Tag Archives: President Donal Trump

Jordan’s King Abdullah discusses holy site tensions in Ramallah

Jordan's King Abdullah II walks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a reception ceremony in the West Bank city of Ramallah, August 7, 2017.

By Ali Sawafta

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Jordan’s King Abdullah met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday for the first time in five years to discuss tensions at a Jerusalem holy site and wider political developments.

While the two leaders meet fairly frequently in Amman and other regional capitals, Abdullah has not visited Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, since December 2012.

The king flew in by helicopter, with the visit coordinated with Israeli authorities which control all entrance and exit points to the West Bank, including its 150 km (93 mile) border with Jordan and the air space above.

The visit comes two weeks since a surge in violence in Jerusalem after Israel installed metal detectors at Muslim entrances to the Al Aqsa mosque compound, following the killing of two Israeli policemen.

The change in security led to days of protests and clashes between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli security forces before Israel, after consultations with Jordan, decided to remove the metal detectors and other measures.

Jordan has been the custodian of Jerusalem’s Muslim holy sites since the 1920s. The compound, which sits on a tree-lined plateau in the Old City, is also revered by Jews, who call it Temple Mount, the site of two destroyed ancient Jewish temples.

“We discussed all issues of mutual interest and we agreed to form a crisis committee that will continue contacts to evaluate what has happened, the lessons to be learned and the challenges we may face at Al Aqsa mosque,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Reyad Al-Maliki told reporters after the meeting.

Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and has growing, if little discussed, economic ties with its neighbor, often plays a mediating role in the region.

With a large percentage of Jordan’s population made up of Palestinians, and Jordan sharing a border with the West Bank, which the Palestinians want for their own state together with East Jerusalem and Gaza, its position is sensitive.

Maliki said Abbas and Abdullah also discussed U.S.-led efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which have been suspended for the past three years, and stated that Israel must “recognize the principle of a two-state solution and end provocative settlement activity that is designed to prevent the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.”

President Donald Trump’s regional envoy, Jason Greenblatt, has made several trips to Amman, Ramallah and Jerusalem this year to try to find common ground and Maliki said U.S. envoys were expected to visit again in the coming days but there is little sign of enthusiasm on anyone’s part to restart talks.

Abdullah is also playing a role in liaising with Egypt and others to see if long-standing differences between Abbas’s Western-backed Fatah party and the rival Hamas Islamist movement can be resolved and Maliki said the issue was discussed.

Hamas, which won the last parliamentary elections held in the Palestinian territories in 2005, seized full control of Gaza after a struggle with Fatah in 2007.

Over the past several months, Abbas, as head of the Palestinian Authority, has stepped up pressure on Hamas, cutting off salaries for civil servants in Gaza, limiting payments for electricity imports and some medicines.

The aim appears to be to oust Hamas from power, but there is little sign of that happening and efforts are being made by regional powers to resolve the internal fighting.

 

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Writing by Luke Baker and Ori Lewis, Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

 

U.S. Supreme Court breathes new life into Trump’s travel ban

People walk outside the the U.S. Supreme Court building after the Court granted parts of the Trump administration's emergency request to put his travel ban into effect immediately while the legal battle continues, in Washington, U.S., June 26, 2017

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Donald Trump by reviving parts of a travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries that he said is needed for national security but that opponents decry as discriminatory.

The justices narrowed the scope of lower court rulings that had completely blocked key parts of a March 6 executive order that Trump had said was needed to prevent terrorism in the United States, allowing his temporary ban to go into effect for people with no strong ties such as family or business to the United States. [http://tmsnrt.rs/2seb3bb]

The court issued its order on the last day of its current term and agreed to hear oral arguments during its next term starting in October so it can decide finally whether the ban is lawful in a major test of presidential powers.

In a statement, Trump called the high court’s action “a clear victory for our national security,” saying the justices allowed the travel suspension to become largely effective.

“As president, I cannot allow people into our country who want to do us harm. I want people who can love the United States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking and productive,” Trump added.

Trump’s March 6 order called for a blanket 90-day ban on people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and a 120-day ban on all refugees while the government implemented stronger vetting procedures. The court allowed a limited version of the refugee ban, which had also been blocked by courts, to go into effect.

Trump issued the order amid rising international concern about attacks carried out by Islamist militants like those in Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin and other cities. But challengers said no one from the affected countries had carried out attacks in the United States.

Federal courts said the travel ban violated federal immigration law and was discriminatory against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Critics called it a discriminatory “Muslim ban.”

Ahmed al-Nasi, an official in Yemen’s Ministry of Expatriate Affairs, voiced disappointment.

“We believe it will not help in confronting terrorism and extremism, but rather will increase the feeling among the nationals of these countries that they are all being targeted, especially given that Yemen is an active partner of the United States in the war on terrorism and that there are joint operations against terrorist elements in Yemen,” he said.

Groups that challenged the ban, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said that most people from the affected countries seeking entry to the United States would have the required connections. But they voiced concern the administration would interpret the ban as broadly as it could.

“It’s going to be very important for us over this intervening period to make sure the government abides by the terms of the order and does not try to use it as a back door into implementing the full-scale Muslim ban that it’s been seeking to implement,” said Omar Jadwat, an ACLU lawyer.

During the 2016 presidential race, Trump campaigned for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. The travel ban was a signature policy of Trump’s first few months as president.

‘BONA FIDE RELATIONSHIP’

In an unusual unsigned decision, the Supreme Court on Monday said the travel ban will go into effect “with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

A lack of a clearly defined relationship would bar from entry people from the six countries and refugees with no such ties.

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin, who successfully challenged the ban in lower courts, said that students from affected countries due to attend the University of Hawaii would still be able to do so.

Both bans were to partly go into effect 72 hours after the court’s decision. The Department of Homeland Security promised clear and sufficient public notice in coordination with the travel industry.

Trump signed the order as a replacement for a Jan. 27 one issued a week after he became president that also was blocked by federal courts, but not before it caused chaos at airports and provoked numerous protests.

Even before the Supreme Court action the ban applied only to new visa applicants, not people who already have visas or are U.S. permanent residents, known as green card holders. The executive order also made waivers available for a foreign national seeking to enter the United States to resume work or study, visit a spouse, child or parent who is a U.S. citizen, or for “significant business or professional obligations.” Refugees “in transit” and already approved would have been able to travel to the United States under the executive order.

A CONSERVATIVE COURT

The case was Trump’s first major challenge at the Supreme Court, where he restored a 5-4 conservative majority with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, who joined the bench in April. There are five Republican appointees on the court and four Democratic appointees. The four liberal justices were silent.

Gorsuch was one of the three conservative justices who would have granted Trump’s request to put the order completely into effect. Fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion in which he warned that requiring officials to differentiate between foreigners who have a connection to the United States and those who do not will prove unworkable.

“Today’s compromise will burden executive officials with the task of deciding – on peril of contempt – whether individuals from the six affected nations who wish to enter the United States have a sufficient connection to a person or entity in this country,” Thomas wrote.

The state of Hawaii and a group of plaintiffs in Maryland represented by the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the order violated federal immigration law and the Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring any particular religion. Regional federal appeals courts in Virginia and California both upheld district judge injunctions blocking the order.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley. Additional reporting by Andrew Chung and Yeganeh Torbati in Washington and Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa, Yemen; Editing by Will Dunham and Howard Goller)

After Court rejection, Trump says Nation’s Security at stake

The James R. Browning U.S. Court of Appeals Building, home of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

By Dan Levine and Mica Rosenberg

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump suffered a legal blow on Thursday when a federal appeals court refused to reinstate a temporary travel ban he had ordered on people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the Trump administration failed to offer any evidence that national security concerns justified immediately restoring the ban, which he launched two weeks ago.

Shortly after the court issued its 29-page ruling, Trump tweeted: “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!” He told reporters his administration ultimately would win the case and dismissed the ruling as “political.”

The 9th Circuit ruling, upholding last Friday’s decision by U.S. District Judge James Robart, does not resolve the lawsuit. It relates only to whether to lift an emergency halt to Trump’s order put in place by a lower court.

The judges said more briefing would be needed to decide the actual fate of Trump’s order.

The Justice Department, which spoke for the administration at oral argument on Tuesday, said it was reviewing the decision and considering its options.

The states of Washington and Minnesota challenged Trump’s order, which had sparked protests and chaos at U.S. and overseas airports on the weekend after it was issued. The two states argued that Trump’s ban violated constitutional protections against religious discrimination.

Asked about Trump’s tweet, Washington state Attorney General  Bob Ferguson said: “We have seen him in court twice, and we’re two for two.”

While the court said it could not decide whether the order discriminated against a particular religion until the case had been “fully briefed,” it added that the states had presented evidence of “numerous statements” by the president “about his intent to implement a ‘Muslim ban.’”

The court said the government had failed to show that any person from the seven countries had perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.

The administration argued that the courts do not have access to the same classified information about threats to the country that the president does. The judges countered that “courts regularly receive classified information under seal.”

Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order barred entry for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and imposed a 120-day halt on all refugees, except refugees from Syria who are barred indefinitely.

The three judges said the states had shown that even temporary reinstatement of the ban would cause harm.

FINAL OUTCOME ‘NOT CERTAIN’

Curbing entry to the United States as a national security measure was a central premise of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, originally proposed as a temporary ban on all Muslims. He has voiced frustration at the legal challenge to his order.

U.S. presidents have in the past claimed sweeping powers to fight terrorism, but individuals, states and civil rights groups challenging the ban said his administration had offered no evidence it answered a threat.

Two of the three 9th Circuit judges were appointees of former Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and one was appointed by former President George W. Bush, a Republican like Trump.

The government could ask the 9th Circuit to have a larger panel of judges review the decision “en banc,” or appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will likely determine the case’s final outcome.

Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News: “It’s an interim ruling and we’re fully confident that now that we will get our day in court and have an opportunity to argue this on the merits we will prevail.”

Asked if the administration would go to the Supreme Court, she said: “I can’t comment on that. … He will be conferring with the lawyers and make that decision.”

If the Trump administration appeals to the Supreme Court, it would need five of the eight justices to vote in favor of a stay blocking the district court injunction. That is likely to be a tall order as the court is evenly divided 4-4 between liberals and conservatives, meaning the administration would need to win over at least one of the liberal justices.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said in a statement: “This victory should not lead to complacency. This and other Trump administration orders and policies still pose a threat to communities of color, religious minorities, women, and others.”

Democrats, the minority party in Congress, celebrated.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in an email statement: “This Administration’s recklessness has already done significant harm to families, and undermined our fight against terror. For the sake of our values and the security of America, Democrats will continue to press for President Trump’s dangerous and unconstitutional ban to be withdrawn.”

But Tom Fitton from the conservative group Judicial Watch said on Twitter: “The Ninth Circuit ruling is a dangerous example of judicial overreach.”

(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco and Noeleen Walder and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Writing by Lisa Lambert and Howard Goller; Editing by Peter Cooney)