Republicans ready bill to bar Palestinian refugees on national security grounds

The law is called the GAZA Act – Guaranteeing Aggressors Zero Admission.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Republican congressmen are preparing a bill to bar potential Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip from entering the United States on national security grounds, Breitbart News reported exclusively Friday.

The law, being formulated by Reps. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) and Andy Ogles (R-TN), is called the GAZA Act – Guaranteeing Aggressors Zero Admission.

Tiffany said in a statement explained the reasoning behind the bill, “Following the horrific attack by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists on innocent Israeli civilians, the last thing America ought to do is trust identity documents issued by the radicals that oversee these territories. We need to put our security at home first and that starts by closing the door to bad actors who might be seeking to enter our country.”

The act also closes other loopholes that could be used to bring in Gazans, such as the Department of Homeland Security’s parole conduit. The Republicans don’t trust this avenue, which the Biden Administration used to resettle close to 100,000 Afghan refugees after the Taliban took over their country in August 2021.

“We can’t let President Biden abuse our parole and visa rules to bring unvetted Palestinians into American communities the way he did with thousands of unvetted Afghans,” Tiffany posted to X Saturday. “I introduced the GAZA Act to protect America’s national security.”

A former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, testified in April to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence that more than 300 of the refugees released into the U.S. had then been found in a Department of Defense’s watchlist because they had planted improvised explosive devices against American and allied forces in Afghanistan.

The idea for the legislation comes as certain progressive Democrat voices such as New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, told The New York Post that “The international community as well as the United States should be prepared to welcome refugees from Palestine [sic],” although he clarified that the authorities should be “very careful to vet and not allow members of Hamas” into the country.

Israel warned Gazan civilians to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, and especially Gaza City, for their own safety, in probable preparation for a ground invasion early this week, after declaring war following the Hamas invasion last Saturday in which the terrorists murdered more than 1,300 men, women and children and took some 150 hostages, including babies, into the Gaza Strip.

Gaza City is crisscrossed with a network of terror tunnels in which Hamas terrorists hide, manufacture and store rockets and other weaponry, under houses, schools and mosques, in blatant violation of international law. Hundreds of thousands have fled southward, although Hamas called for civilians to stay put so that they could continue using them as human shields.

The IDF said that the terror organization that rules the coastal enclave with an iron hand has even set up blockades to stop Gazans from leaving.

Hundreds, if not thousands, have gathered near the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in the hopes of leaving the Strip, but Egypt has so far refused, going so far as to reinforce the crossing with high mounds of dirt.

Afghanistangaza stripHamasOperation Iron SwordsPalestinian refugeesUS Congress