By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Sabreen Abu Jazar was only hours from completing the perilous journey from Gaza to meet her husband in Europe last month when her migrant boat flipped and sank 100 metres from the Greek coast. Her body was finally returned home this week.

“She phoned me just before travelling and asked me to pray for her,” said her mother, sat in a mourning tent in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

    After leaving Gaza in February, via Egypt, Sabreen flew to Turkey where she met her husband, who had migrated to Belgium years ago. They had planned to meet again in Greece, where he had promised a honeymoon but Sabreen never arrived. Three other brides were on the boat.

On Tuesday, around three weeks after her death, Abu Jazar’s body was brought home for burial in her town of Rafah.

“I celebrated her as a bride, now she’s returned to me in a coffin,” said her mother-in-law Buthayna Abu Jazar. “A wedding turned into mourning.”

A rising number of Palestinians are making the perilous crossing to Europe, driven to escape repeated wars and the Israeli and Egyptian blockade that has left Gaza cut off since the Islamist movement Hamas assumed power in 2007.

UN figures show more than 2,700 Palestinians arrived in Greece by sea in 2022, making up 22% of total boat arrivals, the highest of any national group. European Union data from last year also shows a sharp rise in asylum applications by Palestinians in Greece, the main point of entry to Europe.

Not all reach their destination. According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, more than 378 people have died or gone missing while attempting to migrate from Gaza since 2014. Three have died so far in 2023.

“Sabreen lived her 24 years amid a blockade and a bitter economic situation, and like any girl or a young man she quit Gaza hoping for freedom and a better situation,” her uncle Alaa Abu Jazar said.

POLITICAL FACTIONS

Jobs in Gaza are scarce, for college graduates as well as others, and when a position arises, it often goes to someone with a connection to political factions.

Underlying the crisis is a 16-year-old Israeli-led blockade on Gaza, home to 2.3 million people, coupled with internal political divisions that have weakened Palestinians’ political aspirations for statehood.

Ahmed Al-Deek, an official of the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, urged Palestinians from Gaza and refugee camps in Arab countries to shun illegal trips but said the Israeli-led blockade was the prime reason for Gaza youth leaving for a better future abroad.

Deek also blamed the continued internal divisions between Fatah and Hamas and urged “all officials in Gaza Strip to shoulder their responsibilities and resolve the problem of youth and offer them dignified life.”

Gazans say they are ruled by three governments: the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, who has limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and which employs thousands of people in Gaza, the Islamist Hamas group, which runs Gaza, and Israel, the third entity that controls its de facto border.

Mohammad Kuhail, 26, a physiotherapy graduate, tried for six years to find a job in institutions run by Hamas, the United Nations or those affiliated with Abbas’s Fatah movement.

    “If I were from Hamas, they would have hired me,” the 26-year-old said. “Fatah is the same, Fatah cares about Fatah people,” said Kuhail, who whiles away his time in cheap cafes with other unemployed friends.

    Six of his siblings are graduates, two of them engineers, and none of them has ever got a job, he said, leaving the family dependent on his father, a school guard.

FEW JOBS

    According to Palestinian and United Nations estimates, youth unemployment in Gaza runs at about 70%, a figure which makes dreams of building any kind of future out of reach for most young people.

    For its part, Hamas puts the blame for the dire economic situation on the shoulders of Israel, which has fought repeated wars with Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas while maintaining its blockade of the enclave.

    “Our problem is the occupation and isn’t an internal problem,” Ehab Al-Ghsain, Hamas-appointed deputy of the Gaza Labour Ministry, told Reuters.

    In an effort to promote security along its Gaza border, Israel offers some 20,000 permits to allow Gazans to work in Israel.

In Gaza, Hamas says a permanent solution for unemployment is beyond its ability alone.

    In 2022, Al-Ghsain’s office created temporary jobs for 9,000 young people, a fraction of the 236,000 looking for work, he said. Even the 40,000 public servants it has hired in Gaza since 2007 have not received their full salaries.

    In the heart of Gaza City, Saeed Lulu, a media graduate stands selling hot drinks to passersby and taxi drivers at a stall he calls “The Graduates stall”. He is the only breadwinner for a family of six.

    “I graduated 16 years ago and so far, I have failed to find a job,” he said.

In that, he is little different from other graduates. Maher Al-Tabbaa, a Gaza economic analyst, said fewer than 10% of around 14,000 students who graduate every year get jobs.

Standing outside Lulu’s cafe, Majd Al-Jamal, 20, a college undergraduate, wondered whether she should complete her studies after seeing three of her siblings failing for years to find a job.

“I don’t have much enthusiasm,” she said. “We already know what is going to happen.”

(This story has been refiled to add detail on Israel offering jobs, more from Hamas in paragraphs 21 and 22)

(Reporting by Nidal Almughrabi; Editing by Christina Fincher)

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel ratified a law on Thursday limiting the circumstances in which a prime minister can be removed, despite worries voiced by a government jurist that it may be meant to shield the incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu from any fallout from his corruption trials.

The amended definition for the “incapacity” of national leaders is among legislative measures by the religious-nationalist coalition that have tipped Israel into crisis, with the opposition arguing that judicial independence is in peril.

The coalition says the overhaul is aimed at pushing back against what it calls Supreme Court over-reach and restoring balance among branches of government.

By a 61-to-47 final vote, the Knesset approved the bill under which prime ministers can be deemed unfit – and compelled to step aside – either if they or three-quarters of cabinet ministers declare them so on physical or psychological grounds.

The stipulations fleshed out a quasi-constitutional “basic law” that provides the government with guidance in the event of a non-functioning prime minister – but which previously lacked details on circumstances that may give rise to such situations.

According to the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, the rule had earlier left Netanyahu vulnerable to a possible assertion of his incapacity by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, should she perceive an attempt by him to halt his three court cases.

The new law precludes this, IDI senior researcher Amir Fuchs said – while adding that he had considered such a finding by Bararav-Miara to be an unlikely “extreme case”.

Netanyahu denies all charges against him, and has cast the trials as a politicised bid to force him out of office.

Baharav-Miara – who was appointed by the former, centrist Israeli government – said last month that Netanyahu must stay out of his coalition’s push for a judicial overhaul because of what she deemed a conflict of interest arising from his trials.

Baharav-Miara’s deputy, Gil Limon, voiced misgivings over the incapacity bill during a Knesset review session on Tuesday.

“What we see before our eyes is a cluster of legislation elements that are most troubling and are being advanced at great speed,” Limon said, according to an official transcript.

“They have the potential to serve the personal interests of a man regarding the outcomes of legal proceedings he is facing.”

The Movement for Quality Government in Israel filed a Supreme Court appeal against the new law. Should the court rule to overturn the law, that would in itself fuel the feud.

    “Netanyahu and his coalition of corrupt men are trying every possible maneuver in their attempts to escape the threat of justice,” a statement from the watchdog group said.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Hugh Lawson)

By Sumit Khanna and Arpan Chaturvedi

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) -A lower court in India sentenced opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday to two years in jail on charges of defamation for a 2019 speech in which he referred to thieves as having the surname Modi.

Gandhi will appeal against the order in a higher court, but any jailing for him or his disqualification from parliament would be a blow to his Congress party ahead of the 2024 general election, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party is widely expected to win.

The judgment was passed by a magistrate’s court in the city of Surat, located in Modi’s home state of Gujarat. The case was brought by a Gujarat lawmaker from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Gandhi, the 52-year-old scion of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, was present at the Surat court, which gave him bail immediately and suspended the sentence for a month.

“Accused Rahul Gandhi is held guilty … and sentenced to two years simple imprisonment,” Harish Varma, the chief judicial magistrate of Surat, said in his order.

Ketan Reshamwala, an advocate for complainant Purnesh Modi, said the court had found Gandhi’s comment defamatory.

An adviser to the federal government, Kanchan Gupta, said Gandhi could face immediate disqualification from parliament following the conviction, in line with a 2013 order of the country’s highest court.

Congress spokesperson and top lawyer Abhishek Singhvi told a news conference that the party feared Gandhi could be disqualified.

“The disqualification issue is dependent on the stay of conviction,” he said.

“Any reasonable system, any reasonable, fair, non-oppressive, non-biased system would give sufficient time to a person to take some legal steps to stay the conviction,” he said.

In the speech ahead of the last general election in 2019, Gandhi referred to the prime minister and two fugitive Indian businessmen, all surnamed Modi, while talking about alleged high-level corruption in the country.

On Thursday, Gandhi, a former Congress president who is currently an influential MP, told the court that his comment was not against any community.

Congress members rallied behind Gandhi, with many state units planning protests later in the day and on Friday.

“The Modi government is a victim of political bankruptcy”, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said on Twitter. “We will appeal in the higher court.”

Gandhi also received support from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that rules Delhi and two of whose top leaders are in jail on what they call trumped-up charges.

“We have differences with the Congress, but it is not right to implicate Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case like this. It is the job of the public and the opposition to ask questions. We respect the court but disagree with the decision,” AAP chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote on Twitter.

Gandhi’s once-dominant Congress controls less than 10% of the elected seats in parliament’s lower house and lost badly to the BJP in the last two general elections.

Modi remains India’s most popular politician by a substantial margin and polls show he is expected to win a third victory at the election next year.

Unlike in many countries, where defamation is a civil offence, Indian law also has provisions which classify it as a criminal offence punishable with a jail term of up to two years.

(Reporting by Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad and Arpan Chaturvedi and Y.P. Rajesh in New Delhi; Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Krishna N. Das; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, William Maclean)

By Julia Harte, Gabriella Borter and Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – A conservative federal judge in Texas could soon order the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reconsider its 22-year-old approval for a pill used in the most common form of abortion in the United States, or order the approval revoked outright.

Of the various potential rulings possible in the case involving the abortion pill mifepristone, either of those outcomes would be unprecedented judicial intervention in the agency’s regulatory process. 

The FDA declined to comment on the litigation or its next steps. But interviews with nine U.S. food and drug law scholars and attorneys, including six who signed onto a brief filed in the Texas case, revealed the agency has the power to delay or soften the blow of a court-ordered ban on the drug or reconsideration of its approval.

Any ruling in the case is expected to be appealed. Even if higher courts upheld a decision against the FDA, the agency could help prevent mifepristone from being immediately withdrawn from the market, these experts said.

Some of the FDA’s options could be politically and legally risky both for the agency and mifepristone suppliers, they said.

Mifepristone is part of a two-drug regimen with misoprostol that accounts for more than half of U.S. abortions.

GRAPHIC: Medical abortions on the rise in the United States – https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ABORTION/PILL/byprlmmyzpe/chart.png

The agency’s role in determining mifepristone’s future has gotten little notice in a court battle that has drawn widespread attention as the most consequential abortion case since the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that established federal abortion rights.

At a hearing last week in Amarillo, Texas, anti-abortion groups asked U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to halt sales of mifepristone nationwide – even in states where abortion is legal – while their lawsuit against the FDA proceeds.

The groups contend the agency used an improper process when it approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not adequately consider the drug’s safety when used by girls under age 18. The FDA said the pill was deemed safe after extensive studies and use, and that the challenge comes much too late.

What happens next will depend on whether Kacsmaryk finds he has the authority to overrule the FDA’s decision. 

POSSIBLE OUTCOMES

If Kacsmaryk orders the FDA to reconsider the drug’s approval, that could trigger a years-long process during which the pill would remain legally available.

Under FDA statutes and regulations, drug approval withdrawal generally begins with an informal hearing, which can entail extensive document preparation and the convening of an advisory committee.

The process is often triggered by post-approval studies showing inefficacy, according to Harvard Law professor I. Glenn Cohen.

That was the case in 2019 with Makena, a pre-term birth prevention drug. The manufacturer protested the FDA’s action and subsequent administrative hearings dragged out, allowing Makena to be sold for more than three years before the drugmaker took it off the market this month.

Mifepristone makers also would likely challenge a withdrawal under this process, and the FDA could decide at the end not to remove the drug’s approval, said Greer Donley, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School.

If the judge takes the more extreme option of ordering mifepristone’s approval withdrawn, experts said the FDA would have another countermove: it could choose not to enforce the ban.

That could mean refraining from any action to prevent continued mifepristone sales. Or, the FDA could go further and publicly state it would not take such action.

Some lawyers said the FDA might assert its enforcement discretion under Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, but acknowledged that would elicit political and even legal blowback.

Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin law professor emerita who was a senior FDA policy adviser during the Obama administration, said she doubted the agency would actively ignore a court decision, in part because U.S. lawmakers could retaliate with measures including budget cuts.

The FDA could also be sued by anti-abortion groups or officials for not enforcing the order, as could mifepristone makers and sellers for continuing to make it available.

Continued access to the pill would depend on how much legal risk manufacturers and sellers were willing to assume, the scholars said.

“If you have the Supreme Court saying that this is an unsafe drug, at that point the legal risks go up enormously, no matter what the FDA does,” said Donley.

U.S. mifepristone makers told Reuters their decisions about whether to keep manufacturing the pill would follow the FDA’s lead.

Overseas provider Aid Access, an Austria-based service that ships abortion medication to U.S. patients, said it would continue providing the pill no matter how the FDA responds.

Kacsmaryk also is presiding over a lawsuit filed by the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense and others accusing media companies, including Reuters, of violating federal antitrust laws by allegedly working with tech companies to censor information about COVID-19. A Reuters spokesperson has denied the allegations.

(Reporting by Julia Harte and Brendan Pierson in New York, and Gabriella Borter and Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Bill Berkrot)