Category World News

Trump’s UN ambassador pick says Israel has ‘biblical right’ to West Bank

President Donald Trump’s pick to be the United States ambassador to the United Nations has become the latest administration nominee to express the belief that Israel has “biblical” dominion over the occupied West Bank.

Elise Stefanik’s comment on Tuesday came during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where she also pledged to further Trump’s “America First” mission.

“If confirmed, I stand ready to implement President Trump’s mandate from the American people to deliver America First, peace-through-strength national security leadership on the world stage,” she said during her opening statements.

If confirmed as ambassador, Stefanik explained she would audit US funding for the UN and its constellation of agencies. She would also seek to counter China’s influence at the international organisation and bolster Washington’s staunch support for Israel.

But it was her views on the West Bank that signalled the starkest contrast between the Trump administration and that of his predecessor, President Joe Biden.

Stefanik was definitive when asked if she shared the view of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir that Israel has a “biblical right to the entire West Bank”.

“Yes,” she replied during the exchange with Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen.

When pushed if she supported self-determination for Palestinians, Stefanik sidestepped the question.

“I believe the Palestinian people deserve so much better than the failures that they’ve had from terrorist leaders,” she said. “Of course, they deserve human rights. ”

A wider shift

Over the last four years, the Biden administration provided resolute support for Israel at the UN. It repeatedly vetoed UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire to stop Israel’s war in Gaza.

However, the administration had been willing to stand up to its “ironclad” ally on the issue of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Such settlements are considered illegal under international law.

Stefanik’s comments were the latest indication that the incoming Trump administration would take a very different tack.

Trump’s first term saw a surge in settlements, with his administration removing a four-decade-long US policy that recognised the expansion into the West Bank as illegal.

Upon taking office on Monday, Trump cancelled Biden-era sanctions on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of violence against Palestinians.

Trump’s pick to be the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has also supported Israeli settlements in the West Bank, citing the Bible as justification. In a 2017 interview with CNN, for instance, Huckabee argued that the Palestinian territory did not exist at all.

“There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria,” he said, using a biblical name.

And in 2008, when he was campaigning for the presidency, Huckabee asserted that the Palestinian identity itself was a fiction.

“I need to be careful about saying this, because people will really get upset. There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” Huckabee, who has not yet faced a confirmation hearing, said at the time.

‘Standing with Israel’

Stefanik has long been one of Trump’s most ardent defenders in the US House of Representatives.

In December 2023, however, she rose to a new level of prominence with her viral questioning of three university leaders from Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, pressing them over alleged “anti-Semitism” on campus. Two of the three presidents resigned in the aftermath.

Critics have said her accusations helped spur other university leaders to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests on campus, out of fear of public backlash.

In her opening address at Tuesday’s confirmation hearing, Stefanik hailed herself as “the leader in combating anti-Semitism in higher education”, citing her 2023 interaction with the university presidents.

“My oversight work led to the most-viewed testimony in the history of Congress,” she said. “This hearing with university presidents was heard around the world and viewed billions of times. ”

Responding to questions from bipartisan lawmakers, Stefanik pledged to continue — and extend — the US legacy of support for Israel at the UN. The US is one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council and therefore wields veto power.

She repeated the US position that Israel is unfairly targeted by the UN, decrying what she called “anti-Semitic rot” within the organisation.

The US currently pays about one-fifth of the UN’s regular budget, a regular point of ire for Trump.

On Tuesday, Stefanik promised “a full assessment of all the UN sub-agencies” to make sure “that every dollar [goes] to support our American interests”.

She added she would oppose any US funds going to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

Legislation passed by the US Congress last year bans funding through March 2025 for the agency, which humanitarian groups say provides irreplaceable support to Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza.

In her hearing, Stefanik also defended Israel, despite criticisms from UN experts that its methods in Gaza are “consistent with genocide”.

“It is a beacon of human rights in the region,” Stefanik said of Israel.

How is the world viewing Donald Trump’s inaugural address?

The US president laid out a populist agenda in speech to the nation.

Donald Trump’s 30-minute inauguration address was a mix of sweeping indictment of the policies of the last four years and grand promises to fix the United States’s problems.

The US president promised to send troops to the border with Mexico, boost domestic oil production and impose tariffs on imports.

Trump also signed more than 200 executive orders actioning some of his announcements.

So what do his words and actions mean for other nations?

Do they have substance and will they make a difference to the US and the rest of the world?

Presenter: Elizabeth Puranam

Guests:

Nadia Brown – Professor of government, Georgetown University

James Moran – Economist

M23 rebels seize key eastern DRC town of Minova

M23 rebels have seized the town of Minova in eastern DR Congo, a key supply route for the provincial capital Goma, authorities said.

The provincial governor of South Kivu, Jean-Jacques Purusi, on Tuesday confirmed the capture of Minova, adding that the rebels have also captured the mining towns of Lumbishi, Numbi and Shanje in the same province, as well as the town of Bweremana in neighbouring North Kivu province.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC’s) army acknowledged that the rebels had made “breakthroughs” in Minova and Bweremana. It did not say if the towns had been captured.

M23, or the March 23 Movement, is an armed group composed of ethnic Tutsis who broke away from the Congolese army more than 10 years ago. Since its resurgence in 2022, M23 has continued to gain ground in eastern DRC.

It is one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a foothold in mineral-rich eastern Congo, in a decades-long conflict that has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

Since 1998, approximately six million people have been killed while roughly seven million have been displaced internally.

More than 237,000 people have been displaced by the fighting in eastern Congo since the beginning of this year, the United Nations refugee agency said in a report on Monday.

The DRC and the  United Nations accuse Rwanda of supporting M23 with troops and weapons – something Rwanda denies.

Battles near Goma

Fighting has been taking place on several fronts around Goma and hundreds of thousands of people are displaced around the outskirts of the city, which was briefly captured by the M23 in 2012.

Speaking from Goma, Al Jazeera’s Alain Uaykani said that “people in Goma are worried about bombs from the front line reaching neighbourhoods in the city. ”

Many routes leading to Goma have been cut off by fighting, and people often cross Lake Kivu with supplies on overloaded boats. Shipwrecks are frequent on the lake.

Qatar PM hopes Palestinian Authority will return to Gaza when war ends

Qatar’s prime minister has said he hopes the Palestinian Authority (PA) will return to play a governing role in Gaza when Israel’s war ends.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023 after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel that killed at least 1,139 people, mostly civilians, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel’s ferocious 15-month assault on Gaza has killed more than 47,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and destroyed much of the territory’s civilian infrastructure. Israel has severely restricted supplies of aid to the territory, leading to warnings of a humanitarian crisis.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani was speaking at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, two days after the ceasefire that Qatar helped broker came into effect in Gaza.

The prime minister cautioned that Palestinians in Gaza – and not any other country – should dictate the way the enclave will be governed.

“We hope to see the PA back in Gaza. We hope to see a government that will really address the issues of the people over there. And there is a long way to go with Gaza and the destruction,” he said.

‘Time wasted’

Sheikh Mohammed, who is also Qatar’s foreign minister, said that his country was sorry for the time wasted in the talks between Israel and Hamas.

“When we look at and reflect on what we have achieved in the last few days, we felt really sorry for all the time … wasted in these negotiations,” he said.

“We have seen that the framework that we have agreed on in December is the one that’s been realised a couple of days ago, and … I’m talking about December ’23, this means just a year of negotiating details” the prime minister said.

He added that this included “some meaningless things compared to the lives of the people that they have lost”.

How Gaza will be governed after the war was not directly addressed in the agreement between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian group that ran Gaza until the war.

The ceasefire agreement between the sides was mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States and includes a truce, the exchange of Israeli captives for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, and a surge in humanitarian aid deliveries.

Israel has rejected any governing role for Hamas, but it has also opposed rule by the Palestinian Authority, the body set up under the Oslo interim peace accords three decades ago that has limited governing power in parts of the occupied West Bank.

Far-right Oath Keepers, ex-Proud Boys leaders released after Trump pardons

Two major far-right figures in the United States have been released from prison, just hours after President Donald Trump issued pardons for more than 1,500 people charged for their involvement in the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

A lawyer for Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group, said he was released on Tuesday. He had been sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Stewart Rhodes, the former leader of the Oath Keepers militia, also was released shortly after midnight on Tuesday in Cumberland, Maryland. Trump commuted his 18-year prison sentence.

Rhodes and Tarrio were two of the highest-profile January 6 defendants and received some of the harshest punishments in the Justice Department’s years-long effort to investigate the insurrection at the US Capitol.

Trump had promised to pardon those charged in relation to the events of that day, when a mob of his supporters stormed the US legislature to try to prevent Congress from certifying his loss in the 2020 election.

Trump had repeated false claims that the election was stolen from him in the weeks leading up to the riot. He also urged his supporters to “fight like hell” and “stop the steal” during a rally shortly before the attack began.

Rhodes was sentenced in 2023 after being found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a rare charge that alleges the defendant plotted to undermine the authority of the US government or attack it.

Prosecutors had accused Rhodes of instructing members of the Oath Keepers to attack the US Capitol. Rhodes denied any wrongdoing and said he was the victim of politically motivated persecution.  

“For decades, Mr Rhodes, it is clear you have wanted the democracy of this country to devolve into violence,” US District Judge Amit Mehta said in handing down the sentence.

“The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government. ”

For his part, Tarrio was convicted of several charges, including seditious conspiracy. While Tarrio was not in Washington, DC, during the storming of the US Capitol, prosecutors said he organised and directed the Proud Boys who were there that day to attack.

In a statement confirming Tarrio’s release from prison, his family said he was expected to arrive in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday afternoon.

“We Thank You For Being With Us, The Golden Era Has Arrived! ” the statement read, echoing Trump’s call for a “golden age” under his presidency.

Within hours of taking office on Monday, Trump granted clemency to everyone charged in relation to the riot. He pardoned more than 1,500 people and commuted the sentences of 14 others.

The move “ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation”, Trump said in a proclamation posted on the White House website.

Craig Sicknick, whose brother, Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, was assaulted during the riot and died of multiple strokes the next day, called Trump “pure evil” on Tuesday.

“The man who killed my brother is now president,” he told the Reuters news agency.

“My brother died in vain. Everything he did to try to protect the country, to protect the Capitol — why did he bother? ” Sicknick said. “What Trump did is despicable, and it proves that the United States no longer has anything that resembles a justice system. ”

Michael Fanone, a former officer with the Metropolitan Police Department who suffered severe injuries during the riot, also expressed outrage that the six people who assaulted him that day would walk free.