An Israeli security official says four bodies have been transferred to the Red Cross by Hamas.

Israel is now expected to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in the coming hours in exchange.

Footage taken in the early hours of Thursday local time showed a group of Palestinian prisoners disembarking from a Red Cross vehicle in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, to the cheers of a jubilant crowd, but it is unclear how many have been released.

This is the final release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners under Phase 1 of the ceasefire deal Hamas and Israel agreed last month.

Officially, that truce ends on Saturday. It is unclear whether talks on extending the ceasefire have begun.

Israel has not said publicly whether it has identified the bodies handed over by Hamas.

Earlier, Israel said it would send a team of experts from the National Center for Forensic Medicine to the Kerem Shalom border crossing “to assist in identifying the deceased hostages.”

A previous release caused uproar when one of the bodies handed over by Hamas – that was supposed to be that of the hostage Shiri Bibas – was found instead to be that of an unidentified Gazan woman. Hamas later blamed a mix-up and returned Bibas’ body.

If the four bodies are identified as belonging to the hostages, the release would mean that Hamas and its allies now hold 59 captives according to Israeli figures. Of those, more than half are thought to be dead by the Israeli government. One, Hadar Goldin, has been held, dead, since before October 7, 2023.

Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said earlier on Wednesday that the remains of Tsachi Idan, Itzhak Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi and Shlomo Mantzur would be handed over.

The Israeli military has previously said that Mantzur, who at 85 was the oldest hostage taken on October 7, 2023, was killed during the Hamas-led attack and his body was held in Gaza. It had not confirmed the deaths of the others.

The latest transfer was held in private after the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said an agreement had been reached for the four to be returned “in an agreed-upon procedure and without Hamas ceremonies.”

The handover had been in doubt since Saturday, when Israel failed to release more than 600 Palestinians prisoners and detainees in protest at what it said were “humiliating ceremonies” conducted by Hamas during previous releases.

Earlier Saturday, Hamas had released six Israeli hostages from Gaza in two public ceremonies and one private transfer, in what was the final return of living hostages in the first phase of a ceasefire deal that began last month.

Among the Palestinians due for release is Nael Barghouti, the longest-serving Palestinian political prisoner. Nael has been in and out of prison since he was first arrested in 1978 and accused of engaging in attacks against the Israeli military.

He was released in a 2011 Israel-Hamas deal, which saw 1,100 Palestinians exchanged for one Israeli soldier held by Hamas for five years, Gilad Shalit. Nael was re-arrested by Israeli forces in 2014 for “Hamas membership,” according to Israeli media, and has since been serving a life sentence.

The society said 151 prisoners serving life sentences and long sentences were due to be released to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jerusalem or sent into exile. Among them is Bilal Abu Ghanem, who is serving concurrent life sentences for the murder of three Israelis on a Jerusalem bus in 2015.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Lauren Izso contributed reporting.

Editor’s Note: This interview was originally published November 2024 and has been updated ahead of the 2025 Academy Awards.

Midway through the documentary “No Other Land,” journalist and activist Basel Adra recounts a 2009 visit to his village by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In a navy suit and crisp tie, surrounded by security detail and photographers, Blair walked through the village for seven minutes, Adra says in a voice-over.

He visits the local school, Adra says. He passes by Adra’s family’s home. He nods along to something someone says off camera, the footage shows. He shakes a hand. He smiles.

Months later, after Blair returns to the UK, Israel cancels the demolition orders held for the school and home in the street he visited, Adra says. In the mere handful of minutes, Blair accomplished what villagers had been trying to do for years.

“This,” Adra says, “is a story about power.”

“No Other Land” tells of the continued demolition of Masafer Yatta, a collection of villages in the Hebron mountains of the West Bank where Adra and his family still live. But as we see the demolition — the local playground torn down, his family moving their beds and other belongings into a cave, his brother shot and killed by soldiers, attacks by Jewish settlers — Adra and the rest of the filmmakers also show us a community trying to survive.

Adra’s filming begins in 2019 and stretches until 2023, chronicling the Israeli government’s attempt to evict the villagers by force, having claimed the land for a military training facility and firing range in 1981. (During the lengthy legal battle, before the Israeli supreme court ruled in favor of demolishing homes in the villages in 2022, Israeli prosecutors argued that Palestinian residents only began squatting in the area when it was declared a firing range, after previously using the land as seasonal pasture. Residents countered, saying the IDF had blown up Palestinian homes in Masafer Yatta decades earlier, in 1966).

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What motivated you to pick up the camera in the first place? Was making a documentary always the goal?

Basel Adra: No, it wasn’t. It was documenting. To document the things around me was the goal, and it always felt important to catch the incidents that’s happening around us as evidence of the reality of what’s happening. And then, after years, the guys joined, and we decided together that we want to make a movie.

Yuval Abraham: I came here as a journalist, so documenting was part of the job. It’s something that I believe in. I came into journalism out of realizing that there is so much that is not being told in the land that we live in that needs to be told. But for me, the act of documenting, whether it’s by writing or by filming, always has a purpose or an audience in mind, most of the time. Whereas for Basel, it’s also that, but as he said, it’s also the way to survive when you’re being attacked, or when your community is.

You started filming this in 2019 and you wrapped it up before the events of October 2023. Do you think the film has changed or taken on new meaning because of what’s happened since then?

Abraham: Of course, the movie meets the audience at the moment where the audience is. Now, Palestine and Israel are on the news 24/7 for the past year. To me, the film is showing the reality on the ground before October, and it’s showing essentially the decades-long occupation of Palestinians. And I think one of the reasons why we made the movie is, for me, is because — October 7 is an atrocity — but the world was not paying attention, almost at all, to the violent life that Palestinians are living under for decades before October.

This adds so much urgency for me to the film right now. It’s clear that, to anybody who watches our film and looks at the reality of the farmers in Masafer Yatta, living under Israeli military control is not something sustainable and it’s not something just. It’s not something that can continue. Me and Basel were born in the ‘90s. If we would have reached a political solution then, imagine how many more people would be alive today? And it’s unfortunate that people are now talking about the need for political change only after, in a way, human beings are paying with their blood.

I know with the recent escalation, you had to cut your time in the US short. How did it feel to go from touring this documentary all over the world, getting awards, etc., to zooming back home to Palestine and Israel?

Adra: It’s different. It’s not easy to go to the festivals and succeed, and journalists talk about it, the audience wants to see it, and it’s been sold out in many festivals. But coming back to the reality here, it’s sad to see that the situation is going, changing to be worse than it was even before.

Abraham: It’s a question that we always ask ourselves: What can we do to cause change? To end the occupation, to reach a political movement? Now, I think after really a year, it’s hard not to talk about Gaza, honestly, because you see every single day, literally, houses filled with families being bombed and little children obliterated or burnt alive. And now in the north of the Gaza Strip, there is an ethnic cleansing. It’s one of the biggest atrocities of our age and time, and the atrocities of October 7 cannot justify what has been going on every single day since.

What kind of footage do people need to see for the United States to change its foreign policy in a way which would be constructive for the people who are living here, in a way which will push us towards some kind of political solution?

Those of us who want to see a future where this oppression ends have to call for a change. And so can our film do that? I don’t think it can do that. It’s very hard to speak about the power now of documentary and footage, when there is so much footage. You can now Google. I mean, just open Twitter and open Facebook, you see so much endless footage of violence and nothing is changing. It’s a complicated position that we are in, so I don’t know what can change.

So, you don’t necessarily feel hope that things can change, because there’s footage everywhere?

Abraham: This is why we made a documentary, because there is a difference between just posting a random instance of violence to watching our film, which tells a very strong human story of a community for four years, trying to survive on their land. We hope that watching a film will have some kind of impact that these videos that we post on social media does not have.

At the end of the day, we’re not powerful people, and if the people who have power are not using their power to change the reality, then things are not going to change. We can make a million documentaries about it, but they’re not going to change their reality.

When was the moment where you decided, ‘I’m done waiting on other journalists; I’m going to tell my own story?’

Adra: Well, this is like back in the beginning, of documenting what’s going on. What I saw, like the missions happening, the attacks are happening here in Masafer Yatta. But it’s not a story, even, it’s a routine in our lives. So there I started using social media, writing articles and filming what is happening.

Abraham: There are times in history when policy becomes invisible to the people because it happens so much. It’s just routine. It’s part of the routine oppression. I think of South Africa, for example. There were times when it was just considered normal, under the apartheid regime, to have certain people who cannot vote for the main government. It was just normal. You didn’t need to report about it. And this is what’s really happening here in Masafer Yatta. Yesterday, houses were demolished. Was it reported anywhere? It’s not going to be reported, because this is the day-to-day life, the routine life, under the military occupation.

One of the challenges we face as journalists or even as activists, is how to take a policy that is a routine, that the people are not able to see, and to make them see it. And this is one reason to make the film, to make this policy a story that will be so strong that will show the human aspects of it in such a powerful way that people will be interested to see it.

I’ve heard some places have been hesitant to maybe distribute the documentary theatrically. Is that something that you have run into?

Adra: Yeah, we still don’t have a distributor in the US, we think it’s because of the subject, they’re not taking it. We wish this will change in the future, because we really want the movie to be shown around the US, and we want millions of people to see it.

What are you hoping the impact will be? 

Adra: We want political change for the situation here.

Abraham: Change is possible, especially if there is willingness from the US leaders to allow us to reach the point of change. The United States is very much complicit in what we are seeing in our movie. For a better future for Palestinians and for Israelis, we need change in US foreign policy, and we hope that the film will contribute to that.

Like that moment with Blair, for example. 

Abraham: It just gives you an example of people’s lives here are getting ruined, and for people in power who are sitting in Washington, DC or in New York or in London, to change that is a matter of lifting their finger to exert pressure on Israel to stop.

Of course, in the long term, we hope that the film — and not only our film, activism and work that we are doing on the ground and abroad — will lead to an end to this occupation, and to a political solution that is based on Palestinians having freedom, and Palestinians and Israelis both having political and individual rights. And the way to do that is the US changing their foreign policy. That is one of the main things that need to change, and if our film can contribute to that, even just a little bit, then I’m very, very happy that we made it.

It’s time for Keir Starmer to make his move.

Britain’s prime minister has spent months carefully crafting a chummy relationship with Donald Trump. He has showered the US president with flattery since even before his November election win; he has been, in Trump’s words, “very nice.”

On Thursday, Starmer could finally extract something tangible in return. His visit to Washington is the biggest foreign policy challenge yet for a leader who, at a critical time for Ukraine’s future, has emerged as a potential bridge-builder: someone who can sway Trump from his confrontational tendencies and communicate to him the anxieties of the West.

The other scenario is less rosy: Starmer might discover that he’s been building a bridge to nowhere. He and Trump are not natural political bedfellows; there is baggage in their past, and a glaring chasm in their worldviews. Starmer talks up the “special relationship” between Britain and the US at every opportunity, but that relationship is getting bumpy. They want different things.

Urgency on Ukraine

Trump’s stance on Ukraine has tipped this centuries-old transatlantic alliance into uncertainty, as it has done to so many others – including the American relationship with NATO. The president has purred at the advances of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, attacked Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, and has barely returned Europe’s calls, cutting the continent out of negotiations over the end of the conflict.

Starmer follows French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited Washington on Monday, in attempting to straighten those jumbled ties, and he will set the table for Zelensky’s trip to Washington on Friday. All three want to secure a version of peace that Ukraine and Europe can stomach: one that doesn’t sell out occupied Ukrainian territory, and that America will work to maintain.

Britain and France are leading diplomatic efforts on putting together a potential European peacekeeping force, which could enter Ukraine if a ceasefire deal were agreed, but the plan hinges on an American security presence: a “backstop” likely centered on air power, based in a nearby NATO country like Poland or Romania.

On Monday, Trump told reporters that “Europe is going to make sure nothing happens” after a deal is agreed. But Starmer has insisted Europe can’t carry that burden alone, and that American support is the only way to prevent Putin from attacking again.

More urgently, Starmer will seek to persuade Trump to include Zelensky in talks over his country’s future. That is Europe’s most fundamental demand of Trump; the continent is intensely anxious about a pro-Moscow deal being forced on Zelensky.

But he is stepping onto an uneven playing field. Starmer’s problem is obvious: This visit matters far more to him than it does to Trump. The president has little time for European powers; he has threatened to impose major tariffs, and turned his back on decades of American foreign policy, which had placed Europe’s security at the top of Washington’s own priorities.

Starmer presented Trump with a significant gift ahead of his trip, announcing on Tuesday that Britain would hike its defense spending to 2.5% by 2027, and to 3% by the middle of the next decade. That is an unexpected acceleration of his government’s goal, and represents massive expenditure. It is also desperately needed; the British military is much depleted, experts say. A massive review of Britain’s army is due to conclude soon, and nobody expects its findings to be complimentary.

“We must change our national security posture, because a generational challenge requires a generational response,” Starmer said as he unveiled the new policy. “Courage is what our own era now demands of us.” Speaking to journalists later, he admitted the obvious: that events of recent weeks have hastened the move.

A complicated relationship

Thursday’s conversations will test more broadly the twin-track approach that Europe is taking towards Trump.

One camp wants to disengage. Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz said after his election win on Sunday that Europe should “achieve independence” from the US, and slammed “outrageous” American interventions in his country’s politics.

Starmer, like Macron and Italy’s leader Giorgia Meloni, is firmly in the other group; he believes that Trump, if properly convinced, can be retrieved from the clutches of Putin’s embrace.

And there are few other leaders who can do it. “We’re not going to have an election for the foreseeable future. We’ve got a stable, center-left government. Therefore we can play an integral part in these conversations, in a way that other leaders may find difficult,” Ainsley, the former policy chief, said.

But there may be awkward questions for Starmer to answer when he and Trump face the media. Several members of his center-left government have historically condemned Trump. When he was an opposition MP, Starmer himself said Trump’s endorsement of Boris Johnson showed that Johnson “isn’t fit to be prime minister.”

Last October, then-candidate Trump returned fire, accusing Starmer’s Labour Party of election interference after it emerged that dozens of activists had campaigned for Kamala Harris.

Since then, Starmer has kept a tight lid on any criticism of the president from within his ranks. But privately, Trump’s recent interventions on Gaza and Ukraine have appalled most within Labour.

An ‘insane’ deal

Starmer has several obstacles to clear at the White House, and they go beyond Ukraine. The visit is more broadly a challenge of his people-pleasing approach to global affairs.

The prime minister wants to keep everyone happy. He has been loath to criticize Trump, has warmed up Britain’s post-Brexit partnership with the European Union, avowedly backed Kyiv and thawed ties with China. At a time of geopolitical upheaval, he is attempting to squeeze Britain into an impossibly tight Venn diagram.

A case in point: Starmer’s intensely controversial plan to hand the Chagos Islands, Britain’s last African colony, to Mauritius, ending a years-long legal and ethical quandary.

Downing Street says the deal will secure the future of Diego Garcia, a US-UK military base on one of the islands, for 99 years. But Starmer needs Trump’s approval to finish the paperwork, and Westminster does not expect the self-stylized dealmaker-in-chief to be impressed by the terms: London is expected to pay billions of pounds to close the deal, and Mauritius is heavily reliant on imports from China, which has raised national security concerns on both sides of the Atlantic.

The deal is “insane,” according to a former Conservative minister, Grant Shapps, who as UK defense secretary halted the negotiations that Labour later revived.

Mauritius has pushed for control of the islands for decades, and bodies including the International Court of Justice have backed its claims. But Shapps said: “You sometimes, as Trump is proving to the world, just have to say ‘no.’ You have to think about your own national interest.”

Ukraine, Chagos, China and a colorful history of remarks about Trump are all awkward conversation topics that must be broached on Thursday. Starmer will do so delicately; unlike Macron, he is unlikely to fact-check Trump in front of the cameras. But he has run out of room for flattery; there is little time left to start some difficult discussions.

Starmer did not necessarily choose to be a statesman. His foremost stated objective is to grow Britain’s economy; he doesn’t want enemies, he wants investment and trade. But the world has had other ideas, and willingly or not, Starmer has found himself a key cog in a global structure on the verge of collapse.

On Monday, Starmer admitted Trump has “changed the global conversation” on Ukraine. Now it is Britain’s opportunity to do the talking.

President Donald Trump’s upending of US foreign policy has alarmed allies and nations in need. His administration has frozen foreign aid, threatened to take control of other countries’ sovereign territory, exited key international bodies and alienated Europe with an embrace of Russia.

But the head-spinning set of moves, that together signal a retreat from leadership of a liberal order to “America First,” is playing right into the messaging of the US’ biggest rival.

In this time of “transformation and turbulence,” China has a vision for a “safer world,” its top diplomat Wang Yi told G20 counterparts last week as he reiterated Beijing’s pitch for “a new path to security” without alliances, “zero-sum” competition and “bloc confrontation.”

That vision – coded language for reshaping a world order China sees as unfairly dominated by the West – has been a cornerstone of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s push to step up as an alternative global leader to the US.

And the drive has the potential to take on new relevance, observers say, as Beijing eyes the opportunities to advance its influence in the wake of Trump’s US foreign policy upset.

Trump’s shake-up was obvious even in the room of foreign ministers from the world’s largest economies where Wang, China’s most seasoned diplomat, spoke in South Africa last week.

The absence of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio meant no high-ranking US diplomat was there to present an American counterpoint to a gathering of countries that make up 80% of the global population and three-quarters of international trade.

On the surface, this shift has the potential to accelerate China’s ascent as a global power, potentially granting the world’s second-largest economy space to win more allies, boost its global leadership and shift global norms and rules – such as those on human rights or security – in its favor.

But countries from Europe to Asia are well aware of the wide gap between Beijing’s benign rhetoric and its behavior as it flouts a major international ruling to harass Philippine vessels in the South China Sea or intimidates Taiwan – the self-ruling democracy Bejing claims.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has signaled it wants to shift attention from other global conflicts to focus on its rivalry with China. And Beijing will face that and potential fresh US tariffs on its goods as it tries to revive a weak economy – limiting how much it can pour into expanding global influence.

But even still, there are signs that China may see potential for those headwinds to just be some turbulence in a rise made easier by Trump’s policies.

“Trump 2.0 era will undoubtedly weaken the US’ leadership in international affairs,” an analysis published this month on the website of Shanghai-based think tank Fudan Development Institute said.

“As other countries, particularly the European Union and China, actively respond, the power vacuum left by the US withdrawal may be filled by them … With the US no longer able to dominate global issues as it once did, a new global governance structure may emerge,” it said.

Soft power vacuum

As Trump dismantles the US foreign aid sector – freezing funding to global education, health and development programs – some English-language arms of Chinese state media released scathing critiques of such assistance.

Foreign aid is “viewed by the US as a tool to maintain its hegemonic position and engage in geopolitical maneuvering,” nationalist tabloid the Global Times said in an article on USAID, an agency Beijing has long seen as a thorn in its side, accusing of sparking democratic “color revolutions” and indoctrinating US proxies across the world. USAID, which was founded during the Cold War, has long played a key role in advancing American soft power and democratic ideals.

Beijing, however, wasn’t looking at Washington’s aid freeze as an opportunity because – unlike the US – China treats “other nations with sincerity, fairness, and selflessness,” an editorial by the state-run outlet claimed.

There has been some indication China will take targeted steps to ramp up its support in regions it sees as strategically important in the wake of the US freeze – a move that would align with what experts have seen as a soft-power struggle between the two countries in recent decades.

In Cambodia, for example, Beijing released $4.4 million for demining operations, as US-backed landmine removal programs were halted in eight provinces, the Associated Press reported, citing the Cambodian Mine Action Center.

Overall, however, experts say there’s little chance that Beijing would be able or willing to step up to fill the US aid void.

China is a huge player in global development, funneling more than a trillion dollars into overseas projects between 2000 and 2021. But unlike the US, data show the vast majority of Beijing’s development spending is not direct aid, but loans and other financing.

And economic belt-tightening has seen Beijing move away from big-ticket commitments, like building railroads and power plants under Xi’s signature Belt and Road overseas infrastructure drive, paring back to more modest projects in recent years.

“Trump is giving China some opportunity – but China might not be able to pick up this US gift,” said Shanghai-based foreign affairs analyst Shen Dingli. “Due to our gloomy economy and the (downsized) version of Belt and Road … we have less money to buy loyalty.”

Even still, China may look to capitalize on countries’ uncertainty about the US to expand its trade and security ties, as well as access to critical minerals, observers say. And countries may take uncertainty in US relations – from the aid freeze to Trump’s tariff threats – into calculations for dealing with the world’s two largest economies.

“Beijing can send the message to the rest of the world … that the US is fundamentally going to be unreliable,” said Manoj Kewalramani, who heads Indo-Pacific studies at the Takshashila Institution research center in the Indian city of Bengaluru. “Why would you want to pick a fight with Beijing now?”

There are already signs of concern from some parts about Beijing’s potential gains from a Trump-era pullback of US assistance.

In an open letter to Trump posted on social platform X, Nepalese lawmaker Rajendra Bajgain last week warned that a “vacuum created by reduced American involvement will inevitably be filled by other powers that do not share the values of democracy and free enterprise.”

Two major US-funded infrastructure projects as well as other initiatives in Nepal have been put on hold following the US aid freeze, Reuters reported.

China’s aid “aligns with the needs of recipient countries for socio-economic development and the improvement of people’s livelihoods,” it said.

‘Checked and balanced’

But even as some of Trump’s moves so far have created potential openings for Beijing, there’s also the hanging question of how his administration may ultimately calibrate its aid and foreign policy – and its rivalry with China.

When asked this month if the foreign aid shake-up was giving China and Russia an opportunity to expand their influence, national security adviser Mike Waltz told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “all too often these missions and these programs, number one, are not in line with strategic US interests like pushing back on China.”

And speaking to European counterparts earlier this month, US defense chief Pete Hegseth warned that the US could no longer be “primarily focused on the security of Europe.” Instead, the US is “prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific,” he said.

There have also been signs of Trump’s brash diplomacy working against Beijing’s benefit.

Panama, the first country in Latin America to sign onto China’s Belt and Road Initiative, announced it would pull out of the scheme after Trump repeatedly threatened to “take back” the Panama Canal, falsely claiming Panama had ceded its operations to China.

And in Europe, even as Trump officials lambasted European and NATO counterparts earlier this month and warmed to Russia, US allies there appeared galvanized, rather than dissuaded, to bolster NATO with more spending. That pivot will also mean Beijing is watching closely whether Washington is able to peel away its close ally Moscow, as the White House has signaled it may hope to do.

Even still, Beijing will likely see the time as right to put more focus on repairing strained relations with Europe – a potential opening that could widen if Trump slaps tariffs on European goods.

Trump has also so far not shaken US alliances in Asia, as Beijing may have hoped. And it’s not clear that “America First” will leave a security void in Asia or weaken the US alliance system there.

The US president held seemingly successful meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Indian counterpart Narendra Modi this month, and signaled support for the Pacific-focused AUKUS alliance of Canberra, London and Washington.

And uncertainty or future demands from Trump could also strengthen arsenals and partnerships in the region. On Monday, US allies the Philippines and Japan agreed to further deepen their defense collaborations.

Beijing, so far, has been seen as continuing to probe the limits of its own military muscle-flexing in the region, in recent days conducting what New Zealand said were unprecedented live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea.

On Wednesday, Taiwan accused China of setting up a zone for “live-fire training” without advance notice a day after the island’s coast guard detained a Chinese-crewed cargo ship suspected of cutting an undersea cable in the Taiwan Strait.

But Beijing will be carefully watching how Trump’s policies and his allies’ response to them weigh on its core ambitions to defend its territorial claims in the South China Sea – and take control of the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan.

“As long as the war in Europe would be put to an end, China’s freedom of action in our part of the world might be more seriously checked and balanced,” said Shen in Shanghai.

“China must be watching, calculating how it should adjust its new approach to this fast-moving situation,” he said.

The legal team representing Mexico in a lawsuit against eight firearms manufacturers in the United States is preparing to argue part of their case before the US Supreme Court on March 4, according to Pablo Arrocha, legal consultant for the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“This case is going through a stage where questions of admissibility will still be reviewed, not of substance,” Arrocha clarified on Tuesday at the International Forum on Arms Trafficking and Diversion in Latin America organized by the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE).

The Mexican government sued several US arms manufacturers in 2021, accusing them of providing weapons that ultimately reach drug cartels operating in the country and demanding compensation for economic and social damages resulting from armed violence.

Mexico, which has only one gun store, has claimed in the past that between 70% and 90% of all guns recovered from Mexican crime scenes come from the US. A 2024 report from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that 72% of international gun trafficking cases originating in the US featured Mexico as the target country.

In October 2024, the US Supreme Court granted a request by Smith & Wesson and other companies to review a federal appeals court ruling that revived the case after a lower court judge dismissed it, citing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. This is a law that generally bars civil liability for firearms manufacturers and distributors for the use of their products by criminal third parties.

In court filings, the manufacturers have challenged Mexico’s allegations that they were aiding and abetting the illegal sale of their weapons in violation of US federal law. They have pointed to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that shielded Twitter from a lawsuit alleging it aided and abetted terrorism by hosting tweets from the terrorist group ISIS.

“In its zeal to attack the firearms industry, Mexico seeks to raze bedrock principles of American law that safeguard the whole economy,” the manufacturers wrote in a November 2024 brief.

A second lawsuit, filed by Mexico in October 2022 in an Arizona court against five stores that sell guns, is in the evidence-gathering stage, according to Arrocha. Mexico accuses them of negligence, public nuisance and unjust enrichment.

According to the ATF, the Arizona to Mexico gun trafficking pipeline is second only to the illicit firearms trade between Texas and Mexico.

The legal advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that both lawsuits are moving forward and that there are scenarios for any type of outcome.

“This is the beginning, and this is the tip of the spear of something that can allow for much broader litigation strategies in the future,” he said at the forum.

The case comes to the Supreme Court at a moment of diplomatic tension between Mexico and the US. Last week, the US officially designated six Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups, an act that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum characterized as potentially endangering Mexican sovereignty.

At the same press conference, Sheinbaum declared that she would seek reforms to prosecute “any national or foreigner involved in the illicit manufacture, distribution, disposal, transfer and internment of weapons into [Mexico’s] national territory.”