CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said it was time to increase the price of the country’s subsidised bread, revisiting the issue for the first time since 1977 when then president Anwar Sadat reversed a price rise in the face of riots.
El-Sisi on Tuesday did not specify the amount of any potential increase, but any change to the food support system in the world’s largest wheat importer would be highly sensitive. Bread was the first word in the signature slogan chanted in the 2011 uprising that unseated former president Hosni Mubarak.
Bread is currently sold at 0.05 Egyptian pounds ($0.0032) per loaf to more than 60 million Egyptians, who are allocated five loaves a day under a sprawling subsidy program that also includes the likes of pasta and rice, and costs billions of dollars.
“It is time for the 5 piaster loaf to increase in price,” El-Sisi said at the opening of a food production plant. “Some might tell me leave this to the prime minister, to the supply minister to (raise the price); but no, I will do it in front of my country and my people.
“It’s incredible to sell 20 loaves for the price of a cigarette.”
Previous attempted changes to the subsidy program, which caused deadly bread riots in 1977, were agreed as part of former President Anwar Sadat’s loan deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
El-Sisi’s government has also turned to the IMF, which granted a $12 billion loan in 2016 and a one-year $5.2 billion loan last year, but specified that food subsidies should only reach those most in need.
The loan program also required higher fuel and electricity prices.
“I’m not saying we make it significantly more expensive, to as high as it costs to make it, 65 or 60 piastres, but (increasing the price) is necessary,” El-Sisi said.
“Nothing stays stagnant like this for 20 or 30 years, with people saying that this number can’t be touched.”
The Egyptian supply ministry will immediately begin studying raising the bread price and will present its findings to the cabinet as soon as possible following El-Sisi’s remarks, minister Ali Moselhy told local newspaper El-Watan.
El-Sisi has sought to rein in Egypt’s massive subsidy program by targeting those deemed to be sufficiently wealthy while leaving bread prices untouched.
Hussein Abu Saddam, head of the farmer’s syndicate, told Reuters: “The decision is right and comes at a very suitable time. It helps us finish with the old practices and customs, in which the president was always afraid of touching bread prices, fearing the outcry of the poor.”
A hashtag which translates as “except the loaf of bread” trended on Twitter in Egypt by Tuesday afternoon with more than 4,000 tweets.
Last year the country shrank the size of its subsidised loaf of bread by 20 grams, allowing bakers to make more fixed-price loaves from the standard 100kg sack of flour.
“I hope that this is not poorly received, as if we are planning to make a big jump in prices ... we are only talking about achieving balance,” El-Sisi added.
In its 2021/22 budget, Egypt allocated 87.8 billion Egyptian pounds ($5.6 billion) to subsidise supply commodities and support farmers.
Of that amount, 44.8 billion pounds are allocated toward the bread subsidy.
The government set a wheat price assumption of $255.00 per ton in fiscal year 2021/2022, from $193.90 a ton the previous year, according to the budget. Egypt last bought wheat on Monday for $293.74 a ton c&f.
Wheat prices globally have rallied over supply concerns during the coronavirus pandemic.
Egypt’s El-Sisi calls for first bread price rise in decades
https://arab.news/m5rvz
Egypt’s El-Sisi calls for first bread price rise in decades
- Al-Sisi on Tuesday did not specify the amount of any potential increase
- "It is time for the 5 piaster loaf to increase in price," al-Sisi said at the opening of a food production plant
Gaza’s Islamic Jihad says Israeli hostage tried to take own life
- One of the group’s medical teams intervened and prevented him from dying
DUBAI: An Israeli hostage held by Gaza’s Islamic Jihad militant group has tried to take his own life, the spokesperson for the movement’s armed wing said in a video posted on Telegram on Thursday.
One of the group’s medical teams intervened and prevented him from dying, the Al Quds Brigades spokesperson added, without going into any more detail on the hostage’s identity or current condition.
Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Militants led by Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement killed 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage in an attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies. Hamas ally Islamic Jihad also took part in the assault.
The military campaign that Israel launched in response has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, according to health officials in the coastal enclave.
Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Hamza said the hostage had tried to take his own life three days ago due to his psychological state, without going into more details.
Abu Hamza accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of setting new conditions that had led to “the failure and delay” of negotiations for the hostage’s release.
The man had been scheduled to be released with other hostages under the conditions of the first stage of an exchange deal with Israel, Abu Hamza said. He did not specify when the man had been scheduled to be released or under which deal.
Arab mediators’ efforts, backed by the United States, have so far failed to conclude a ceasefire in Gaza, under a possible deal that would also see the release of Israeli hostages in return for the freedom of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Islamic Jihad’s armed wing had issued a decision to tighten the security and safety measures for the hostages, Abu Hamza added.
In July, Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said some Israeli hostages had tried to kill themselves after it started treating them in what it said was the same way that Israel treated Palestinian prisoners.
“We will keep treating Israeli hostages the same way Israel treats our prisoners,” Abu Hamza said at that time. Israel has dismissed accusations that it mistreats Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli airstrikes kill at least 37 across Gaza, medics say
CAIRO: Israeli airstrikes killed at least 37 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including 11 people in a tent encampment sheltering displaced families, medics said.
They said the 11 included women and children in the Al-Mawasi district, which was designated as a humanitarian zone for civilians earlier in the war between Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas militant group, now in its 15th month. The director general of Gaza’s police department, Mahmoud Salah, and his aide, Hussam Shahwan, were killed in the strike, according to the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry.
“By committing the crime of assassinating the director general of police in the Gaza Strip, the occupation is insisting on spreading chaos in the (enclave) and deepening the human suffering of citizens,” it added in a statement.
The Israeli military said it had conducted an intelligence-based strike in Al-Mawasi, just west of the city of Khan Younis, and eliminated Shahwan, calling him the head of Hamas security forces in southern Gaza. It made no mention of Salah’s death.
Other Israeli airstrikes killed at least 26 Palestinians, including six in the interior ministry headquarters in Khan Younis and others in north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, the Shati (Beach) camp and central Gaza’s Maghazi camp.
Israel’s military said it had targeted Hamas militants who intelligence indicated were operating in a command and control center “embedded inside the Khan Younis municipality building in the Humanitarian Area.”
Asked about the reported 37 deaths, a spokesperson for the Israeli military said it followed international law in waging the war in Gaza and that it took “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
The military has accused Gaza militants of using built-up residential areas for cover. Hamas denies this.
Hamas’ smaller ally Islamic Jihad said it fired rockets into the southern Israeli kibbutz of Holit near Gaza on Thursday. The Israeli military said it intercepted one projectile in the area that had crossed from southern Gaza. Israel has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians in the war, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the tiny, heavily built-up coastal territory is in ruins. The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack on southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
27 migrants die off Tunisia, 83 rescued, in shipwrecks: civil defence
TUNIS: Twenty-seven migrants, including women and children, died after two boats capsized off central Tunisia, with 83 people rescued, a civil defense official told AFP on Thursday.
The rescued and dead passengers, who were found off the Kerkennah Islands off central Tunisia, were aiming to reach Europe and were all from sub-Saharan African countries, said Zied Sdiri, head of civil defense in the city of Sfax.
Searches were still underway for other possible missing passengers, according to the Tunisian National Guard, which oversees the coast guard.
Tunisia is a key departure point for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe with Italy, whose island of Lampedusa is only 150 kilometers (90 miles) from Tunisia, often their first port of call.
Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing, which has seen a spate of recent shipwrecks, with the dangers exacerbated by bad weather.
On December 18, at least 20 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa died in a shipwreck off the city of Sfax, with five others missing.
Earlier on December 12, the coast guard rescued 27 African migrants near Jebeniana, north of Sfax, but 15 were reported dead or missing.
Since the beginning of the year, the Tunisian human rights group FTDES has counted “between 600 and 700” migrants killed or missing in shipwrecks off Tunisia. More than 1,300 migrants died or disappeared in 2023.
kl/bou/dcp
Syria forces launch security sweep in Homs city: state media
- Syrian security forces are conducting a security sweep in the city of Homs, state media reported on Thursday
DAMASCUS: Syrian security forces are conducting a security sweep in the city of Homs, state media reported on Thursday, with a monitor saying targets include protest organizers from the Alawite minority of the former president.
“The Ministry of Interior, in cooperation with the Military Operations Department, begins a wide-scale combing operation in the neighborhoods of Homs city,” state news agency SANA said quoting a security official.
The statement said the targets were “war criminals and those involved in crimes who refused to hand over their weapons and go to the settlement centers” but also “fugitives from justice, in addition to hidden ammunition and weapons.”
Since Islamist-led rebels seized power in a lightning offensive last month, the transitional government has been registering former conscripts and soldiers and asking them to hand over their weapons.
“The Ministry of Interior calls on the residents of the neighborhoods of Wadi Al-Dhahab, Akrama not to go out to the streets, remain home, and fully cooperate with our forces,” the statement said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, told AFP the two districts are majority-Alawite — the community from which ousted President Bashar Assad hails.
“The ongoing campaign aims to search for former Shabiha and those who organized or participated in the Alawite demonstrations last week, which the administration considered as incitement against” its authority, he said.
Shabiha were notorious pro-government militias tasked with helping to crush dissent under Assad.
On December 25, thousands protested in several areas of Syria after a video circulated showing an attack on an Alawite shrine in the country’s north.
AFP was unable to independently verify the footage or the date of the incident but the interior ministry said the video was “old and dates to the time of the liberation” of Aleppo in December.
Since seizing power, Syria’s new leadership has repeatedly tried to reassure minorities that they will not be harmed.
Alawites fear backlash against their community both as a religious minority and because of its long association with the Assad family.
Last week, security forces launched an operation against pro-Assad fighters in the western province of Tartus, in the Alawite heartland, state media had said, a day after 14 security personnel of the new authorities and three gunmen were killed in clashes there.
Palestinian Authority suspends broadcast of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV temporarily
- The authority accuses the broadcaster of sowing division in the Middle East and Palestine
- The authority says Al-Jazeera was airing 'inciting material' from Jenin camp in the West Bank
CAIRO: The Palestinian Authority suspended the broadcast of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV temporarily over “inciting material,” Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported on Wednesday.
A ministerial committee that includes the culture, interior and communications ministries decided to suspend the broadcaster’s operations over what they described as broadcasting “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife” in the country.
The decision isn’t expected to be implemented in Hamas-run Gaza where the Palestinian Authority does not exercise power.
Al-Jazeera TV last week came under criticism by the Palestinian Authority over its coverage of the weeks-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and militant fighters in the Jenin camp in the occupied West Bank.
Fatah, the faction which controls the Palestinian Authority, said the broadcaster was sowing division in “our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular.” It encouraged Palestinians not to cooperate with the network.
Israeli forces in September issued Al-Jazeera with a military order to shut down operations, after they raided the outlet’s bureau in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
