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For the first time, most Palestinian Americans will be able to use Tel Aviv airport
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For the first time, Palestinian Americans will be able to enter and leave Israel through its main airport, part of a major policy change that will significantly ease access to the country for hundreds of thousands of West Bank residents and Palestinians abroad.
The change was made as part of Israel’s ongoing effort to join the Visa Waiver Program, which would enable Israelis to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without first obtaining a visa.
One of the key obstacles to joining the program was that Palestinian citizens of the United States, like all Palestinians, have been barred from using Ben Gurion International Airport and must instead travel through Jordan. The United States has demanded that in order to join the program, Israel must treat all U.S. citizens entering the country equally, no matter their national origin.
Under a memorandum of understanding signed Wednesday, Israel will move closer to treating U.S. citizens who hold Palestinian identity documents as they would any others entering Israel. Palestinian Americans, including those coming from the West Bank, would be allowed to enter Israel for a 90-day period and travel where they wish, as would any other U.S. citizen.
The memorandum was signed by Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to Washington; Tom Nides, the U.S. ambassador to Israel; and Rob Silvers, the Department of Homeland Security undersecretary for policy. “This is a significant milestone towards Israel joining the program,” Herzog wrote on Twitter, attaching a photo of himself signing the document.
Tzachi HaNegbi, Israel’s national security advisor, said Israel’s compliance with the document would begin as of Thursday.
The memorandum, a copy of which was viewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, appears to include two major caveats that likely will not please Palestinian Americans who have been lobbying for this change. Palestinian Americans living in the West Bank must still pre-apply for entry through the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, the Israeli military authority that governs many aspects of Palestinian life in the West Bank.
That provision would remain in place until May 1 of next year, when Israel says COGAT’s database will be integrated with the broader database that it uses at points of entry. Thereafter, Palestinian Americans will not need to pre-apply. The U.S. has expressed a desire for the screening to take a maximum of 24 to 48 hours.
The other caveat is that the new terms will not be extended to Americans currently living in the Gaza Strip. In their case, cumbersome travel requirements will be only slightly eased.
The deadline for entering the Visa Waiver Program, a club whose membership Israel has coveted for decades, is Sept. 30. Israel sees membership in the program as a means to facilitate business in the United States and allow its citizens to tour that country at will. A small subset of Israelis who have been denied visas have said the refusal has incurred financial and personal costs.
The reverse is not the case with U.S. citizens traveling to Israel. They generally arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport without pre-arranged visas, although they may still be flagged at the airport if immigration officials uncover anything meriting suspicion.
The United States will monitor the new policies regarding Palestinian Americans, which Israel has portrayed as a pilot initiative, and will decide by the deadline if Israel merits joining the Visa Waiver Program.
“Our understanding is that this policy will apply to U.S. citizens, including Palestinian Americans on the Palestinian population registry,” Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said Wednesday at a daily press briefing. “And that will begin a process in which we will monitor not just their implementation of these policies but their compliance with these policies and compliance with other facets of the Visa Waiver Program.”
Mainstream pro-Israel groups, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have for years pressed for Israel’s entry into the program. Last month, 65 senators from both parties urged the Biden administration to accelerate Israel’s entry into the program.
“Israel’s entry into the United States Visa Waiver Program will serve as a bridge to bring the American and Israeli people closer together by fostering personal connections and mutual understanding,” said William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, in a text message. “It will enrich both of our countries through shared knowledge, experiences, and perspectives.”
Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, backed by Arab American groups, have urged the administration to slow-walk Israel’s entry until it ends discriminatory practices. The State Department has warned that Arab Americans traveling to Israel may face difficulties and discrimination.
Ending discrimination based on national origin was the last of three conditions Israel had to meet to join the program. it has met the other two requirements: reshaping its intelligence-sharing apparatus to sync with those of the other member countries and meeting a threshold wherein fewer than 3% of Israeli visa applicants are denied approval.
For a long time, the visa denial threshold was one of the most daunting challenges for Israel to overcome. U.S. immigration officials were on the lookout for Israelis seeking to work illegally in the United States because of a once-thriving industry of young Israelis who sold products at U.S. malls.
“For entry into the Visa Waiver Program, all of the Program’s mandatory requirements must be satisfied,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “The Department is working closely with the Government of Israel in its efforts to meet those requirements, in furtherance of our shared goal that Israel join the Visa Waiver Program.”
Insiders say that Israel credits meeting the 3% threshold in part to COVID-19, and Israeli officials are concerned that the end of the pandemic will increase the number of Israelis seeking to enter the United States to work illegally. If that happens before Israel joins the program, membership would again be off the table.
Once a country is in the Visa Waiver Program, however, it stays in, even if visa refusal rates climb. A number of countries, particularly in eastern and Central Europe, have in the past spiked above the threshold but stayed in.
The memorandum signed Wednesday, however, suggests that Israel may still be susceptible to being booted out of the program. “Under U.S. law, the Secretary of Homeland Security has broad discretion to undertake remedial measures, including in consultation with the Secretary of State, the suspension or termination a country from the VWP,” it says.
A sticking point may be whether Israel discriminates against Arab Americans who are not on the Palestinian population registry. The memorandum requires spot-checks of statistics regarding denial of visa entry and examination of “persons referred or detained for enhanced screening, questioning, or examination.”
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The post For the first time, most Palestinian Americans will be able to use Tel Aviv airport appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New Orleans Attack Puts Spotlight on Islamic State Comeback Bid
A member of the Emergency Response Division holds an Islamic State militants flag in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 10, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani/File Photo.
A US Army veteran who flew a black Islamic State flag on a truck that he rammed into New Year’s revelers in New Orleans shows how the extremist group still retains the ability to inspire violence despite suffering years of losses to a US-led military coalition.
At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the Islamic State “caliphate” imposed death and torture on communities in vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and enjoyed franchises across the Middle East.
Its then-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed in 2019 by US special forces in northwestern Syria, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims.
The caliphate collapsed in 2017 in Iraq, where it once had a base just a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria in 2019, after a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition.
Islamic State responded by scattering in autonomous cells, its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify. The U.N. estimates it at 10,000 in its heartlands.
The US-led coalition, including some 4,000 US troops in Syria and Iraq, has continued hammering the militants with airstrikes and raids that the US military says have seen hundreds of fighters and leaders killed and captured.
Yet Islamic State has managed some major operations while striving to rebuild and it continues to inspire lone wolf attacks such as the one in New Orleans which killed 14 people.
Those assaults include one by gunmen on a Russian music hall in March 2024 that killed at least 143 people, and two explosions targeting an official ceremony in the Iranian city of Kerman in January 2024 that killed nearly 100.
Despite the counterterrorism pressure, ISIS has regrouped, “repaired its media operations, and restarted external plotting,” Acting US Director for the National Counterterrorism Center Brett Holmgren warned in October.
Geopolitical factors have aided Islamic State. Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has caused widespread anger that jihadists use for recruitment. The risks to Syrian Kurds who are holding thousands of Islamic State prisoners could also create an opening for the group.
Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for the New Orleans attack or praised it on its social media sites, although its supporters have, US law enforcement agencies said.
A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been growing concern about Islamic State increasing its recruiting efforts and resurging in Syria.
Those worries were heightened after the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the potential for the militant group to fill the vacuum.
‘MOMENTS OF PROMISE’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Islamic State will try to use this period of uncertainty to re-establish capabilities in Syria, but said the United States is determined not to let that happen.
“History shows how quickly moments of promise can descend into conflict and violence,” he said.
A U.N. team that monitors Islamic State activities reported to the U.N. Security Council in July a “risk of resurgence” of the group in the Middle East and increased concerns about the ability of its Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), to mount attacks outside the country.
European governments viewed ISIS-K as “the greatest external terrorist threat to Europe,” it said.
“In addition to the executed attacks, the number of plots disrupted or being tracked through the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Levant, Asia, Europe, and potentially as far as North America is striking,” the team said.
Jim Jeffrey, former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition To Defeat Islamic State, said the group has long sought to motivate lone wolf attacks like the one in New Orleans.
Its threat, however, remains efforts by ISIS-K to launch major mass casualty attacks like those seen in Moscow and Iran, and in Europe in 2015 and 2016, he said.
ISIS also has continued to focus on Africa.
This week, it said 12 Islamic State militants using booby-trapped vehicles attacked a military base on Tuesday in Somalia’s northeastern region of Puntland, killing around 22 soldiers and wounding dozens more.
It called the assault “the blow of the year. A complex attack that is first of its kind.”
Security analysts say Islamic State in Somalia has grown in strength because of an influx of foreign fighters and more revenue from extorting local businesses, becoming the group’s “nerve centre” in Africa.
‘PATH TO RADICALIZATION’
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native and US Army veteran who once served in Afghanistan, acted alone in the New Orleans attack, the FBI said on Thursday.
Jabbar appeared to have made recordings in which he condemned music, drugs and alcohol, restrictions that echo Islamic State’s playbook.
Investigators were looking into Jabbar’s “path to radicalization,” uncertain how he transformed from military veteran, real-estate agent and one-time employee of the major tax and consulting firm Deloitte into someone who was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” an acronym for Islamic State.
US intelligence and homeland security officials in recent months have warned local law enforcement about the potential for foreign extremist groups, such as ISIS, to target large public gatherings, specifically with vehicle-ramming attacks, according to intelligence bulletins reviewed by Reuters.
US Central Command said in a public statement in June that Islamic State was attempting to “reconstitute following several years of decreased capability.”
CENTCOM said it based its assessment on Islamic State claims of mounting 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024, a rate which would put the group “on pace to more than double the number of attacks” claimed the year before.
H.A. Hellyer, an expert in Middle East studies and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, said it was unlikely Islamic State would gain considerable territory again.
He said ISIS and other non-state actors continue to pose a danger, but more due to their ability to unleash “random acts of violence” than by being a territorial entity.
“Not in Syria or Iraq, but there are other places in Africa that a limited amount of territorial control might be possible for a time,” Hellyer said, “but I don’t see that as likely, not as the precursor to a serious comeback.”
The post New Orleans Attack Puts Spotlight on Islamic State Comeback Bid first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Plans $8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel, US Official Says
US President Joe Biden speaks on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this White House handout image taken in the Oval Office in Washington, US, April 4, 2024. Photo: The White House/Handout via REUTERS
The administration of President Joe Biden has notified Congress of a proposed $8 billion arms sale to Israel, a US official said on Friday, with Washington maintaining support for its ally.
The deal would need approval from the House of Representatives and Senate committees and includes munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells, Axios reported earlier. The package also includes small-diameter bombs and warheads, according to Axios.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Protesters have for months demanded an arms embargo against Israel, but US policy has largely remained unchanged. In August, the United States approved the sale of $20 billion in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel.
The Biden administration says it is helping its ally defend against Iran-backed terrorist groups like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
The post US Plans $8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel, US Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Releases Proof-of-Life Video of Israeli Hostage Liri Albag
Illustrative. An undated picture of (from left) Liri Albag, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, and Karina Ariev held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, that was made public by their families on July 16, 2024. Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum
i24 News – The Palestinian terrorists of Hamas on Saturday released a video showing signs of life from Israeli hostage Liri Albag.
Albag’s family requested media not to share the video or images from it, asking journalists to respect their privacy at this moment.
Albag, 20, is a surveillance soldier stationed at the Nahal Oz base, was abducted on October 7 by Palestinian jihadists.
The post Hamas Releases Proof-of-Life Video of Israeli Hostage Liri Albag first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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