The health ministry in Gaza said yesterday that 1,042 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed large-scale strikes on March 18.
According to the ministry’s statement, the figure includes 41 people killed in the past 24 hours. It also reported that the overall death toll had reached 50,399 since the war began on October 7, 2023.
After a ceasefire that lasted roughly two months, Israel relaunched its military campaign in Gaza on March 18. Since then, bombardment and new ground assaults that have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry’s count does not distinguish between fighters and civilians, but it says more than half those killed are women and children.
The US Supreme Court examined yesterday the legality of a 2019 statute passed by Congress to facilitate lawsuits against Palestinian authorities by Americans killed or injured in attacks abroad as plaintiffs pursue monetary damages for violence years ago in Israel and the West Bank.
The nine justices heard arguments in appeals by the US government and a group of American victims and their families of a lower court’s ruling that the law at issue violated the rights of the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organisation to due process under the US Constitution. The ongoing violence involving Israel and the Palestinians served as a backdrop to the arguments.
Many of the questions posed by the justices seemed to suggest they would rule in favour of the plaintiffs. Some of the questions explored the authority of Congress and the president to empower US federal courts to hear civil suits over allegedly wrongful conduct experienced by Americans overseas, and what type of connection defendants must have to the US before they must face such legal proceedings.
US courts for years have grappled over whether they have jurisdiction in cases involving the Palestinian Authority and PLO for actions taken abroad.
Under the language at issue in the 2019 law – called the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act – the PLO and Palestinian Authority would automatically “consent” to jurisdiction if they conduct certain activities in the US or make payments to people who attack Americans.
“Congress’ judgment on these issues, as in all issues of national security and foreign policy, are entitled to great deference,” Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler, who argued on behalf of the Trump administration, told the justices.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with Kneedler on that point.
“Congress and the president are the ones who make fairness judgments when we’re talking about the national security and foreign policy of the US,” Kavanaugh said. “Unless it crosses some other textually or historically rooted constitutional principle, courts shouldn’t be coming in.”
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