Lebanon’s crisis-battered health care system now prepares for a wider war with Israel, minister says

Lebanon's Health Minister Firas Abiad speaks during a press conference on the first case of cholera, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. (AP)
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Updated 12 August 2024
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Lebanon’s crisis-battered health care system now prepares for a wider war with Israel, minister says

  • “We hope that all the efforts we are doing for preparing for this emergency go to waste,” Abiad says

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s crisis-battered health care system is now preparing for the possibility of a devastating wider conflict with Israel, the country’s health minister told The Associated Press in an interview Monday.
Israel’s military and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah militant group have traded strikes since the current war in Gaza began, but tensions have escalated since an Israeli strike in a Beirut suburb killed a top Hezbollah commander last month. Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate.
Lebanon’s caretaker government, amid diplomatic maneuvering for de-escalation, is trying to prepare for the worst with a tattered budget, a deeply divided parliament and no president.
“The Lebanese health system had to adjust to multiple crises,” caretaker Health Minister Firas Abiad said. Healthcare facilities cut costs by keeping inventory at a minimum, leaving little backup for emergencies, he said. Now inventory has been built up to four months’ worth of critical supplies.
“We hope that all the efforts we are doing for preparing for this emergency go to waste” and a wider war is averted, Abiad said. “The best thing that we want is for all of this to turn out to be unnecessary.”
Inside Gaza, the health system has been decimated. Abiad said Lebanese health authorities take the possibility of hospitals being targeted in a wider conflict “very seriously.”
Already, he said, almost two dozen paramedics and health care workers in southern Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes. They include paramedics from medical groups affiliated with Hezbollah and allied groups that have filled the gaps in areas with limited state services.
Israeli strikes have hit deeper into Lebanon in recent weeks, and sonic booms from military jets rattle Beirut. Much of the border region is in rubble.
The Mediterranean country’s health sector was once renowned as one of the best in the region. But Lebanon has faced compounding crises since 2019, including a fiscal one that followed decades of corruption and mismanagement. Other challenges include the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Beirut Port explosion that damaged or destroyed key health care infrastructure and dwindling international aid to help Lebanon host more than 1 million Syrian refugees.
Lebanese hospitals in 2021 were at breaking point, barely able to keep the lights on and short on medicines.
Abiad said the health sector has shown resilience before, and he hopes it will again.
“During the (port) blast, the system was able to absorb an excess of 6,000 casualties in a matter of 12 hours,” he said. “There is, I would say, a determination within our health care system to provide the needed care to all the people who require it.”
But resilience might not be enough for the troubled country and its 6 million people. The financial crisis has left government agencies beholden to humanitarian organizations for cash injections and supplies.
Last week, the health ministry received 32 tons of emergency medical aid from the World Health Organization. But UN agencies and other humanitarian groups have had to reallocate funds from existing work to provide aid to about 100,000 people who have fled southern Lebanon since the current war in Gaza began.
Abiad said some issues are out of the ministry’s control, including securing fuel for electricity and petrol for ambulances, as well as supporting the almost 800,000 UN-registered Syrian refugees in the country.
Healthcare resources are not sufficient for refugees in particular, Abiad said: “The international community really has to pull its weight and chip in with this particular issue.”


UNRWA chief vows to continue aid to Palestinians despite Israeli ban

Updated 6 sec ago
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UNRWA chief vows to continue aid to Palestinians despite Israeli ban

OSLO: The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA will continue to provide aid to people in the Palestinian territories despite an Israeli ban due to be implemented by the end of January, its director said Wednesday.
“We will ... stay and deliver,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told a conference in Oslo. “UNRWA’s local staff will remain and continue to provide emergency assistance and where possible, education and primary health care,” he said.


Erdogan says Turkiye can ‘crush’ all terrorists in Syria

Updated 7 min 15 sec ago
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Erdogan says Turkiye can ‘crush’ all terrorists in Syria

ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday urged all countries to “take their hands off” Syria and said Turkiye had the capacity and ability to crush all terrorist organizations in the country, including Kurdish militia and Islamic State.
Speaking in parliament, Erdogan said the Kurdish YPG militia was the biggest problem in Syria now after the ousting of former President Bashar Assad, and added that the group would not be able to escape its inevitable end unless it lays down its arms.


World must keep pressure on Israel after Gaza truce: Palestinian PM

Updated 11 min 1 sec ago
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World must keep pressure on Israel after Gaza truce: Palestinian PM

OSLO: The international community will have to maintain pressure on Israel after an hoped-for ceasefire in Gaza so it accepts the creation of a Palestinian state, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa said on Wednesday.
A ceasefire agreement appears close following a recent round of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying late Tuesday that a deal to end the 15-month war was “on the brink.”
“The ceasefire we’re talking about ... came about primarily because of international pressure. So pressure does pay off,” Mustafa said before a conference in Oslo.
Israel must “be shown what’s right and what’s wrong, and that the veto power on peace and statehood for Palestinians will not be accepted and tolerated any longer,” he told reporters.
He was speaking at the start of the third meeting of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, gathering representatives from some 80 states and organizations in Oslo.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, the host of the meeting, said a “ceasefire is the prerequisite for peace, but it is not peace.”
“We need to move forward now toward a two-state solution. And since one of the two states exists, which is Israel, we need to build the other state, which is Palestine,” he added.
According to analysts, the two-state solution appears more remote than ever.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, firmly supported by US President-elect Donald Trump, is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.
Israel is not represented at the Oslo meeting.
Norway angered Israel when it recognized the Palestinian state, together with Spain and Ireland, last May, a move later followed by Slovenia.
In a nod to history, Wednesday’s meeting was held in the Oslo City Hall, where Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
The then-head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Israeli prime minister and his foreign minister were honored for signing the Oslo accords a year earlier, which laid the foundation for Palestinian autonomy with the goal of an independent state.


Syrians in uproar after volunteers paint over prison walls

Updated 11 min 30 sec ago
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Syrians in uproar after volunteers paint over prison walls

DAMASCUS: Families of missing persons have urged Syria’s new authorities to protect evidence of crimes under president Bashar Assad, after outrage over volunteers painting over etchings on walls inside a former jail.
Thousands poured out of prisons after Islamist-led rebels toppled Assad last month, but many Syrians are still looking for traces of tens of thousands of relatives and friends who went missing.
In the chaos following his ouster, with journalists and families rushing to detention centers, official documents have been left unprotected, with some even looted or destroyed.
Rights groups have stressed the urgent need to preserve “evidence of atrocities,” which includes writings left by detainees on the walls of their cells.
But a video appearing to show young volunteers paint over such writings at an unnamed detention center with white paint and adorning its walls with the new Syrian flag, the depiction of a fireplace or broken chains has circulated on social media in recent days, angering activists.
“Painting the walls of security branches is disgraceful, especially before the start of new investigations into human rights violations” there, said Diab Serriya, a co-founder of Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP).
It is “an attempt to destroy the signs of torture or enforced disappearance and hampers efforts to... gather evidence,” he said.
Jomana Hasan Shtiwy, a Syrian held in three different facilities under Assad, often changing cells, said the writings on the walls held invaluable information.
“On the walls are names and telephone numbers to contact relatives and inform them about the fate of their children,” she said on Facebook.
In each new cell, “we would write a memory so that those who followed could remember us,” she said.
A petition appeared on Tuesday calling for the new Syrian authorities to better protect evidence, and give investigating the fate of those forcibly disappeared under Assad “the highest priority.”
It slammed what it called “the insensitive treatment of the sanctity” of former detention centers.
“Some have gone as far as to paint cells, obscuring their features, which for us represents... a great wronging of detainees,” said signatories, including ADMSP.
The president of the International Committee for the Red Cross said last week determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria’s civil war would be a “huge challenge.”
Mirjana Spoljaric said the ICRC was following 43,000 cases, but that was probably just a fraction of the missing.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, says more than 100,000 people have died in detention from torture or dire health conditions across Syria since 2011.


Iran’s navy unveils its first signals intelligence ship

Updated 48 min 35 sec ago
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Iran’s navy unveils its first signals intelligence ship

DUBAI: Iran’s navy received its first signals intelligence ship on Wednesday, semi-official Tasnim news organization reported, a few days after the country’s army took delivery of 1,000 new drones.
The Zagros is a new category of military vessel equipped with electronic sensors and the ability to intercept cyber-operations and conduct intelligence monitoring, Tasnim said.
“The Zagros signals intelligence ship will be the watchful eye of Iran’s navy in the seas and oceans,” Navy Commander Shahram Irani said.
Earlier this month, Iran started two-month-long military exercises which have already included war games in which the elite Revolutionary Guards defended key nuclear installations in Natanz against mock attacks by missiles and drones.
The military drills and procurement come at a time of high tensions with arch-enemy Israel and the United States under incoming US president Donald Trump.
In October, the spokesperson of Iran’s government said the country plans to raise its military budget by around 200 percent to face growing threats.