By JAMEY KEATEN and SARAH EL DEEB

GENEVA (AP) — International aid agencies warned on Friday that plans presented by Israel to control aid distribution in Gaza, including a U.S.-backed proposal, will only increase suffering and death in the devastated Palestinian territory, which has been under a total Israeli blockade for nearly 10 weeks.

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They urged Israel to lift its ban on all food, medicine and other supplies entering Gaza, which has caused a surge of malnutrition and hunger among Palestinians as supplies rapidly dwindle.

“Humanitarian aid should never be used as a bargaining chip,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said in Geneva.

The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said that a new system for delivering humanitarian aid and food to Gaza was being launched, with deliveries set to begin “very soon.”

He said that details would be announced in the coming days. He depicted it as independent from Israel, which he said wouldn’t be involved in distribution. He said that private companies would provide security, while Israel’s military would secure the perimeters of aid areas from afar.

“I will be the first to admit it will not be perfect, especially in the early days,” Huckabee said.

A new U.S.-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has put forward an aid distribution plan along the lines of Israel’s demands, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The group is made up of American security contractors, former government officials, ex-military officers and humanitarian officials.

It wasn’t immediately clear if this was the plan that Huckabee was referring to. But aid workers have said the creation of the group does little to assuage their concerns.

The U.N. has rejected Israeli plans to control aid

Israel has spoken for weeks of imposing a new aid system in Gaza, but has given no details publicly. The United Nations and most aid groups, which have led the aid operation in Gaza since the war began, have refused to participate, saying the details provided by Israel in private discussions violate humanitarian principles.

They say that the plans floated by Israel center on creating a limited number of distribution hubs inside Gaza to which Palestinians would have to come to receive food — armed security companies would transport the aid and guard the hubs. Israel also wants to vet recipients of the help, aid workers say.

Elder, of UNICEF, said that the plan as presented to the aid community appeared “designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic.” He said that it doesn’t comply with Israel’s obligations to allow and facilitate impartial humanitarian relief.

He said that the plan would entrench forced displacement “for political and military purposes,” as Palestinians will be forced to move to be closer to distribution hubs. The most vulnerable, including children, older people and those suffering from illness, may not be able to get to the hubs. It also endangers people by forcing them to seek aid from militarized areas.

“More children are likely to suffer and risk death and injury as a consequence of this plan,” Elder said. “There is a simple alternative. Lift the blockade, let humanitarian aid in, save lives.”

Huckabee called on U.N. agencies and independent aid groups to join the new aid mechanism.

But Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said Friday that multiple meetings with Israeli officials haven’t assuaged U.N. concerns over the plans.

“The current shape that we have been briefed about by (Israeli officials) would not allow us to resume lifesaving activities at the scale that was possible prior to the total blockade of Gaza,” he said.

UN says new plan can’t match scale of aid need

Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza on March 2, then resumed bombardment of the territory, breaking a two-month ceasefire. It says the moves aim to pressure Hamas to release its remaining hostages and disarm. Rights groups have called the blockade a “starvation tactic” and possible war crime.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

The government has said that aid won’t resume until a new distribution mechanism is in place, accusing Hamas and other fighters of siphoning off large amounts of the help. The U.N and aid workers deny that there is significant diversion, saying that the U.N. strictly monitors distribution.

Throughout the war, multiple U.N agencies and other humanitarian groups have been trucking in supplies and distributing them as close as possible to where Palestinians were located. Before the blockade, aid groups were distributing supplies at hundreds of locations around Gaza.

The operation has been led by UNRWA, the main U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. Israel has banned the agency since last year, alleging that its staff have been infiltrated by Hamas. UNRWA, which employs more than 10,000 staff in Gaza, said that it acts quickly to remove any staff suspected of having militant ties, and that Israel hasn’t given it evidence of its claims.

UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said that it would be “impossible to replace UNRWA” to deliver aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

“We are the largest humanitarian organization. We have the largest reach,” she said. The agency also provides shelters, runs warehouses and trucking services for aid distribution. ”It is very, very difficult to imagine any humanitarian operation without UNRWA.”

In its proposal, the Gaza Humanitarian Fund said that it would initially set up four distribution sites, each serving 300,000 people. That would cover about half of Gaza’s population. The system would be scaled up to meet the needs of 2 million people. But the proposal doesn’t give a time frame. It said that subcontractors would use armored vehicles to transport supplies from the Gaza border to distribution sites, where they would also provide security. The aim would be to avert criminal gangs and other armed groups, it said.

Touma said that claims of aid diversion are hard to counter when there are no independent media or monitoring on the ground in Gaza. Israel has barred international media from entering the territory. When the ceasefire was in place, reports of looting significantly decreased, she added.

Laerke said that “the looting of a few trucks here and there” wasn’t the main problem for aid distribution.

“The problem is the blockage of hundreds of aid trucks that should go into the Gaza Strip every single day. That is the root cause of the humanitarian crisis there.”

Sarah El Deeb reported from Beirut.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Stockholm City Council has rejected the U.S. Embassy’s demands that it comply with the Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

It’s the latest in U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to terminate such programs within the federal government — and beyond — in what he described in his inauguration speech as a move to end efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”

Countries and cities across Europe have received similar outreach from U.S. embassies, including France, Belgium and the city of Barcelona, all of which lashed out at the U.S. efforts to expand its anti-DEI policies to the continent.

In an email to the city’s planning office, dated April 29, the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm asked that Stockholm officials sign a certification that their contractors do not operate any programs promoting DEI that would violate U.S. anti-discrimination law.

The city council said Friday that it will not comply with the embassy’s demands or respond officially.

“We were really surprised, of course,” Jan Valeskog, vice mayor for city planning, told The Associated Press. “We will not sign this document at all, of course not.”

Valeskog said that while the city wants to continue its good relationship with the embassy, it will follow Swedish law and city policies to include DEI practices.

By KATHY McCORMACK

A Tufts University student from Turkey told a federal judge Friday that she has had a dozen asthma attacks in the six weeks since she was arrested while walking along a street in a Boston suburb.

Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, participated in her bail hearing in Vermont by video from an immigration detention center in Louisiana. She said the first of 12 asthma attacks came on at the Atlanta airport while she was waiting to be taken to Louisiana. The attack was severe, and she did not have all her medications.

“I was afraid, and I was crying,” she said.

Her lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process. They have called for her release.

The U.S. Justice Department said an immigration court in Louisiana, which is conducting separate removal proceedings regarding Ozturk, has jurisdiction over her case.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions ordered Ozturk’s transfer to Vermont, where she was last confined before she was taken to Louisiana. The government requested a delay, but a federal appeals court upheld his decision Wednesday, ordering Ozturk to be transferred to ICE custody in Vermont no later than May 14.

Sessions decided not to wait for the transfer, going ahead with the bail hearing.

Immigration officials surrounded Ozturk in Massachusetts on March 25 and drove her to New Hampshire and Vermont before putting her on a plane to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana. Her student visa had been revoked several days earlier, but she was not informed of that, her lawyers said.

Ozturk’s lawyers first filed a petition on her behalf in Massachusetts, but they did not know where she was and were unable to speak to her until more than 24 hours after she was detained. A Massachusetts judge later transferred the case to Vermont.

Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Ozturk said Friday that if she is released, Tufts would offer her housing and her lawyers and friends would drive her to future court hearings.

“I will follow all the rules,” she said.

A State Department memo said Ozturk’s visa was revoked following an assessment that her actions ”‘may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in March, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Associated Press writer Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.

The Frost will be without a key piece in Game 2 of their first-round playoff series in Toronto after the PWHL suspended winger Britta Curl-Salemme one game for a hit she delivered in Game 1.

The PWHL Player Safety Committee handed down the suspension, the third of Curl-Salemme’s rookie season, on Friday morning.

It’s a difficult loss for Minnesota, which trails the series 1-0 after a 3-2 loss in Toronto on Wednesday. Curl-Salemme scored the Frost’s first goal in that game, but moments later was assessed a 5-minute major and game misconduct for what PWHL Player Safety characterized as “a high and forceful check” on Toronto blue liner Renata Fast.

Curl-Salemme, was skating the puck out of her own end when she raised an elbow and appeared to catch Fast in the jaw. The hit, the league said in a statement Friday, made “the head the main point of contact on a play where such contact to the head was avoidable.”

A rookie from Wisconsin, Curl-Salemme had been fined and suspended twice already this season, once for a high sticking incident on Jan. 2 against Boston and again for an illegal check to the head on Mar. 9 against Toronto.

In a Zoom interview with reporters on Thursday, Toronto coach Troy Ryan said Fast had been seen twice by the Sceptres’ medical team and was likely to play on Friday.

Minnesota coach Ken Klee said Curl-Salemme was not “a malicious person,” and, while acknowledging it cost her a game, that Wednesday’s incident was a competitive hockey play.

“For players that play hard and aggressive, sometimes it’s tough,” Klee said. “It’s happening in a split second. It’s nothing malicious for her. I mean, obviously, we know that decisions are going to be made, but for her, she’s trying to play hard, trying to do her job.”

The PWHL’s Player Safety Committee is chaired by PWHL executive vice president of hockey operations and includes PWHL special advisor Cassie Campbell-Pascall, former NHL referee Bill McCreary, longtime NHL executive Mike Murphy and Matt McMahon, a member of the NHL’s Player Safety department.