First, a scoop: My colleague Vincenzo Genovese reports that US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner called for a radical overhaul of financial support for Gaza while addressing a closed-door meeting of the Palestine Donor Group in Brussels, in which European and Arab delegates pledged a nearly €900-million recovery package.
Speaking via video last week, Kushner dismissed the Gaza aid initiatives carried out so far as "designed step by step by NGOs and terrorists", and called for a fundamental shift in approach to "turn the tide", according to people familiar with the content of the private talks consulted by Euronews.
Kushner is a key figure on the Board of Peace, the controversial body chaired by the US president that is expected to oversee Gaza's reconstruction. The European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Šuica, triggered outrage in February when she travelled to Washington for a meeting of the Board, despite the Commission having expressed doubts over its compatibility with the UN charter. Vincenzo has the details in this exclusive story.
A postcard from Djibouti: Our special correspondent Toby Gregory, who was embedded with the EU's naval mission Aspides this week during foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas’s official visit, writes in from the Bab el-Mandeb. It's a tiny country that carries an outsized load: sitting on the narrow gateway where much of the world’s shipping passes within sight of Yemen, and where Houthi drones and missiles have turned one of the busiest trade routes on earth into a front line.
