BEIRUT: Fears of an escalation in the simmering conflict between Hezbollah and Israel have prompted some airlines to cancel flights to Lebanon, but business appeared to be proceeding as usual Tuesday at the Beirut airport, where many travelers greeted the warnings with a shrug.
Hadi Sharqawi, 24, a Lebanese student in Italy, arrived Tuesday after two days of flight cancelations, to spend a month and a half with his family as he normally does in the summer. He is from the town of Kharayeb, which is in southern Lebanon although relatively far from the border where clashes have been ongoing for 10 months.
“As far as the threats, they didn’t influence me at all to not come to Lebanon,” Sharqawi said. “Even if there are threats, we will still come.”
Seventy-one-year-old Mohammad Mokhaled, from the southern town of Jarjouh, who was waiting to pick up his daughter Tuesday, agreed.
“We are not scared of the situation, because we are used to this,” he said. “We hear airstrikes regularly and the breaking of the sound barrier, and it doesn’t affect us.”
Lebanon is bracing for a retaliatory strike from Israel after a missile hit a soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Syrian Golan over the weekend, killing 12 children and adolescents. Israel accused the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of carrying out the strike, to which Hezbollah issued a rare denial.
Even before the deadly incident, rhetoric and fears of a full-blown conflict had been intensifying, but it has had relatively little impact on the summer tourist season, during which tens of thousands of Lebanese working or studying abroad typically come to visit their families, filling up restaurants and beach clubs.
Israel and the Lebanese militant group have traded near-daily strikes since the war in Gaza erupted on Oct.7 following Hamas’ surprise attack on southern Israel.
The Beirut airport reported that 406,396 passengers arrived in June compared to 427,854 arrivals in the same period in 2023, a decrease of 5 percent. It also recorded 300,362 departed the country in June, compared to 280,366, an increase of 7 percent.
Amal Ahmadieh, 23, was leaving Tuesday to return to Qatar, where she works in a restaurant, after a vacation in Lebanon. Ahmadieh said she was leaving as originally scheduled and had not pushed up her flight due to security concerns.
“Honestly everyone was telling me that the situation was not good but I wanted to come to see my friends and my family,” she said. “Whatever happens, at the end of the day, this is my country.”
Some European airlines have canceled flights in light of the increased tensions. Frankfurt-based Lufthansa Group said Monday that three of its airlines — Lufthansa, Swiss and Eurowings — decided to suspend flights to and from Beirut “up to and including” August 5. Air France also suspended some of its flights, while other airlines changed their flight schedules.
Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines delayed some flights to arrive Tuesday morning instead of at night, the carrier said, “due to technical reasons related to the distribution of insurance risks.”
MEA chief Mohamad El-Hout, however, downplayed fears. Following a meeting Tuesday with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the state-run National News Agency said Hout had “denied that Rafik Hariri Airport had received any threats or information from any source that the airport would be attacked.”
He pointed out that Lufthansa Group had also canceled flights to Lebanon in the early months of the war in Gaza and border conflict in Lebanon, “and nothing happened then.”
What happened in Majdal Shams has kicked off a flurry of diplomatic efforts to prevent the situation from spiraling.
A Western diplomat whose country is involved in those efforts said that he anticipates Israel will keep its retaliation within boundaries that would not lead to an all-out war — similar to the exchange of strikes between Iran and Israel after Israel struck an Iranian consular building in Syria. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
“It’s clear that they (Israel) want to take a stance but without leading to a generalized conflict,” he said. “It’s sure that there will be a retaliation. It will be symbolic. It may be spectacular, but it will not be a reason for both parties to engage in a general escalation.”
Despite escalating tension between Israel and Hezbollah, it’s business as usual at Beirut airport
https://arab.news/p2tt8
Despite escalating tension between Israel and Hezbollah, it’s business as usual at Beirut airport
- “As far as the threats, they didn’t influence me at all to not come to Lebanon,” Sharqawi said. “Even if there are threats, we will still come”
- Even before the deadly incident, rhetoric and fears of a full-blown conflict had been intensifying, but it has had relatively little impact on the summer tourist season
UN winds down ‘unique’ Iraq probe into Daesh crimes
PARIS: The head of a UN body investigating crimes by Daesh in Iraq expressed regret over “misunderstandings” that led to the premature end of its crucial mission, at Baghdad’s request.
Daesh seized vast swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014, carrying out abductions, beheadings, ethnic cleansing, mass killings and rapes.
The Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh, also known as UNITAD, was set up in September 2017 — as Daesh was being driven out of its last major strongholds in Iraq.
In an interview with AFP, UNITAD head Ana Peyro Llopis reflected on its seven-year effort to bring the terrorists to justice, and said “misunderstandings” with the Baghdad authorities contributed to the mission’s closure later this month.
Peyro Llopis noted it has been the only such international investigation mission to be established on the ground.
“There are not many who would have opened their doors to us in such a generous way” to investigate crimes, she said in the telephone interview.
“We could have publicly recognized, more clearly, that the good work we were able to do was only possible because we were invited and that it is unique.”
UNITAD’s mission will end on Sept. 17, years ahead of its expected completion, after the Security Council last year renewed its mandate for only one year at the request of Iraq’s government.
“The Iraqis have seen concrete results in foreign jurisdictions, and got the impression that UNITAD cooperated more with foreign states than with Iraq,” said Peyro Llopis. “Everything could have been better explained,” she added.
A major bone of contention with Baghdad was the sharing of evidence.
“The UN has strict rules of confidentiality and respect for the consent of those who testify,” she said, meaning that not all evidence was passed on to the Iraqis.
Media reports spoke of tensions between UNITAD and the Baghdad government.
Pact for $4.5m signed to aid 4,400 stranded Gazans in West Bank
- “Thousands of Palestine refugees from Gaza remain trapped in the West Bank, trapped in this crisis situation,” UNRWA Commissioner-General said
CAIRO: The Qatar Red Crescent and the UN agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) signed an agreement on Sunday, with $4.5 million from a Qatari state development fund, to aid more than 4,400 stranded Palestinian workers and patients from Gaza in the West Bank.
“Cash assistance will represent vital support for those displaced who have not been able to return to the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Strip last October,” a statement from the Qatar’s state news agency said.
“Thousands of Palestine refugees from Gaza remain trapped in the West Bank, trapped in this crisis situation, stranded from their loved ones and livelihoods,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said.
Since Israel’s blockade of Gaza began in 2007, movement in and out of the Strip has been heavily restricted, forcing individuals to seek medical care, education, or jobs in the West Bank, while escalating violence often closes borders, trapping those in need of essential services.
Egypt condemns killing of activist by Israeli forces in the West Bank
- Ministry extends condolences to government of Turkiye and its people
CAIRO: Egypt condemned the killing of US-Turkish activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces in the West Bank.
Ahmed Abu Zeid, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, condemned the killing of Eygi, which occurred south of Nablus.
In a statement issued by the ministry, Abu Zeid extended his condolences to the Turkish government and people and offered his sympathies to the family of the deceased.
He said the death is a further example of the daily Israeli violations against Palestinian civilians and their supporters, adding to the various forms of violence and disregard for human rights they face in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He also condemned the moral crisis faced by the international community due to the atrocities committed against civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories over decades.
Eygi, 26, was shot and killed on Friday in the village of Beita, near Nablus, during a nonviolent protest against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and escalating settler violence against Palestinian homes and landowners.
Eight-year-old found dead in Turkiye after national search effort
- “Narin Guran was found dead wearing the same clothes as the last time she was seen,” said Zorluoglu
ANKARA: The body of an eight-year-old girl who had been missing in Turkiye for 19 days has been found after an enormous manhunt, the interior minister said on Sunday.
The body of Narin Guran was found in a bag in a river in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, around one kilometer from the village where she lived with her family, Diyarbakir governor Murat Zorluoglu told reporters.
“Unfortunately, the lifeless body of Narin, who went missing in the village of Tavsantepe... has been found,” Turkish interior minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
She disappeared on August 21, sparking a huge search effort in Turkiye, with a number of well-known figures joining a social media campaign called “Find Narin.”
“Narin Guran was found dead wearing the same clothes as the last time she was seen,” said Zorluoglu.
“Based on the first observations, she was put into a bag after she was killed. The bag was then placed in the river, hidden under branches and rocks so as not to raise suspicion,” he added.
Diyarbakir prosecutors have detained 21 people, said Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc.
The girl’s uncle was arrested last week on suspicion of murder and “deprivation of liberty.”
“Our president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is following the case closely to guarantee that the ongoing investigation continues thoroughly and that those who took Narin’s life answer before the law,” the president’s communications director Fahrettin Altun said on X.
Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish party DEM has called for a march to take place in Diyarbakir on Sunday evening.
“Narin was killed in an organized manner. Those responsible for this murder, which has saddened us all, must be revealed and held accountable before an impartial and independent justice system,” DEM wrote on X.
Tunc said on X that “those responsible for Narin’s death will be brought to justice.”
Sudan rejects UN call for ‘impartial’ force to protect civilians
PORT SUDAN: Sudan has rejected a call by UN experts for the deployment of an “independent and impartial force” to protect millions of civilians driven from their homes by more than a year of war.
The conflict since April last year, pitting the army against paramilitary forces, has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The independent UN experts said Friday their fact-finding mission had uncovered “harrowing” violations by both sides, “which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
They called for “an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians” to be deployed “without delay.”
The Sudanese foreign ministry, which is loyal to the army under General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, said in a statement late Saturday that “the Sudanese government rejects in their entirety the recommendations of the UN mission.”
It called the UN Human Rights Council, which created the fact-finding mission last year, “a political and illegal body,” and the panel’s recommendations “a flagrant violation of their mandate.”
The UN experts said eight million civilians have been displaced and another two million people have fled to neighboring countries.
More than 25 million people — upwards of half the country’s population — face acute food shortages.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on a visit to Sudan on Sunday, said: “The scale of the emergency is shocking, as is the insufficient action being taken to curtail the conflict and respond to the suffering it is causing.”
In Port Sudan, where government offices and the United Nations have relocated to due to the intense fighting in the capital Khartoum, Tedros called on the “world to wake up and help Sudan out of the nightmare it is living through.”
The Sudanese foreign ministry statement accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Burhan’s former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, of “systematically targeting civilians and civilian institutions.”
“The protection of civilians remains an absolute priority for the Sudanese government,” it said.
The statement added that the UN Human Rights Council’s role should be “to support the national process, rather than seek to impose a different exterior mechanism.”
It also rejected the experts’ call for an arms embargo.
