The West Bank-governing Palestinian Authority is taking a stand against a coalition of militants based in the Jenin refugee camp.

The beleaguered PA is staking its legitimacy on a security operation designed to extend its control, jump on a weakened Iranian alliance network, and even prove its ability to take on governance of Gaza.

But will this be the unloved and deeply distrusted authority’s last stand?

As of Thursday, PA security services had the Jenin camp surrounded and besieged for the fourth straight week, part of a long-term security campaign that has led to nearly 250 arrests and the deaths of 15 people, including three militants, six PA officers, a journalist, and a child.

A tense standoff is prevailing in Jenin between PA forces on the perimeter and an unknown number of militants holed up inside the mazelike camp along with the few dozen residents who remain.

Electricity and water have been cut off to the camp since the start of the campaign Dec. 14, and PA snipers perched above buildings monitor its entrance, residents say.

Raneen Sawafta/Reuters

A member of the Palestinian Authority security forces aims a weapon during clashes with a coalition of militants, in Jenin, West Bank, Dec. 14, 2024.

The PA and militants have traded accusations over why the electric company has yet to restore power.

The authority is trumpeting its “protect the homeland” campaign as a “law and order” operation against the cross-factional Jenin Brigades, comprising Palestinian Islamic jihad, Hamas, independents, and a splinter faction of Fatah, the party that controls the PA.

The brigades, whose members say they are devoted to “armed resistance,” have orchestrated attacks on Israelis in the West Bank since their formation in 2021. The coalition has faced several Israeli military incursions into the camp in attempts to root it out.

Now the PA, looking to burnish its credentials with the West – and prevent a pretext for wider destructive Israeli military incursions in the West Bank – is attempting to root out the brigades for good.

The PA says the militants are Tehran-backed “outlaws” and not “legitimate resistance fighters.”

West Bank is polarized

The Jenin Brigades and supporters within the camp say the PA campaign seeks to demonstrate to Israel that it has complete control over areas in the West Bank. Hamas, which for years has been operating in refugee camps, warned that the authority was “crossing all red lines.”

As part of their operations, the security services say they have confiscated “large numbers of weapons and explosive material,” and accuse the militants of planting explosive devices in the streets and alleyways of the mazelike camp, a car-bombing, and “spreading chaos.”

Public support for the PA or the militants is divided, pointing to a growing schism within Palestinian society. The West Bank has not been this polarized in nearly two decades.

Jenin residents, weary of years of deadly Israeli incursions, have expressed their desire for a return to normal life. But the PA’s cutting of electricity and water has increased pressure on camp residents to leave.

Raneen Sawafta/Reuters

A Palestinian protests against shooting clashes between Palestinian security forces and militants, at a demonstration in Jenin, West Bank, Dec. 21, 2024.

Tamam Mer’ei says her bedridden husband requires a constant power supply for his electric bed. When the electricity was cut last month, her family of five, along with her son’s family, began to feel the strain of the blockade.

“The cold December weather and near-constant sound of gunfire made it extremely difficult to leave the house to seek supplies,” she says. “Eventually, we had no choice but to leave the camp, because my husband suffered a heart attack.”

Braving crossfire, the family evacuated her husband on a wheelchair, maneuvering past explosive devices hidden under rubble by militants.

“The situation is miserable. Not just because of the lack of food, water, and utilities, but because it’s unbearable to see Palestinians fighting each other,” she says, speaking from Ibn Sina Hospital, where her husband is recovering.

With us or against us

Meanwhile, the PA and President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction are employing with-us-or-against-us rhetoric, likening dissent to “betrayal.”

In a rare show of force, Fatah held a military parade in Ramallah last week to celebrate its founding, its fighters firing into the air.

As part of its crackdown on criticisms of the Jenin campaign, the PA last week shut down Al Jazeera’s offices in Ramallah, banned the Qatar-based network from broadcasting in the West Bank, and ordered four of its websites to be blocked.

To explain the move, after two decades of relying on the network’s coverage of alleged Israeli violations in the occupied territories, the PA accused Al Jazeera of incitement and sowing division in “our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular.”

Observers say the message is clear: Criticism of the campaign will not be tolerated.

Raneen Sawafta/Reuters

Mourners carry the body of Palestinian Shatha al-Sabbagh, a Jenin refugee camp resident who reported on clashes between Palestinian security forces and militants, during her funeral in the camp, Dec. 29, 2024.

Local nongovernmental organizations, rights groups, and journalists have been largely unable to enter Jenin camp amid the PA’s intense security measures. Reports from the camp have relied on local journalists and social media posts by residents, one of whom, Shatha al-Sabbagh, was shot dead in late December. Her family says the security services are to blame, an allegation the PA denies.

The Jenin campaign had been planned for months, Palestinian officials say, and was accelerated in the wake of the weakening of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” in Lebanon and Syria.

Another factor driving the campaign: Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and calls from the Israeli far right to export the war to the West Bank, PA officials and observers say.

In statements to the press, PA security forces spokesperson Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab has stressed the authority’s commitment not to give Israel an excuse to turn the West Bank into another Gaza, citing the international community’s inability to stop the “genocide” there.

“Many Palestinians in the authority and among the public are afraid of Israel taking advantage of the situation in refugee camps to do things in the West Bank similar to what they are doing in Gaza,” says Ghassan Khatib, a professor of international studies at Birzeit University.

Raneen Sawafta/Reuters

Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, spokesperson of the Palestinian security forces, speaks about the PA operation in the Jenin camp, in Jenin, West Bank, Jan. 9, 2025.

Community leaders preach dialogue as a way out of the crisis.

“The current form of resistance adopted by these groups is unlikely to yield results without significant costs,” says Nidal Obeidi, a former mayor of Jenin and veteran Fatah official.

“At the same time, the PA must recognize that it cannot resolve this situation without an open and genuine dialogue,” he says. Otherwise, it “risks pushing the entire society into a national disaster.”

Yet dissent is already splitting Mr. Abbas’ party itself.

Zakaria Zubeidi and Jamal Hawil, both Fatah officials imprisoned by Israel, released a statement recently denouncing the campaign, warning that the PA’s actions serve Israeli and U.S. interests rather than the Palestinian cause.

“The real problem is the lack of hope and the absence of any political horizon,” they wrote. “The resistance is not the issue; the issue lies with those who believe that eliminating resistance will secure them power and a state.”

Potential embarrassment

With Palestinians’ disapproval of the PA and Mr. Abbas at all-time highs, much is at stake for the authority.

If it fails to root out the militants, or even stem their attacks, it will expose itself as an inept security partner for the United States and Israel and ruin its chance to govern Gaza, analysts say. At the same time, it will reveal itself as a hollow threat internally in the West Bank.

“The PA’s ability to navigate this crisis will have lasting implications for the future of governance and resistance in the West Bank,” says Mr. Obeidi.

“In this operation, there is no way in which the authority can be completely successful or a complete failure,” says Dr. Khatib. “I think the outcome will be somewhere in between.

“As we all know, as long as there is occupation, there is going to be continued resistance.”

Blocking Arab citizens’ protests against the war in Gaza. Making a mid-level officer who ordered aggressive tactics against anti-government demonstrators the head of Israel’s national police force. Another officer’s refusal to arrest violent Jewish settlers in the hopes of currying favor with his boss.

This is just a partial list of how the Israeli police force has been politicized under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The process has proceeded relentlessly since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power two years ago and gave Mr. Ben-Gvir, an extremist settler provocateur with his own long rap sheet, the highest law enforcement job in the country.

Analysts say the politicization of the police is part of a broader assault on the legal status quo ante by the hard-right coalition, which is reviving its judicial overhaul efforts targeting the Supreme Court and the independent attorney general – key checks on political power in Israel.

“If you are politicizing or privatizing the police, it means you are not a democracy,” says Gayil Talshir, a senior lecturer in political science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. What’s happening within Israel’s police, she argues, is a “grand plan to change Israel from a liberal democracy to an autocracy.”

“Politicization means ending the notion of expertise – one cannot be a professional judge, journalist, police officer, or academic,” she says. “You are always being asked, ‘Which side are you on?’ And if you are deemed to be on the left, you are considered intent on tearing the government down, and if you are on the right, you are seen as supporting it.”

Tsafrir Abayov/AP

Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (center) arrives for a conference calling for Jewish resettlement of the Gaza Strip, near the Israel-Gaza border, southern Israel, Oct. 21, 2024.

The Netanyahu-led government of nationalist, ultranationalist, and religious parties launched its controversial overhaul two years ago to limit judicial review of legislation and executive decision-making. It said it was seeking to constrain what it considered an overly activist, liberal-minded Supreme Court.

At the time, a mass protest movement – unprecedented in size and duration in Israel’s history – was mobilized to counter what democracy activists portrayed as a naked power grab. Demonstrations packed streets around the country for about 40 weeks straight, until the devastating Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas assault thrust the country into war and brought the overhaul efforts to a halt.

Fifteen months into a multi-front conflict that is being felt less acutely now in Israel, the anti-government protests have shrunk, and morphed into demands for a ceasefire deal to return the remaining Oct. 7 hostages.

But for its part, the government is ramping up its judicial overhaul, albeit in altered form. The revised agenda has something for most everyone in the coalition: Mr. Netanyahu, facing an ongoing corruption trial, is still seeking his political survival; settlers still see the overhaul as a path to imposing sovereignty over the West Bank; and the ultra-Orthodox parties are now counting on it to thwart new efforts to induct their conscription-age youths into the army.

Ministers target attorney general

Considered an obstacle to government plans, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara lately has been the subject of increasingly fierce attacks bordering on incitement by ministers who have noisily called for her firing. She has held firm to her role providing legal oversight of the government while leading prosecutions on behalf of the state.

“This is why she is a target. … They [government ministers] want a ‘yes man’ so they can rule without boundaries,” says Yaniv Roznai, a law professor at the Rubinstein Center for Constitutional Challenges at Reichman University.

In November Ms. Baharav-Miara wrote Mr. Netanyahu asking that he consider firing Mr. Ben-Gvir, citing his promotion of loyalists and mounting evidence that he interferes in police operations, including anti-government protests.

Gil Cohen-Magen/AP

Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara attends a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, June 5, 2024. She has faced fierce attacks from members of the far-right government.

“The police are supposed to be a central gatekeeper in a democracy. Imagine that tomorrow the court gives some kind of order, and the government does not want to comply with it,” says Professor Roznai. “We are now in a situation that, frankly, if the court or attorney general say ‘A,’ and the minister of national security says ‘B,’ I am not sure with whom the police will comply, and this is highly problematic. It goes to the core of the rule of law.”

That scenario may already be happening. Last summer, when a right-wing mob that included lawmakers broke into a detention camp to protest the arrest of soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner from Gaza, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Mr. Ben-Gvir may have stymied the police response.

Police duties

Last week, the Supreme Court struck down a section of a controversial new law that gave Mr. Ben-Gvir the power to take control over policies governing how police conduct investigations.

In issuing the ruling, Justice Isaac Amit warned that the police had become dangerously politicized under Mr. Ben-Gvir and, citing a jump in crime rates, noted it isn’t doing the job it is tasked to do. In particular, 2024 saw a dramatic increase in homicides among Israeli Arabs to more than twice the level before Mr. Ben-Gvir took office. There has also been a steep climb in the number of women killed nationwide.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel issued a statement recently claiming an “escalation in arrests and detentions of protesters, alongside the adoption of militant and harsh tactics to disperse them,” saying “police violence has become part of the mainstream.”

Moshe Peretz, a political activist, says even fellow veteran protesters are being deterred from showing up at demonstrations because police have been making more frequent arrests, charging into crowds on horses and removing protesters with what he terms brute force.

Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

Police officers detain a demonstrator as ultra-Orthodox Jewish men protest against attempts to draft members of their community into Israel's military, on the outskirts of Bnei Brak, Israel, Dec. 24, 2024.

“I know well the experience of sitting on a cold bench while detained for hours,” he says.

According to political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin, “They are trying to create an ethos of raw power controlling society, sending a message: ‘If you are a loyal citizen to the government, you will be left alone, but raise your head and we will slap you down.’”

Mr. Ben-Gvir’s Ministry of National Security did not respond to a request for comment.

Palestinian citizens’ rights

For Palestinian citizens of Israel, the heavy-handed police stifling of dissent is nothing new. But the rise in systemic targeting of the community, especially when it comes to freedom of speech and the right to protest under Mr. Ben-Gvir and more so since the war began, has been marked.

Some 200 Palestinian citizens and East Jerusalem residents are facing charges for exercising their rights of freedom of expression, according to Adalah, a Palestinian-run legal center based in Haifa.

In one case, a teacher from Nazareth says she was arrested and held blindfolded in a police car overnight, her hands and feet cuffed, for posting a video of herself on TikTok dancing with a time stamp of Oct. 7. She denies the video was meant as a celebration of the Hamas attack, as Mr. Ben-Gvir reportedly suggested when he instructed police to investigate her.

Myssana Morany, an Adalah lawyer, is representing organizers of a planned march this Friday in the Arab town of Sakhnin calling for an end to the war in Gaza and a crackdown on crime in the Arab sector. The march has been blocked by police on the grounds it could weaken the army’s morale.

“The police,” she says, “are now not even trying to hide the sentiment that, ‘We don’t like your political position, so we are not allowing you to protest.’”

Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg/AP

Todd Blanche (at left), attorney for President-elect Donald Trump, and Mr. Trump appear on a screen at a Manhattan criminal court for sentencing in the hush money case, in New York, Jan. 10, 2025.

In a historic proceeding in a Manhattan court today, President-elect Donald Trump became the first former or incoming president to be sentenced for felony crimes.

Facing a maximum sanction of four years in prison, Mr. Trump received an “unconditional discharge” sentence from New York state Judge Juan Merchan – meaning his conviction on business fraud charges stands, but he faces no incarceration, fines, or probation. But while the sentence is minimal – unusually so, according to some experts – it is also unprecedented.

Mr. Trump is now the first former president, and president-elect, to be officially branded a felon. The somewhat surreal proceeding – Mr. Trump appeared via video link – closes a chapter in only one of four criminal cases brought against the former president.

Hearing his sentence, Mr. Trump – just over a week away from his inauguration – appeared bemused and defiant, delivering a five-minute address to the court before the judge handed down his sentence.

“This has been a very terrible experience,” Mr. Trump said. “I’m totally innocent. I did nothing wrong.”

Judge Merchan, minutes later, contended that the trial “was no more special, unique, or extraordinary than any other” criminal case taking place in the courthouse at that time.

While the presidency comes with extensive powers, “one power they do not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict,” he said.

“Sir, I wish you Godspeed as you pursue your second term in office,” he concluded.

Having been found guilty last May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Mr. Trump pushed to have the case dismissed or delayed. His sentencing was delayed twice. But after months of speculation that he could become the first president in history to be sent to prison, today’s proceeding might feel anticlimactic.

While legal experts say that the sentence was lighter than it would have been had Mr. Trump been a typical defendant, many say it represents the best of a justice system that has come under heavy criticism as the president-elect has fought four separate criminal prosecutions.

“The judge is being very careful to not put any kind of burden on [Mr. Trump] as he begins his service as president,” says Marta Nelson, the director of sentencing reform at the Vera Institute of Justice.

Judge Merchan wants “to be giving some due process and ability to appeal,” she adds. But “moving towards sentencing before inauguration is this judge’s way of showing that no one is above the law.”

Ending one phase of legal battle, beginning another

The sentencing today concludes the first phase of an almost two-year legal battle. It also triggers the second phase: Mr. Trump can now begin appealing his conviction and sentence.

A Manhattan jury found Mr. Trump guilty of falsifying business records. Those records related to hush money payments made on the eve of the 2016 presidential election to an adult-film star alleged to have had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.

Sentencing had already been delayed twice at Mr. Trump’s request – first in July last year due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling on presidential immunity, then again in September as the presidential election loomed. On Thursday night, the high court, in a 5-4 vote, rejected a bid by the president-elect to delay sentencing once more.

Many experts viewed the Manhattan case as the weakest of the four criminal cases brought against Mr. Trump. Yet it was the only case to go to trial, and the president-elect used the two-month proceeding to raise vast amounts of campaign funds and to criticize witnesses, prosecutors, and Judge Merchan in appearances outside the courthouse.

Seth Wenig/AP/File

Justice Juan Merchan said during Mr. Trump’s sentencing on Friday that while the presidency comes with extensive powers, “one power they do not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict.” Judge Merchan sits for a portrait in his New York chambers, March 14, 2024.

Mr. Trump has maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings, describing them as “lawfare” waged by a Democratic district attorney. His lawyers have tried to get the case dismissed, moved out of Manhattan, or moved to federal court, claiming juror bias, conflict of interest with Judge Merchan, and prosecutorial misconduct.

Lightest possible sentence

An unconditional discharge “appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options,” wrote Judge Merchan in an order last week. To vacate the jury’s verdict because Mr. Trump is a former president and a president-elect, he added, “would constitute a disproportionate result and cause immeasurable damage to the citizenry’s confidence in the Rule of Law.”

Instead, giving the president-elect what could be the lightest sentence possible may have the opposite effect, according to some experts.

“You can argue it actually makes [trust in] the system somewhat better because you have a judge taking to reality the situation,” says Vinoo Varghese, a criminal defense lawyer in New York City and a former state prosecutor. In his 25 years as a lawyer in the city, Mr. Varghese says he’s seen only one unconditional discharge, and it was for a misdemeanor crime.

For someone convicted on 34 felony counts, “that screams jail time,” he adds. With that conviction, “there’s no other defendant that’s walking away without jail.”

Flexible sentencing, judicial censure

The final judgment may anger Mr. Trump’s supporters and his critics, not to mention the president-elect himself. But Judge Merchan’s actions illustrate the unique reality of the case. Furthermore, they display the flexibility that some legal experts believe needs to be more present in criminal sentencing in the U.S.

One aspect of sentencing that even the president-elect received is one that criminal defendants around the country receive regularly: a public dressing-down from the judge.

Indeed, this element of the justice system is one of the oldest there is.

“Sentences are supposed to humiliate you,” says John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School. “In pre-Revolutionary America, we put people in the stocks, and that was for humiliation, not pain,” he adds.

Sentences are supposed to achieve two other things as well, says Ms. Nelson at the Vera Institute. They’re supposed to provide some accountability for the harm that was done, and they’re supposed to make sure, as best they can, that the crime doesn’t happen again.

Accountability typically requires the defendant to do something, like perform community service, pay a fine, or spend time in prison. Ms. Nelson describes it as having a defendant “do sorry.”

Can’t ‘do sorry’

But this case is different – unprecedented, even.

“You can’t ‘do sorry’ … when you’re president of the United States,” she says.

That said, a uniquely light sentence for a unique defendant “makes the case that a sentence should [often] be individualized,” she continues. A sentence “should be based on the facts of the crime, and who the defendant is and what the consequences of that sentence would be upon the defendant,” says Ms. Nelson.

That appears to have happened with Mr. Trump.

In New York, the maximum sentence for the felony falsification of business records is four years in prison. Given the president-elect’s age, and his lack of a prior criminal record, many legal experts agreed that a sentence carrying some form of punishment, like a fine or probation, was more likely.

Instead, the sentence was an unconditional discharge, an adjudication that, given the conviction, perhaps only a president-elect less than two weeks from his inauguration could get. (And a conviction, again, that Mr. Trump can now seek to overturn on appeal.)

“This is a very tailored sentence,” says Ms. Nelson. “Wouldn’t it be great if everybody else had that same level of tailoring to their particular circumstances?”

As Donald Trump prepares to take the oath of office as president Jan. 20, he and his advisers have already been staking out policy moves. But few have raised eyebrows quite as much as his comments regarding the acquisition of Greenland.

In a Dec. 22 announcement naming his ambassador to Denmark, Mr. Trump wrote that “The United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.” The idea seems to many outlandish, and the leaders of both Denmark and Greenland itself are rejecting it. Mr. Trump’s statement framed his reasons, namely “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World.”

“I think it boils down to three things” for Mr. Trump, says Otto Svendsen, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Greenland’s geostrategic position in the Atlantic Ocean,” where it sits along the shortest path a ballistic missile could take between Russia and the U.S.; “deterring Russian and Chinese presence in the Arctic at large; and, I think perhaps most poignantly with the broader economic goals of the Trump administration, its access to critical resources.”

The island has vast natural resources, including lithium, platinum, and graphite, that are vital to “everything from the energy transition, analog development, and various military applications [to] electronic applications,” Mr. Svendsen says. Additionally, Greenland has access to billions of barrels of untapped oil deposits.

Perhaps in keeping with his past as a real estate executive, Mr. Trump may also be driven partly by a desire to secure his legacy by expanding the United States, something that a source told Reuters he often talks about.

Are there historical parallels for this saga?

Purchasing new lands is something the U.S. is very accustomed to.

The U.S. has even tried to purchase Greenland before, with President Harry Truman’s administration offering $100 million in 1946 and Mr. Trump himself floating the idea in 2019. As far back as the 1860s, an acquisition was explored by the same Secretary of State William Seward who engineered the Alaska purchase.

“Even when it uses force, [the U.S.] likes to buy,” says David Ekbladh, a professor of history at Tufts University. One prominent example is with the Mexican-American War. “We push Mexico into a war, ... we demand territory, and then we purchase,” explains Dr. Ekbladh. That action, known as the Gadsden Purchase, which was finalized in 1854, brought parts of modern-day New Mexico and Arizona into the union.

But in his eyes, Mr. Trump’s Greenland aspirations are “a little bit more like Panama,” with the strategic canal there being another target of Mr. Trump’s recent ambitions.

Once a province of Colombia, Panama became a case in which “The U.S. stirs the pot with a group of people that want to break away and uses that as a lever” to gain control, says Dr. Ekbladh. After Panama’s independence, the U.S. signed a 1903 treaty gaining access to a 10-mile wide strip of land for the future Panama Canal.

Greenland’s government, led by Prime Minister Múte Egede, has long pushed for eventual independence, in a loose parallel to Panama’s case.

Mr. Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr., who took a private trip Jan. 7 to Greenland, seem to be echoing that strategy, with the former posting to the social platform Truth Social, “[The Greenlanders] and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”

Who would decide Greenland’s fate?

While the island has a degree of domestic autonomy, Greenland has been largely under Denmark’s control since 1814. Denmark still controls Greenland’s foreign and defense policies.

It is important to note that, as part of the complicated history, the U.S. agreed to let go of potential territorial claims in Greenland when it purchased the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands) from Denmark in 1917.

However, Denmark’s 2009 Act on Greenland Self-Government “clearly stipulates that the future of Greenland is up to the people of Greenland, and the government in Copenhagen is very adamant about upholding that piece of legislation,” says Mr. Svendsen. “I think they’ve had to strike a very delicate balance between asserting themselves towards these very aggressive claims by President Trump, and at the same time sort of upholding the democratic legitimacy of Greenland and what they have politically committed themselves to from this 2009 self-government act.”

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

When it comes to what Greenlanders think, there is a similar balance. Most residents want independence from Denmark, at the very least. The idea of being a U.S. overseas territory or state akin to Puerto Rico or Guam is not the end goal, a point that Mr. Egede and Greenland’s Finance Minister Erik Jensen have expressed.

Yet for Greenland, independence could raise questions of how to replace a block grant from Copenhagen, which provides about $500 million a year toward basic government services.

Mr. Svendsen says one potential path toward a greater U.S. role would be for Americans, in exchange for certain concessions, to make a compelling financial offer to the people of Greenland.

That could take the form of a “free association” agreement similar to what the U.S. has with the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau in the Pacific Ocean. But again, the people of Greenland haven’t embraced that goal.

What would the diplomatic consequences be if the U.S. acquired Greenland?

Mr. Trump has long clashed with European Union nations over everything from trade to defense, and this seems to be another flashpoint that plays into the broader deterioration of U.S.-EU relations.

The Trump administration’s “America first” foreign policy strategy values projecting strength. The hope may be that assertive words yield at least some concessions. But Greenland already provides an air base to the U.S., and is open to more economic dealmaking.

Some experts say Mr. Trump’s efforts risk backfiring if they alienate longtime partners, including people in Greenland.

When it comes to resources, a 2023 survey showed that “25 of 34 minerals deemed ‘critical raw materials’ by the European Commission were found in Greenland.” A U.S. claim on those resources may exacerbate tensions between the U.S. and the EU, as both have interests in the Arctic.

Mr. Trump has made a point of not ruling out the use of military force to acquire Greenland. Any such action would be incendiary – in part because Denmark is part of the NATO alliance (as is the U.S., of course) and by the organization’s charter an attack on one member of the alliance is considered an attack on all.

Why are nations so interested in controlling the Arctic?

“Climate change is opening up the Arctic in a way where things are more accessible,” says Dr. Ekbladh. “That creates a new landscape for competition.” As ice caps recede, places once impassable are now turning into potentially lucrative trade routes, especially when paired with the vast sources of oil and minerals that will also become increasingly less expensive to harvest as the region warms.

In 2021, China stated plans for a “Polar Silk Road,” eyeing both the mineral deposits and the potential new shipping lanes that could appear, and has close ties with Arctic power Russia.

Acquiring Greenland would be a way for the Trump administration to push back against China, something that has been a primary foreign policy objective for Mr. Trump, says Dr. Ekbladh.

REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

Commuters on a rickshaw in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on Jan. 1, 2025. A mural depicts the 2024 Student Movement that toppled a dictatorship after 15 years last year.

Since the fall of a brutal dictator in Bangladesh last July, the interim government set in its place has insisted that the task of reinventing society belongs to the people. This week it put that ideal to work.

On Tuesday, officials dispatched eight venerated local movie directors throughout the South Asian country to mentor a new generation of filmmakers. Remembering Monsoon Revolution – a reference to the student-led movement that ousted Sheikh Hasina after 15 years of hard reign – is the first of seven initiatives meant to forge a new sense of nationhood through art and archiving.

The focus on cultural production underscores that rebuilding nations involves more than organizing elections or fixing broken economies. One of the most effective tools for stitching societies back together is storytelling.

“The establishment of a cultural bridge is crucial after the revolution,” said Mostofa Sarwar Farooki when placed in charge of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in November. “We want to ensure that Bangladesh represents everyone – many people, many religions, many languages, and all cultures will be at the center of our policy.”

The goal of the film initiative is to produce two documentaries and six fiction stories by the end of May. The other initiatives will engage musicians, cartoonists, writers, painters, and stage actors, resulting in concerts, exhibitions, and collaborative albums. A digital oral history project will gather the individual stories of ordinary citizens.

Stirring public dialogue with art has helped other societies restore trust and empathy by encouraging independent thinking and deep listening across divided communities. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, storytelling enabled “people to explore different ways to deal with difficult wartime memories, to challenge dominant historical narratives, and to question conventional concepts of identity,” wrote Nerkez Opačin, a research fellow at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, in 2015.

In Somalia, the United Nations has helped turn poets into peacemakers. “Poetry has the power to connect people on a deep, emotional level,” one young performance poet, Zahra Abdihagi, said in a U.N. interview last July. “It provides a safe and expressive outlet for people to process their trauma, share their stories, and work towards forgiveness and understanding.”

The launch of the film project in Bangladesh this week coincides with a vibrant public debate among students, teachers, and others over the drafting of a proclamation on the meaning of the July revolution and the kind of society that should emerge from it. Their vibrant civic engagement offers a model for countries in similar states of transition, such as Syria and Sri Lanka.

“The July revolution presented us an opportunity to rebuild,” Mr. Farooki, a filmmaker himself, told Variety magazine this week, to “move towards a beautiful, democratic society where there is freedom of expression, fair justice for all and no corruption.”