PM-elect Mikati optimistic about new Lebanon government

Lebanon's premier-designate Najib Mikati holding a press conference following his meeting with the president at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of the capital Beirut, on August 16 26, 2021. (AFP)
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Updated 18 August 2021
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PM-elect Mikati optimistic about new Lebanon government

  • Aoun and Mikati to focus on naming ministers as PM-elect claims support of former premiers

BEIRUT: The 11th meeting between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati on Tuesday showed promise for eliminating the obstacles hindering the long-awaited formation of a government in Lebanon.

Following the meeting, Mikati said: “We still have a few meters left in the race, and I hope we can eliminate the remaining obstacles in a decent manner that suits everyone.

“Everyone is seeking to form a government, because if we do not, it would be a sin against the nation.”

He added: “The dialogue has been positive, and we hope that a government will be born soon. We are working hard to eliminate all obstacles. The formation of a government in Lebanon is much like a complicated math problem that starts with calculating the representation of sects, regions and political parties and ends with people’s allegiances.”

Mikati claimed he received the support of former premiers, including Saad Hariri, who recently resigned, after nine months of fruitless efforts to form a new administration.

Mikati said on Monday that talks with Aoun would “mainly focus on naming the ministers.”

Talks between Aoun and Mikati are being fueled by US and French pressure and the suffocating conditions that the Lebanese have been living in.




Pharmacists hold signs reading in Arabic ‘no gasoline = no ambulance’ and ‘no electricity = no hospital’ as they protest in Beirut, denouncing the critical condition facing the country’s hospitals. (AFP)

Elsewhere, an argument on Tuesday at a gas station in Kafaat, Beirut’s southern suburbs, developed into a heavy firefight.

The Lebanese Army intervened, arresting some of the shooters and settling the dispute.

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Last week, the central bank announced it could no longer finance imports of gasoline and diesel at heavily discounted exchange rates, effectively ending a subsidy scheme.

The station was set ablaze after a B7 rocket-propelled grenade was fired at it by members of Zaiter family, who are protected by the dominant forces in the region and supported by Hezbollah and the Amal Movement.

While rows over the limited supply of fuel blaze on, the army has been carrying out raids in search of subsidized gasoline and diesel that distributors have been hoarding to be smuggled to Syria or sold on the black market.

The army raided a depot in the industrial city in Zouk Mosbeh and seized 65,000 liters of diesel and 48,000 liters of gasoline. The fuel was later distributed for free to the hospitals and bakeries in the area.

A fuel tanker was also raided in Wadi Hunin in southern Lebanon, where the army seized over 47,000 liters of gasoline.

Security forces also seized more than 70,000 liters of gasoline, hidden inside tanks and cisterns in an abandoned zone on the road leading to the airport, in addition to other quantities that were hidden inside a sand plot in the same area. The seized fuel was distributed to hospitals and owners of private generators.

The power crisis has worsened amid the severe shortages of gasoline, forcing dozens of private generator owners to scale down or completely cut supplies, with Lebanon’s state-owned electricity company providing less than one hour a day. Most regions have plunged into darkness and hospitals have intensified appeals for diesel supplies to be able to continue operating.

Head of the Syndicate of Private Hospital Owners Suleiman Haroun said “the seized fuel distributed to hospitals is not enough because hospitals require 350,000 liters of diesel per day to operate.”

But positive signs regarding the diesel importation issue emerged on Tuesday, where it was reported that Lebanon’s central bank had approved financing for two fuel shipments at the subsidized rate of 3,900 Lebanese pounds to the dollar. The two shipments contain 80 million liters of diesel that would suffice the market for five to six days.

The Lebanese parliament will convene on Friday to discuss a strategy for dealing with the fuel crisis.

Speaker Nabih Berri called the session to discuss “appropriate action” over crippling fuel shortages.

Last week, the central bank announced it could no longer finance imports of gasoline and diesel at heavily discounted exchange rates, effectively ending a subsidy scheme, surrendering the Lebanese to a sharp increase in prices.

The bank’s governor, Riad Salameh, has been at odds with the government over the move, claiming that it should only have been done after the provision of prepaid cash cards for the poor.

Salameh has said he can resume subsidizing imports only if a law is passed allowing him to dip into the mandatory reserves.

 


US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says 5 members killed in Hamas attack

Updated 6 sec ago
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US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says 5 members killed in Hamas attack

  • “We condemn this heinous and deliberate attack in the strongest possible terms,” the group said in its statement

WASHINGTON: The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Wednesday accused militant group Hamas of attacking a bus with its members en route to deliver aid, saying at least five people were killed and multiple others injured.
The group said in a statement that around 10 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) “a bus carrying more than two dozen members of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation team... were brutally attacked by Hamas.”
“We are still gathering facts, but what we know is devastating: there are at least five fatalities, multiple injuries, and fear that some of our team members may have been taken hostage,” the statement read.
In an email to AFP the group said all the passengers on the bus were Palestinian and all were aid workers. They were en route to GHF’s distribution center in the area west of Khan Younis.
“We condemn this heinous and deliberate attack in the strongest possible terms,” the group said in its statement. “These were aid workers. Humanitarians. Fathers, brothers, sons and friends, who were risking their lives every day to help others.”


Palestinian boy who lost nine siblings arrives in Italy for treatment

Updated 12 June 2025
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Palestinian boy who lost nine siblings arrives in Italy for treatment

  • According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) website, more than 15,000 children have reportedly been killed and over 34,000 injured in almost two years of war in Gaza

MILAN: A group of 17 Palestinian children, including an 11-year-old boy who lost nine siblings in an Israel strike in Gaza last month, arrived in Italy on Wednesday for hospital treatment, accompanied by more than 50 family members.
Adam Al-Najjar, who has multiple fractures, arrived with his mother at Milan’s Linate airport where he was welcomed by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, before being transferred to the city’s Niguarda Hospital.
The plane that landed at Linate carried five other injured Palestinian minors, while 11 more arrived on flights to other Italian airports.
The May 23 attack left Adam in a serious condition at Nasser Hospital, one of the few operational medical facilities in southern Gaza.
Adam “is stable, has a head wound that is healing but his left arm is bad, the bones are fractured and the nerves damaged,” his 36-year-old mother, Alaa Al-Najjar, a paediatrician, told Italian newspaper la Repubblica.
Adam’s father, Hamdi Al-Najjar, who was also a doctor, died a week after the attack.
“The damage is in my left hand, there is a problem with the nerves, I can’t feel my fingers. There’s still a lot of pain,” Adam told Turkish news agency Anadolu.
A total of 70 Palestinians were set to arrive in Italy on three military aircraft that set off from Israel’s Eilat airport, the Italian foreign ministry said earlier on Wednesday.
The patients will be treated at hospitals in numerous cities including Milan, Rome, Florence and Bologna.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) website, more than 15,000 children have reportedly been killed and over 34,000 injured in almost two years of war in Gaza.
Including the latest operation, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has so far brought 150 injured Palestinians from Gaza to Italy for treatment, the foreign ministry said.
The Italian government has been a staunch supporter of Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants that killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
In recent months, Rome has criticized the extent of the Israeli response, and expressed concern as the death toll in Gaza has mounted, while declining to apply sanctions.
Italy was not among numerous European Union countries that called last month for a review of EU-Israeli economic and trade relations.

 


Israel to expel French nationals on Gaza aid boat by end of week

Updated 12 June 2025
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Israel to expel French nationals on Gaza aid boat by end of week

  • All 12 of them have been banned from Israel for 100 years
  • France and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting a UN meeting later this month in New York on steps toward recognizing a Palestinian state and reaching a so-called two-state solution to the conflict

JERUSALEM: Israel is to expel by the end of the week four French nationals held after security forces intercepted their Gaza-bound aid boat, France’s foreign minister said Wednesday, as an Israeli NGO said one of the French campaigners was briefly put in solitary confinement.
The announcement came as France’s prime minister accused activists aboard the boat — who hoped to raise awareness about the humanitarian situation in war-torn Gaza — of capitalizing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for political attention.
The four, who include Rima Hassan, a member of European Parliament from the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party who is of Palestinian descent, will be deported on Thursday and Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on X.
They were among 12 people on board the Madleen sailboat which was carrying food and supplies for Gaza before it was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters off the besieged Palestinian territory on Monday.
Four, including two French citizens and Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg, agreed to be deported immediately.
The remaining eight were taken into custody after they refused to leave Israel voluntarily, according to Adalah, an Israeli rights NGO representing most of the activists.
All 12 of them have been banned from Israel for 100 years.
Adalah said on Wednesday that Israeli authorities had placed French MEP Hassan and Brazilian activist Thiago Avila in solitary confinement, with Hassan later removed.

“Israeli authorities transferred two of the volunteers — the Brazilian volunteer Thiago Avila and the French-Palestinian European Parliament member Rima Hassan — to separate prison facilities, away from the others, and placed them in solitary confinement,” Adalah said in a statement.
The NGO later said that Hassan had been moved back to Givon prison in Ramla, near Tel Aviv, while Avila remained in isolation.
When asked for comment, Israel’s prison authority referred AFP to the foreign ministry, which said it was checking the reports.
Adalah said Hassan was put in isolation after writing “Free Palestine” on a prison wall.
The NGO said Brazilian activist Avila was placed in isolation “due to his ongoing hunger and thirst strike, which he began two days ago.”
“He has also been treated aggressively by prison authorities, although this has not escalated to physical assault,” it added.
The leader of Hassan’s LFI party in parliament, Mathilde Panot, said France’s prime minister Francois Bayrou had failed to condemn Israel’s actions.
The party’s boss, Jean-Luc Melenchon, accused Bayrou of “abandoning the French prisoners,” and called on President Emmanuel Macron to step in.
“These activists obtained the effect they wanted, but it’s a form of instrumentalization to which we should not lend ourselves,” Bayrou responded in the National Assembly.
It’s “through diplomatic action, and efforts to bring together several states to pressure the Israeli government, that we can obtain the only possible solution” to the conflict, he added.
Foreign Minister Barrot also rejected Panot’s criticism, saying “the admirable mobilization” of French officials had made a rapid resolution of the situation possible “despite the harassment and defamation that they have been subjected to.”

France and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting a UN meeting later this month in New York on steps toward recognizing a Palestinian state and reaching a so-called two-state solution to the conflict.
Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, whose entire population the United Nations has warned is at risk of famine.
Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz on Wednesday called on Egypt to block a hundreds-strong pro-Palestinian activist convoy from reaching Gaza, as the group arrived in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023 attacked Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the retaliatory Israeli military offensive has killed at least 55,104 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.
Out of 251 taken hostage during the Hamas attack, 54 are still held in Gaza including 32 the Israeli military says are dead.

 


Israel says bodies of two hostages retrieved from Gaza

Updated 11 June 2025
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Israel says bodies of two hostages retrieved from Gaza

  • Yair Yaakov was seized in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and killed the same day

JERUSALEM: Israeli forces have retrieved the bodies of two hostages from the Gaza Strip, the military said Wednesday, as Israel presses its offensive in the Palestinian territory.
A military statement said a joint operation by the army and the Shin Bet security agency recovered the bodies of Yair Yaakov and “an additional hostage whose name has not yet been cleared for publication” from the Khan Yunis area of southern Gaza.
Yaakov, a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was 59 when he was seized in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and killed the same day.
The military statement said he had been abducted and killed by fighters from Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally.
Yaakov was abducted along with his partner Meirav Tal, as they sheltered in their safe room in Nir Oz.
She was freed on November 28, 2023 during the first truce.
Abducted separately at the home of their mother, Yair’s two children Yagil and Or were also released on November 27 during the first truce.
Nir Oz was one of the communities hit hardest by the attack, with nearly a quarter of its residents killed or taken hostage.


Milei says Argentina to move Israel embassy to Jerusalem in 2026

Argentine President Javier Milei attends a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem. (Reuters)
Updated 11 June 2025
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Milei says Argentina to move Israel embassy to Jerusalem in 2026

  • “I am proud to announce before you that in 2026 we will make effective the move of our embassy to the city of west Jerusalem,” Milei told Israeli parliament Wednesday

JERUSALEM: Argentine President Javier Milei said Wednesday his country would move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the status of which is one of the most delicate issues in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“I am proud to announce before you that in 2026 we will make effective the move of our embassy to the city of west Jerusalem,” Milei said in a speech in the Israeli parliament during an official state visit.
Argentina’s embassy is currently located near the coastal city of Tel Aviv.
Several countries, including the United States, Paraguay, Guatemala and Kosovo, have moved their embassies to Jerusalem, breaking with international consensus.
Israel has occupied east Jerusalem since 1967, later annexing it in a move not recognized by the international community.
Israel treats the city as its capital, while Palestinians want east Jerusalem to become the capital of a future state.
Most foreign embassies to Israel are located in the coastal hub city of Tel Aviv in order to avoid interfering with negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
In 2017, during his first term as US president, Donald Trump unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, sparking Palestinian anger and the international community’s disapproval.
The United States transferred its embassy to Jerusalem in May 2018.