The United Kingdom and the European Union have agreed on a draft political declaration that sets out the terms of the post-Brexit relationship between London and Brussels.

Speaking outside Number 10 Downing Street on Thursday, May said that the Brexit deal “is the right deal for the UK.”

“The British people want this to be settled, they want a good deal that sets us on course for a brighter future,” May said. “That deal is within our grasp and I am determined to deliver it.”

The draft declaration sets out an “ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership”, officials said on Thursday, AFP news agency reported.

The UK and EU agreed the terms for the draft divorce deal last week. That agreement is legally binding and covers the terms of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

It addresses the UK’s so-called “divorce bill” and outlines the “backstop” agreement, that will ensure no return to a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, in the event that the UK and EU fail to reach a future trade agreement.

The draft political declaration is aspirational and not legally binding, but it sets out the future framework for EU-UK relations after Brexit, paving the way for an EU summit this weekend to rubber-stamp the agreements.

Tusk said on Thursday that the EU executive informed him it has agreed on the text in principle and that the leaders of the 27 remaining EU states would screen the text on Thursday at a Brussels meeting.

“The Commission president has informed me that it has been agreed at negotiators’ level and agreed in principle at political level, subject to the endorsement of the leaders,” Tusk said.

He said that the British prime minister and the European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, had discussed the text on Wednesday.

“The declaration established the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation” and other areas, according to a copy of the document seen by the AFP.

Representatives from all 28 EU countries are set to meet on Friday to prepare for the weekend summit.

Gibraltar, fishing rights issues remain

Some EU member states have raised objections to the divorce deal that was agreed at the UK-EU level and work is still ongoing among those states, European Commission spokesperson Margaritis Schinas said Thursday.

Spain wants stronger language underlining its role in any decisions on Gibraltar, a British territory on the tip of the Iberian peninsula. Meanwhile, several member states are concerned about the impact of Brexit on fishing rights in the waters around Britain.

“I can confirm that the issue of Gibraltar, like the issue of fishing, are questions that still need to be tackled, resolved,” he said. “There are ideas, contacts are ongoing,” he added, in relation to Gibraltar.

May addressed the issue on Thursday and said she thought a deal could be done.

May said she had spoken to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and added: “I am confident that on Sunday we’ll be able to agree a deal that delivers for the whole UK family, including Gibraltar.”

The UN special envoy to Yemen is expected to arrive in the Yemeni city of Hodeidah as part of his renewed push for peace, as sporadic fighting continued in the strategic port city.

Martin Griffiths is spearheading the biggest push in two years to get the warring parties to join the upcoming peace negotiations aimed at ending almost four years of devastating conflict.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow, reporting for neighbouring Djibouti, said residents in Hodeidah say there is no meaningful ceasefire in place as there are still sporadic clashes near the city’s outskirts.

“When they announced that they were going to stop drone and ballistic missile attacks against their opponents, the Houthi fighters were categorical that they still have the right to defend their positions, which they have been fortifying in the past days,” Adow said.

The UN envoy arrived in the capital city of Sanaa on Wednesday, where he met the leaders of Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have been in control of the Yemeni capital since 2014.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of the Houthi rebels’ Higher Revolutionary Committee and an influential political figure, tweeted on Thursday that he “hopes there is no escalation in military operations by the coalition [Saudi-UAE] following Griffiths’s visit to Hodeida”.

Griffiths’ planned visit to Hodeidah, which has become the focus of the country’s ongoing war, comes a day after US Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced that talks would commence by early December in Sweden between Houthi rebels and the UN-recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Earlier peace talks between the government, supported by Saudi Arabia, and the Houthi rebels collapsed in September after Houthis were not able to attend.

Last week, Griffith said that Yemen’s parties had given “firm assurances” they are committed to attending peace talks to agree on a framework for peace under a transitional government.

But military officials say intermittent clashes have continued to erupt in the Red Sea city of Hodeidah.

Fighting broke out followed by a lull in violence earlier this month in Hodeidah as Saudi-UAE coalition warplanes reportedly carried out air attacks on Houthi positions.

The port city – the main gateway for imports of relief supplies and commercial goods into the country – is under Houthi control. In June, the Saudi-UAE alliance launched a wide-ranging operation to retake the strategic seaport.

According to Adow, Griffiths is keen on maintaining a ceasefire before taking the two sides to the negotiating table in Sweden.

He also said talk of the Houthis handing over the port to a third party was not looking feasible at the moment.

Years of war

Efforts to launch peace negotiators failed in September when the Houthis did not show up at the talks in Switzerland, saying they needed stronger security guarantees from the international community. The Saudi-UAE coalition has enforced a crippling air and sea blockade on the Middle East’s poorest country since March 2015.

Western allies, including the United States, have called for a ceasefire to end the nearly four-year-old war that has killed more than 10,000 people, according to the World Health Organization, and caused the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis.

UN agencies say up to 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation if the port of Hodeidah is closed by fighting or damage.

Aid group Save the Children reported on Wednesday that as many as 85,000 children may have starved to death in the past three years during its brutal war.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen’s war in 2015 to restore Hadi’s government, which was removed from Sanaa by the Houthis in 2014.

Australia has unveiled plans to increase government powers to strip the citizenship of the people convicted of “terrorism” and to control the movements of Australian fighters who return home from the battlefields of Syria and Iraq.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday that his government wanted powers to expel anyone convicted of a “terrorist” offence, even native-born Australians, as he singled out Muslim leaders as having a “special responsibility” to prevent acts of violence committed by members of the community.

“People who commit acts of terrorism have rejected absolutely everything that this country stands for,” Morrison told a hastily organised press conference in Sydney.

“This is something that can’t be tolerated, and for those who would engage in this sort of activity, and they have citizenship elsewhere, or we have reason to believe they do, they can go.”

This comes a day after Muslim leaders in Australia boycotted a roundtable meeting called by the conservative leader, who has asked the Muslim community to do more to halt attacks in the country.

Community leaders, in an open letter, said they are “deeply concerned and disappointed” with statements made by the prime minister and senior officials, which “infer that the community is collectively culpable for the criminal actions of individuals and should be doing more to prevent such acts of violence”.

“These statements have achieved nothing to address underlying issues, but rather, have alienated large segments of the Muslim community,” they said in the letter published by Australian media.

Legislation to amend Citizenship Act

Australia’s current Citizenship Act allows authorities to revoke the citizenship of people jailed for six years or more for “terrorist” activities, but only if they are already dual nationals.

Morrison called these limits “unrealistic” and said the law should be broadened to strip citizenship from convicted “terrorists” if they could “reasonably” be expected to gain citizenship in another country through their parents or grandparents.

The conservative government will submit legislation to amend the Citizenship Act to enshrine these new powers, he said, in the final two-week parliamentary session of the year that begins on Monday.

His proposals came two days after police in the country’s second largest city, Melbourne, arrested three Australian-born men of Turkish descent for allegedly plotting a mass shooting in the city.

Less than two weeks earlier, a Somalia origin man went on a stabbing spree in Melbourne, killing one man and wounding two others before being fatally shot by police. 

Authorities said all four men were inspired by the propaganda of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, even though none had any direct links to such organisations.

Legal challenges

Experts say the proposed legislation was likely to face legal challenges. 

“It is not clear that the commonwealth has the power to kick out people who have been here for many, many generations,” said Sangeetha Pillai, a constitutional lawyer at the Kaldor Centre, University of New South.

“This legislation would make some people stateless at least temporary and in some cases, permanently.”

Prime Minister Morrison said the law will also seek the power to impose “temporary exclusion orders” on so-called “returned foreign fighters” – Australian citizens who travel to conflict zones to fight alongside armed groups.

Modelled on a British law, the provision would allow Australia to bar the return of a citizen for up to two years and to impose strict conditions on their activities once they come home.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said there had been seven “terror-related” attacks in Australia, while authorities had thwarted 15 other plots since 2014.

Nine people convicted of “terrorism” have already had their citizenship revoked under the existing law, mainly for activities overseas, he added. 

“We assess there are around 50 Australian dual citizens who may be eligible to lose citizenship under the current provisions, and even more with the changes we are announcing today,” Dutton said.

Morrison and Dutton also said they would renew a push for controversial legislation which would allow authorities to break into encrypted messaging apps that police say are widely used by “extremists” and other criminals.

The law, which would force app developers and telecom companies to provide police with the ability to decrypt messages, has drawn strong criticism from civil liberties groups.

Morrison heads a minority coalition government that must call a national election before May 2019 but is trailing far behind the main opposition Labor Party in opinion polls.

As campaigning builds towards the election, Morrison and Dutton have led a tough law-and-order push around “terrorism” and immigration.

Eric Brown had a target on his back for 28 years. That’s how long he spent in the security forces of Northern Ireland, first in the police, then the British Army, during the Troubles.

The sectarian conflict from 1968 to 1998 pitted mostly Catholic Irish nationalists, who wanted to end British rule in Northern Ireland, against mostly Protestant unionists, who wanted British rule to continue.

Policemen and soldiers were routine targets for Irish nationalist paramilitaries, as they were regarded as enforcers of British occupation.

The most dangerous place to be a police officer or soldier was along the controversial border, nearly 500 kilometres long, that divided Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland. It is where Brown worked and lived, in the strongly nationalist county of Fermanagh.

The border is quiet now, and people on both sides can travel across it without even realising they’ve done so. But security officials across the United Kingdomand Ireland have warned that Brexit might put an end to that.

The European Union insists that if Northern Ireland leaves the bloc along with the rest of the UK, and adopts different trading rules from EU-member state the Republic of Ireland, then they’ll be forced to create a “hard border” of customs checks and trading posts. 

That could, in the worst case scenario, incite Irish nationalist paramilitaries, now largely dormant, to renew their attacks.

But Brown, like many unionists, sees warnings of a so-called hard border as a threat European leaders are using to force Britain to stay close to the European Union.

“I always thought this hard border stuff was a little bit of scaremongering,” he tells Al Jazeera. “I don’t for one moment believe that this could challenge the peace and lead to a return of violence. I don’t think the situation and circumstances are right, certain political parties could not afford to return to terrorism.”

He is disappointed by the deal negotiated by the British government to withdraw from the EU. In order to avoid any possibility of a “hard border”, Prime Minister Theresa May has agreed that Northern Ireland will continue to abide by all of the EU’s trading rules, even if the rest of the UK diverges.

The deal has prompted consternation from unionists, who fear they are being sold out. 

It is a double shock because, due to May’s poor performance in elections last year, she has been relying on Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to back up her government. Faced with the prospect of their homeland being permanently economically cut off from the rest of the UK, the DUP has all but withdrawn its support for her.

During the 2016 Brexit referendum, Brown voted to remain in the EU, and even though the result went the other way, he says it should be honoured. 

Now he is faced with the prospect of living under EU rules, with Northern Ireland’s place in the UK undermined.

“There is trepidation among unionists. This is a threat to the union,” he says. “I don’t see why Northern Ireland should be treated preferentially, because we took the decision as a nation, we need to face it as a nation.”

But not everyone agrees, including most of those who work in the Province’s vital agricultural industry. 

The Ulster Farmers’ Union has thrown its weight behind the deal, not with great enthusiasm, but because almost all of its members agree that any deal that keeps close economic ties with the EU is better than simply crashing out of the bloc without agreement.

“Withdrawing without a deal would be an absolute disaster,” says the union’s president, Ivor Ferguson. “Seventy-five percent of what we produce leaves Northern Ireland. We depend so much on trading north and south, any restrictions on that would be a problem.”

Business leaders and organisations representing the hospitality, food and drinks industry have also backed the deal. 

It isn’t just about continuing free trade with Europe, it’s also about maintaining the high product standards promoted by the EU.

“A big concern for us would be if the floodgates were opened to cheap products below our standards,” Ivor continues. “Some of the politicians who said not to worry about leaving the EU without a deal were also the ones who wanted to bring in cheap products from America and elsewhere.”

Even for farmers though, the deal creates nervousness. 

Ivor says he’s received assurances from London that there will never be any restrictions for Northern Irish products being sold into the rest of the UK, guarantees which “at the moment” he takes at face value.

But Ben Lowry, deputy editor of the Belfast-based unionist daily newspaper The News Letter, envisages a full trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

“The EU won’t allow us out and London clearly won’t fight for us,” he says, “it means a major barrier between us and the rest of the UK.”

Despite this sentiment, the deal has not prompted mass protests. According to Lowry, the issues are too complex. “Very few people understand it and the implications of it, and therefore there is nothing like the uproar that there should be.”

He is dismissive of suggestions that Northern Ireland could benefit from its unique position between the EU and the rest of the UK, attracting investment from international companies that want to straddle both jurisdictions.

“Many people believe we will get the best of both worlds. I would even be attracted to that myself, if it wasn’t my fear for the long-term implications of this,” he says. “This is a victory for Irish nationalism better than they could have dreamt of a few years ago.”