The US military will establish a temporary port on the Gaza coast to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to the beleaguered territory, Joe Biden is to announce.
The US president is to make the announcement in his State of the Union address in the coming hours.
The plan – which an Israeli official has reportedly said Israel “fully supports” – will provide capacity for hundreds of additional truckloads of aid each day.
It will allow more shipments of food, medicine and other essential items into Gaza, US administration officials have told Sky News’ partner network NBC News.
The operation will not require American troops to be on the ground, and Israeli officials could screen the goods at the city’s port, the US officials said.
The port is expected to take a number of weeks to plan and execute.
A desperate policy decision that Biden hoped never to have to make
This is a significant announcement but details are scant. The timing reflects the urgency of the humanitarian situation but it’s also about politics.
‘Port’ is a somewhat misleading word to describe what the Americans intend to construct. It will take the form of a temporary pier or causeway that will allow aid to be offloaded from ships to trucks for distribution.
Importantly, American officials tell us that US boots will not be on the ground in Gaza but that the causeway can be installed from offshore. No more detail has been revealed.
All of this leaves plenty of unanswered questions and exposes deep failures in diplomatic leverage that the United States has over Israel.
Who will build the infrastructure that will be needed on the land end of the pier? Who will distribute the aid once it is offloaded?
Who will manage crowd control and prevent stampedes which will be inevitable without considerable policing of the mass of people. How long will all this take?
Like the airdrop announcement last week, the port announcement represents a desperate policy decision that President Biden hoped never to have to make.
Shipments will come via Cyprus enabled by the US military and a coalition of partners and allies, US officials also told NBC.
Earlier this week, EU officials were in Cyprus to discuss the establishment of a maritime aid corridor with a platform at Larnaca on the island.
Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas attacked the country on 7 October, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250.
More than 100 hostages were released in November in exchange for 240 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The number of Palestinians killed has reached more than 30,700, according to the Hamas-led health ministry in Gaza.
The territory is facing a worsening humanitarian catastrophe, with aid groups warning that it has become nearly impossible to deliver supplies within most of Gaza.
Image: Palestinian children wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Rafah. Pic: Reuters
Many Palestinians, especially in the devastated north, are scrambling for food to survive.
Sir Mark Lowcock, former head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, has told Sky News that without far more aid, there will be an “explosion” in the number of people dying.
“The death toll from starvation and related diseases is going to be larger than the 30,000 people who are estimated to have been killed already by the bombs and the bullets,” he said.
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Image: Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
A farmer who fell from a greenhouse roof during an anti-immigrant raid at a licensed cannabis facility in California this week has died of his injuries.
Jaime Alanis, 57, is the first person to die as a result of Donald Trump’s Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (ICE) raids.
His niece, Yesenia Duran, posted on the fundraising site GoFundMe to say her uncle was his family’s only provider and he had been sending his earnings back to his wife and daughter in Mexico.
The United Food Workers said Mr Alanis had worked on the farm for 10 years.
“These violent and cruel federal actions terrorise American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,” the union said in a recent statement on X.
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Who is being targeted in Trump’s immigration raids?
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it executed criminal search warrants at Glass House Farms facilities on Thursday.
Mr Alanis called family to say he was hiding and possibly fleeing agents before he fell around 30ft (9m) from the roof and broke his neck, according to information from family, hospital and government sources.
Agents arrested 200 people suspected of being in the country illegally and identified at least 10 immigrant children on the sites, the DHS said in a statement.
Mr Alanis was not among them, the agency said.
“This man was not in and has not been in CBP (Customs and Border Protection) or ICE custody,” DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said.
“Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30ft. CBP immediately called a medivac to the scene to get him care as quickly as possible.”
Four US citizens were arrested during the incident for allegedly “assaulting or resisting officers”, the DHS said, and authorities were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents.
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In a statement, Glass House, a licensed Cannabis grower, said immigration agents had valid warrants. It said workers were detained and it is helping provide them with legal representation.
“Glass House has never knowingly violated applicable hiring practices and does not and has never employed minors,” it added.
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Image: Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:46
Will Trump address parliament on UK state visit?
This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”