The US government has tried for the second time to deport a stateless Palestinian woman, according to court documents – despite a judge’s order barring her removal.

Ward Sakeik. Photograph: Change.org

US tries to deport stateless Palestinian woman again despite judge’s order

The US government has tried for the second time to deport a stateless Palestinian woman, according to court documents – despite a judge’s order barring her removal.

Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old newlywed, was detained in February on her way home from her honeymoon in the US Virgin Islands. Last month, the government attempted to deport her without informing her where she was being sent, according to her husband, Taahir Shaikh. An officer eventually told her that she would be sent to the Israel border – just hours before Israel launched airstrikes on Iran.

After her lawyers filed suit on behalf, US district judge Ed Kinkeade issued an order on 22 June barring the government from deporting Sakeik or removing her from the Texas district where she is being detained while her case is decided.

But on Monday, the government tried once again to deport her. Officers at the detention facility woke her up early in the morning on Monday, and told her she “had to leave”. When she tried to tell the officer there was a court order blocking her removal, the officer responded: “It’s not up to me.”

“Sakeik informed me that when she arrived at intake, her belongings had been placed outside the door,” her lawyer testified in court documents.

Sakeik’s family is from Gaza, but she was born in Saudi Arabia, which does not grant birthright citizenship to the children of foreigners.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/02/stateless-palestinian-woman-deportation-ward-sakeik

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If you care for the sanctity of human life and freedom of speech, we urge you to speak up, too. FREE PALESTINE!

Bob Vylan

@BobbyVylan

Israel drops bombs on refugee camps: Israeli bombs have been blasting away at tents full of families with babies and little children

Gaza now

'Lucrative' business deals help sustain Israel's Gaza campaign- UN expert Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese... U.N. report names firms aiding Israeli settlements & Albanese calls for legal action against executives for international law violations

United Nations Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese

"It names arms firms such as Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) and Leonardo (LDOF.MI), alleging their weaponry has been used in Gaza. It also lists heavy machinery suppliers Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N)and HD Hyundai (267250.KS), claiming their equipment has contributed to property destruction in Palestinian territories.

Technology giants Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Amazon (AMZN.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O), and IBM (IBM.N) were named as "central to Israel's surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction.""

 https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/lucrative-business-deals-help-sustain-israels-gaza-campaign-un-expert-says-2025-07-01/

'Lucrative' business deals help sustain Israel's Gaza campaign, UN expert says

By Emma Farge

July 1, 2025

• U.N. report names firms aiding Israeli settlements, Gaza campaign
• Albanese calls for legal action against executives for international law violations
• Israel denies genocide claims, cites self-defense against Hamas attacks

GENEVA, July 1 (Reuters) - A U.N. expert has named over 60 companies, including major arms manufacturers and technology firms, in a report alleging their involvement in supporting Israeli settlements and military actions in Gaza, which she called a "genocidal campaign."

 

Italian human rights lawyer Francesca Albanese, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, compiled the report based on over 200 submissions from states, human rights defenders, companies, and academics.

 

The report, published late Monday, calls for companies to cease dealings with Israel and for legal accountability for executives implicated in alleged violations of international law.

 

"While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, this report shows why Israel's genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many," Albanese wrote in the 27-page document. She accused corporate entities of being "financially bound to Israel's apartheid and militarism."... READ MORE https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/lucrative-business-deals-help-sustain-israels-gaza-campaign-un-expert-says-2025-07-01/

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"I am sorry to say that my cousin Amna was killed today in an Israeli air strike on a cafe where journalists were meeting in #Gaza. She was nicknamed Frans/France as a child because she was so pretty. " Abdallah Alsalmi

 

Abdallah Alsalmi

@AbdallaBBC

 

I am sorry to say that my cousin Amna was killed today in an Israeli air strike on a cafe where journalists were meeting in #Gaza. 

 

She was nicknamed Frans/France as a child because she was so pretty. 

 

She trained as a painter then worked a photographer and a graphic artist. 

 

Her last IG story: “I miss canvas and colours.” 

 

This is not fair.

 

 الله يرحمك يا فرانس.

In one of the massacres committed 30 June 2025 by Israel in Gaza, the artist Frans Al-Salmi and the journalist Ismail Abu Hatab were Killed. A month ago, she had made this portrait of him.

Israel just massacred 21 Palestinians in a café at #Gaza City beach, among them journalist Ismail Abu Hatab and artist Frans Al-Salmi. This is Frans’s last post where she painted her friend Ismail

 

 Journalist Ismail Abu Hatab killed by Israel 30 June 2025

 

Palestinian artist Frans Al-Salmi killed by Israel 30 June 2025

"The Israeli army killed renowned Palestinian visual artist Frans Al-Salmi in the latest massacre on Gaza’s coast. Frans was widely known for her powerful and expressive artwork that captured the soul of Palestinian life and struggle."

"29 others were also killed—including 2 journalist. Their lives, art, and voices were stolen. We must not look away"

" "How much I miss paintings and colors" The last thing that the plastic artist and painter Frans Al-Salmi wrote on the Instagram story She was martyred today in the bombing of the Al-Baqa cafeteria on the Gaza beach, for your soul peace" @mhmd_s09

"When you start painting again during the brutal genocide so a part of you can come back to life.
“Details that carry us to the life of Gaza between the sky and the earth”, this was my friend’s idea to revive the spirit of life within me, allowing the colors to return and tell fragments of his photos and his exhibition on the BYPA platform.
We still love life and our passions, despite all the hardships" francalsalmi

 

Ismail Abu Hatab

Palestinian journalist (1993–2025)

Ismail Abu Hatab was a Palestinian photo-journalist and filmmaker, owner of C-light TV production company, best known for his frontline coverage of the Gaza war. He organized several photography exhibitions outside the Gaza Strip. He was killed by an Israeli air-strike on 30 June 2025

Exclusive Part 1: After the latest Israeli settler attacks, Christians in the Holy Land ask American Catholics for help: “Soldiers are usually with the settlers. They’re protecting the settlers, and they’re not doing anything” to protect those [the Palestinians] under attack. There’s nothing we can do. It’s a peaceful village, very quiet. I have a family tree of 600 years in Taybeh. I’m not gonna leave.”

Stephen Herreid on June 30, 2025  https://catholicvote.org/exclusive-israeli-settler-attacks-christians-holy-land-ask-american-catholics-for-help/

Adobe stock

Exclusive Part 1: After the latest Israeli settler attacks, Christians in the Holy Land ask American Catholics for help

Christians in the Holy Land expressed hope and quiet defiance last week after a string of internationally reported attacks by Israeli settlers, one of which left three Palestinians dead.

One of the villages reportedly attacked was Taybeh, about 10 miles north of Jerusalem. Taybeh is “100% Christian,” Nadim Khoury told CatholicVote via phone on Friday. A resident of Taybeh, Khoury is the founder of Taybeh Brewery, colloquially known as Taybeh Beer.

This week’s attack in his town was far from an isolated incident, according to Khoury. He fluently listed from memory a number of similar instances of violence and intimidation against local Christians by alleged Israeli settlers. 

“Last month, they went inside 14 homes and they broke the doors while people were sleeping,” he said. “Last harvest … they didn’t allow the people to go into their groves to harvest their olive oil.” Last week, he went on, settlers brought sheep to graze on the crops of hardworking locals, ruining their business. They “ate all the wheat and barley that the farmers were growing on the mountains of Taybeh,” Khoury said. 

Wednesday night, he went on, they broke into people’s homes to “kick them out,” and when the residents resisted, the attackers “burned the homes.”

Footage of some of the violence was widespread on social media this week.

Asked about Israeli soldiers arriving to police the violence, Khoury expressed a sentiment that several other local Christians who spoke with CatholicVote also volunteered: “Soldiers are usually with the settlers.” 

“They’re protecting the settlers, and they’re not doing anything” to protect those under attack, he explained. “There’s nothing we can do. It’s a peaceful village, very quiet. I have a family tree of 600 years in Taybeh. I’m not gonna leave.”

Asked what his hopes are for the future, Khoury answered simply: “Nothing is left for us except hopes. We pray so hard for peace and prosperity in this area. We have deep roots in this area. We cannot give it up. We must keep fighting for it.” 

Khoury’s friend and pastor, Father Bashar Fawadleh, spoke along similar lines. In a phone call with CatholicVote Friday, Father Fawadleh expanded on his parishioner’s allusion to settlers aiming to get locals to leave their hometowns.

The priest said he knew of “more than 140 families” who have left their cities in the West Bank. “In Taybeh we are also bleeding from emigration,” he said, with 10 families having left since October 7, 2023. 

“We have to stop this bleeding,” he said, and asked that CatholicVote spread the word to American Catholics that “we need support.”  What is needed, he said, is the creation of good jobs, and — ultimately — a peaceful end to the violence and intimidation.

Father Fawadleh expressed gratitude to American Catholics who stand in solidarity with the Christians of the Holy Land. But the hope he encourages in his flock, he said, “is very deep for our side – because it’s built on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the now-empty tomb in Jerusalem.”

“We are still awaiting the third day,” he went on, “to have the new life, to have liberty and freedom for our society, our country, and our population. And we hope that one day we have justice, and from justice we can have the fruit of justice, [which] is peace.”

The pastor is confident, however, that Christians are not alone in that hope. 

“That is the dream that we are all dreaming here in the Holy Land,” he said, both “the Jews and the Palestinians. We are all dreaming that we can live together without any problems, without any occupation, without any killing, so that we can all live together in this very important and very holy place — the homeland of Jesus.”....   READ MORE    https://catholicvote.org/exclusive-israeli-settler-attacks-christians-holy-land-ask-american-catholics-for-help/

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Artist Frans Al-Salmi was murdered 30 June 2025 by Israel when the IDF bombed a beautiful seaside cafe in Gaza

Artist Frans Al-Salmi was murdered this morning by Israel when the IDF bombed a beautiful seaside cafe in Gaza

 

Art by Palestinian Frans Al-Salmi : Shireen Abu Akleh, Palestinian-American journalist (1971–2022)

Shireen Abu Akleh was a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for 25 years for Al Jazeera, before she was killed by Israeli forces while wearing a blue press vest and covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Abu Akleh was one of the most prominent names across the Middle East for her decades of reporting in the Palestinian territories, and seen as a role model for many Arab and Palestinian women.

Art by Palestinian Frans Al-Salmi

 

Art by Palestinian Frans Al-Salmi

Art by Palestinian Frans Al-Salmi

Israeli attack on Gaza City beach cafe kills dozens, including journalist Palestinian photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab killed in attack, bringing journalist death toll to 227

 

Emergency teams dig through the rubble to retrieve victims of the attack (Screengrab/X)

By MEE staff

Published date: 30 June 2025 16:38 BST |  

 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-attack-gaza-city-beachfront-cafe-kills-least-22-including-journalist

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An Israeli air strike targeting a cafe on Gaza City Beach has killed at least 33 Palestinians, including a journalist, and injured around 50 others, according to eyewitnesses and reporting from Wafa news agency and Quds Network.

Images and videos circulated online by Quds Network revealed emergency teams carrying bodies out of the building’s wreckage and combing through the rubble.

Gaza's government media office said in a statement that Palestinian photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab was among those killed in the attack. It added that Hatab had worked for a number of media platforms and organised several photo exhibitions about Gaza outside Palestine.

The media office said that Hatab's death brought the toll of Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 2023 to 227.

Visual artist Frans al-Salmi was also reportedly killed in the attack.

Journalist Bayan Abusultan was wounded in the strike, although her condition is currently unknown, according to Wafa.

Gaza journalist Belal Khaled shared images on social media of Abusultan with blood spattered across her face and torso.

According to Al Jazeera, at least 80 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn on Monday.

The toll includes 57 Palestinians in northern Gaza and 15 aid seekers near aid distribution hubs in southern Gaza's Rafah.

The Israeli military said on Monday that it is “operating intensively” and “will expand” its operations in different areas in Gaza City and Jabalia, ordering Palestinians to move to al-Mawasi in the south of the Strip.

In a post on X, army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued an evacuation warning to Palestinians living in Gaza City, Jabalia areas, and in different neighbourhoods including East Zaytoun, the Old Town, Turkmen, Ajdida, Tuffah, and Daraj.

Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.

Gaza: ‘Unbearable’ suffering continues, UN official tells Security Council

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https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/06/1165126 

 UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe.  Khaled Khiari, Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, Asia and the Pacific at the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. (file photo)

30 June 2025 Peace and Security

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is deepening at an alarming rate, a senior United Nations official warned on Monday, as Israeli military operations and attacks on civilians seeking aid continue to exact a devastating toll on lives and infrastructure.

Briefing ambassadors in the Security Council, Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East Khaled Khiari said more than 1,000 Palestinians had been killed since mid-June alone, many of them while seeking aid.

Citing figures from the Gazan health authorities, he reported that the total number of Palestinian fatalities since 7 October 2023 had surpassed 56,500.

“The level of suffering and brutality in Gaza is unbearable,” Mr. Khiari said. “The continued collective punishment of the Palestinian people is unjustifiable.”

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Killed trying to access aid

Mr. Khiari cited multiple incidents involving the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) opening fire near food distribution points.

On 17 June, at least 50 people were killed and 200 injured in Khan Younis when an IDF tank opened fire on a crowd waiting for UN World Food Programme (WFP) aid trucks.

Once again a week later, IDF troops reportedly opened fire near Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, this time killing 49 Palestinians and injuring 197 others.

“We strongly condemn the loss of lives and injuries of Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza,” Mr. Khiari said. “We call for an immediate and independent investigation into these events and for perpetrators to be held accountable.”

He emphasised that the UN “will not participate in any aid delivery modality that does not comply with the fundamental humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality,” a sentiment which other UN officials have repeatedly said as well.

Strong condemnation

Mr. Khiari reiterated the UN’s strong condemnation of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups for their attacks in Israel, which killed over 1,200 people and led to more than 250 being taken hostage. Fifty hostages, including one woman, remain in captivity.

“Nothing can justify these acts of terror. We remain appalled that hostages may be subjected to ongoing ill-treatment and that the bodies of hostages continue to be withheld,” he said.

At the same time, he also condemned “the widespread killing and injury of civilians in Gaza, including children and women, and the destruction of homes, schools, hospitals and mosques.”

Rising violence in the West Bank

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli raids and settler violence have escalated.  

Mr. Khiari reported that a 15-year-old boy and an elderly woman were killed in separate incidents on 25 June. Armed settlers also killed several Palestinians during attacks in Surif and Kafr Malik.

“The escalating violence in the occupied West Bank is alarming,” Khiari said, warning that military operations and settler expansion are leading to fatalities, displacement and destruction.

Iran-Israel ceasefire brings hope to the region

Mr. Khiari concluded his briefing with comments on the wider Middle East region, particularly the recent flare-up between Israel and Iran.

He welcomed the 24 June ceasefire agreement between the two countries, announced by US President Donald Trump, and credited US and Qatari mediation.

“We hope that this ceasefire can be replicated in the other conflicts in the region – nowhere is this more needed than in Gaza,” he said.

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News Tracker: Past Stories on This Issue

Guterres calls for immediate Gaza ceasefire as humanitarian crisis reaches ‘horrific proportions’

27 June 2025

Peace and Security

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, warning that the humanitarian crisis has reached “horrific proportions” and that the world must not let the suffering of Palestinians be overshadowed by other regional conflicts.