European shares rebound as worries of US involvement in Middle East ease
The pan-European STOXX 600 (.STOXX), opens new tab was up 0.4% at 537.98 points at 0708 GMT. The benchmark is on track to log weekly declines for a second week.
Israel and Iran's air war entered a second week and European officials sought to draw Tehran back to the negotiating table after President Donald Trump said any decision on potential U.S. involvement would be made within two weeks.
The news improved market mood and helped recover some interest in risk assets that were being sold off during the week on uncertainty around how long the conflict would go on.
In the market, travel and leisure stocks (.SXTP), opens new tab gained the most, up 1.1%, as oil prices eased.
Conversely, energy shares (.SXEP), opens new tab were at the bottom of the index with a 0.7% decline, trimming some gains from this week.
Among stocks, London's Berkeley (BKGH.L), opens new tab was the biggest percentage decliner, down 8%. The homebuilder named current finance chief Richard Stern as its new CEO, but reported an annual pre-tax profit slightly ahead of market expectations.
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Daily Mail
11 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
How Poland stopped 98 per cent of illegal migrant crossings with 'big and beautiful' 116-mile, 16ft-high razor-wire border fence fitted with motion sensors and monitored by armed guards
Poland 's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has claimed a £300 million border wall has proven '98 per cent effective' at preventing attempts of illegal migration from Belarus. 'We had large numbers of people who were invited by Russia and Belarus from the Middle East and Africa who were then pushed across the Polish-Belarusian border into Poland,' Sikorski told BBCR4's Today programme. Warsaw alleges that Minsk and Moscow have long been waging a 'hybrid war', seeking to flood Poland with refugees to strain the country's finances and law enforcement resources, and destabilise civil society. 'This year we have completed a big and beautiful fence with sensors overground, underground, with a patrol road alongside it, so hardly anybody gets through that barrier,' Sikorski declared. He also mentioned a recent amendment to immigration legislation that stipulates migrants attempting to reach Poland via Russia and Belarus can continue to apply for asylum in Poland, but only at consulate buildings in Moscow and Minsk. The anti-migration fencing was completed in June 2022 and now spans a 116-mile-long stretch of the Polish-Belarusian border, but was subsequently upgraded with surveillance equipment, including CCTV cameras, heat and motion sensors. The five-metre-high metal fence scythes through the Polish countryside, covered with miles upon miles of barbs and topped with razor wire. Border checkpoints are also reinforced with huge concrete slabs, each weighing more than 1.5 tonnes, along with secondary walls and barbed-wire fencing. Sikorski spoke to BBCR4 amid discussions about soaring illegal migration figures in Britain, with 20,000 migrants said to have arrived in Britain via small boats crossing The Channel so far in 2025. Now, Polish authorities are proceeding full steam ahead with a new project - East Shield - which aims to transform its entire frontier with Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad into one gigantic, closely surveilled fortification. The 400-mile-long construction, announced last year and targeted for completion in 2028, arguably constitutes the single most significant national security investment in Poland's post-war history at more than £2 billion. It was green-lit by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government in response to Russia's war in Ukraine, and Moscow and Minsk's so-called hybrid war tactics. In addition to the barbed wire-topped fencing, concrete reinforcements and secondary defences, the East Shield will see strips of land turned into minefields and littered with anti-tank fortifications including steel and concrete hedgehogs, 'dragon's teeth' obstacles and deep trenches, along with drone defence equipment. This multi-layered line of defence is expected to extend more than 200 metres back from the initial border wall. Behind these defences, Warsaw is constructing bunkers, firing posts and other military infrastructure in the forests, woods and small villages spanning the length of the country to provide yet more resistance should the deterrent fail. According to details provided by the government, the programme will also employ state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, including imagery intelligence (IMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), and acoustic monitoring to improve situational awareness of the would-be battlefield. Cezary Tomczyk, Poland's Secretary of State in the Ministry of National Defence, sees the mammoth project as not just a defence insurance policy for Poland, but for the whole of Europe. Speaking at the launch of the project in 2024, he said: 'Today we are making a decision that will change how we think about Poland's security for decades. This is not just Poland's border. It is the border of the European Union and NATO. The frontline of democracy, order and stability.' As such, Poland worked to attract investment from the European Union's lending and financing arm, the European Investment Bank (EIB), to help finance East Shied. In March, the defence ministry announced that the EIB had agreed in principle to spend up to €1 billion on the project, close to half the forecasted cost. Lieutenant General Stanislaw Czosnek, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, told Ukrainskaya Pravda in May that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was the primary motivating factor behind East Shield. 'The security environment in our region has significantly deteriorated. We are in a state of hybrid war, and we are acting in advance,' he said. In the months before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Poland was already struggling to cope with a constant stream of migrants crossing the border from Belarus. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had urged migrants to forge a path further West and even began facilitating visas and travel from Middle Eastern countries to accelerate the process. The move prompted Warsaw to break with EU migration policies and begin work on its border fence - a project whose necessity was justified in November 2021 when crowds of migrants attempted to bust through then-incomplete defences. Heavily armed riot police and border security teams were dispatched to manage the ruckus. In one particularly shocking clash, some members of a group of more than 1,000 migrants tried to hack down a barbed-wire fence only to meet a phalanx of Polish guards who forced them back with pepper spray. Hundreds of migrants broke through the Belarusian border fence close to the Kuznica crossing with Poland, before rushing towards Polish barbed wire barricades, in November 2021 Polish forces are seen standing guard at the border to block the passage of migrants from Belarus in 2021 Poland's then-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said: 'The Polish government is determined and we will defend the security of our country,' labelling the action an 'invasion' orchestrated by Belarus. The border wall was completed after months of work in June 2022, but the number of people lodging asylum claims in Poland only continued to increase. Hundreds of migrants have also attempted to penetrate the border fencing, mostly to no avail. Those that do manage to sneak or force their way through are swiftly detained by heavily armed Polish border guards patrolling the fence in armoured vehicles. A brazen attempt to cut through the fence in March proved the last straw for Premier Donald Tusk, who promptly suspended the right to claim asylum in Poland for 60 days, save for unaccompanied minors, pregnant women, elderly or unwell people. Earlier this year, the Polish government confirmed it would not take part in the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, which the bloc implemented to manage the arrival of asylum seekers. Under the agreement, states could either relocate a certain number of migrants, pay a financial contribution or provide operation support to help resettlement. Tusk said: 'Poland will not implement the Migration Pact in a way that would introduce additional quotas of immigrants in Poland. 'We are ready to cooperate with everyone to protect Europe from illegal migration. However, Poland will not take on any additional burdens. We have already taken on more than anyone could have imagined just a few years ago.' As Poland continues cracking down on illegal migration, Britain is struggling with record-breaking numbers of migrants arriving via small boats. More than 20,000 people have reached Britain by crossing The Channel on migrant vessels since the start of the year. The same milestone was not hit until mid-to-late August in previous years, including 2022 - the year which went on to see a record annual total of 45,700 arrivals. Since the start of the so-called Channel crisis in 2018, more than 170,000 migrants have reached Britain by small boat - but only about four per cent have been removed. The overall cost of the asylum system was £5.3billion in 2023-24, more than double the amount spent in 2021-22. Accommodation costs are expected to hit more than £15billion over 10 years - triple the original estimate - the National Audit Office said in May. French President Emmanuel Macron's government recently agreed to change its rules so gendarmes and other officials can intercept dinghies already in the Channel, and prevent them heading for Britain. The new 'maritime doctrine', expected to come into force in the next few weeks, will allow French police to block small boat departures within 300 metres of the shoreline. However, French police unions are understood to have expressed concerns that their members may be required to enter the water wearing body armour, which can weigh up to 6lbs and would put them at risk of drowning. Last month, sources said French officers had also raised concerns about being unable to carry firearms if they are required to go into the sea, because salt water would damage the weapons. French police colonel Olivier Alary told the BBC earlier this month his teams 'will be able to do more' once the 300 metre rule comes into force.
The Independent
11 minutes ago
- The Independent
Trump's Gaza ceasefire boasts will mean nothing unless he can get a grip on Israel
Donald Trump claims to have extracted a 60 day 'ceasefire' in Gaza. If it works, a two-month suspension of the bombing of the enclave and killings at human feeding pens would be welcome. But it will solve nothing because both Israel 's rulers and Hamas have the same core beliefs that begin 'from the river to the sea …' ' Israel will be sovereign' - or ' Palestine will be free'. The former is part of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party's founding documents – the latter is a chant often taken to mean that Israel should, along with its population, be extinguished. The only solution to these mutually exclusive slogans is tolerance and hope. Trump's ceasefire offers neither. Violence and impunity have created a landscape of horror – Trump isn't the guide out of it. Hamas is blood soaked, murderous. It has sacrificed tens of thousands of innocent civilians to the Israeli war machine in its long campaign to shatter any chance that Palestinians might ever hope for their own state and freedom, alongside Israel, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Hamas remains the dominant force in Gaza. It has, and will, mistake world-wide public dismay at what Israel has done to the Strip for endorsement of its zero sum agenda. It will take the 60 days as a breather and a rearming opportunity. The struggle for Gaza 's population will be how to resist the temptation to take up emigration opportunities. Israel has smashed their world into rubble and dust and thereby may deliver on the Netanyahu government's clear desire to flush Gaza's 2.2 million survivors into the Egyptian Sinai desert and beyond. A poll conducted in May this year showed that 43 per cent of Gazans were now willing to emigrate – anywhere. The Palestinians have nowhere to turn for leadership. Seven months ago, 36 per cent of all Palestinians said they support Hamas and 21 per cent said they support Fatah, which dominates the West Bank. Support for Hamas over the past seven months has decreased by 4 percentage points, according to the poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. Marwan Bargouthi, the most popular Palestinian politician with 50 per cent support, is in an Israeli jail serving several life sentences. Since the murder of nearly 1,200 people and the abduction of 240 from Israel by extremists led by Hamas on October 7 2023, Israel has waged a war of staggering brutality against Gazans. The indictments of Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, then defence minister, for war crimes and the issuing of arrest warrants isn't done lightly by the International Criminal Court. Israel has changed. There is a battle raging internally for its soul as Netanyahu continues to do everything he can to stay in office – he is facing corruption charges. He has temporarily suspended plans to destroy the independent judiciary but that will come back. Meanwhile the population is showing signs of radicalisation. Some 82 per cent of Israeli Jews support the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, according to a recent poll by Pennsylvania State University. And 54 per cent strongly support this. It asked 1,000 Jewish Israelis if they supported the idea that all the people in towns conquered by Israel should be killed – in the same way that Jericho was flattened in the bible – 47 per cent backed the idea of mass slaughter. The results of this survey were published in Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The left-wing publication has also published allegations that the Israel Defence Force has deliberately killed more than 400 Gazans seeking food aid since May. Trump has leverage over Israel. He has cut foreign aid almost entirely around the world except there and Egypt. Before slashing help to the world's neediest, the Jewish state received up to 20 per cent of America's total overseas aid. According to the Watson Institute of Public Affairs, the US provided Israel with $22.7 billion in military aid in the first year of its Gaza campaign. 'Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign aid since its founding, receiving about $310 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance,' according to a November 2025 report by the US Council on Foreign Relations. Trump says he is putting pressure on Netanyahu, who is shortly to visit the White House. But the US president has previously endorsed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza with the fantasy of settling its population in neighbouring countries while turning it into a beach resort. His calls for a ceasefire warn that life will get worse of Gazans – they don't focus on any kind of option that would undermine the standing of Hamas with hope. The US instead has been silent as Gaza has been carpet bombed and Jewish settlers run amok on the West Bank where illegal Israeli settlements have marched across the landscape and physically obliterated the space where a Palestinian state could ever take form. If Trump wants to earn the Nobel Peace Prize which he thinks he already richly deserves, he needs to end Israel's impunity by ending the subsidies that allow it to make war. Hamas and its fellow recidivist travellers to Armageddon can only be put out of business if the Palestinians, who already despair of all their leaders, can be offered a path that isn't towards more generations of apartheid, occupation and indignity. Trump could help end a zero sum grand guignol by forcing Israel to back away from its 'river to the sea' policies while Hamas' demands of sovereignty in the same space can be swept aside by a genuine return to Palestinian faith in liberty. Not long ago two thirds of people on both sides thought that it would be possible for two nations to live side by aside between the River Jordan and the Med. They need freeing from the subsidies that traps them in misery there.
Reuters
13 minutes ago
- Reuters
Trump's ceasefire statement raises hopes in Gaza as Israel presses on with attacks
CAIRO/JERUSALEM, July 2 (Reuters) - Word from U.S. President Donald Trump that Israel has agreed to the conditions needed to finalise a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza raised hopes on Wednesday in the enclave, where health officials said at least 20 people had been killed in Israeli attacks. A "final" proposal would be delivered by the mediators, Qatar and Egypt, to Hamas, Trump said in a social media post on Tuesday, after what he described as a "long and productive" meeting between his representatives and Israeli officials. Gazans said even a temporary pause would bring relief. "I hope it would work this time, even if for two months, it would save thousands of innocent lives," Kamal, a resident of Gaza City, said by phone. There is growing public pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and end the nearly two-year-long war, a move strongly opposed by hardline members of his right-wing ruling coalition. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote on X on Wednesday that a majority within the coalition government would back an agreement that would see the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza. "If there is an opportunity to do so - we must not miss it!", he wrote on X. Of 50 hostages still held, around 20 are believed to be still alive. For Gazans, who have fled multiple times and face daily struggles to find food 21 months into Israel's military campaign, the statements provided a glimmer of hope. "Everyone is hopeful that it would work this time, there is no room for more failures, every day more costs us our lives," said Tamer Al-Burai, a businessman. "We are living the most difficult days. People want an end to the war, an end to the starvation and humiliation." There was no immediate official comment by either Israel or Hamas to Trump's latest statement on the progress of the plan. "Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60 Day CEASEFIRE, during which time we will work with all parties to end the War," Trump's statement said, without specifying the conditions. The U.S. president appeared to be seeking to use any momentum from U.S. and Israeli strikes on nuclear sites in Iran and a recently agreed ceasefire in that conflict to put pressure on Hamas, which is backed by Tehran. Israeli leaders also believe that, with Iran weakened by last month's 12-day war, other countries in the region have an opportunity to forge ties with Israel. A Hamas official declined immediate comment on Trump's statement. A source close to the group said leaders of the Islamist faction were expected to debate the proposal and seek clarifications from mediators before giving an official response. At the end of May, Hamas had said it was seeking amendments to a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal, which Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff said was "totally unacceptable." That proposal had involved a 60-day ceasefire and the release of half the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and the remains of other Palestinians; Hamas would release the remaining hostages as part of a deal that guarantees the end of the war. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on X on Wednesday that his party could provide the government with a safety net if hardline members of the Israeli cabinet opposed a deal, effectively pledging not to back a no-confidence motion in parliament that could topple the government. Gaza health authorities said Israeli gunfire and military strikes killed at least 20 Palestinians in separate attacks in north and southern areas, and the Israeli military ordered more evacuations late on Tuesday. In response to questions from Reuters about the reports, the Israeli military stated that its operations aimed to dismantle Hamas' military capabilities and mitigate civilian harm, without commenting on specific incidents. The war began when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took 251 hostages back to Gaza in a surprise attack that led to Israel's single deadliest day. Israel's subsequent military assault has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry, displaced almost the whole 2.3 million population and plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis. More than 80% of the territory is now an Israeli-militarized zone or under displacement orders, according to the UN.
