AQABAT JABR: Israeli forces killed five Palestinian gunmen linked to the Islamic militant Hamas group in a raid on refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Monday, the latest bloodshed in the region that will likely further exacerbate tensions.
The Palestinian president’s office called the violence a crime, urging the United States to pressure Israel to hold back on its incursions. The military said the raid was meant to apprehend a militant cell that staged a botched shooting attack on a restaurant in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
The violence comes amid one of the deadliest periods in years in the West Bank and in the first weeks of Israel’s new government, its most right-wing ever, which has promised to take a tough stance against the Palestinians.
The Israeli military said it was operating in the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp to apprehend the suspects behind a failed shooting attack last month at a West Bank restaurant, where attackers allegedly were thwarted by a weapon malfunction. The attackers then fled the scene, the military said, adding that they were members of the Hamas militant group that rules the Gaza Strip and has elements in the West Bank as well.
The military said it was searching Monday for the militant cell behind the shooting that it said had sealed itself inside a home in the refugee camp. During the search, troops encountered gunmen and a gunbattle erupted. The military said several of the gunmen who were killed were involved in the attempted attack on the restaurant.
“The new Israeli government is continuing its series of crimes against our Palestinian people,” a statement from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ office said.
Jihad Abu Al-Assal, the governor of Jericho and the Jordan Valley, said the military was still holding on to the gunmen’s bodies. Without access to the bodies, the Palestinian Health Ministry did not immediately confirm the deaths, saying only that three were injured, one of them critically.
Speaking at an event at the site of a recent deadly Palestinian shooting attack, Netanyahu confirmed earlier reports by Israeli security officials that five gunmen were killed.
Hamas said all five of those killed were members of its armed wing. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the violence would be met with a response.
“Our people and their resistance will not delay in responding to this crime,” he said.
The raid comes days after an earlier incursion in the Aqabat Jabr camp, which is near the Palestinian city of Jericho, a desert oasis in an area of the West Bank that rarely sees such unrest, where troops were also searching for the suspects.
Since the shooting at the nearby settlement, the Israeli military has blocked access to several roads into Jericho — a closure that has placed the city under a semi-blockade, disrupting business and creating hourslong bottlenecks at checkpoints that affected even Palestinian security forces, footage showed.
Monday’s violence comes days after an Israeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp killed 10 Palestinians, mostly militants but also a 61-year-old woman. The next day, a Palestinian shooting attack outside an east Jerusalem synagogue killed seven people, including a 14-year-old.
The Israeli army has ramped up near-nightly raids in the occupied West Bank since a series of deadly Palestinian attacks within Israel last spring. Over the last year of escalating raids, Jericho has remained a sort of sleepy desert town, spared much of the violence.
The Palestinian Authority, in retaliation for last week’s raid into the Jenin refugee camp, declared a halt to security coordination with Israel.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed last year in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, making it the deadliest year in those areas since 2004, according to figures by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. Since the start of this year, 41 Palestinians have been killed in those territories. Some 30 people were killed in Israel by Palestinians in 2022.
The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent.
Israeli troops kill 5 Palestinian gunmen in West Bank raid
https://arab.news/9bzya
Israeli troops kill 5 Palestinian gunmen in West Bank raid
Supreme Court ruling offers little relief for Republicans divided on Trump’s tariffs
- “I have the right to do tariffs, and I’ve always had the right to do tariffs,” Trump said at a news conference, adding that he doesn’t need Congress
WASHINGTON: For a few hours on Friday, congressional Republicans seemed to get some relief from one of the largest points of friction they have had with the Trump administration. It didn’t last.
The Supreme Court struck down a significant portion of President Donald Trump’s global tariff regime, ruling that the power to impose taxes lies with Congress. Many Republicans greeted the Friday morning decision with measured statements, some even praising it, and party leaders said they would work with Trump on tariffs going forward.
But by the afternoon, Trump made clear he had no intention of working with Congress and would instead go it alone by imposing a new global 10 percent import tax. On Saturday morning, he went further by saying he would raise that new tariff to 15 percent.
He’s doing so under a law that restricts the tariffs to 150 days and has never been invoked this way before. His decision could not only have major implications for the global economy, but also ensure that Republicans will have to keep answering for Trump’s tariffs for months to come, especially as the midterm elections near.
“I have the right to do tariffs, and I’ve always had the right to do tariffs,” Trump said at a news conference, adding that he doesn’t need Congress.
Tariffs have been one of the only areas where the Republican-controlled Congress has broken with Trump. Both the House and Senate at various points have passed resolutions intended to rebuke the tariffs being imposed on trade partners like Canada.
It’s the rare issue where Republican lawmakers who came of age in a party that largely championed free trade have voiced criticism of Trump’s economic policies.
“The empty merits of sweeping trade wars with America’s friends were evident long before today’s decision,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime Senate Republican leader, said in a statement, adding that tariffs raise the prices of houses and disrupt other industries important to his home state of Kentucky.
At least one Republican congressman who last week voted against Trump’s tariffs on Canada is now facing political consequences. Trump on Saturday posted on his Truth Social platform that he was rescinding his endorsement of Colorado Rep. Jeff Hurd for reelection over his lack of support for tariffs and instead supporting Hurd’s Republican primary competitor, Hope Scheppelman.
“Congressman Hurd is one of a small number of Legislators who have let me and our Country down,” Trump wrote. “He is more interested in protecting Foreign Countries that have been ripping us off for decades than he is the United States of America.”
How Democrats plan to leverage Trump’s trade war
Democrats, looking to win back control of Congress, intend to make McConnell’s point their own. At a news conference Friday, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s new tariffs “will still raise people’s costs and they will hurt the American people as much as his old tariffs did.”
Schumer challenged Republicans to stop Trump from imposing his new global tariff. Democrats on Friday also called for refunds to be sent to US consumers for the tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court.
“The American people paid for these tariffs and the American people should get their money back,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said on social media.
It all played into one of the Democrats’ central messages for the midterm campaign: that Trump has failed to make the cost of living more affordable and has inflamed prices with tariffs.
Midsize US businesses have had to absorb the import taxes by passing them along to customers in the form of higher prices, employing fewer workers or accepting lower profits, according to an analysis by the JPMorganChase Institute.
Will Congress act on Trump’s new tariffs?
The Supreme Court decision on Friday made it clear that a majority of justices believe that Congress alone is granted authority under the Constitution to levy tariffs. Yet Trump quickly signed an executive order citing the Trade Act of 1974, which grants the president the power to impose temporary import taxes when there are “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits” or other international payment problems. The authority has never been used and therefore never tested in court.
Republicans at times have warned Trump about the potential economic fallout of his tariff plans. Yet before Trump’s “Liberation Day” of global tariffs in April last year, Republican leaders declined to directly defy the president.
Some GOP lawmakers cheered on the new tariff policy, highlighting a generational divide among Republicans, with a mostly younger group of Republicans fiercely backing Trump’s strategy. Rather than adhering to traditional free trade doctrine, they advocate for “America First” protectionism, hoping it will revive US manufacturing.
Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio freshman, slammed the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday and called for GOP lawmakers to “codify the tariffs that had made our country the hottest country on earth!”
A few Republican opponents of the tariffs, meanwhile, openly cheered the Supreme Court’s decision. Rep. Don Bacon, a critic of the administration who is not seeking reelection, said on social media that “Congress must stand on its own two feet, take tough votes and defend its authorities.”
Bacon predicted there would be more Republican pushback coming. He and a handful of other GOP members were instrumental earlier this month in forcing a House vote on Trump’s tariffs on Canada. As that measure passed, Trump vowed political retribution for any Republican who voted to oppose his tariff plans.
