BEIRUT: Lebanon’s longtime parliament speaker Nabih Berri often seems like a veteran schoolteacher with a class of unruly students, using threats and jokes and occasional gavel-pounding to keep the assembly in order.
The 80-year-old has held the job for a quarter-century, and is set to be re-elected as speaker for a sixth time on Wednesday, when the new assembly convenes after national elections earlier this month — the first in nine years.
That he faces no challengers, and rarely has over the years, owes much to Lebanon’s sectarian-based and elite-dominated political system, which has mostly kept the peace since the 1975-1990 civil war, but has also spawned political paralysis and endemic corruption.
Berri is seen by some as an embodiment of that system, which shows no signs of changing despite rising discontent. But the parliament speaker, who is one of Lebanon’s most influential and enduring politicians, is also seen as a moderate, unifying figure who lifted his Shiite community’s profile and role in the country’s postwar politics, often acting as mediator among feuding Lebanese factions.
“I don’t believe that there is anyone else who has the characteristics, shrewdness and skills to be parliament speaker more than he does,” said Fouad Saniora, a former prime minister from a rival bloc who had tense relations with Berri during his term.
Lebanon’s political system, built to distribute power among its various sects, mandates a Christian president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister and a Shiite parliament speaker, while the Cabinet and parliament seats are equally divided between Muslims and Christians. As leader of the Shiite Amal movement, which is closely allied with the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, Berri is virtually untouchable. The two parties hold all but one of the 27 seats allotted to Shiites in parliament.
“This is the reality in Lebanon,” said Nabil Bou Monsef, deputy editor-in-chief of the leading daily An-Nahar. “As long as he is the man chosen by his sect to head the parliament, no other sect will veto him as this will lead to sectarian conflict. ... These are the rules of the game.”
Berri’s rise is unusual because he does not come from an established political dynasty. He was born in the African nation of Sierra Leone on Jan. 28, 1938 to a Lebanese trading family with origins in the south Lebanon town of Tibnin. He worked his way up, eventually becoming a lawyer, and says he ended four centuries of feudalism in southern Lebanon.
He was a follower of Imam Moussa al-Sadr, a charismatic Iranian-born cleric who led a Shiite revival in the 1960s that mobilized the long-marginalized community. Berri rose to prominence in 1976, when he became an active member of the politburo of Amal, the military wing of al-Sadr’s movement.
“I was influenced by Imam Moussa al-Sadr in every aspect,” Berri told The Associated Press in a recent interview in his office, which is decorated with an icon of the Virgin Mary and a picture of Berri meeting the late Pope John Paul II.
Berri was elected leader of the Amal movement in 1980 after al-Sadr disappeared while visiting Libya two years earlier. He forged close ties with Syrian President Hafez Assad and remains closely allied to Assad’s son and successor, Bashar.
Amal fighters battled Israeli troops when they invaded Lebanon in 1982, but failed to prevent them from reaching the capital, Beirut. The Shiite fighters later resorted to insurgent attacks, and along with Hezbollah took credit for the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. To this day, Berri says his greatest political achievement was setting up the “resistance.”
Amal struggled during Lebanon’s civil war, however, especially after Iran set up Hezbollah in the early 1980s, drawing Amal defectors into its ranks. The two Shiite groups fought each other on several occasions during the war, but eventually mended ties, and today form the backbone of a Lebanese coalition allied with Syria and Iran.
“When it comes to resistance (against Israel) and goals and everything, we are one body,” Berri said about his ties with Hezbollah. “It is not a Shiite thing. This is a national coalition.”
Berri became known in the West in June 1985, when he helped mediate the release of 39 American hostages after 17 days in captivity. They were held by Shiite extremists who had hijacked a TWA Boeing 727, killed a passenger — US Navy diver Robert Stethem — and demanded the release of 700 Arabs held by Israel.
In the years after the civil war, Berri emerged as a canny mediator who maintained friendly ties with the country’s various factions and worked to prevent them from relapsing into civil war. Known to his supporters as the “Istez,” a title reserved for lawyers, Berri plays an outsized role in naming presidents, forming governments and passing legislation, and his Beirut residence is invariably on the itinerary of visiting foreign dignitaries.
But he is also seen as part of a narrow political elite that has been unable to provide basic services. Nearly 30 years after the civil war ended, Beirut still experiences routine power outages, and a dispute over trash collection in recent years sparked mass protests, organized with the hashtag #YouStink drive, directed against the political class.
Critics accuse Berri of holding up the legislative process when it suits his needs, and his supporters have taken to the streets in violent protests when other factions have challenged him. Earlier this year they blocked Beirut streets with burning tires and trash bins after a leaked video showed the foreign minister calling Berri a “thug” in a closed meeting.
Berri, who has nine children and 26 grandchildren, insists he won’t follow the local tradition of keeping his job in the family, but the octogenarian also has no plans to step down.
“There is no retirement in politics,” he said. “As long as you serve your people and you can work, you will work.”
Speaker’s long tenure embodies Lebanon’s political stasis
Speaker’s long tenure embodies Lebanon’s political stasis
Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill 35
- Hossam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said in a statement that the facility’s generators were hit and that “the army is attempting to target the fuel tank, which is full of fuel and poses a significant fire risk”
- Bassal said eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said on Sunday that Israeli strikes killed at least 35 Palestinians across the territory, more than 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war.
The violence came even as Palestinian groups involved in the fighting said a ceasefire deal was “closer than ever.”
Israel has faced growing criticism of its actions during the war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, including from rights groups accusing it of “acts of genocide” which the Israeli government strongly denies.
Pope Francis denounced on Sunday the “cruelty” of Israel’s bombardment, highlighting the deaths of children and attacks on schools and hospitals in Gaza.
It was his second such comment in as many days, despite Israel’s accusing the pontiff of “double standards.”
On the ground in Gaza, civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were killed in an air strike on a house in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah belonging to the Abu Samra family.
An AFP photographer saw residents searching through the debris for survivors, while others looked for belongings they could salvage.
In a nearby compound, bodies covered in blankets lay on the sandy ground.
The military said it targeted an Islamic Jihad militant who was operating in Deir el-Balah.
“According to an initial examination, the reported number of casualties resulting from the strike does not align with the information held by the IDF (military),” it said to AFP in a statement, which did not give its own toll.
“We are... losing loved ones every day,” said Deir el-Balah resident Naim Al-Ramlawi.
“I pray to God that a truce will be reached soon” and would allow Gazans to finally “live a decent life, instead of this miserable life,” he said.
The military also confirmed a separate strike further north, on a school in Gaza City.
Bassal said eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.
It was the latest of numerous similar strikes against schools-turned-shelters during the war.
The military says the facilities are used by Hamas Palestinian militants.
In this case it said it carried out a “precise strike” that targeted a Hamas “command and control center” inside the school compound.
AFP images showed mangled concrete slabs and iron beams strewn amid patches of blood at the damaged school building.
Bassal said in a statement that a separate strike, overnight into Sunday, killed three people in Rafah, in the south.
And a drone strike on Sunday morning hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people, the spokesman added.
Late on Sunday, the civil defense agency said seven people were killed when Israeli drones struck tents in the humanitarian area of Al-Mawasi in western Khan Yunis, while the Israeli military said it had targeted a “Hamas terrorist.”
Israel in early October began a major military operation in Gaza’s north, which it said aimed to prevent Hamas from regrouping there.
A United Nations official who visited Gaza City said late last month that people were living in “inhumane conditions with severe food shortages and terrible sanitary conditions.”
On Sunday a hospital director in northern Gaza said Israeli forces were bombing buildings near the facility.
Hossam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said in a statement that the facility’s generators were hit and that “the army is attempting to target the fuel tank, which is full of fuel and poses a significant fire risk.”
Contacted by AFP, the military said it was unaware of any strikes on the hospital, one of only two still operating in northern Gaza.
The unprecedented Hamas attack last year that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 96 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 45,259 people, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Hamas and two other Palestinian armed groups said in a rare joint statement on Saturday that an agreement to end the bloodshed was “closer than ever,” after Qatari-hosted talks that followed months of stalled negotiations.
In ruined homes, Palestinians recall Assad’s torture
- According to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, at the start of Syria’s conflict in 2011 it was home to 160,000 registered refugees
YARMUK, Syria: School lessons ended in Syria’s biggest Palestinian refugee camp on October 18, 2012, judging by the date still chalked up on the board more than a decade later.
“I am playing football“; “She is eating an apple“; “The boys are flying a kite” are written in English.
Outside, the remaining children in the Damascus suburb of Yarmuk now play among the shattered ruins left by Syria’s years of civil war.
And as the kids chase through clouds of concrete dust, a torture victim — freed from jail this month when rebels toppled Bashar Assad’s government — hobbles through the rubble.
“Since I left the prison until now, I sleep one or two hours max,” 30-year-old Mahmud Khaled Ajaj told AFP.
Since 1957, Yarmuk has been a 2.1-square-kilometer (519-acre) “refugee camp” for Palestinians displaced by the founding of the modern Israeli state.
Like similar camps across the Middle East, over the decades it has become a dense urban community of multi-story concrete housing blocks and businesses.
According to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, at the start of Syria’s conflict in 2011 it was home to 160,000 registered refugees.
Rebellion, air strikes and a siege by government forces had devastated the area and left by September this year only 8,160 people still clinging to life in the ruins.
With Assad’s fall, more may return to reopen the damaged schools and mosques, but many like Ajaj will have terrible tales to tell of Assad’s persecution.
The former Free Syrian Army rebel fighter spent seven years in government custody, most of it at the notorious Saydnaya prison, and was only released when Assad’s rule ended on December 8.
Ajaj’s face is still paler than those of his neighbors, who are tanned from sitting outside ruined homes, and he walks awkwardly with a back brace after years of beatings.
At one point, a prison doctor injected him in the spine and partly paralyzed him — he thinks on purpose — but what really haunts him was the hunger in his packed cell.
“My neighbors and relatives know that I had little food, so they bring me food and fruit. I don’t sleep if the food is not next to me. The bread, especially the bread,” he said.
“Yesterday, we had bread leftovers,” he said, relishing being outside after his windowless group cell, and ignoring calls from his family to come to see a concerned aunt.
“My parents usually keep them for the birds to feed them. I told them: ‘Give part of them to the birds and keep the rest for me. Even if they are dry or old I want them for me’.”
As Ajaj spoke to AFP, two passing Palestinian women paused to see if he had any news of missing relatives since Syria’s ousted leader fled to Russia.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has documented more than 35,000 cases of disappearances under Assad’s rule.
Ajaj’s ordeal was extreme, but the entire Yarmuk community has suffered on the frontline of Assad’s war for survival, with Palestinians roped into fighting on both sides.
The graveyard is cratered by air strikes. Families struggle to find the tombs of their dead amid the devastation. The scars left by mortar strikes dot empty basketball courts.
Here and there, bulldozers are trying to shift rubble and the homeless try to scavenge re-usable debris. Some find work, but others struggle with trauma.
Haitham Hassan Al-Nada, a lively and wild-eyed 28-year-old, invited an AFP reporter to run his hand over lumps he says are bullets still lodged in his skull and hands.
His father, a local trader, supports him and his wife and two children after Assad’s forces shot him and left him for dead as a deserter from the government side.
Nada told AFP he fled service because, as a Palestinian, he did not think he should have to serve in Syrian forces. He was caught and shot multiple times, he said.
“They called my mother after they ‘killed’ me, so she went to the airport road, toward Najha. They told her ‘This is the dog’s body, the deserter’,” he said.
“They didn’t wash my body, and when she was kissing me to say goodbye before they buried me, suddenly and by God’s power, it’s unbelievable, I took a deep breath.”
After Nada was released from hospital, he returned to Yarmuk and found a scene of devastation.
2024 Year in Review: Can Lebanon recover from the depredations of Israel-Hezbollah war?
- Months-long conflict compounded the country’s economic and political crises, left thousands displaced from the south
- With the Iran-backed militia weakened, now could be the moment when the state reasserts control over its security
BEIRUT: On the first day of 2024, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah received an Israeli ultimatum. If it did not immediately retreat from the Israeli-Lebanese border and cease its rocket attacks, a full-scale war was imminent. It was the threat that preceded the storm.
The following day, Israeli fire, previously confined to cross-border exchanges initiated by Hezbollah on Oct. 8, 2023, with the stated aim of supporting Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza, was turned on the southern suburbs of Beirut for the first time.
An Israeli drone targeted a Hamas office in Haret Hreik, killing the group’s third-ranking leader, Saleh Al-Arouri. Simultaneously, the killings of Hezbollah leaders in southern Lebanon increased exponentially.
The war that Hezbollah launched against northern Israel compounded Lebanon’s existing crises. Already burdened by the financial collapse of 2019, Lebanon entered 2024 grappling with worsening economic and social turmoil.
A political crisis deepened the chaos, as a failure to appoint a president — caused by sharp divisions between Hezbollah and its allies on one side and their opponents on the other — has left the government paralyzed since October 2022.
The flare-up on the border initially displaced 80,000 people from their villages, further straining the country’s economy and increasing poverty. In mid-December 2023, donor countries informed Lebanon of plans to reduce aid for social protection at the start of 2024.
Military confrontations escalated quickly. Hezbollah maintained its “linked fronts” strategy, insisting it would continue its attacks until Israel withdrew from Gaza, while Israel insisted Hezbollah comply with Resolution 1701 and withdraw its forces north of the Litani River.
Between Oct. 8, 2023, and September 2024, Hezbollah launched 1,900 cross-border military attacks, while Israel responded with 8,300 attacks on southern Lebanon. These hostilities caused hundreds of fatalities and displaced entire communities in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.
Despite intensive diplomatic efforts — primarily by France and the US — no ceasefire was reached during this period. The confrontations intensified, with the Israeli army expanding its targets to the Baalbek region, while Hezbollah extended its strikes to deep Israeli military positions.
Daily clashes revealed Hezbollah’s entrenched military presence in southern Lebanon, including arms depots, artillery emplacements and tunnels, despite the monitoring role of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon under Resolution 1701.
Resolution 1701 mandates the establishment of a weapons-free zone between the Blue Line and the Litani River, except for Lebanese government and international forces. It also prohibits the unauthorized sale or supply of arms to Lebanon.
Hassan Nasrallah, the slain secretary-general of Hezbollah, asserted in 2021 that the group’s fighting force was 100,000 strong.
Funded by Iran and trained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah boasted a significant arsenal, predominantly Iranian-made and locally manufactured weapons.
After monopolizing resistance operations in the 1980s, Hezbollah morphed into what many analysts considered an Iranian proxy beyond the control of the Lebanese state.
This year’s confrontations broke traditional rules of engagement, imposing new dynamics.
UNIFIL troops in forward positions were not spared from the crossfire, with incidents escalating after Israeli forces entered UNIFIL’s operational zones.
By mid-July, Western embassies in Lebanon were urging their nationals to leave, aware of Israel’s threat to expand the conflict into an all-out war on Lebanon.
Israeli strikes on Hezbollah’s leadership intensified, culminating in the July killing of Radwan Division commander Fouad Shukr in southern Beirut. The following day, Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh was targeted in Tehran, heightening tensions between Israel and Iran.
Israeli airstrikes deepened across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, while Hezbollah extended its attacks to Kiryat Shmona, Meron and the outskirts of Haifa and Safed.
Then, on Sept. 17-18, Israel mounted a coordinated attack on thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies, causing explosions that resulted in 42 deaths and more than 3,500 injuries. Although Israel has not claimed responsibility, the attack marked a significant escalation.
By Sept. 27, the killing of Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah figures in Haret Hreik signaled the start of a wider war. Israeli forces used precision concussion rockets to strike deep into buildings and bunkers, killing Hezbollah commanders and forcing mass evacuations from Beirut’s southern suburbs.
In response, Hezbollah reaffirmed its commitment to linking any ceasefire in Lebanon to one in Gaza. However, by Oct. 1, Israel had intensified its raids, leveling residential buildings and even threatening archaeological sites in Tyre and Baalbek.
The Israeli army also initiated a ground offensive in southern Lebanon, destroying border villages and severing land crossings with Syria to disrupt Hezbollah’s supply lines. Satellite imagery revealed the total destruction of towns like Ayta Al-Shaab and Aitaroun, rendering them uninhabitable.
The devastation affected not only Hezbollah but also Lebanon’s Shiite community, which had invested heavily in the group over decades.
On Nov. 26, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, with US mediation, finalized a ceasefire agreement. However, the deal was preceded by a massive Israeli escalation in Beirut.
As the ceasefire came into effect, questions arose in Hezbollah strongholds about its decision to separate the Lebanon and Gaza peace tracks. Critics also questioned its commitment to dismantling military installations and cooperating with US-led monitoring efforts.
Despite the ceasefire, violations continued. Meanwhile, the war’s economic toll was becoming apparent.
Amin Salam, Lebanon’s minister of economy, estimated initial losses at $15-20 billion, with 500,000 jobs lost, widespread business closures, and agricultural devastation affecting 900,000 dunams of farmland.
Farmers, industrialists and displaced communities were left without support, deepening Lebanon’s economic paralysis. Municipalities began assessing damages, while Hezbollah sought to distribute Iranian-funded aid to those affected.
Although its leadership and its once mighty arsenal have been badly diminished, and the war in Gaza continues, the fact that Hezbollah has survived the past year of conflict is being projected by the group as a victory in itself.
What is certain is that Lebanon now faces an unprecedented challenge, recovering from a conflict it was ill-equipped to withstand and watching a friendly government in neighboring Syria crumble under an onslaught by opposition forces.
By the same token, now may be the moment many Lebanese had been eagerly waiting for, when the state is in a position to assert its control over internal and external security.
UN investigator says possible to find ‘enough’ proof for Syria prosecutions
- Since Assad’s fall, Petit has been able to visit the country but his team still require authorization to begin their work inside Syria which they have requested
DAMASCUS: The visiting head of a UN investigative body for Syria said Sunday it was possible to find “more than enough” evidence to convict people of crimes against international law, but there was an immediate need to secure and preserve it.
The doors of Syria’s prisons were flung open after an Islamist-led rebel alliance ousted longtime ruler Bashar Assad this month, more than 13 years after his brutal repression of anti-government protests triggered a war that would kill more than 500,000 people.
With families rushing to former prisons, detention centers and alleged mass graves to find any trace of disappeared relatives, many have expressed concern about safeguarding documents and other evidence.
“We have the possibility here to find more than enough evidence left behind to convict those we should prosecute,” said Robert Petit, who heads the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) set up by the UN in 2016 to prepare prosecutions for major international crimes in Syria.
But he noted that preserving evidence would “need a lot of coordination between all the different actors.”
“We can all understand the human impulse to go in and try and find your loved ones,” Petit said. “The fact is, though, that there needs to be a control put in place to restrict access to all these different centers... It needs to be a concerted effort by everyone who has the resources and the powers to do that to freeze that access, preserve it.”
The organization, known as the Mechanism, was not permitted to work in Syria under Assad’s government but was able to document many crimes from abroad.
Since Assad’s fall, Petit has been able to visit the country but his team still require authorization to begin their work inside Syria which they have requested.
He said his team had “documented hundreds of detention centers... Every security center, every military base, every prison had their own either detention or mass graves attached to it.”
“We’re just now beginning to scratch that surface and I think it’s going to be a long time before we know the full extent of it,” he told AFP.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, more than 100,000 people died in Syria’s jails and detention centers from 2011.
The Saydnaya complex, the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, epitomised the atrocities committed against Assad’s opponents.
Petit compared Saydnaya to the S-21 prison in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, which came to stand for the Khmer Rouge’s wider atrocities and now houses the country’s genocide museum.
The Saydnaya facility will become “an emblematic example of inhumanity,” he said.
Petit said his team had reached out to the new authorities “to get permission to come here and start discussing a framework by which we can conduct our mandate.”
“We had a productive meeting and we’ve asked formally now, according to their instructions, to be able to come back and start the work. So we’re waiting for that response,” he said.
Even without setting foot in Syria, Petit’s 82-member team has gathered huge amounts of evidence of the worst breaches of international law committed during the war.
The hope is that there could now be a national accountability process in Syria and that steps could be taken to finally grant the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed in the country.
Tunisian women herb harvesters struggle with drought
- Tunisia produces around 10,000 tonnes of aromatic and medicinal herbs each year, according to official figures
TUNIS: On a hillside in Tunisia’s northwestern highlands, women scour a sun-scorched field for the wild herbs they rely on for their livelihoods, but droughts are making it ever harder to find the precious plants.
Yet the harvesters say they have little choice but to struggle on, as there are few opportunities in a country hit hard by unemployment, inflation and high living costs.
“There is a huge difference between the situation in the past and what we are living now,” said Mabrouka Athimni, who heads a local collective of women herb harvesters named “Al-Baraka.”
“We’re earning half, sometimes just a third, of what we used to.”
SPEEDREAD
Yet the harvesters say they have little choice but to struggle on, as there are few opportunities in a country hit hard by unemployment and high living costs.
Tunisia produces around 10,000 tonnes of aromatic and medicinal herbs each year, according to official figures.
Rosemary accounts for more than 40 percent of essential oil exports, mainly destined for French and American markets.
For the past 20 years, Athimni’s collective has supported numerous families in Tbainia, a village near the city of Ain Draham in a region with much higher poverty rates than the national average.
Women, who make up around 70 percent of the agricultural workforce, are the main breadwinners for their households in Tbainia.
Tunisia is in its sixth year of drought and has seen its water reserves dwindle, as temperatures have soared past 50 degrees Celsius in some areas during the summer.
The country has 36 dams, mostly in the northwest, but they are currently just 20 percent full — a record low in recent decades.
The Tbainia women said they usually harvested plants like eucalyptus, rosemary and mastic year-round, but shrinking water resources and rare rainfall have siphoned oil output.
“The mountain springs are drying up, and without snow or rain to replenish them, the herbs yield less oil,” said Athimni.
Mongia Soudani, a 58-year-old harvester and mother of three, said her work was her household’s only income. She joined the collective five years ago.
“We used to gather three or four large sacks of herbs per harvest,” she said. “Now, we’re lucky to fill just one.”
Forests in Tunisia cover 1.25 million hectares, about 10 percent of them in the northwestern region.
Wildfires fueled by drought and rising temperatures have ravaged these woodlands, further diminishing the natural resources that women like Soudani depend on.
In the summer of last year, wildfires destroyed around 1,120 hectares near Tbainia.
“Parts of the mountain were consumed by flames, and other women lost everything,” Soudani recalled.
To adapt to some climate-driven challenges, the women received training from international organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, to preserve forest resources.
Still, Athimni struggles to secure a viable income.
“I can’t fulfil my clients’ orders anymore because the harvest has been insufficient,” she said.
The collective has lost a number of its customers as a result, she said.
