A veteran Palestinian negotiator said on Monday she had been denied a US travel visa for the first time, and viewed it as retaliation for her criticism of the Trump administration and Israel.
US diplomats did not immediately respond to the allegations by Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) who took part in interim peace talks with Israel dating back decades.
Since they boycotted the Trump administration over its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel‘s capital in late 2017, the Palestinians have seen cuts to US funding that have contributed to economic distress in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

China will raise tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods starting next month in response to President Trump increasing tariffs on products from Beijing.
Bloomberg reports the 25 percent tariffs will impact nearly 2,500 U.S. products and will go into effect June 1.
The retaliatory tariffs from China are the latest escalation of tensions between the world’s two largest economies as they seek to negotiate a trade deal.
Beijing is increasing tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on a number of U.S. goods, including peanuts, sugar, wheat, chicken and turkey, according to CNBC.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}

President Trump on Monday accused Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) of harboring “tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people” in response to comments she made about the Holocaust.
Tlaib said in a recent interview that she has a “calming feeling” when she thinks about the genocide because her Palestinian ancestors “lost their land” and “lost their lives” amid an effort “to create a safe haven for Jews” in the Middle East, even though it was “forced on them” and took away their “human dignity.”
“Democrat Rep. Tlaib is being slammed for her horrible and highly insensitive statement on the Holocaust,” Trump tweeted. “She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people. Can you imagine what would happen if I ever said what she said, and says?”

A new report by the Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center indicates a major increase in the number of calls to its helpline and a steady increase in cases since the Gaza war in 2014.
Released Sunday, the report showed that more than 4,000 calls were made to the helpline in 2018, up 25 percent from 2017. Just this month, during two days of heavy rocket fire from Gaza, the hotline received 1,000-plus calls.
According to the report, kids and teenagers comprised approximately 25 percent of the Israelis contacting the organization for help. While civilians made up 45 percent of callers in 2018, discharged Israel Defense Forces soldiers aged 21 to 34 made up another 45 percent, with the final 10 percent comprised of older IDF PTSD sufferers.

The White House balks after House Democrats demand to see the full Mueller Report and President Trump’s taxes. Is this a constitutional crisis? Insight from Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton.
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Israel’s Transportation Ministry recently approved a major expansion plan for the country’s Ben-Gurion International Airport, according to which approximately 860,000 square feet of floor space will be added, along with four additional conveyor belts for luggage and 90 new check-in counters.
The airport will be able to handle increased air traffic after the $840 million renovations. Its border control, parking and duty-free areas will also be expanded.
In anticipation of record numbers of travelers this summer—more than 25 million, up from 23 million this year—the airport is already planning to set up 25 temporary service counters.

The European Union has pledging to give the Palestinian Authority 15 million euros to cover the salaries of public employees—salaries that leader Mahmoud Abbas cut to keep up the P.A.’s payments to imprisoned and released terrorists, wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists.
Abbas has declared that the P.A. is “obligated” to continue rewarding the terrorist prisoners and families of so-called “martyrs.”

Poland abruptly canceled a visit by Israeli officials amid concern that talks would focus on the unsettled issue of Jewish property restitution.
The escalation comes amid thorny relations between Poland and Israel about historic issues, mainly the role that Poles played during the Holocaust. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki scrapped a trip to Jerusalem in February after Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly said the Polish nation cooperated with German Nazi occupiers during World War II.

President Donald Trump’s long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan will recognize the extension of Israeli law over all Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a Channel 12 television report said Sunday.
The report said that the plan, expected to be made public in mid-June, will recognize that all Israeli-settled areas “will remain in Israeli hands under a permanent accord”.
While the US will not explicitly back the “annexation” of the settlements, or the extension of “Israeli sovereignty” to them, it will not object to the “extension of Israeli law” to them.

A senior Iranian official on Sunday dismissed the United States military buildup in the region, saying that American wouldn’t dare attack out of fear of Iranian retribution against Israel.
“The US military forces’ deployment in the Persian Gulf is more of the nature of psychological warfare. They are not ready for a war, specially when Israel is within our range,” the Iranian Parliament vice-speaker Ali Motahhari said on Sunday, according to the FARS news agency.
Meanwhile, a senior Israeli official warned that Israel could indeed be caught in the crossfire of a US-Iran conflict either by direct rocket attack or through one of Iran’s proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon or Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza.