A rubber boat washed up on a beach in Israel on Sunday with no one on board, only what appeared to be the belongings of would-be migrants.

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Israeli authorities said they found the dinghy along the Mediterranean coast near the city of Netanya with nothing but a messy pile of personal items, food, water and travel documents, including three from Somalia.

Video: Violent demonstrations among immigrants erupt in Tel Aviv / Credit: Israel Police

Police said they were searching the waters nearby for signs of survivors and released a photograph of the boat. What looked like clothing, an air pump and several makeshift, inflatable lifebuoys were among the items that covered the boat's floor.

The travel documents are still being investigated, the police said. According to the United Nations' International Organization for Migration, more than 187,000 people crossed the Mediterranean so far this year, and the group has recorded 2,093 deaths along the central Mediterranean route.

The migrants often make the perilous crossing in small, unstable boats. Many come from Africa, fleeing conflict or in search of a better life in Europe.

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Migrants trapped in Belarus made multiple attempts to force their way into Poland overnight, Warsaw said on Wednesday, announcing that it had reinforced the border as the European Union prepares to impose sanctions on Belarus over the crisis.

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The bloc's 27 ambassadors are set to agree on Wednesday that the growing numbers of migrants flying to Belarus to reach the EU border amount to "hybrid warfare" by President Alexander Lukashenko – a legal basis for new sanctions.

"Mr. Lukashenko ...unscrupulously exploits people seeking refuge as hostages for his cynical power play," Germany's acting Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter.

He described images from the Belarusian border, where people are stuck in freezing conditions with little food and shelter, as "horrific" but said the EU could not be blackmailed.

The EU accuses Belarus of encouraging the migrants – from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa – to try to illegally cross the frontier in revenge for earlier sanctions imposed on Minsk over human rights abuses.

Lukashenko has denied using the migrants as weapons and on Wednesday won a fresh show of support from his most powerful ally, Russia, which blamed the EU for the crisis and sent two strategic bombers to patrol Belarusian airspace.

"It is apparent that a humanitarian catastrophe is looming against the background of Europeans' reluctance to demonstrate commitment to their European values," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a briefing.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, urging Moscow to put pressure on Belarus over the situation at the border, a German government spokesperson said. Putin's office said he suggested to Merkel that EU members discuss the crisis directly with Minsk.

Thousands of people have converged on the border this week, where razor wire fences and Polish soldiers have repeatedly blocked their entry. Some of the migrants have used logs, spades, and other implements to try to break through.

"It was not a calm night. Indeed, there were many attempts to breach the Polish border," Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told broadcaster PR1.

Video from the border obtained by Reuters showed young children and babies among the people stuck there.

"There are lots of families here with babies between two or four months old. They have not eaten anything for the past three days," the person who provided the video told Reuters, saying they were a migrant themselves and declining to be named.

The Polish border guards service reported 599 illegal border-crossing attempts on Tuesday, with 9 people detained and 48 sent back. Blaszczak said the force of Polish soldiers stationed at the border had been strengthened to 15,000 from 12,000.

After midnight, two groups of migrants were turned back. One that was around 200 people near the town of Bialowieza and another of around two dozen was turned back near Dubicze Cerkiewne, a spokeswoman told Reuters.

Neighboring EU state Lithuania, which followed in Poland's footsteps by imposing a state of emergency at its border on Tuesday, reported 281 migrants were turned back that day, the highest figure since August when such pushbacks began.

The EU accuses Lukashenko of using "gangster-style" tactics in the months-long border standoff, in which at least seven migrants have died. The new EU sanctions would target around 30 individuals and entities including the Belarusian foreign minister, three EU diplomats told Reuters. 

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Lukashenko's government blames Europe and the United States for the plight of the people stranded at the border.

The crisis erupted after the EU, United States and Britain imposed sanctions on Belarus over its violent crackdown on mass street protests that were sparked by Lukashenko's disputed election victory in 2020.

Lukashenko turned to traditional ally Russia for support and financing to ride out the protests. The migrant crisis has given Moscow an opportunity to double down on its support for Belarus, a country it regards as a strategic buffer against NATO, and criticize the EU.

Peskov accused the EU of trying to "strangle" Belarus.

Poland denies accusations by humanitarian groups that it is violating the international right to asylum by hustling migrants back into Belarus instead of accepting their applications for protection. Warsaw says its actions are legal.

Some migrants have complained of being repeatedly pushed back and forth by Polish and Belarusian border guards, putting them at risk of exposure, lack of food and water.

"Yesterday we helped to secure and evacuate one group of immigrants," said Michal Swiatkowski, 30, a member of the Polish Red Cross rescue group from Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski.

"There were 16 people, most of them were children. They did not require medical attention, although we donated warm clothes, blankets, and some food," he told Reuters.

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday called on member states to impose new sanctions against Belarus, alleging the country is responsible for an influx of migrants at the Polish border.

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Polish police posted video early Tuesday showing a group of migrants who had camped overnight just on the far side of Poland's eastern border in Belarus. Polish riot police and coils of razor wire faced the migrants and police said the situation overnight was calm.

That followed a day of heavy tensions on the border, where a large group of migrants – hundreds if not thousands of people mostly from the Middle East and encouraged by Belarus – sought to illegally push their way into Poland.

The use "of migrants for political purposes is unacceptable," she said, adding that the EU would also look at how to sanction "third-country airlines" that bring migrants to Belarus. The EU accused Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko of weaponizing migrant flows in retaliation for sanctions imposed by Brussels, an accusation the leader denies.

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The year 2019 saw a 10-fold increase in the number of cross-border infiltrations into Israel from Jordan, compared to the two previous years, according to IDF data obtained by Israel Hayom.

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The Israeli Immigration Policy Center petitioned the Tel Aviv District to discover the exact numbers, but the IDF Spokesperson's Unit refused to hand the information over for nearly a year. Eventually, the IIPC received the numbers under the Freedom of Information Law.

In 2017, IDF forces spotted 10 infiltrations from Jordan, and in 2018, that number stood at 13. However, 2019 saw 120 identified infiltration incidents from Jordan. However, the numbers only refer to the number of incidents and not the number of people who attempted to cross the border illegally. Most of the incidents involved groups rather than individuals, so it is not improbable to assume that the number of people who attempted to infiltrate Israel from Jordan in 2019 was as high as a few hundred.

Along with the increased number of incidents identified, the army thwarted fewer attempts in the same time frame. In 2018 10 out of 13 infiltration attempts (77%) were prevented, compared to only 81 out of 120 (68%) in 2019.

It is likely that there were other incidents that slipped under IDF forces' radar.

The issue of illegal border crossings from Jordan first came to light through tracking rulings by Israel's immigration custody court, which holds hearings on the cases of migrants arrested by Population Authority inspectors in Israel months or years after crossing the Jordanian border.

Most of the infiltrators who were caught and put in government custody arrived from Turkey, and nearly all of them had entered Israel as migrant laborers or as tourists and were deported after overstaying their visas. Some even tried to return to Israel after their deportations, but were rejected.

The infiltration from Jordan bears similarities to the illegal infiltration Israel saw from Egypt prior to building its border fence in the southern. At its peak, that influx reached some 2,000 Sudanese and Eritrean migrants per month. Those migrants also used paths originally created by infiltrators from China, Georgia, and Turkey.

IIPC attorney Yonatan Yakobovich said, "Past experience teaches us that the moment smuggling networks are in place, they expand both in terms of numbers and the number of countries from which the infiltrators arrive.

"Because the border is completely open in the Arava and there is no expectation that a border fence will be built, it's clear that there is nothing that will prevent a new wave of infiltrators, even from Africa. The government has to try new infiltrators on criminal charges and pass new laws to prevent infiltration in order to deincentivize infiltration into Israel," Yakobovich said.

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Earlier, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that up to 150 people were feared dead.

"The worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year has just occurred," UNHCR head Filippo Grandi said in a tweet.

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There were about 250 people on board, mainly from Eritrea and other sub-Saharan African and Arab countries, when the boat capsized off the coast near Komas, east of the capital Tripoli, Libyan navy spokesman Ayoub Qassem said.

Libya is a hub for migrants and refugees, many of whom try to reach Europe in unseaworthy boats.

The latest shipwreck takes the death toll of Mediterranean migrants to over 600 this year, putting 2019 on track to be the sixth year in a row with more than 1,000 deaths, UNHCR spokesman Charlie Yaxley said.

"Until we address the reasons why people take these dangerous boat journeys, sadly, this is unlikely to be the last tragedy like this that we see," he said.

Yaxley said survivors of the wreck were likely to be brought to two detention centers in Libya where they would face further risks, and he called for their immediate release.

"We know that inside these detention centers there's insufficient food, water, often unsanitary conditions, there have been widespread reports of human rights violations taking place," he said.

Libya says the migrants are illegally entering and leaving the country. It regularly detains them in centers that the UN says are effectively jails, exposing them to the added risk of being caught up in the country's civil war.

One detention center in Tripoli was hit by an airstrike earlier this month, killing more than 50 people. UNHCR subsequently said it had been closed, but rescued migrants have continued to be sent there.

Human rights activists have accused politicians in the European Union of turning a blind eye and letting people die rather than risk a voter backlash by appearing soft on immigration. Europe struggled to cope with an influx of more than one million refugees and migrants in 2015.

Italy, many African migrants' intended first destination, has taken a tough line since a populist government took office in 2018, and immediately sought to close the nation's ports to rescued migrants.

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Alternative for Germany (AfD) posted segments of a video clip showing youths attacking security guards with plastic chairs on the Twitter account of its parliamentary faction.

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In the AfD video, the party's deputy floor leader, Beatrix von Storch, says: "Stuttgart, 50 hooligans. Police operation against rioting youths, attacks on lifeguards."

Von Storch was referring to a brawl at a public swimming pool at the weekend in Stuttgart where police arrested three youths who had attacked staff.

But the footage used in the AfD video were from a brawl last month in the Israeli city of Holon, which was widely reported by Israeli media as well as by the British daily The Mirror.

Some German news web sites and social media users accused the AfD of racism, and some said the AfD was "dumb" to use a video in which the security guards were wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the word security in Hebrew.

The AfD later removed the video from Twitter.

In a new video posted on Twitter, which did not include footage of a brawl, von Storch says: "Our country has changed. Drastically. And that's because of a number of migrants that is too high."

The AfD and its supporters say members of the public do not feel safe at swimming pools and water parks because migrants often harass women, get into fights and engage in pickpocketing.

The AfD entered parliament for the first time in the 2017 election, helped by voter angry at Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to welcome almost one million refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

German parties say the AfD's verbal attacks, mainly against Muslim migrants, legitimizes a language of hate that encourages far-right sympathizers to resort to violence.

Debate about the risk of far-right violence intensified this summer after the murder of a pro-immigration conservative politician Walter Lübcke. A far-right sympathizer has been charged with his killing.

The AfD denies it harbors racist views and says its members have been victims of attacks by far-left groups.

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The event was hosted by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which presented its recent study delving into the legal, security and cultural implications of the crisis, titled "The Migration Wave into Europe: An Existential Dilemma."

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Session chairwoman Fiamma Nirenstein, who edited the study, told Jewish News Syndicate that "the crisis is indeed existential for Europe, and this is precisely why ambassadors are searching for answers." The Jewish state, she said, "deals with many of the same challenges, yet has prevailed in maintaining a clear national identity," while at the same time securing its own security interests.

Nirenstein, a former Italian parliamentarian who immigrated to Israel in 2013 and is now a senior fellow at the JCPA, said that "Israel has proven that it can export its knowledge on how to deal with difficult problems such as terrorism. Europeans recognize this and are now inclined to hear whether Israel can provide useful insights into this new problem, which threatens the very nature of Europe as a continent with Western ideals."

Discussion at the event was comprehensive, but calm – unusually so for a topic that has become hyper-charged across the European Union. Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, director of JCPA's Project on Regional Middle East Developments and former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate's Research Division, addressed the security implications of the immigration wave.

Kuperwasser called out European governments for not properly dealing with the extremist organizations already operating in their countries, noting that indoctrination toward violent extremism is rampant in Islamic education in Europe, in the European prison system and among converts to Islam.

"We must improve intelligence and counterterrorism practices," he said, though noted that "much has been accomplished here already."

Kuperwasser also warned against turning a blind eye to what he called "soft" radicalism. Issues that might not seem problematic now, he said, could become much more so in the future.

"Europe must say that it rejects all forms of radicalism, whether terrorism or softer forms of radicalism," said the Mideast expert. As an example, Kuperwasser noted that many Muslims adhere to an Islamic doctrine that calls for them to be less aggressive while living under the sovereignty of non-Muslims, with the belief that they will later become rulers themselves.

"Just because they currently live as a minority in Europe," he said, "does not mean that Muslims have given up the idea that Islam should one day be in the majority."

Ethical principles at stake

Dr. Lars-Uwe Kettner, the legal counselor to the German Embassy to Israel, said that Germany's open policy on immigration is based on humanitarian considerations. "We took a strong stand towards human dignity," he said. He noted, however, that the challenges Germany's approach involves make it "very important that we stay in discussion with each other on these issues."

Germany has been among the most liberal European countries in its approach to immigration and has encouraged other European countries to share the immigration burden. This policy has angered many nations, particularly those in Eastern Europe who have been less eager to open their borders, and has led to political backlash.

Hungarian Ambassador to Israel Levente Benkő noted that this phenomenon can be seen all over Europe.

While it is difficult to maintain "politically correct discourse on this issue," he said, the inability of European governments to come up with suitable answers is giving rise to political extremism in Europe. This, he said, has been one of the unexpected byproducts of the immigration issue.

"There are parties coming out of nowhere with controversial answers that do not contribute positively to this problem. If the mainstream is unable to deal with this issue, that will give rise to parties on the extreme Left and the extreme Right," said Benkő.

Ambassador Martin Stropnicky of the Czech Republic said the problem is arising in large part not only because of the sheer number of migrants, but because "most of the people that are immigrating [to Europe] now do not want to accept our cultural milieu, but want us to accept theirs," he said. "And that is not acceptable."

According to Israel Prize laureate Professor Asa Kasher, co-author of the IDF Code of Ethics and a JCPA fellow, there is an ethical principle at stake when it comes to the preservation of national identity.

Kasher addressed the need to maintain "proportionality" when deciding how many migrants to accept. He insisted that nobody should be "indifferent to human suffering," including the suffering of migrants, yet at the same time, he said states have a national, cultural and sometimes religious identity that should be preserved.

"States have a right to maintain their identity," said Kasher. "That means they have a right to stop others from taking steps that jeopardize that identity."

Given that European countries cannot absorb unlimited numbers of refugees without jeopardizing their own identities, Kasher suggested that a more appropriate humanitarian approach might be to invest effort and money in the countries migrants are fleeing.

"We can spend a lot of money on naval forces stopping them from coming" to Europe, he said, "but maybe it is more effective to spend the money building a hospital or a school that will help encourage those who are suffering to stay and not to immigrate."

Sharing security concerns

From ethical and moral considerations, the discussion turned to the legal aspects of the crisis.

According to former legal adviser and director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry Alan Baker, while there may be moral and ethical reasons to accept migrants, there is "zero legal obligation" to do so under international law.

"There is a dichotomy between the legal obligations of sovereignty and the moral issue of permitting freedom of movement between one country and another," said Baker.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations and current JCPA president Dore Gold praised the working session, noting that issues such as terrorism and migration are "changing the way people look at the relations between the Middle East and Europe."

In particular, Gold noted that "Israel and Europe are now sharing the same set of security concerns they did not have before."

Superior Israeli intelligence on Islamic State, he added, as well as the natural-gas resources discovered off Israel's coast in recent years, are positively impacting the way European nations look to and rely on Israel.

"Israel must be prepared for a new paradigm of relations with Europe," said Gold.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The request filed with the ICC alleges that European Union officials are knowingly responsible for deaths of migrants at land and sea, and their widespread rape and torture at the hands of a Libyan coast guard funded and trained at the expense of European taxpayers. It names no EU official but cites an ongoing ICC investigation into the fate of migrants in Libya.

The legal document cites public EU documents, statements from the French president, the German chancellor and other top officials from the bloc.

"We leave it to the prosecutor, if he dares, if she dares, to go into the structures of power and to investigate at the heart of Brussels, of Paris, of Berlin and Rome and to see by searching in the archives of the meetings of the negotiations who was really behind the scenes trying to push for these policies that triggered the death of more than 14,000 people," said Juan Branco, a lawyer who co-wrote the report and shared it with The Associated Press.

The ICC is a court of last resort that handles cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide when other countries are unwilling or unable to prosecute. It is up to the prosecutor, who receives many such requests, to decide whether to investigate and ultimately bring a case.

The EU spokeswoman in charge of migration, Natasha Bertaud, declined to comment directly on the court filing, but she and Germany's government spokesman, Steffen Seibert, each placed blame for deaths at sea firmly on smugglers.

"The EU's track record on saving lives in the Mediterranean speaks for itself, saving lives has been our top priority and we have been working relentlessly to this end," Bertaud said.

The first crime, according to the document, was the decision to end the Mare Nostrum rescue operation near the end of 2014. In one year, the operation rescued 150,810 migrants in the Mediterranean as hundreds of thousands crossed the sea. The operation cost more than €9 million ($10 million) a month, nearly all paid for by Italy. It was replaced by an operation named Triton, financed by all 28 EU nations at a fraction of the cost. But unlike the earlier operation, Triton ships didn't patrol directly off the Libyan coast, the origin of most of the flimsy smuggling boats that were taking off for Europe.

Deaths in the Mediterranean then soared. In 2014, around 3,200 migrants died in the sea. The following year, it rose to over 4,000, and in 2016 peaked at over 5,100 deaths and disappearances, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.

"The objective of this new policy was to sacrifice the lives of many in order to impact the behavior of more," according to the complaint. "It also failed. Crossings did not decrease as predicted, because the risk had little deterrent effect on those who have little to lose to begin with."

Bertaud said the EU quickly realized its mistake in ending the Mare Nostrum operation and tripled its rescue capacity in 2015, helping save the lives of 730,000 since that year.

But EU countries leaned heavily on the Libyan coast guard to do so, sending money and boats and a degree of training to units of the loosely organized force linked to various factions of Libya's militias. For Alpha Kaba, a Guinean detained in slave-like conditions in Libya before ultimately making the crossing in 2016, that decision is a travesty.

Kaba was rescued by a ship operated by humanitarian organizations. Those are all but gone now from the Mediterranean, after Italy, Malta and other countries repeatedly refused to allow them to dock with migrants on board. And in the past two years, migration has considerably increased to Europe. The total for the first four months of 2019 was around 24,200 for irregular migration, 27% lower than a year ago, according to Frontex, the EU's border agency.

"Yes, there's no more migration, but where are all those young people that they picked up? They're in the prisons. They're in Libya and in prisons, and they're being tortured over there. If they aren't allowed in Europe, then let them go back to their countries quickly and under good conditions," said Kaba, who has received asylum in France. "There are no more entrances or exits."

Libya's role in the migrant crisis is already on the radar of the court's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda. In a statement to the Security Council in May 2017, she said that her investigators were collecting and analyzing "information relating to serious and widespread crimes allegedly committed against migrants attempting to transit through Libya."

She told the council: "I am deeply alarmed by reports that thousands of vulnerable migrants, including women and children, are being held in detention centers across Libya in often inhumane conditions. Crimes, including killings, rapes and torture, are alleged to be commonplace."

The court also already has an investigation in Libya, ordered by the U.N. Security Council during the bloody campaign by late dictator Moammar Gadhafi against popular protests in 2011 that ultimately toppled his regime and led to his death.

The court receives many similar requests every year for formal investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"The more detailed the communication, the more likely the prosecutor will take it seriously," said Dov Jacobs, a defense lawyer at the ICC who is not connected to the 243-page request.

Branco said he believed the details in the report, co-written with Omer Shatz, would leave the court little choice.

"[European officials] pretended that this was a tragedy that nothing could be done against it that they had no role in it," he said. "And we demonstrate very carefully that, on the contrary, they triggered this so-called tragedy."

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In an episode of the "Shaklabaz" program aired last week, comedian Shimaa Seif tried to annoy people on a microbus by speaking loudly in the Sudanese dialect. She then asked a man for a kiss before revealing her true identity.

Many Sudanese viewers expressed outrage on social media, calling the performance insulting and racist. Others called for boycotting the TV station and the production company, with the hashtag "boycott MBC Masr" in Arabic.

Seif told local media that the scene was not intended to offend. She said the episode was aired years ago without provoking any negative reaction.

Egypt has a large community of Sudanese refugees and migrants who have long complained of discrimination and bigotry. This is not the first time Arab TV shows with racist tropes have sparked controversy.

Last year, an Egyptian series sparked anger by mocking the Sudanese dialect and depicting darker-skinned people as being poor or lazy. The show starred comedian Samir Ghanem and his daughter, Amy Ghanem, who wore dark makeup and wigs with Rastafarian-style braids.

In another sketch aired last year on state-run Kuwait TV, an ensemble of Kuwaiti actors appeared in blackface, wearing traditional Sudanese turbans and jalabeyas, the long garment worn by men in Upper Egypt and Sudan.

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Conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz told the Austria Press Agency that the Freedom Party's branch in Upper Austria province should "immediately and unambiguously" distance itself from the poem that appeared in a party publication in Braunau.

Kurz said "the choice of words is abhorrent, inhuman and deeply racist, and has no place in Upper Austria or the whole country."

The poem, which was titled "The Town Rat" and warned against mixing cultures, also drew strong criticism from the center-left opposition.

Kurz struck a coalition deal with the Freedom Party and became chancellor in late 2017.

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