysts speculate that continued strikes on Iranian infrastructure may be designed to exacerbate internal fractures. 'If Iran collapses internally or fragments,' warned Dr. al-Hiti, 'we could see the emergence of new secessionist waves—Kurdish independence, Ahvazi autonomy, even unrest in Iraq. That's how geopolitical maps change.' And while regional states seek to prevent such an outcome, the war has already forced governments to recalibrate. Iraq has condemned the use of its airspace by Israeli forces. Armed factions aligned with Tehran have threatened to target US bases if Washington intervenes. The Houthis have escalated strikes on Israeli interests in the Red Sea. Hezbollah has declared its full support for Iran. The consequences are not limited to military strategy. Oil prices have surged. International flights have been suspended across several countries. Diplomacy has stalled. Most importantly, a new regional paradigm is taking shape—one defined not by US-led alliances or post-ISIS stability, but by direct state conflict, multipolar competition, and the return of mass-scale confrontation. As the missiles continue to fall, one thing is increasingly clear: the Middle East is undergoing a strategic reordering. Whether this leads to a new balance of power or deeper fragmentation remains uncertain. What is certain, however, is that the rules have changed—and so has the map.
Scoop
a day ago
- General
- Scoop
Gaza: As Last Fuel Supplies Run Out, Aid Teams Warn Of Catastrophe
19 June 2025 Speaking from Gaza City in the north of occupied territory, Olga Cherevko from the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said that water pumps had stopped at one site for displaced people there on Wednesday 'because there's no fuel'. 'We are really - unless the situation changes - hours away from a catastrophic decline and a shutdown of more facilities if no fuel enters or more fuel isn't retrieved immediately,' she told UN News. In its latest update on the emergency, OCHA said that without the immediate entry of fuel or access to reserves, 80 per cent of Gaza's critical care units essential for births and medical emergencies will shut down. More killed seeking aid The development comes as Gaza's authorities reported that 15 people had been killed near an aid distribution hub in the centre of the Strip on Thursday. On Tuesday, unverified videos of another incident circulating on social media showed dead bodies lying in the street near a relief facility in the southern city of Khan Younis, reportedly following artillery fire. Finding food is a daily challenge for increasingly desperate Gazans who are ' simply waiting for food and hoping to find something in order not to watch their children starve in front of their eyes ', Ms. Cherevko explained. She added: 'I spoke with a woman a couple of days ago where she told me that she went with a friend of hers who is nine months pregnant in hopes of finding some food. Of course, they didn't manage because they were too afraid to enter areas where there could be incidents like the ones that have been reported over the past few days.' Search for shelter Back in Gaza City, OCHA's Ms. Cherenko said that conditions in shelters in Gaza are now 'absolutely horrific' and increasingly crowded - 'there are people coming from the north constantly,' the veteran aid worker added, while others are also moving back northwards, likely to be closer to the entry points for aid convoys. The amount of aid entering Gaza today remains extremely limited and far below the 600 trucks a day that used to reach the enclave before the war began in October 2023. In its latest update, OCHA reported that 'starvation and a growing likelihood of famine' are ever-present in the enclave. An estimated 55,000 pregnant women now face miscarriage, stillbirth and undernourished newborns as a result of the food shortages. Starvation diet 'With the very limited volume of aid that is entering, everyone continues to face starvation and people are constantly risking their lives to try to find something,' Ms. Cherevko continued. ' You eat or [you're] left with the choice of starving to death.' After more than 20 months of war, sparked by Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel, 82 per cent of Gaza's territory is either an Israeli militarized zone or affected by evacuation orders. Three months since hostilities re-escalated on 18 March, more than 680,000 people have been newly displaced. 'With no safe place to go, many people have sought refuge in every available space, including overcrowded displacement sites, makeshift shelters, damaged buildings, streets and open areas,' OCHA said.
