BEIRUT: Lebanon’s top Christian cleric said on Sunday the nation faced “multiple dangers” that would be hard to weather without a government, speaking a day after the prime minister-designate quit following his failed bid to form a cabinet.
Mustapha Adib stepped down on Saturday after hitting a roadblock over how to make appointments in the sectarian system, striking a blow to a French initiative that aimed to haul the nation out of its deepest crisis since its 1975-1990 civil war.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who had pressed Lebanon’s fractious politicians to reach a consensus so that Adib was named on Aug. 31, is to due to speak about the crisis in a news conference in Paris later on Sunday.
Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, leader of the Maronite church, Lebanon’s biggest Christian community, said Adib’s resignation had “disappointed citizens, especially the youth, who were betting on the start of change in the political class.”
Many top politicians, both Christian and Muslim, have held sway for years or even decades. Some are former warlords.
Rai said Lebanon now had to navigate “multiple dangers” without a government at the helm.
Rai’s comments were echoed on the streets of Beirut, where mass protests erupted in 2019 as years of mismanagement, corruption and mounting debts finally led to economic collapse, paralysing banks and sending the currency into freefall.
“There needs to be fundamental change. We need new people. We need new blood,” said 24-year-old Hassan Amer, serving coffee from a roadside cafe in the capital, which was hammered by a huge port blast on Aug. 4 that killed almost 200 people.
In nearby streets, walls were still plastered with graffiti from the protests, including the popular call for sweeping out the old guard: “All of them means all of them.”
Frustration at the failure of Adib, a Sunni Muslim, to form a government was voiced by many across Lebanon’s religious communities. Prime ministers under Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system must be Sunnis.
A senior Shiite Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Qabalan, said on Saturday Adib’s resignation as the economy collapsed could “be described as a disaster,” calling for national unity to deliver reforms, the state news agency reported.
The cabinet formation effort stumbled after Lebanon’s two main Shiite groups, Amal and the heavily armed Iran-backed Hezbollah, demanded they name several ministers, including finance, a key role as the nation draws up a rescue plan.
Saad Al-Hariri, a former prime minister and leading Sunni politician, said in a statement he would not be involved in naming any new premier and said the French plan was “the last and only opportunity to halt Lebanon’s collapse.”
A French roadmap laid out a reform program for a new government to help trigger billions of dollars of international aid.
Lebanese patriarch warns of crisis without a government after Adib steps down
https://arab.news/2z5d7
Lebanese patriarch warns of crisis without a government after Adib steps down
- Al-Rai said Adib’s resignation had ‘disappointed citizens, especially the youth’
- Frustration at Adib’s failure to form government was voiced by Lebanon’s religious communities
Relatives of freed Gaza hostages call for release of remaining captives
- Mandy Damari, the mother of British-Israeli Emily Damari, said her daughter was “in high spirits.”
RAMAT GAN, Israel: The relatives of the three Israeli hostages released from Gaza by Palestinian militants Hamas called on Monday for all those remaining in the territory to be freed.
Speaking at a press conference at the Sheba hospital where the three women are being treated, they gave no details on the conditions in which their relatives had been held for 471 days or on their health.
Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher were released on Sunday as part of the first round of exchanges that also saw around 90 Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli jails.
Meirav Leshem Gonen, the mother of Romi Gonen, said: “We got our Romi back, but all families deserve the same outcome, both the living and the dead. Our hearts go out to the other families.”
“We are a people who desire peace but are ready for war when needed,” she added.
Yamit Ashkenazi meanwhile passed on a message from her sister Doron Steinbrecher.
“Everyone needs to return, until the last hostage comes home. Just as I was fortunate to return to my family, so must everyone else.”
Mandy Damari, the mother of British-Israeli Emily Damari, said her daughter was “in high spirits.”
She called for all the hostages to be released and for humanitarian aid that was going into the Gaza Strip to also go to the remaining captives.
Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 91 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military has said are dead.
A further two hostages who are presumed alive have been held in Gaza since 2014 and 2015 respectively, as has the body of a soldier killed in the 2014 Gaza war. The three are also due to be released as part of the deal.
Before the press conference, the Israeli military released new footage of the moment the three freed hostages were reunited with their mothers at an Israeli military base.
In the footage, the three women are seen embracing their mothers tightly as they meet for the first time after their release.
Hamas says next hostages to be released on Sunday, a day later than expected
- Hamas had been expected to release four hostages on Saturday, coinciding with a release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel
- Accord outlines a six-week initial ceasefire phase and includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip
CAIRO/TEL AVIV: A Hamas official said on Monday the Palestinian militant group would next release hostages on Sunday, a day later than expected under a complex ceasefire accord reached this month with Israel.
Nahed Al-Fakhouri, head of the Hamas prisoners’ media office, said in a statement the names of hostages it would release would be provided on Saturday. Israel would similarly disclose the names of Israeli prisoners to be released under the deal, he said.
“Based on these two lists, the actual implementation will be carried out on Sunday,” Al-Fakhouri said.
Hamas had been expected to release four hostages on Saturday, coinciding with a release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
A senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that as far as Israel was concerned, the deadline for the next hostages to be released by Hamas was Saturday.
“This is the agreement and must be adhered to,” the official told Reuters.
Earlier this month, Israel and Hamas agreed to a three-phase ceasefire that could bring an end to the 15-month war in Gaza. The ceasefire came into effect on Sunday with Hamas releasing three Israeli hostages. Israel also released Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
The ceasefire accord outlines a six-week initial ceasefire phase and includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and release of hostages taken by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
After 15 months of war, Hamas still rules over what remains of Gaza
- Avi Issacharoff: “Hamas is going to remain in power and will continue to build more tunnels and recruit more men, without the emergence of any local alternative”
- Israel has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and has reduced entire neighborhoods to fields of rubble
GAZA CITY: As a ceasefire brought calm to Gaza’s ruined cities, Hamas was quick to emerge from hiding.
The militant group has not only survived 15 months of war with Israel — among the deadliest and most destructive in recent memory — but it remains firmly in control of the coastal territory that now resembles an apocalyptic wasteland. With a surge of humanitarian aid promised as part of the ceasefire deal, the Hamas-run government said Monday that it will coordinate distribution to the desperate people of Gaza.
For all the military might Israel deployed in Gaza, it failed to remove Hamas from power, one of its central war aims. That could make a return to fighting more likely, but the results might be the same.
There was an element of theater in Sunday’s handover of three Israeli hostages to the Red Cross, when dozens of masked Hamas fighters wearing green headbands and military fatigues paraded in front of cameras and held back a crowd of hundreds who surrounded the vehicles.
The scenes elsewhere in Gaza were even more remarkable: Thousands of Hamas-run police in uniform re-emerged, making their presence known even in the most heavily destroyed areas.
“The police have been here the whole time, but they were not wearing their uniforms” to avoid being targeted by Israel, said Mohammed Abed, a father of three who returned to his home in Gaza City more than seven months after fleeing the area.
“They were among the displaced people in the tents. That’s why there were no thefts,” he said.
Other residents said the police had maintained offices in hospitals and other locations throughout the war, where people could report crimes.
Israel has repeatedly blamed Hamas for the heavy civilian death toll and damage to infrastructure because the group’s fighters and security forces embed themselves in residential neighborhoods, schools and hospitals.
A deeply rooted movement
Opinion polls consistently show that only a minority of Palestinians support Hamas. But the Islamic militant group — which does not accept Israel’s existence — is deeply rooted in Palestinian society, with an armed wing, a political party, media and charities that date back to its founding in the late 1980s.
For decades, Hamas functioned as a well-organized insurgency, able to launch hit-and-run attacks on Israeli forces and suicide bombings in Israel itself. Many of its top leaders have been killed — and quickly replaced. It won a landslide victory in 2006 parliamentary elections, and the following year it seized Gaza from the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in a week of street battles.
Hamas then established a fully-fledged government, with ministries, police and a civilian bureaucracy. Its security forces quickly brought Gaza’s powerful families into line and crushed rival armed groups. They also silenced dissent and violently dispersed occasional protests.
Hamas remained in power through four previous wars with Israel. With help from Iran it steadily enhanced its capabilities, extended the range of its rockets and built deeper and longer tunnels to hide from Israeli airstrikes. By Oct. 7, 2023, it had an army of tens of thousands in organized battalions.
In the surprise incursion that triggered the war, its fighters attacked southern Israel by air, land and sea, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Hamas-led militants abducted 250 others.
A war like no other
In response, Israel launched an air and ground war that has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and has reduced entire neighborhoods to fields of rubble. Some 90 percent of Gaza’s population has been displaced, often multiple times.
Nearly every day of the war, the Israeli military announced that it had killed dozens of fighters, or taken out a midlevel commander, or dismantled a tunnel complex or obliterated a weapons factory. Israeli forces killed Hamas’ top leader, Yahya Sinwar, and most of his lieutenants. But the exiled leadership is mostly intact and Mohammed Sinwar, his brother, has reportedly assumed a bigger role in Gaza.
The military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters — roughly half of Hamas’ estimated prewar ranks — though it has not provided evidence.
What Israel said were carefully targeted strikes frequently killed women and children and in some cases wiped out entire extended families.
The military blamed civilian casualties on Hamas. But survivors of the bombardment, crammed into tents after their homes were flattened, were a pool of potential recruits.
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a prepared speech that Hamas had recruited nearly as many fighters as it lost during the war.
Michael Milshtein, an Israeli expert on Palestinian affairs and former military intelligence officer, said Hamas no longer has the ability to launch an Oct. 7-style attack but has returned to its insurgent roots, using creative tactics like harvesting unexploded Israeli ordnance for homemade bombs.
“Hamas is a chameleon. It changed its colors according to the circumstances,” he said.
“The war is ending with a strong perception of success for Hamas,” he added. “The enlistment capabilities will be crazy. They won’t be able to handle it.”
Israel ensures there is no alternative
Palestinian critics of Hamas have long said there is no military solution to the Mideast conflict, which predates the birth of the militant group by several decades.
They argue that Palestinians would be more likely to break with Hamas if they had an alternative path to ending Israel’s decades-long occupation, which has further entrenched itself during the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is opposed to Palestinian statehood, has ensured they do not.
He has rebuffed proposals from the United States and friendly Arab countries for a reformed Palestinian Authority to govern both Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank ahead of eventual statehood. Instead, he has vowed to maintain open-ended security control over both territories.
Avi Issacharoff, a veteran Israeli journalist — and co-creator of the Netflix hit “Fauda” — said Netanyahu’s refusal to plan for the day after was the “biggest debacle of this war.”
“Israel is waking up from a nightmare into the very same nightmare,” he wrote in Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper. “Hamas is going to remain in power and will continue to build more tunnels and recruit more men, without the emergence of any local alternative.”
Netanyahu has threatened to resume the war after the first six-week phase of the ceasefire if Israel’s goals are not met, while Hamas has said it will not release dozens of remaining captives without a lasting truce and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
There’s no reason to think another military campaign would bring about a different result.
In early October, Israeli forces sealed off the northern towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya, barring nearly all humanitarian aid, forcing thousands to flee and destroying nearly every structure in their path, including schools and shelters, according to witnesses who fled.
The army had carried out major operations in all three places previously, only to see militants regroup. At least 15 Israeli soldiers have died in northern Gaza this month alone.
When residents returned to Jabaliya on Sunday, they found a sprawling scene of devastation with only a few tilted shells of buildings in a sea of gray rubble.
Dozens of Hamas police kept watch over their return.
Middle East is being reshaped and what will emerge is unclear, UN chief tells Security Council
- Antonio Guterres presents detailed vision for immediate action needed in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria to build on ceasefires, relieve suffering and embrace political processes
- He urges Israel to end its presence in Lebanon, warns any attempt to annex West Bank would violate international law, and calls for inexorable path toward a 2-state solution
NEW YORK CITY: The Middle East is undergoing a “profound transformation” marked by both uncertainty and potential, the UN secretary-general told a high-level meeting of the Security Council on Monday.
Antonio Guterres praised Egypt, Qatar and the US for their efforts to secure a ceasefire and hostage-release agreement between Hamas and Israel. The deal reached last week came into effect on Sunday, when the first phase of hostage releases by both sides took place and the number of trucks entering Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid to the starving population began to ramp up.
Guterres urged all parties to honor their commitments, fully implement the agreement, and ensure it leads to the release of all hostages and a permanent ceasefire in the territory.
He called for the wider effects of the deal to include an assurance that all UN agencies are able to perform their duties “without hindrance,” including the Relief and Works Agency, the largest aid agency for Palestinians, which is under threat from an imminent Knesset ban on operating in Israel.
“The UN must have rapid, safe and unimpeded access through all available channels and crossings to deliver food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter, and materials to repair infrastructure across Gaza, including the north,” said Guterres.
The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said that after 15 months of “relentless war, the humanitarian needs in Gaza are staggering and there is no time to lose.”
UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Monday that the entire population of Gaza, more than 2 million people, depends on aid basics to survive.
“Children account for about half of the Strip’s population, with many surviving on just one meal a day,” he added. “Our partners working on children’s welfare say the provision of food, water and medical supplies are being prioritized.”
The World Health Organization has a 60-day plan to increase bed capacity at some hospitals in northern and southern Gaza, Haq said, and to send in additional health workers from abroad to staff them. He noted that about 30,000 people in the territory sustained life-changing injuries during the conflict and need specialized care.
Enabling a surge in the amount of desperately needed relief supplies entering the territory requires that visas and permits for humanitarian workers be granted quickly, and that steps are taken to ensure safe conditions and conducive operating environments are in place, Guterres told members of the Security Council.
This includes the provision of necessary technical and protective gear, coordination between all parties and UN operatives on the ground, and the restoration of public order and safety to prevent the looting of humanitarian aid, he added. Commercial supplies must also be allowed to enter Gaza to help meet the “overwhelming needs of the population.”
Guterres also called for medical evacuations for those who need to travel for treatment, and urged UN member states to take in patients from Gaza.
In addition, people returning to homes they were forced to abandon during the war must be able to do so safely, he said.
“Explosive ordnance must be removed. The recovery of human remains must be conducted with dignity and respect,” Guterres added, and the international media must be allowed into Gaza to report “on this crucial story.”
He highlighted the need for intensifying collective efforts to establish effective governance and security arrangements in Gaza that will ultimately enable the enclave and the West Bank to reunify, as he underscored the Palestinian Authority’s desire to assume its role there.
In the West Bank itself, Guterres said the situation was growing worse, with clashes, airstrikes, the relentless expansion of illegal settlements, and demolitions of Palestinian properties. This is causing deep concern about an “existential threat” to the integrity and continuity of the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank, he added.
“Israeli administrative changes over the past two years have streamlined and accelerated the settlement-approval process,” Guterres said.
“As a result, control over many aspects of planning and daily life in Area C of the West Bank has been transferred to Israeli civilian authorities.”
Israeli officials now openly speak about their desire to annex the West Bank in the near future, but Guterres warned that “any such annexation would constitute a most serious violation of international law.”
Greater stability in the Middle East requires “irreversible action” that moves toward a two-state solution “with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace and security, in line with international law, relevant UN resolutions and previous agreements, with Jerusalem as the capital of both states,” he said.
Guterres had just returned from a solidarity visit to Lebanon, where he said a “new dawn is rising” for the country, with hopes for the establishment of a state that will be able to represent all Lebanese people and guarantee their security.
While there he visited southern Lebanon, where peacekeepers from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon are stationed on the demarcation line between the country and Israel. He saluted the peacekeepers for their efforts and thanked the countries that contribute troops.
Although the ceasefire with Israel there is fragile, “it is holding,” said Guterres, and the UN peacekeepers are making “vital efforts to nurture this process” in cooperation with the Lebanese army.
He stressed that the Israeli presence in southern Lebanon needs to end, as stipulated in the recent ceasefire agreement, and that the Lebanese Armed Forces must be present in all parts of the country.
“Resolution 1701 is clear: The area between the Blue Line and the Litani River must be free of all armed personnel, assets and weapons, other than those of the government of Lebanon and UNIFIL,” he said, referring to a resolution adopted by the Security Council in 2006 with the aim of resolving the conflict that year between Israel and Hezbollah.
Regarding the situation in neighboring Syria, Guterres said a country that has been “a crossroads of civilizations” now stands at “a crossroads of history.”
He added: “Following the fall of the brutal previous regime, and years of bloodshed, there is a possibility of promise for the people of Syria.”
However, he warned that “we cannot let the flame of hope turn into an inferno of chaos,” as he called for “much more significant work in addressing sanctions and designations,” given the country’s “urgent economic needs.”
He also underscored the fact that an inclusive political transition would be “the most effective means to ensure that Syria receives more support.”
Israel buries soldier killed in Gaza more than 10 years ago
- Oron Shaul was 21 years old when he was killed during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City in 2014
JERUSALEM: An Israeli soldier killed during the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip was buried on Monday in Israel after his remains were recovered from the Palestinian territory by the army over the weekend.
Oron Shaul was 21 years old when the military vehicle he was in was blown up during an operation in Gaza City on July 20, 2014, claiming his life and those of six other soldiers.
Shaul and another soldier, Hadar Goldin, whose remains are still in Gaza, have been the focus of indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas for years.
Shaul’s body was retrieved by Israeli forces during a special military operation over the weekend, according to the army.
Goldin and two civilians presumed to be alive who have been held in Gaza since 2014 and 2015 respectively are among the hostages at the center of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that took effect on Sunday.
Israel counts them in addition to the 91 people still being held in Gaza after they were abducted by Hamas militants during their unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The two civilians are also included among those set to be freed in hostage-prisoner exchanges during the ongoing first stage of the ceasefire.
