Abukeshek was detained alongside Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila after the Israeli navy stopped the humanitarian vessel, while dozens of other activists were intercepted by the Greek coast guard and taken to the island of Crete, according to officials and legal representatives.

Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares described the detention as unlawful and said he had raised the matter directly with his Israeli counterpart.“This is a case of illegal detention in international waters, outside the jurisdiction of Israeli authorities,” Albares said in an interview with Spain’s public radio.

“I have made this clear to my Israeli counterpart.”The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, known as Adalah, said it visited both men at a detention facility in the Israeli port city of Ashkelon and reported that they had begun a hunger strike.

The group said the two activists alleged they had been repeatedly beaten while in custody and were subjected to isolation, prolonged blindfolding and physical assault.“Adalah maintains that the treatment of the two activists, including the use of isolation, prolonged blindfolding and physical beatings, constitutes a grave violation of international law,” the organization said in a statement.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in an online post that Abukeshek and Ávila were being questioned over possible links to the Palestinian militant group Hamas and confirmed that both had been granted consular access.

The detention has added fresh strain to already tense relations between Israel and Spain, one of Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.Spain formally recognized Palestinian statehood in 2024, a move that triggered strong objections from Israel and widened diplomatic friction between the two governments.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez intensified criticism on Friday during a campaign event ahead of regional elections in southern Spain, directly addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the detention.“Now that Netanyahu has taken foreign citizens, including a Spanish national, and brought them to Israel, I have a few things to say to Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Sánchez told supporters of his Socialist Party.

“First, Spain will always protect its citizens. Second, we will always uphold international law — and this is yet another violation of it,” he said. “And third, we demand the release of the Spanish citizen who has been illegally detained by the Netanyahu government.”

The case has drawn wider attention across Europe as international activists continue attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza amid the prolonged conflict and worsening humanitarian conditions in the enclave.

The German navy vessel Fulda is being positioned to support a potential multinational operation aimed at protecting maritime navigation through the strategically vital waterway, where tensions surged after Iran effectively disrupted shipping routes during the recent war.

A defense ministry spokeswoman said the deployment was intended to make a “significant and visible contribution” to an international coalition seeking to safeguard freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy transit corridors.

Several countries have indicated readiness to participate in what officials have described as a “neutral” maritime security mission following the end of hostilities between the United States and Iran.The United States said last week it had begun de-mining operations in coordination with Tehran, although Iranian authorities have not publicly confirmed such cooperation.

The minesweeper Fulda, a specialized vessel designed to detect and neutralize naval mines, will be stationed with a crew of around 45 personnel, the spokeswoman said.Any eventual deployment into the Strait of Hormuz itself would depend on what Berlin described as a lasting cessation of hostilities and formal approval from Germany’s Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, which is required for overseas military operations.

The conflict in Iran began on Feb. 28 with air strikes carried out by the United States and Israel, sharply escalating regional tensions and raising fears over global energy supply disruptions.In response, Iran’s military moved to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of global oil shipments normally pass, triggering a spike in international crude prices and renewed concerns over shipping security.

The narrow maritime passage linking the Persian Gulf to global markets remains one of the most strategically sensitive chokepoints in world trade, particularly for Europe and Asia’s energy imports.

Diplomatic efforts to stabilize the region have since intensified, with prospects for renewed negotiations between Washington and Tehran emerging this weekend in Pakistan, where both sides have reportedly sent envoys to Islamabad for indirect talks on ending the conflict.

Germany’s move reflects broader European efforts to restore stability in Gulf shipping lanes and prevent renewed disruption to commercial traffic after weeks of heightened military confrontation.

The fire department said a man in his 50s was found trapped under a car in Nea Makri, northeast of Athens, amid severe weather conditions. Emergency services reported nearly 500 calls across the greater Athens area, including more than 30 rescue operations.

Authorities issued emergency alerts and closed schools in Athens and other regions as the storm intensified. Ferry services, a key transport link for Greece’s islands, remained suspended in many areas due to rough seas.

The national weather service warned of continued severe conditions, forecasting intense rainfall, thunderstorms and possible hail across much of the country.

Localized flooding has already been reported in several areas.On Wednesday, flights to Crete were disrupted after an African dust storm reduced visibility, forcing some aircraft to reroute.

Officials said the storm system, which has affected large parts of the country for three days, is expected to ease by Friday.

Erdogan has bitten off more empire than Turkey can chew…

Since 2003, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has towered over his country like a colossus, dominating its political discourse in every respect. To survive and thrive in this cut-and-thrust political culture takes skill, brains and, above all, cunning ruthlessness. But, along with success, as the ancients tell us, so often comes hubris — excessive self-confidence, potentially leading to ruin. And, in pushing his signature, expansionist neo-Ottoman foreign policy beyond its limit, Erdogan has bitten off more empire than Turkey can chew.

On its surface, Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanism perfectly fits the tenor of the times. The desire for the emboldened Turkish Republic to more greatly influence the former regions of its predecessor state — the sultanate centered for centuries in Istanbul — coincides with our new era of loose bipolarity, wherein the two superpowers, the US and China, have far less control over other great powers just beneath them, such as India, Russia, Europe, Japan and the Anglosphere, in terms of power.

Erdogan, viewing a revived Turkey as a prospective great power in its own right alongside these others, sees the chance to set a largely independent Turkish foreign policy for the first time in such a favorable global system.

Reflexively, Erdogan has resolved the age-old question of Turkey’s basic cultural orientation by harkening back to the days of Ottoman power, when the answer was “both” and “neither.” Like the Ottomans, Erdogan sees his country as both Western and Middle Eastern-oriented, and also as entirely distinct from both regions because of its unique dual historical and cultural circumstances.

Given this common view of identity, Erdogan’s Turkey, while still wishing to play a role in European politics, has shifted its emphasis to the Middle East, particularly to the Ottoman Empire’s former possessions in Greece, Syria, Iraq and North Africa, hoping to expand its power and influence in this traditional bastion.

But, as has happened literally dozens of times in history, in practice Erdogan has engaged in imperial overstretch, taking on more commitments than he can sustain. Presently, Turkey is directly involved in the civil war in Libya, supporting the Government of National Accord (GNA) faction in Tripoli against the forces ranged around Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, who is backed in turn by Russia, France and Egypt.

In June, Turkey at least temporarily bolstered the then-flailing GNA, supplying it with arms, drone technology and mercenaries. However, getting out of failed states is often far harder than getting in. At present, Ankara has no visible strategy to accomplish the tall task of winning the war, helping to establish a stable, pro-Turkish government, and then withdrawing any time in the near future.

At the same time, Ankara has also retained a significant military and geographical foothold in the north of neighboring Syria, occupying swaths of land with the aim of both halting the influx of refugees and stopping Syrian Kurdish forces from effortlessly crossing the border to aid the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the indigenous Turkish Kurdish grouping that has been the mortal enemy of Ankara for decades.

If this were not enough, Erdogan also continues the traditional Turkish practice of propping up a government in the north of the divided island of Cyprus. In fact, he has also moved to a far more aggressive posture in the eastern Mediterranean, with the Turkish Navy actively challenging ships in waters recognized by the international community as belonging to Greece — a ruling Ankara defiantly refuses to countenance. At stake here are potentially large natural gas deposits, of great value to a perpetually thirsty Turkey.

To facilitate this far more expansionistic regional strategy, Erdogan has also built bases in both Qatar (completed in 2019) and Bashiqa in Iraq. All these moves must be seen as part of a strategic whole, the basis of Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman efforts to decisively expand Turkey’s power in the region.

But you cannot run an empire on the cheap. The fatal flaw in Erdogan’s fevered neo-Ottoman dream is that Turkey is simply not the great power he imagines that it is. In Ankara’s case, the endemic structural problems with its economy make such an expansionistic foreign policy utterly unsustainable in the long run.

The devastating effects of the pandemic on Turkey’s economy are clear. In September, the Turkish lira slid to an all-time low. In a desperate effort to keep the currency from plunging further, the government has blown almost half the foreign reserves of $65 billion it had at the beginning of this year. Inflation remains stubbornly high, reaching nearly 12 percent in August. Finally, Turkey’s gross domestic product was pulverized in the second quarter of 2020, almost entirely due to the coronavirus disease lockdown. It tumbled a hair-raising 9.9 percent year-on-year, the worst such figure in more than a decade. To put it mildly, such devastating statistics do not make running a neo-Ottoman foreign policy easy.

Instead, these numbers amount to facts on the ground that simply cannot be gotten around in the long term. Erdogan’s grandiose neo-Ottoman dream is destined to fail for the most pedestrian, and historically common, of reasons — his expansionistic dreams have far outpaced Turkey’s economic realities.

Piece first published on Arab News.

Dr. John C. Hulsman is the president and managing partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a prominent global political risk consulting firm. He is also senior columnist for City AM, the newspaper of the City of London. He can be contacted via chartwellspeakers.com.