BEIRUT: During August alone, a total of 45 individuals were killed and 263 injured as a result of traffic accidents on Lebanon’s roads, according to figures published by the Internal Security Forces.
A security source with expertise in traffic affairs told Arab News: “In a country experiencing chaos and exceptional circumstances, these numbers are considered normal and not surprising, and may even be lower than the real figure.”
The traffic accidents have claimed the lives of entire families and left children orphaned. Collisions have been particularly common on highways, often involving marginalized children, the elderly, or motorcyclists.
Information International has observed a steady increase in daily traffic accident rates this year compared to the previous year. By the end of August 2023, there were approximately 1,507 traffic accidents in various regions, resulting in fatalities and injuries. Meanwhile, at the same time in the previous year, there had been a total of 1,482 traffic accidents.
The number of accidents in the first half of 2022 increased from 916 to 1,099 by the end of the first half of 2023, an increase of 26 percent. The death toll rose from 129 to 199, an increase of 54 percent. The number of injuries rose from 1,003 to 1,230, an increase of 22.6 percent.
Reviewing the number of fatalities that occurred over a decade and a half, from the year 2012 until June 2023, shows that the total number of traffic accident fatalities has exceeded 6,000.
Information International indicates that these statistics do not include minor traffic accidents that cause damage to vehicles without claiming lives.
The security source, who is not authorized to be named, links “traffic accidents to the poor conditions of roads in Lebanon, where potholes are abundant and darkness prevails due to frequent power outages. Additionally, there is a lack of regulation for vehicles whose owners do not adhere to the required driving standards. (This is) in addition to the decline in the security authorities’ control over the roads, except for the checkpoints erected to pursue wanted persons.”
The source added: “The increase in traffic accidents during August has its reasons, as there were about a million expatriates and tourists in Lebanon, and summer parties, late-night gatherings, and weddings have become more frequent. Meanwhile, most of the partygoers, especially young people, consume alcohol …
“According to our reviews, the primary cause of accidents is speeding, followed by poor road conditions, lack of proper lighting, distraction, lack of concentration, fatigue, and the presence of water on roads that have not undergone maintenance.”
Lebanon’s streets are becoming even more narrow with an increasing number of vehicles driving on them. There is also an increased presence of motorcycles, often unlicensed, that young people and small business owners opt for as they are unable to buy a car or wish to avoid traffic jams on the roads, but without taking into account general safety rules, such as wearing helmets.
The security source said: “Internal Security Forces’ radars are still on the roads, monitoring speeding on highways, and violators are being fined. But the fine does not exceed 50,000 Lebanese pounds, which is now equivalent to approximately half a dollar, while the cost of parking a car in front of restaurants and entertainment venues has reached 1 million Lebanese pounds. The 50,000-pound fine used to be worth around $30 before the value of the national currency collapsed. It was a deterrent back then and contributed to reducing traffic accidents.”
The security source places responsibility for not adjusting these fines on Parliament, “which seems to have priorities unrelated to traffic fines.”
The Internal Security Forces are facing shortages in their human resources, in addition to difficulties in mobility due to fuel expenses. The mechanical inspection center has also been out of operation for over a year. Used cars entering Lebanon and those driving on the roads, especially older ones, are no longer subject to inspection.
One of the consequences of the suspension of mechanical inspections is the lack of public road safety as the inspections reveal defects, especially in brakes, lighting, tire conditions, glass safety, and emissions, compelling vehicle owners to repair them.
Municipalities and the Ministry of Public Works and Transport have shifted blame around, placing responsibility for the accidents on everything from a failure to operate traffic lights with alternative power to the theft of manhole covers in the middle of the streets, resulting in the deaths of dozens of cyclists and car drivers during the night.
The security source does not overlook “the ethics of driving as a factor causing traffic accidents. The relevant agencies have noticed a decline in drivers’ respect for traffic laws, a tendency toward chaos, and a disregard for the state. In many cases, they lead themselves to death on the roads.”
Traffic accidents on Lebanon’s roads claim 45 lives in one month
https://arab.news/2y8xt
Traffic accidents on Lebanon’s roads claim 45 lives in one month
- Security source: Main causes are speed, poor road conditions and lack of regulation, deterrents
- Information International has observed a steady increase in daily traffic accident rates this year compared to the previous year
Thousands march in London in support of Palestinians, 1 year after Oct 7
At Saturday’s 20th “National March for Palestine” in London, familiar chants — “ceasefire now,” “stop bombing hospitals, stop bombing civilians“
LONDON: Thousands of protesters marched through central London on Saturday calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon as the war in the Palestinian territory neared the one-year mark.
Pro-Palestinian supporters from across the country began the march from Russell Square to Downing Street demanding an end to the conflict, which has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza;
At Saturday’s 20th “National March for Palestine” in London, familiar chants — “ceasefire now,” “stop bombing hospitals, stop bombing civilians” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — were joined by shouts of “hands off Lebanon.”
The rally came ahead of the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attack in Israel by fighters from Palestinian group Hamas which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,825 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory’s health ministry and described as reliable by the United Nations.
Zackerea Bakir, 28, said he has attended dozens of marches around the Uk.
Large numbers continue to turn up because “everyone wants a change,” Bakir told AFP.
“It’s continuing to just get worse and worse, and yet nothing seems to be changing... I think it’s tiring that we have to continue to come out,” said Bakir, joined at the rally by his mother and brother.
Several protesters carried posters reading “Starmer has blood on his hands.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages held by Hamas, as well as suspended some arms licenses to Israel.
However, many at the rally said it was not enough.
Sophia Thomson, 27, found the Labour government’s stance “hypocritical.”
According to Thomson, the size of the protests “goes to show the government doesn’t speak for the people.”
“It’s not good enough. It’s not good enough,” added Bakir, calling for the government to “stop giving a carte blanche of support to the Israeli government.”
London’s Metropolitan police put in place a “significant” policing operation ahead of planned protests and memorial events.
While the rally was largely peaceful, two were arrested for assaulting an emergency worker, according to the Met.
Three others were arrested as tensions rose between the main march and a counter protest.
While exact numbers at the demonstration were unclear, “it appears to be greater than other recent protests,” the Met said on X.
Another rally also took place simultaneously in the Irish capital, Dublin.
A memorial for the October 7 attack will be held in London on Sunday.
Displaced Gazan mothers struggle to care for their newborns
- “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant or given birth during the war because life is completely different,” said Rana Salah
- Milana is one of around 20,000 babies to have been born in Gaza in the last year, according to UNICEF statistics
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza: Gazan mother Rana Salah cradles her one-month-old daughter Milana in her arms in a sweltering tent for the displaced, and speaks of the guilt she feels for bringing her child into a world of war and suffering.
“If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant or given birth during the war because life is completely different; we’ve never lived this life before,” she said, speaking at a camp in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
“I gave birth twice before, and life was better and easier for me and the child. Now, I feel like I’ve wronged both myself and the child because we deserve to live better than this.”
Milana was born in a hospital tent by caesarean owing to complications with Salah’s pregnancy. The family have not been able to return home due to the conflict, moving instead from one tent to another.
Milana is one of around 20,000 babies to have been born in Gaza in the last year, according to UNICEF statistics.
The current war, a particularly deadly episode in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israeli air and artillery strikes in response have reduced much of the Palestinian enclave to rubble and more than 41,500 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault, according to the Gaza health ministry. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced.
INFECTION RISK
Salah fans Milana with cardboard and says the heat is bad for the baby’s skin.
“Instead of returning to our house, we keep moving from one tent to another... where diseases are widespread and the water is contaminated.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said postnatal services have decreased significantly in Gaza, so women who have complications have less access to the care they need, as do their babies.
Rick Brennan, the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Regional emergency director, said malnutrition was a threat to newborns, particularly if their mothers were unable to breastfeed, as there was no access to breast milk substitutes.
Displacement and being constantly on the move are disruptive for a newborn and expose them to risks of infection, he said.
Manar Abu Jarad is staying in a school shelter run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA). Her youngest daughter Sahar was born on Sept. 4th, also by caesarean section. Her husband was killed in the war.
On hearing she would need a caesarean for the birth, she worried about how she would care for her other children.
“I already have three girls. I started shouting... How can I carry (water) buckets? How can I bathe my daughters? How can I help them and my husband is not with me, he was martyred.”
Children rock baby Sahar, who is swaddled in a crib, next to Jarad.
“I’ve reached the point where I cannot carry the responsibility for this girl ... Thank God I found some help here,” she said. She has borrowed what she can from family and uses one diaper a day for the baby as she can’t afford more.
“I don’t have the money to provide diapers or milk for her.”
Jarad longs for an end to the war and a return to her home, even if it is just a tent next to her former home.
“The important thing is to go home. Enough of all the exhaustion we are experiencing here, enough carrying buckets, enough of the dirt in the bathrooms. It’s really, really hard and really tiring for us. Diseases are everywhere.”
Macron urges halt to arms deliveries to Israel for use in Gaza
- “The priority is that we return to a political solution,” Macron told broadcaster France Inter
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday urged a halt to arms deliveries to Israel, which has been criticized over the conduct of its retaliatory operation in Gaza.
“I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,” Macron told broadcaster France Inter, adding that France was not sending any arms to Israel.
Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva
- Amphoras, statuettes, vases, oil lamps and figurines are among the 44 objects unearthed in Gaza going on show in the “Patrimony in Peril” exhibition at the Museum of Art and History
- “It’s a part of Gaza’s soul. Its identity, even,” Beatrice Blandin, the exhibition’s curator, said
GENEVA: Archaeological treasures from the Gaza Strip are going on display in Geneva, with the Swiss city protecting the heritage of a territory devastated by a year of war.
Amphoras, statuettes, vases, oil lamps and figurines are among the 44 objects unearthed in Gaza going on show in the “Patrimony in Peril” exhibition at the Museum of Art and History (MAH).
“It’s a part of Gaza’s soul. Its identity, even,” Beatrice Blandin, the exhibition’s curator, told AFP. “Heritage is really the history of this strip of land, the history of the people who live there.”
The artefacts are from a collection of more than 530 objects that have been stored in crates in a secure warehouse in Geneva since 2007, unable to return to Gaza.
The exhibition, which runs from Saturday until February 9, also includes artefacts from Sudan, Syria and Libya.
It was staged to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
The exhibition looks at the responsibility of museums in saving such property from damage, looting and conflict, reminding visitors that deliberately destroying heritage is a war crime.
“The forces of obscurantism understand that cultural property is what is at stake for civilization, because they have never stopped wanting to destroy this heritage, as in Mosul,” said Geneva city councillor Alfonso Gomez — a reference to the northern Iraqi city captured by the Islamic State jihadist group in 2014.
MAH director Marc-Olivier Wahler told AFP: “Unfortunately, in the event of conflict, many aggressors attack cultural heritage because it is obviously erasing the identity of a people, erasing its history.”
Thankfully, “there are museums, rules and conventions that protect this heritage.”
Since Israel’s offensive in Gaza began following the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, cultural sites in the Palestinian territory have paid a heavy price, says the United Nations’ cultural organization.
UNESCO has verified damage to 69 sites: 10 religious sites, 43 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, two depositories of movable cultural property, six monuments, one museum and seven archaeological sites.
At a time when Palestinian cultural heritage is “the victim of unprecedented destruction, the patrimonial value of the Gazan objects held in Geneva seems greater than ever,” said the MAH.
Some of the objects belonged to the Palestinian Authority. The rest belonged to the Palestinian entrepreneur Jawdat Khoudary, but he later gave ownership of them to the PA in 2018.
These artefacts, evoking daily, civil and religious life from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman era, arrived in Geneva in 2006 to be shown at the “Gaza at the Crossroads of Civilizations” exhibition, inaugurated by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
They had been meant to form the foundation of an archaeological museum to be built in Gaza.
Instead, they were stuck in Geneva for 17 years, the conditions for their safe return having never been met.
“At the time when the objects were due to leave, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip and there were geopolitical tensions between Palestine and Israel,” said Blandin.
This “coincidence of circumstances,” she said, ultimately saved the artefacts: the rest of Khoudary’s private collection, which remained in Gaza, has been “totally destroyed” since October 7 last year.
Following a new cooperation agreement signed last September between the Palestinian Authority and Geneva, the Swiss city has committed to looking after the artefacts for as long as necessary.
The MAH also served as a refuge, in 1939 when the Spanish Republicans evacuated by train the greatest treasures from the Museo del Prado in Madrid and several other major collections.
And last year, Geneva hosted an exhibition of Ukrainian works of art.
According to the Swiss Museums Association, Switzerland, along with counterparts in other countries, has also been able to help more than 200 museums in Ukraine preserve their collections after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Frankly Speaking: How Fareed Zakaria views change in Saudi Arabia
- CNN journalist and author no longer skeptical about Arab Gulf states after seeing the Kingdom’s transformation
- Says they are moving region toward stability, economic integration, greater interdependence, ties with more countries
DUBAI: The changes taking place in Saudi Arabia will be viewed in the long run as nothing short of a revolution, but one that happened in an “incremental” and “organic way,” according to CNN journalist, author and political analyst Fareed Zakaria.
He made the comments during an appearance on the Arab News show “Frankly Speaking” from the Saudi capital, which he visited last week and where he participated in a talk at the Riyadh International Book Fair around his latest book, “The Age of Revolutions.”
He said he feels the changes across the Kingdom are taking place at many levels. “The ones that I am most struck by, of course, are the role of women, but I am also struck by the role of (all) Saudis. And this to me is a very interesting and somewhat unremarked upon change,” he told “Frankly Speaking” host Katie Jensen.
“There are areas where (Saudi Arabia) is moving very fast; there are areas where it is still being somewhat restrained. … I am impressed that they are trying to strike a balance, that they are trying to push some things forward and modernize in some areas.”
Elaborating on the point, Zakaria said: “The role of women really has been transformed, but there are some areas, for example, where there’s still the requirement and encouragement that Saudis dress in traditional clothes. So, Saudi Arabia is trying to balance this in a way that doesn’t become too revolutionary.”
Overall, he said referring to the change, “when you look at it in historical terms, clearly this will be seen as a revolution, but it’s a revolution that is being played out in an incremental way, in an organic way … so that the changes are not so overwhelming.”
Moving on to the wider Arab Gulf region, Zakaria confessed that he was a skeptic for many years, considering these countries “very passive.”
“If you look at the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, the Arab world was defined by its big, large states that were historically important: Egypt, Syria, Iraq. Then in the ’70s, you went through maybe a period of turmoil around Iran and the Islamic Revolution,” he said.
“But today, what is clear is that (the Arab Gulf states), starting with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, are in the driver’s seat and they are trying, they are moving, they’re trying to move the region toward stability, economic integration, greater interdependence, more ties with more countries.”
Zakaria attributed said change in part to what is been happening in Saudi Arabia. “The UAE, to be fair, may even have been one of the first to begin that process. But now that Saudi Arabia is on board, of course, is much larger, much more powerful and can have a much more positive influence,” he said.
Alluding to the spirit of the landmark Abraham Accords, brokered by the Trump administration in 2020, Zakaria noted that the Arab Gulf states are reaching out to India and China among other economic powers. “This is all for the good because the more trade, commerce, interdependence and integration takes place, the more the average person in the Arab world is going to benefit because his or her living standards will rise,” he said.
The Indian-born American journalist is the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and writes a weekly column for The Washington Post. A prolific author, Zakaria has a PhD in government from Harvard University where he studied under such famous scholars as Samuel P. Huntington and Stanley Hoffmann.
