BEIRUT: Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri on Friday held consultations with lawmakers about the new government he will form.
He held the non-binding meetings at the parliament’s headquarters despite the damage it suffered after the Beirut Port explosion on Aug. 4.
There were tough security measures at entrances leading to parliament and there were no protests nearby, despite activists’ anger about Hariri’s nomination to lead the country. He resigned a year ago as prime minister following massive demonstrations against Lebanon’s political elite.
“Hariri is sticking to forming a government of non-party member specialists whose mission is to implement economic, financial, and administrative reforms as cited by the French initiative, which the parliamentary blocs vowed to support,” sources close to Hariri told Arab News. “Hariri listened to the points of view of the lawmakers, noting that since his nomination he has not talked to anyone about details related to the government which he intends to form.”
Parliamentary blocs that met Hariri expressed a sense of optimism and cooperation, especially those that did not nominate him on Thursday to form the government. Representatives of these blocs were unanimous in emphasizing the importance of speeding up the reform process to save the country from its economic crisis.
“Talks were straightforward and open,” lawmaker Gebran Bassil said after his meeting. “There is no personal problem with Hariri and we are extremely positive, and we are concerned in implementing the reforms cited by the French proposal.”
He asked that reforms start with a forensic investigation and the imposition of capital control, and to agree on a joint program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“The priority is for qualified people and we wait for what President Michel Aoun and Hariri will agree on, so that we determine our stance toward forming the government, noting that we are ready to facilitate the process.”
Lawmaker Mohammed Raad, head of Hezbollah parliamentary bloc, said after his Hariri meeting: “We tendered our point of view regarding the role of the government, and this is something that we consented on to a large extent. We discussed reform issues related to administration, the judiciary, and control agencies, calling for rectifying the financial and banking situation, in addition to other issues cited in the French initiative which we vowed to support 90 percent of them. We advised to adopt a method whereas each minister would hold one portfolio so that he would be capable of sorting out its problems. We advised not to have a small government, and to have between 22 and 24 ministers, and expressed our readiness to cooperate.”
Former Prime Minister Tammam Salam said he hoped that the government would be formed by a harmonious team to implement the required reforms during a three to six month period. “Parliament is there to question and hold accountability, in addition to follow up all government actions, and this cannot be achieved during this period in a traditional way as if things are all fine in the country.”
Dr. Nasser Yassin said that the spirit of openness and cooperation after a period of acrimony and accusation was about maintaining a minimum level of stability in Lebanon within the framework of the French initiative.
“The collapse of Lebanon affects neighboring countries, and we have already seen refugee boats sailing in the direction of Cyprus,” he told Arab News. “Nobody wants to increase the crises of the region, the crises of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya are enough, and what is needed is to maintain a minimum stability in Lebanon. I do not see new equations.”
He added that what was happening in Lebanon was the failure of some in leading the country, the attempts of some parties to undermine the role of other parties, and the game to save the political order while maintaining the same political behavior.
Lebanon’s parliamentary blocs to help Hariri form new government
https://arab.news/p4a8w
Lebanon’s parliamentary blocs to help Hariri form new government
- Lawmakers emphasize need to expedite reform process
- Parliamentary blocs that met Hariri expressed a sense of optimism and cooperation
Hamas official says ready to free 34 Gaza hostages under mooted deal
- Israeli PM says Hamas has yet to provide list of hostages to be released under agreement
- Mediators Qatar, Egypt and US have tried for months to strike a deal to end the war
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: A Hamas official on Sunday said the Palestinian militants were ready to free 34 hostages in the “first phase” of a potential deal with Israel, after Israel said indirect talks on a truce and hostage release agreement had resumed in Qatar.
Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have tried for months to strike a deal to end the war. The latest effort comes just days before Donald Trump takes office as president of the United States on January 20.
The talks took place as Israel pounded the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing at least 23 people according to rescuers, nearly 15 months into the war.
During that time there has been only one truce, a one-week pause in November 2023 that saw 80 Israeli hostages freed along with 240 Palestinians from Israeli jails.
“Hamas has agreed to release 34 Israeli prisoners from a list presented by Israel as part of the first phase of a prisoner exchange deal,” the Hamas official said.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas has yet to provide a list of hostages to be released under an agreement.
The Hamas official, requesting anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the ongoing negotiations with the media, said the initial swap would include all the women, children, elderly people and sick captives still held in Gaza.
He said some may be dead and that Hamas requires time to determine their condition.
“Hamas has agreed to release the 34 prisoners, whether alive or dead. However, the group needs a week of calm to communicate with the captors and identify those who are alive and those who are dead,” the official said.
During their attack on October 7, 2023 which began the Gaza war, militants seized 251 hostages, of whom 96 remain in Gaza. The Israeli military says 34 of those are dead.
Until the Hamas official’s comment there had been no update on the talks which both warring sides were to resume in Qatar over the weekend.
“Efforts are under way to free the hostages, notably the Israeli delegation which left yesterday (Friday) for negotiations in Qatar” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told relatives of a hostage on Saturday, according to his office.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, in an interview with RTL radio, said that “we continue to exert the necessary pressure” to reach a deal.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t depend only on us.”
In December, Qatar expressed optimism that “momentum” was returning to the talks following Trump’s election victory.
But Hamas and Israel then traded accusations of imposing new conditions and obstacles.
In northern Gaza on Sunday, the Civil Defense agency said an air strike on a house in the Sheikh Radwan area killed at least 11 people.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the victims included women and children, and rescuers were using their “bare hands” to search for five people still trapped under rubble.
The Israeli military said Sunday it had struck more than 100 “terror targets” in Gaza over the past two days, marking an apparent escalation in its assault.
The Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said a total of 88 people were killed over the previous 24 hours.
In one strike, five people died when the house of the Abu Jarbou family was struck in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, rescuers said.
AFP footage from another strike, on Bureij camp near Nuseirat, showed rescuers transporting bodies and injured people to a hospital.
In one scene, a medic attempted to resuscitate a wounded man inside an ambulance, while another carried an injured child to the hospital.
Relatives cried over the bodies of two men wrapped in white shrouds, the images showed.
Several of the strikes targeted sites from which militants had been firing projectiles into Israel in recent days, the military said.
The military separately announced that its forced had killed a militant commander in close combat in northern Gaza last week.
It said the slain man was a member of militant group Islamic Jihad’s rocket array, and had participated in the October 7, 2023 attack.
Last week, Katz warned of intensified strikes if the incoming rocket fire continued.
Rocket fire had become less frequent as the war dragged on but has recently intensified, as Israel pressed a major land and air offensive in the territory’s north since early October.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli data.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 45,805 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
Algerians campaign to save treasured songbird from hunters
- Goldfinches are native to Western Europe and North Africa, and raising them is a cherished hobby in Algeria, where they are known locally as “maknin”
- Caging the wild birds cause them to suffer from serious health problems due to abrupt changes in their diet and environment, say advocates
SÉTIF, Algeria: With its vivid plumage and sweet trill, the goldfinch has long been revered in Algeria, but the national obsession has also driven illegal hunting, prompting calls to protect the songbird.
Amid a persistent demand for the bird that many choose to keep in their homes, conservation groups in the North African country are now calling for the species to be safeguarded from illegal hunting and trading.
“The moment these wild birds are caged, they often suffer from serious health problems, such as intestinal swelling, due to abrupt changes in their diet and environment,” said Zinelabidine Chibout, a volunteer with the Wild Songbird Protection Association in Setif, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) east of the capital, Algiers.
Goldfinches are native to Western Europe and North Africa, and raising them is a cherished hobby in Algeria, where they are known locally as “maknin.”
The bird is considered a symbol of freedom, and was favored by poets and artists around the time of Algeria’s war for independence in the 1950s and 60s. The country even dedicates an annual day in March to the goldfinch.
Laws enacted in 2012 classified the bird as a protected species and made its capture and sale illegal.
But the practices remain common, as protections are lacking and the bird is frequently sold in pet shops and markets.
A 2021 study by Guelma University estimated that at least six million goldfinches are kept in captivity by enthusiasts and traders.
Researchers visiting markets documented the sale of hundreds of goldfinches in a single day.
At one market in Annaba, in eastern Algeria, they counted around 300 birds offered for sale.
Back to the wild
Chibout’s association has been working to reverse the trend by purchasing injured and neglected goldfinches and treating them.
“We treat them in large cages, and once they recover and can fly again, we release them back into the wild,” he said.
Others have also called on enthusiasts to breed the species in order to offset demand.
Madjid Ben Daoud, a goldfinch aficionado and member of an environmental association in Algiers, said the approach could safeguard the bird’s wild population and reduce demand for it on the market.
“Our goal is to encourage the breeding of goldfinches already in captivity, so people no longer feel the need to capture them from the wild,” he said.
Souhila Larkam, who raises goldfinches at home, said people should only keep a goldfinch “if they ensure its reproduction.”
The Wild Songbird Protection Association also targets the next generation with education campaigns.
Abderrahmane Abed, vice president of the association, recently led a group of children on a trip to the forest to teach them about the bird’s role in the ecosystem.
“We want to instill in them the idea that these are wild birds that deserve our respect,” he said. “They shouldn’t be hunted or harmed.”
Israel’s defense chief threatens ceasefire collapse if Lebanese army not deployed south of Litani river
- Under the agreement, Hezbollah is supposed to move its fighters, weapons and infrastructure away
- Lebanese army soldiers and UN peacekeepers are to be the sole armed presence in southern Lebanon
Israel’s defense chief warned Sunday that the truce that ended more than a year of fighting with Lebanon’s Hezbollah is at risk.
During the first phase of the ceasefire, Hezbollah is supposed to move its fighters, weapons and infrastructure away from southern Lebanon north of the Litani River, while Israeli troops that invaded southern Lebanon need to withdraw all within 60 days.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the agreement also requires Lebanese troops to eliminate any Hezbollah infrastructure in the buffer zone — “something that hasn’t happened yet.”
Lebanese army soldiers are to deploy in large numbers and alongside United Nations peacekeepers be the sole armed presence in southern Lebanon.
“If this condition is not met, there will be no agreement, and Israel will be forced to act on its own to ensure the safe return of the residents of (Israel’s) north to their homes,” he said.
Katz made the statement after Hezbollah’s current leader Naim Kassem warned in a televised address Saturday that its fighters could strike Israel if its troops don’t leave the south by the end of the month.
Top Hezbollah security official Wafiq Safa told a news conference Sunday that Lebanon's Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who negotiated the ceasefire deal with Washington, told Hezbollah that the government will meet with US envoy Amos Hochstein soon.
“And in light of what happens, then there will be a position,” said Safa.
Hochstein had led the shuttle diplomacy efforts to reach the fragile truce.
Erdogan expects support from Syria in Turkiye’s battle with PKK
- “The new administration in Syria is showing an extremely determined stance in preserving the country’s territorial integrity and unitary structure,” he said
ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Syria’s new leadership is determined to root out separatists there, as Ankara said its military had “neutralized” 32 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in the country.
A rebellion by groups close to Turkiye ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad last month. Since then, Turkiye-backed Syrian forces have occasionally clashed in the north with U.S-backed Kurdish forces that Ankara deems terrorists.
“With the revolution in Syria... the hopes of the separatist terrorist organization hit a wall,” Erdogan told his party’s provincial congress in Trabzon.
“The new administration in Syria is showing an extremely determined stance in preserving the country’s territorial integrity and unitary structure,” he said.
“The end of the terrorist organization is near. There is no option left other than to surrender their weapons, abandon terrorism, and dissolve the organization. They will face Turkiye’s iron fist,” Erdogan added.
The defense ministry separately announced the armed forces’ operation in northern Syria that it said had “neutralized” — a term that usually means killed — the 32 PKK members. It said Turkiye’s military had also “neutralized” four PKK members in northern Iraq, where the militants are based.
Palestinian ministry says Israeli forces kill teenager in West Bank raid
- Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that Madani was hit when Israeli forces fired bullets, flares and tear gas
NABLUS, Palestinian Territories: The Palestinian health ministry in the Israeli-occupied West Bank stated that Israeli forces had killed a teenager during a raid on a refugee camp near the city of Nablus Sunday.
Mutaz Ahmad Abdul Wahab Madani, 17, was “killed and two others were wounded by occupation forces’ gunfire during a raid near Askar Camp east of Nablus,” the Ramallah-based ministry said in a statement.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that Madani was hit when Israeli forces fired bullets, flares and tear gas.
Medics reported that Madani had been shot in the chest and that Israeli forces initially kept him with them before handing him to Palestinian medics.
He was then transported to Rafidia hospital in a critical condition but succumbed to his wounds, a medic said.
Violence in the West Bank has intensified since war broke out in the Gaza Strip after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Since then, at least 818 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers, according to the health ministry.
In the same period, Palestinian attacks in the West Bank have killed at least 25 Israelis, according to official Israeli figures.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since conquering it in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
