Brussels: EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday are to look at ways to press aid on Tunisia in a bid to stem migrant boat departures for Europe.
The discussion will come two weeks after a boat believed to have been carrying hundreds of migrants capsized off Greece in one of the worst such tragedies in years.
At least 82 people died and many more remain missing in the sinking, which occurred in unclear circumstances.
Amnesty International and other rights groups say the tragedy resulted from Brussels’ “Fortress Europe” policy implemented over the past seven years, since experiencing a huge inflow of Syrian war refugees.
“The recent tragic shipwreck in the Mediterranean, and the many lives lost, is a stark reminder of our need to continue working relentlessly on our European migratory challenge,” European Council chief Charles Michel said in his letter inviting leaders to the Brussels summit.
“We will review the migratory situation and progress in the implementation” of decisions made in a previous summit in February, he said.
In early June, European Union countries reached agreement on a long-stalled revision of the bloc’s asylum rules.
It aims to share the burden of hosting asylum seekers across EU countries, with those refusing to do so having to pay money to the ones that do.
Poland and Hungary, which were outvoted on the plan, have come out strongly against it and intend to have it discussed at Thursday’s summit, EU diplomats said. It also needs buy-in from the European Parliament.
Poland’s European affairs minister, Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek said on Tuesday that being forced to pay other EU countries to host migrants was a violation of his country’s “sovereign rights.”
“A fee of 20,000 euros (per migrant) is de facto punishment,” he said.
Frontex, the EU’s border patrol agency, says boat crossings across the central Mediterranean constitute the principal route for irregular migrant entries to Europe.
Crossings leaving North African countries including Tunisia and going to EU nations Italy and Malta “more than doubled” between January and May this year, compared with the same period in 2022, it says.
Brussels is seeking to extend a tactic it used with Turkiye in 2016, which worked to greatly reduce irregular migration flows to Europe in exchange for six billion euros in assistance.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on June 11 offered Tunisia more than one billion euros — 900 million euros in long-term aid plus 150 million euros immediately — if it meets International Monetary Fund conditions for an IMF loan worth nearly $2 billion.
The EU money would largely go to improving economic prospects for people in Tunisia. An extra 100 million euros this year is also to go to boosting Tunisia’s border patrols, search and rescue and accepting back denied asylum seekers.
But Tunis, though indebted, has balked at what Tunisian President Kais Saied called IMF “diktats.”
The US government has strongly urged Tunisia to undertake the IMF reforms. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned two weeks ago that Tunisia risked falling off an “economic cliff.”
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Monday that it was important for Europe “to try to address and resolve the financial problem” of Tunisia, “to ensure the country’s stability.”
At a time when Europe is experiencing fall-out from Russia’s war in Ukraine, “we shouldn’t forget the importance of the southern front,” the Mediterranean, he said.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, also on Monday, said Paris wanted to see the IMF deal sealed with Tunisia “because it’s in the interest of that country, which is a close country and a friendly one.”
France has separately announced 26 million euros in aid to Tunisia to help curb departures by irregular migrants across the Mediterranean.
Many of the migrants coming from Tunisia originate from sub-Saharan Africa. The country is also in the grip of a worsening economic crisis that has pushed many of its citizens to take desperate measures in search of better lives abroad.
The International Organization for Migration says 2,406 migrants died or disappeared in the Mediterranean in 2022, while 1,166 deaths or disappearance were recorded since the start of 2023.
EU presses Tunisia in bid to stem Med migrant flow
https://arab.news/n5xx9
EU presses Tunisia in bid to stem Med migrant flow
- Crossings leaving North African countries including Tunisia and going to EU nations Italy and Malta “more than doubled” between January and May this year
- France has separately announced 26 million euros in aid to Tunisia to help curb departures by irregular migrants across the Mediterranean
Egypt braces for second summer of power cuts as gas supplies dwindle
- The cuts started as Egypt allocated more of its gas production for export to raise scarce dollars, importing polluting fuel oil to keep some power stations running
CAIRO: Among the bustling workshops of central Cairo’s Al-Sabtiyah district, Om Ghada’s blacksmith business has seen profits dip as two-hour power cuts each day returned after a brief suspension during the holy month of Ramadan.
When scheduled outages began last summer it came as a shock to Egyptians accustomed to years of reliable power supplies under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and the government promised they would be temporary.
But supplies of the natural gas that helped generate an electricity surplus are dwindling and the power cuts are back.
The outages “create a lot of obstacles and cut into my profit,” said Om Ghada, as sparks flew from a metal cutter nearby. She owns the workshop, which is among dozens in the area that rely on electricity to power machines.
“One customer yesterday waited two hours, until they became impatient and left,” she said.
While Egypt recently secured record investments from the United Arab Emirates and an expanded IMF program, easing a foreign currency crisis, power cuts are a reminder of underlying economic challenges.
The cuts started as Egypt allocated more of its gas production for export to raise scarce dollars, importing polluting fuel oil to keep some power stations running. The government initially blamed them on high temperatures, but they continued through 2023 after summer ended even after the government paused exports to meet demand.
Egypt has been seeking a role as a regional energy exporter, eyeing electricity sales to countries including Saudi Arabia and Libya, planning an interconnector to Greece, and shipping Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) cargoes from two liquefaction plants.
But development of renewables has been halting and gas supplies are in doubt because of a lack of large discoveries since the giant Zohr field in 2015. That pushed gas production in 2023 to its lowest level since 2017, and the government recently started importing LNG cargoes.
Officials have blamed power cuts on rising demand from a growing population of 106 million, mega-projects backed by El-Sisi, and urban development.
Cuts to electricity subsidies have been slowed as the economy came under pressure in recent years.
Egypt’s electricity ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SALES DOWN
The power cuts were suspended over Ramadan and the Eid holiday that followed, and local media said they would also be halted for labor day and spring holidays going over this weekend. But they are sometimes hard to predict and are hurting small businesses that play a crucial role in an economy where growth has slowed and is expected to ease to 2.8 percent in the current financial year ending in June, from above 4 percent last year.
Ahmed Hussein, an air conditioning technician in Al-Sabtiyah, said daytime power cuts reduced productivity by 40 percent. South of central Cairo in the Sayeda Zeinab neighborhood, Essam said sales at the dessert shop where he works were down 30 percent since the regular power cuts began.
“As long as there’s no electricity there are no sales. The safe and the till aren’t working,” Essam, who didn’t give his last name, said. “Customers can’t see anything.”
Sales of generators are up, but many can’t afford them.
The cuts have drawn ire on social media, where some have complained about being stuck in elevators, or unable to use them, and others have bemoaned the lack of air conditioning in hotter areas in southern Egypt.
At the launch of a state-run cloud computing data center this week, El-Sisi encouraged citizens to focus on developing sectors like information technology, saying “this needs brains, not a factory or anything else.”
But as one social media post quipped in response: “This needs electricity and unlimited Internet.”
Rafah incursion would put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk, UN aid agency says
- Leaders internationally have urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be cautious
- US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said any US response to incursion would be up to President Biden
GAZA: The United Nations humanitarian aid agency says hundreds of thousands of people would be “at imminent risk of death” if Israel carries out a military assault in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
The city has become critical for humanitarian aid and is highly concentrated with displaced Palestinians.
Leaders internationally have urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be cautious about any incursion into Rafah, where seven people — mostly children — were killed overnight in an Israeli airstrike.
On Thursday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said any US response to such an incursion would be up to President Joe Biden, but that currently, “conditions are not favorable to any kind of operation.”
Turkiye’s trade minister said Friday that its new trade ban on Israel was in response to “the deterioration and aggravation of the situation in Rafah.”
The Israel-Hamas war has driven around 80 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes, caused vast destruction in several towns and cities, and pushed northern Gaza to the brink of famine.
The death toll in Gaza has soared to more than 34,500 people, according to local health officials, and the territory’s entire population has been driven into a humanitarian catastrophe.
The war began Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked southern Israel, abducting about 250 people and killing around 1,200, mostly civilians. Israel says militants still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Dozens of people demonstrated Thursday night outside Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv, demanding a deal to release the hostages. Meanwhile, Hamas said it would send a delegation to Cairo as soon as possible to keep working on ceasefire talks. A leaked truce proposal hints at compromises by both sides after months of talks languishing in a stalemate.
Across the US, tent encampments and demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war have spread across university campuses.
More than 2,000 protesters have been arrested over the past two weeks as students rally against the war’s death toll and call for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are advancing Israel’s military efforts in Gaza.
Iraqi militant group claims missile attack on Tel Aviv targets, source says
- The attack was carried out with multiple Arqub-type cruise missiles
BAGHDAD: The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a group of Iran-backed armed groups, launched multiple attacks on Israel using cruise missiles on Thursday, a source in the group said.
The source told Reuters the attack was carried out with multiple Arqub-type cruise missiles and targeted the Israeli city of Tel Aviv for the first time.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed dozens of rockets and drone attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria and on targets in Israel in the more than six months since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7.
Israel has not publicly commented on the attacks claimed by Iraqi armed groups.
15 pro-government Syrian fighters killed in Daesh attacks: monitor
- It is the latest attack of its kind by remnants of the jihadists
BEIRUT: Daesh group militants killed at least 15 Syrian pro-government fighters on Friday after they attacked three military positions in the Syrian desert, a war monitor said.
It is the latest attack of its kind by remnants of the jihadists.
They “attacked three military sites belonging to regime forces and fighters loyal to them... in the eastern Homs countryside, triggering armed clashes... and killing 15” pro-government fighters, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Daesh overran large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a so-called caliphate and launching a reign of terror.
It was defeated territorially in Syria in 2019, but its remnants continue to carry out deadly attacks, particularly against pro-government forces and Kurdish-led fighters in the vast desert.
Daesh remnants are also active in neighboring Iraq.
Last month, Daesh fighters killed 28 Syrian soldiers and affiliated pro-government forces in two attacks on government-held areas of Syria, the Observatory said.
Many were members of the Quds Brigade, a group comprising Palestinian fighters that has received support from Damascus ally Moscow in recent years, according to the Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
In one of those attacks, the jihadists fired on a military bus in eastern Homs province, the Observatory said at the time.
Separately, six Syrian soldiers died in an Daesh attack against a base in eastern Syria, it added.
Syria’s war has claimed the lives of more than half a million people and displaced millions more since it erupted in March 2011 with Damascus’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.
It then pulled in foreign powers, militias and jihadists.
In late March, Daesh militants “executed” eight Syrian soldiers after an ambush, the monitor said at that time.
The jihadists also target people hunting desert truffles, a delicacy which can fetch high prices in the war-battered economy.
The Observatory in March said Daesh had killed at least 11 truffle hunters by detonating a bomb as their car passed in the desert of Raqqa province in northern Syria.
In separate unrest in the country, Syria’s defense ministry earlier on Friday said eight soldiers had been injured in Israeli air strikes near Damascus.
The Observatory said Israel had struck a government building in the Damascus countryside that has been used by Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group since 2014.
The Israeli military has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters.
Prominent Gaza doctor killed by torture in Israeli detention
- Al-Bursh died in Ofer Prison, an Israeli-run incarceration facility in the West Bank, says the Palestinian Prisoners Society
GAZA: Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian surgeon and former head of orthopedics at Gaza’s Al-Shifa medical complex, was killed on April 19 under torture in Israeli detention.
According to a statement from the Palestinian Prisoners Society, Al-Bursh, 50, died in Ofer Prison, an Israeli-run incarceration facility in the West Bank.
His body remains held by the Israeli authorities, according to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society described the doctor’s death in Israeli custody as “assassination.”
Al-Bursh, who was a prominent surgeon in Gaza’s largest hospital Al-Shifa, was reportedly working at Al-Awada Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip when he was arrested by Israeli forces.
The Israeli prison service declared Al-Bursh dead on April 19, claiming the doctor was detained for “national security reasons.”
However, the prison’s statement did not provide details on the cause of death. A prison service spokesperson said the incident was being investigated.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said on Thursday she was “extremely alarmed” at the death of the Palestinian surgeon.
“I urge the diplomatic community to intervene with concrete measures to protect Palestinians. No Palestinian is safe under Israel’s occupation today,” she wrote on X.
I am extremely alarmed by information that Dr. Adnan Albursh, a well-known surgeon at #alshifa_hospital, has died while detained by Israeli forces in the Ofer military prison. While I acquire more information, I URGE the diplomatic community to intervene with CONCRETE MEASURES to…
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) May 2, 2024
Since Oct. 7, when Israel launched its retaliatory bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military has carried out over 435 attacks on healthcare facilities in the besieged Palestinian enclave, killing at least 484 medical staff, according to UN figures.
However, the health authority in Gaza said in a statement that Al-Bursh’s death has raised the number of healthcare workers killed in the ongoing onslaught on the strip to 496.
Palestinian prisoner organizations report that the Israeli army has detained more than 8,000 Palestinians from the West Bank alone since Oct. 7. Of those, 280 are women and at least 540 are children.
