Hezbollah, Iran preventing Lebanese recovery: Expert

Members of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia march in Srifa, Lebanon, during a funeral one of their commanders killed in battle in 2016. (Shutterstock photo)
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Updated 07 November 2020
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Hezbollah, Iran preventing Lebanese recovery: Expert

  • Panel discussion highlights political intransigence, economic mismanagement as obstacles to reform

LONDON: Hezbollah and Iran are preventing Lebanon from enacting badly needed reforms to emerge from political, social and financial crises, Ziad Majed, associate professor and program coordinator for Middle East pluralities at the American University of Paris, said on Friday.

Iran “is contributing to conflicts in the region, thus opening Lebanon as a theater to many of the terrible events of the region,” Majed said during a virtual panel discussion organized by the Council for Arab-British Understanding and attended by Arab News.

Alia Moubayed, a financial analyst, said the dysfunctional political system has contributed to Lebanon’s financial issues.

“The existential nature of (this) crisis stems from the fact that it’s a multipronged crisis. It’s a balance-of-payments crisis … It’s also a debt crisis. Lebanon’s debt has been above 140 percent for decades, and most recently it has just continued to edge up. We got to a point where this debt became increasingly unsustainable, leading to basically a debt default,” she added.

“It’s also a banking crisis. The banking system was attracting capital from abroad and offering exorbitant returns at risk of not being paid, to the extent that up to 75 percent of the assets of banks were exposed to the sovereign and Central Bank risk. All the money in dollars amounted to more $120 billion; the Central Bank, not being able to print dollars, was unable to give (funds) back.”

Moubayed said this is having serious social impacts on ordinary Lebanese. “Per capita income more than halved in less than a year. Almost 80 percent of the value of the currency has been lost,” she added.

“This obviously led to hyperinflation — more than 120 percent. That’s really wiping out the savings of Lebanese (people) but also undermining many livelihoods, particularly for the poor. Poverty rates exceed 50 percent, compared to 37 percent in 2019.

“There was also the horrible explosion that happened at the heart of the Beirut port, which deepened contraction of GDP (gross domestic product). The economy is really reeling.”

Ziad Abdel Samad, executive director of the Arab NGO Network for Development, said the Aug. 4 blast was a pivotal moment for the country — symbolic as well as material.

“The Beirut blast … was the manifestation of the government’s failure. Both corruption and negligence disabled the main agencies from doing their jobs properly,” he added.

Moubayed said: “We find ourselves with a lack of willingness, competence and … ability to move the country on a virtuous path. It’s being thwarted by the political elite because somebody has to bear the brunt of these losses. That means those who benefited for most of this time … are now trying to avoid this overhaul.”

Majed agreed, saying: “In this kind of configuration, it’s extremely difficult to modify electoral law, to modify the concept of the power-sharing formula, and to talk about a citizenship that’s capable, through its creativity and activism, to reconstruct a new Lebanon or political system.” 

He added: “If you combine with that the whole financial management or all the economic crises and the current terrible situation, you have a country that’s just pushing some of its people to leave, and that’s terrible.” 

Abdel Samad, though, suggested a complete rethink of social and economic approaches in Lebanon, based on “creating a big coalition” to “adopt an urgent reform agenda” and “recover the state and stolen assets” from the political elite.

“It’s easy to see the collapse of Lebanon will create serious threats to the region. Lebanon is hosting more than 1 million Syrian refugees and around 500,000 officially registered Palestinian refugees,” he said.

“It’s important to underline that any external pressure and functions can help, but won’t have the expected result unless they rely on a strong local movement able to break the status quo and lead the nation to real changes.”

Moubayed said if political change happens, a roadmap exists to solve Lebanon’s financial issues.

“We need a capital control law that would reduce the leakages out of the system. Another immediate action would be a rationalization of the costly subsidy system that isn’t benefitting those who need it,” she added.

“In addition to these measures, we need to approach the crisis in a comprehensive way — solid debt restructuring that would address the unsustainability of public finances.

“The second pillar of the approach would be the restructuring of the banking system in order to put back the financial sector to its right size, because it’s clearly an oversized system that the society and economy can’t sustain, but also (there would need to be) stronger regulation.

“The third (pillar) would be a strong social protection system that Lebanon has been lacking. Clearly the whole structure of governance (needs) reform. I don’t think Lebanese citizens are willing to undergo more pain if we don’t establish a system of good governance based on an independent judiciary … strong accountability (and) transparency.”


’Strong likelihood’ famine imminent in north Gaza, say food security experts

Updated 4 sec ago
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’Strong likelihood’ famine imminent in north Gaza, say food security experts

The warning comes just days ahead of a US deadline for Israel to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza

LONDON: There is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of the northern Gaza Strip, a committee of global food security experts warned on Friday, as Israel pursues a military offensive against Palestinian militants Hamas in the area.
“Immediate action, within days not weeks, is required from all actors who are directly taking part in the conflict, or have influence on its conduct, to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation,” the independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said in a rare alert.
The warning comes just days ahead of a US deadline for Israel to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on US military aid.

Israeli army discovers ‘Hezbollah training center’ near UNIFIL outpost as raids continue in Lebanon

Updated 28 min 22 sec ago
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Israeli army discovers ‘Hezbollah training center’ near UNIFIL outpost as raids continue in Lebanon

  • Several videos showed residential houses and tourist, social and religious facilities being set with explosives and blown up remotely
  • Adraee also accused Hezbollah of “using ambulances to transport saboteurs and arms” and called on “medical personnel to avoid dealing and cooperating with Hezbollah members”

BEIRUT: The Israeli army on Friday continued to destroy houses in Lebanon’s southern border villages to establish a buffer zone. The latest bombing targeted the areas of Yaroun, Aitaroun and Maroun Al-Ras in Bint Jbeil.
Several videos showed residential houses and tourist, social and religious facilities being set with explosives and blown up remotely.
In parallel with the deliberate destruction, Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued “a new urgent warning to the residents of southern Lebanon,” instructing them “to refrain from returning to the south, or to their houses or olive fields,” describing the region as “a dangerous combat zone.”
Adraee also accused Hezbollah of “using ambulances to transport saboteurs and arms” and called on “medical personnel to avoid dealing and cooperating with Hezbollah members.”
The army will take the “necessary measures against any vehicle transporting armed members regardless of its type,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army claimed that “surveillance cameras of the Oded Brigade reservists captured a Hezbollah training center just 200 meters from a UNIFIL outpost.”
The army claimed that “the forces discovered the training facility, which was used by Hezbollah for training, studying, and storing large quantities of weapons.”
It said that “the facility contained missile launchers used for firing at Israeli settlements, as well as documents and instructional books detailing Hezbollah’s operational methods, maps of Israel, explanations of the Israeli army’s equipment, and additional weapons.” The army said “the weapons were confiscated and the compound was dismantled.”
The Israeli army resumed raids on the Baalbek-Hermel area, killing and injuring people and causing further destruction.
The Ministerial Emergency Committee estimated that, as of Thursday evening, Israel had conducted 121 raids, including 56 on Nabatieh, 24 on Baalbek and 23 in the south.
The committee said the number of people killed so far in Israeli attacks on Lebanon exceed 3,100, while 14,000 people have been injured.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced, with close to 200,000 staying in shelters, it added.
Lebanese observers believe this transitional phase, from now until US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, is the most dangerous period for Lebanon.
Raids on Kfar Tebnit killed two people after a building comprising residential apartments and commercial shops was destroyed.
A raid on Zebdine in Nabatieh killed Mohammed Fayez Mokaddam and his sons, Fayez and Hadi Mokaddem, after their building was destroyed.
Zaher Ibrahim Ataya, a medic with Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Committee from the southern town of Tair Harfa, was killed when Israeli forces struck a newly established medical center.
The strike was part of a broader Israeli aerial campaign that targeted more than 50 towns across the Tyre and Bint Jbeil districts in the past 48 hours.
The Lebanese Red Cross chief Georges Kettaneh announced that rescue teams have returned to Wata Al-Khiyam to complete the recovery of victims from an incident on Oct. 27.
Working alongside UNIFIL forces and the Lebanese Army, teams recovered four bodies and remains, with efforts continuing to ensure the mission’s completion.
Earlier the Red Cross retrieved 17 bodies from the site where civilians, who had been tending to livestock, sought shelter in a building during an Israeli incursion.
The Israeli military initially stalled permission for the Lebanese Red Cross to recover the victims, eventually granting only a four-hour window for the operation.
The Israeli air campaign extended to Lebanon’s Bekaa region, with strikes hitting Hrabta town west of Baalbek and Hosh Al-Sayyed Ali near the Syrian border north of Hermel.
Sirens sounded across northern Israel, including Haifa, Nazareth, Kiryat Shmona and surrounding areas, as well as the Ramat Trump settlement in the Golan Heights and Israeli media reported approximately 30 rockets launched from Lebanon toward northern Israel and Haifa’s suburbs.
The Israeli military confirmed detecting about 20 rockets, with some being intercepted, and reported drone incursions in northern airspace, including one near Caesarea.
The Israeli military announced the death of a soldier from Battalion 8207, Alon Brigade (228), who succumbed to wounds sustained in southern Lebanon on Oct. 26, while Israeli army radio detailed a fierce battle in the border village of Aitaroun that claimed the lives of six Israeli soldiers.
Hezbollah said on Friday it had launched “dozens of rockets reaching as far as Haifa and south of Nazareth.”
The group claimed strikes on several targets, including the Stella Maris naval base and Ramat David air base, northwest and southeast of Haifa, respectively, Kiryat Shmona settlement, and military gatherings in Misgav Am and Margaliot settlements.
In response to Israeli infiltration attempts, Hezbollah reported targeting Israeli forces south of Adaisseh with artillery fire. The group also claimed to have destroyed a military bulldozer and inflicting casualties on accompanying infantry forces trying to advance northwest of Kfarkila.


Buried for 14 hours after Israeli strike, Lebanese toddler makes recovery

Updated 23 min 6 sec ago
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Buried for 14 hours after Israeli strike, Lebanese toddler makes recovery

  • Two-year-old Ali Khalifeh is the only survivor of his family after Israel blew up the apartment block where they lived
  • The toddler’s parents, sister and two grandmothers all perished in the strike that killed 15

SIDON, Lebanon: Rescuers did not expect to find two-year-old Ali Khalifeh alive after an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon killed his entire family and left him trapped under the rubble for 14 hours.
Amputated, bandaged and hooked to a respirator in a hospital bed that was way too big for him, “Ali is the sole survivor of his family,” said Hussein Khalifeh, his father’s uncle.
The toddler’s parents, sister and two grandmothers all perished in the strike on September 29, days after Israel intensified its attacks on Hezbollah militants.
The strike on Sarafand, some 15 kilometers (nine miles) south of the coastal city of Sidon, flattened an apartment complex and killed 15 people, many of them relatives, according to residents.
“Rescue workers had almost lost hope of finding anyone alive under the rubble,” 45-year-old Khalifeh told AFP from the hospital in Sidon where his two-year-old relative was being treated.
But then “Ali appeared among debris in the shovel of the bulldozer, after we all thought he had died,” he said.
“He emerged from the rubble, barely breathing, after 14 hours.”
Israel has been at war with Hezbollah since late September, when it broadened its war focus from fighting Hamas militants in Gaza to securing its northern border with Lebanon.
An escalating Israeli air campaign, after nearly a year of low intensity cross-border fire, has killed more than 2,600 people across Lebanon since September 23, according to health ministry figures.
Signs of the violence were apparent even at the hospital in Sidon where Ali was rushed to following the strike on Sarafand.
The toddler, under a medically induced coma after doctors amputated his right hand, has since been transferred to a medical facility in the capital Beirut where he is due to undergo pre-prosthetic surgery.
“Ali was sleeping on the couch at home when the strike hit. He is still asleep today... were are waiting to complete his surgeries before waking him up,” said the relative Hussein Khalifeh.
Other family members were also fighting to stay alive after the Sarafand strike.
One of Khalifeh’s nieces, 32-year-old Zainab, was trapped under the rubble for two hours before being rescued and transferred to the nearest hospital, said the man.
It was there that she was later informed that her parents, her husband and three children, aged between three and seven, had all been killed.
The strike left her with only one, severely injured eye.
Zainab said she “did not hear the sounds of the missiles that rained down on her family’s home,” according to Khalifeh.
“She only saw darkness and heard deafening screams,” he said.
Ali Alaa El-Din, a doctor treating her, said that “the psychological scars that Zainab suffered are much greater than her physical injury.”
He has also tended Zainab’s sister Fatima, 30, who was wounded in the same strike.
Both had injuries “throughout their bodies, with fractures in the feet and damage to the lungs,” said the doctor.
Medically, he added, “Zainab and Fatima’s cases are not among the most difficult cases we have faced during the war, but they are the most severe from a psychological and human perspective.”


UN accuses Israel of ‘deliberate’ attack on peacekeeping position in Lebanon

Updated 12 min 58 sec ago
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UN accuses Israel of ‘deliberate’ attack on peacekeeping position in Lebanon

  • UN Interim Force in Lebanon cites ‘seven other similar incidents’
  • Accuses Israel of ‘flagrant violation of international law and resolution 1701’

NEW YORK: The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon on Friday said two Israeli excavators and a bulldozer destroyed part of a fence and a concrete structure in one of its positions in Ras Naqoura in southern Lebanon.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon added that in response to its “urgent protest,” the Israel Defense Forces denied any activity was taking place inside its position.

UNIFIL is stationed in southern Lebanon to monitor hostilities along the demarcation line with Israel, an area that has seen more than a year of fighting that turned into fierce clashes since last month between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters.

Israel claims that UN forces provide cover for Hezbollah, and has told UNIFIL to evacuate peacekeepers from southern Lebanon for their own safety.

But UNIFIL said the incident, which took place on Thursday, “like seven other similar incidents, is not a matter of peacekeepers getting caught in the crossfire, but of deliberate and direct actions by the IDF.”

UNIFIL issued a statement warning that “the IDF’s deliberate and direct destruction of clearly identifiable UNIFIL property is a flagrant violation of international law and resolution 1701.”

It called on the IDF and all other actors to honor “their obligation to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property and respect the inviolability of UN premises at all times.”

UNIFIL also expressed concern over the destruction and removal this week of two of the blue barrels that mark the UN-delineated line of withdrawal between Lebanon and Israel (the Blue Line). Peacekeepers said they directly observed the IDF removing one of them.

“Despite the unacceptable pressures being exerted on the mission through various channels, peacekeepers will continue to undertake our mandated monitoring and reporting tasks under resolution 1701,” UNIFIL said.


Netanyahu appoints Yechiel Leiter as new ambassador to US

Updated 53 min 44 sec ago
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Netanyahu appoints Yechiel Leiter as new ambassador to US

  • His son was killed last year in Gaza war against Hamas
  • Leiter’s appointment came three days after Trump’s election to second term as US president

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed US-born Yechiel Leiter, an official who previously served as chief of staff in the finance ministry, as the next Israeli ambassador to the United States.
“Yechiel Leiter is a highly capable diplomat, an eloquent speaker, and possesses a deep understanding of American culture and politics,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
His appointment was also welcomed by Yisrael Ganz, the head of the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization representing councils of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a territory Palestinians want as part of a future state.
Ganz said Leiter, who lives in the Gush Etzion settlement area, as “a key partner in English-language advocacy for Judea and Samaria,” a name used by many Israelis for the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Leiter’s appointment came three days after Donald Trump’s election to a second term as US president, celebrated by many Israelis because of his strong support for Israel.
As well as serving in the finance ministry, Leiter also held positions as deputy director general in the Education Ministry and acting chairman of the Israel Ports Company.
His son was killed last year in the Gaza war against Palestinian militant group Hamas while serving with the Israeli military.