International
Israel’s ambassador to the UN gives 48 hours to UNRWA to evacuate its centers in Jerusalem
The ambassador of Israel to the UN, Danny Danon, today gave the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) 48 hours to evacuate its centers in Jerusalem, in accordance with an Israeli law that prohibits the organization from providing services in the territory of the Hebrew State.
“UNRWA will have to cease operations and evacuate all the premises in which it operates in Jerusalem, including the properties located in Ma’alot Dafna (in East Jerusalem) and Kfar Aqueb,” Danon warned on Tuesday at a press conference prior to a Security Council session, which deals with the issue of the agency.
The ambassador recalled that the law prohibits the agency from operating “within the sovereign territory of the State of Israel,” as well as having contact with Israeli officials and maintaining “any service or representative office activity within our territory.”
Thus, he said, Israel, which gave the agency until January 30 to leave its offices in East Jerusalem, “will end all collaboration, communication and contact with the UN or with anyone acting on its behalf.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres responded today to the letter sent to him by Danon last Friday, informing him that UNRWA must “cease its operations in Jerusalem and evacuate all facilities in which it operates in the city no later than January 30, 2025,” that is, six days in advance.
In a four-page response, Guterres describes this “unilateral demand” as “manifestly unreasonable and inconsistent with Israel’s international obligations,” and recalls that Danon has ignored his messages, which gave him “ample opportunities” to consult and negotiate with the UN
The United States said on Tuesday before the UN Security Council that the closure of the UNRWA offices in Jerusalem “is a sovereign decision of Israel,” and went further, stressing that “the United States supports the implementation of this decision.”
The diplomat Dorothy Shea, who acting heads the US mission until the arrival of the new ambassador, Elise Stefanik, thus adapted her speech to the new airs of foreign policy marked by President Donald Trump, aligning herself more clearly with Israel.
“The UNRWA,” Shea said, “exaggerates the effects of the laws (approved by the Israeli parliament to almost completely restrict the agency’s activities) by suggesting that they are going to force the cessation of their humanitarian operations in full.” These statements are “irresponsible and dangerous,” he said.
Meanwhile, the UN director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Louis Charbonneau, urged governments on Tuesday to make it clear to the Government of Israel that the international community “will not allow it to dismantle” the offices of the UNRWA.
“Governments must make it clear to the Israeli authorities that the world will not allow them to liquidate the rights of Palestinian refugees. They must support efforts to hold Israeli authorities accountable for starving Palestinian civilians in Gaza as a weapon of war,” he said in a statement.
The law to which Danon refers was approved last year and prohibits UNRWA from providing services in Israeli territory, including East Jerusalem, where more than 300,000 Palestinians live who do not enjoy the same rights as other Israeli citizens (they cannot vote, for example, in national elections).
The agency has about 30,000 employees and is responsible for carrying out some of the tasks of a State (such as providing health or educational services) to the Palestinians who were displaced after the creation of the State of Israel and their descendants, both in Gaza and the West Bank and in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Israel accuses UNRWA of having links with Hamas, although so far it has only presented specific evidence against some workers.
The UN has repeated on numerous occasions that the services provided by UNRWA are irreplaceable because there is no agency or NGO that has its logistics, personnel and capabilities to carry them out, compared to what the Government of Israel advocates.
International
Petro compares US deportations with trains sent to Nazi concentration camps
The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, compared on Wednesday the deportation of illegal immigrants from the United States with the sending of tens of thousands of people to concentration camps in Europe during World War II by Nazi Germany.
“From the episode with Trump (…) there are a series of lessons that must be learned, from them and from us. From them, I suppose, they don’t have to get handcuffs from people who want to get out of their own country,” the president said.
And he added that “There will be a political discussion there, for example, if they are not repeating the same mistake of the Germans in 1943 because they used trains and railways to carry entire wagons full of Jews, socialists and communists to the concentration camp.”
The crisis began after Petro disallowed, through a message on the social network X and not through diplomatic channels, the entry into the country of two planes sent by the United States with deported Colombians, claiming that, by coming handcuffed, they were not receiving “dignified treatment.”
In response to that refusal, Trump ordered the imposition of 25% tariffs on all Colombian products, in addition to other travel and immigration sanctions, and Petro responded with a similar measure, which caused panic throughout the country since the US is Colombia’s main trading partner and strategic ally in political and security matters.
For that reason, between yesterday and today, three flights of the Colombian Aerospace Force (FAC) have already arrived in Bogotá, bringing 306 Colombians, of which, according to Petro this Wednesday, 42 are minors.
“Where here is Mr. Trump going to tell 42 Colombian children that they are criminals?” the president wondered.
He added: “In the same way he told 42 children, he will tell hundreds of thousands, who are criminals, that’s what they thought in 1943.”
The president also said that in the United States “everyone who is Latin American, indigenous, black, will be treated as a criminal.”
“It’s called collectivizing crime, it was invented by (Adolf) Hitler,” he concluded.
Petro also assured on Wednesday that his country will have difficulties in its foreign relations due to global changes that, he said, lead to the emergence of “monsters”.
“In the case of Colombia’s foreign relations, we see neither more nor less that what there will be are difficulties. It is a world that enters a phase of profound changes,” said the president when taking office to his new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laura Sarabia.
Pointing out that the world is in a phase of change, Petro quoted the Italian philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci to say that while the new does not fully appear or the old is extinguished, “the monsters appear.”
“And monsters is what we are going to have, hopefully not within Colombian society but I’m afraid so are you too,” he said.
Petro assured that those who fight “for a better world” must “put on their boots” and form “an army of life, a united humanity, a united Latin America, a group that knows how to defend democracy and freedom.”
At that point he referred to Sarabia, his right hand, and who at 30 years of age is the youngest chancellor that Colombia has ever had, to indicate that she has to carry the voice of the country in that fight.
International
The White House rescums its order to freeze federal aid and loans
The White House rescinded on Wednesday the order promulgated on the eve of immediately freezing all federal subsidies and loans, a measure that had already been temporarily blocked by a judge.
“The Office of Administration and Budget (WBO) memorandum M-25-13 is terminated,” this office said in a new memorandum addressed to “heads of departments and executive agencies.”
The order to freeze aid and loans had created some chaos and confusion in its implementation, even causing the fall of the federal payment portals of the public health insurance program Medicaid.
The Government had justified the measure by arguing the need to ensure that all funds comply with the recent executive orders signed by Trump, which include restrictions on the rights of transgender people and cuts in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Trump’s pause put at risk the disbursement of billions of dollars for various programs, including student loans, and could have a negative impact on health research, food assistance and funding of support organizations for veterans and people with disabilities.
The measure could also affect aid for areas devastated by fires in California and floods in North Carolina, regions that Trump visited last week and where he had promised federal support.
Hours after publishing the order, a federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked its implementation for a week.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt had said on Wednesday morning that the Trump administration was “prepared to fight this battle in court.”
For his part, the leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, warned that Trump “will try to find another way” to do it, but he welcomed the decision to terminate the order: “The Americans defended themselves and Donald Trump backed down,” he said.
International
Trump signs a law against migrants with minor crimes, the first since his return to power
US President Donald Trump signed his first law on Wednesday since he returned to power, a measure that allows immigration authorities to arrest migrants for robbery and other minor crimes before they have been convicted.
Trump initialed the law, the first since the beginning of his second term on January 20, in the East Room of the White House, before a hundred guests, including relatives of Laken Riley, a young woman murdered by an undocumented migrant whose death inspired the legislation.
“The United States will never forget Laken Riley,” said Trump, who said that the migrant who murdered her, from Venezuela, should have been deported.
“Instead of being expelled, as should have happened, he was released in the United States, like millions of other people, many of them very dangerous, but you see what we are doing: we are getting them out of here,” he stressed.
During his speech, Trump told the story of Laken Riley, whose name the law bears. Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered in the state of Georgia in February 2024 by an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant, José Ibarra.
Ibarra resided irregularly in the United States and had been arrested for a minor crime of shoplifting, but was allowed to stay in the country while his immigration case was in process. The migrant found guilty of Riley’s murder at the end of 2024 and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
His death fueled the debate on immigration in the final stretch of the November 2024 elections, in which the Democratic candidate and then vice president, Kamala Harris, lost to Trump, who had promised the largest deportations in the history of the country.
The initiative, approved on January 22 by the House of Representatives, by a Republican majority, with the almost unanimous support of that bench – except for one legislator who did not vote – and the support of 46 Democratic congressmen.
The law also received the approval of the Senate, where the Republicans have a majority, with the support of 12 Democratic senators, despite the opposition of activists for the rights of immigrants, traditionally aligned with the Democratic Party.
These groups denounced the measure for considering it too radical, to the point that it could trigger massive raids against people accused of minor crimes, such as shoplifting.
Civil rights and immigrant organizations also warned that the law eliminates due process for those accused of non-violent crimes.
The arrests contemplated in the new legislation include petty thefts in supermarkets or stores and detainees will be placed in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The text will also authorize the attorneys general of the states of the country to intervene in the immigration policy decisions of the federal government. Among the new powers, they will be allowed to force the State Department to no longer grant visas to citizens of countries that do not accept deportations from the United States.
According to US media estimates, the government would need to spend more than 3 billion dollars and increase the capacity to detain migrants to more than 60,000 beds in order to enforce that law.
Trump put migration at the focus of his campaign and has pressured government agencies to impose a minimum daily arrests quota per agent and raise the total number of arrests to between 1,200 and 1,500 per day.
The US president suggested that the approval of this law is just the beginning. At a conference of Republican legislators at his hotel in Doral, near Florida, he highlighted on Monday that he shows the potential of bills that will help them take vigorous measures “against criminal foreigners and fully restore the rule of law in the country.”
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