UNITED NATIONS: The United States and France are trying to hammer out an interim accord to halt hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah with a view to opening broader diplomatic talks, Cyprus’ President Nikos Christodoulides said on Wednesday.
“I don’t see that we can have a (broad) agreement but a form of interim agreement in order to avoid further escalation. This is the effort right now especially from the United States and France,” Christodoulides told Reuters on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
The Mediterranean island of Cyprus is the closest European Union member state, some 264 km (164 miles) from Lebanon. It has been at the forefront of maritime aid efforts for Gaza and has a key interest on developments in Lebanon should there be a need to evacuate foreign nationals.
Christodoulides said he had spoken to Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and French President Emmanuel Macron in New York and by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“During the last days there are a lot of deliberations to avoid further escalation, especially with Lebanon. There is a diplomatic initiative from the United States and France,” he said, adding that meetings in New York on Wednesday would be crucial.
“Avoid further escalation to give time to diplomacy to find a permanent solution,” he said.
US, France working on Lebanon diplomatic initiative, Cyprus president says
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US, France working on Lebanon diplomatic initiative, Cyprus president says
- Mediterranean island of Cyprus is the closest EU member state, some 264 km from Lebanon
- It has been at the forefront of maritime aid efforts for Gaza and has a key interest on developments in Lebanon
Macron urges Israel, Hezbollah to de-escalate tensions
- French president calls for creation of Palestinian state with ‘security guarantees for Israel’
- ‘Israel can’t, without consequence, just expand its operations to Lebanon. We can’t have a war in Lebanon’
NEW YORK CITY: French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called for Israel and Hezbollah to de-escalate tensions.
“Israel can’t, without consequence, just expand its operations to Lebanon,” he told the UN General Assembly. “We can’t have a war in Lebanon.”
Macron said France would act to “ensure a diplomatic voice can be heard,” adding: “We should look for peace everywhere and not accept any differences at a time when human lives are at stake.”
Regarding Gaza, he said Israel “has a legitimate right to protect their own people and to deny Hamas the means of attacking them again.”
However, he added that Israel’s invasion of Gaza has gone on for “too long,” and there is no justification for the deaths of Palestinians.
He called for the release of hostages held by Hamas, including several French citizens, along with a ceasefire and humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
Macron offered France’s participation in “any initiatives that will save lives and will allow for everyone’s safety to be protected” because “it’s imperative that a new page is turned in Gaza, for the guns to be silent, for humanitarian workers to return, (and) for civilians to finally be protected.”
France is committed to the creation of a Palestinian state with “security guarantees for Israel,” he said, reiterating his country’s commitment to working with Israelis, Palestinians and other partners to create the conditions for a just and lasting peace.
What will become of the Lebanese displaced by intensifying Israel-Hezbollah conflict?
- Israeli forces have struck multiple Hezbollah targets in recent days, forcing civilians in the south to flee northward
- Hobbled by political deadlock and economic meltdown, Lebanon’s government is in no position to mount a significant relief effort
LONDON: Nearly half a million Lebanese civilians have been displaced from their homes in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley since Israel intensified its air campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia this week, raising the prospect of a major humanitarian emergency.
In a country already grappling with a profound economic crisis, the exodus of thousands of civilians from towns and villages bordering Israel is stretching Lebanon’s limited resources and further destabilizing its fragile society.
The most pressing question on the minds of those fleeing, however, is whether their displacement will be temporary or permanent.
Indeed, villages closest to the border have been the most heavily damaged, with entire areas reduced to rubble. Israeli forces have been accused of creating a “dead zone” as a buffer between the two countries.
“We don’t think this is going to last only for a short duration,” Tania Baban, Lebanon country director of the US-based charity MedGlobal, told Arab News. “Some people may not be able to go home if their home is no longer standing.”
Since Hezbollah began rocketing northern Israel in solidarity with its Hamas allies following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, southern Lebanon has been transformed into a battleground, with Israel mounting retaliatory strikes.
The region, a stronghold for Hezbollah, has faced near daily bombardment, leaving towns and villages in ruins and devastating forests and farmland.
Lebanon’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, has said that about 500,000 Lebanese have been displaced since Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah ramped up, with more than 110,000 fleeing prior to the recent escalation.
Areas such as Tyre, Sidon and Nabatiyeh have experienced a mass exodus. Some 70 percent of Tyre’s population has evacuated, according to the city’s mayor, Hassan Dbouk. “People could not tolerate it anymore,” he told the Washington Post.
Baban believes the official number of displaced is an underestimate. “We started distributing some much-needed basic items to the shelters on Tuesday, such as mattresses, towels, pillows, water and personal hygiene kits,” she said.
“We went to several schools to get their information and do our assessment, and there were displaced people flooding in, and this is only in Beirut.
“They’re mostly from the south. I’m sure Bekaa as well, but we don’t have those types of details yet, because people are still flooding in.”
Safa Kosaibani, 21, who fled from Nabatiyeh to the coastal city of Sidon with her daughters and sisters-in-law, said that she heard Israel was telling civilians to leave southern Lebanon, but did not trust the warnings.
“We thought it was just psychological warfare,” she told the Washington Post. “That they were just trying to push us to leave our land, because we pushed them away from their land in the north. They want to do the same to us.”
An estimated 60,000 or so Israelis are internally displaced from the other side. On Sept. 17, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu updated his government’s war goals to include returning those people home.
Nour Hamad, a 22-year-old student in the Lebanese city of Baalbek, described living “in a state of terror” all week. “We spent four or five days without sleep, not knowing if we will wake up in the morning,” she told the AFP news agency.
“The sound of the bombardment is very frightening, everyone’s afraid. The children are afraid, and the grown-ups are afraid too.”
As civilians tried to escape the conflict zones this week, they found highways from the south clogged with traffic. Roads to safety were so busy that many spent 12 hours or more on a journey that previously took just one or two.
While some have found refuge with friends or relatives, the sheer volume of displaced people is overwhelming Lebanon’s capacity to provide accommodation, with schools, community centers and unfinished buildings quickly being converted into temporary shelters.
Lebanon’s government is in no position to mount a significant relief effort. In recent years, it has been paralyzed by political deadlock and financial collapse, with its currency losing more than 90 percent of its value.
“Lebanon has been dealing with multiple crises and has still not recovered from the devastating of the Aug. 4, 2020, Beirut port explosion, as well as the economic crisis that engulfed the country starting in late 2019,” Hovig Atamian, director of programs at CARE International in Lebanon, told Arab News.
“Humanitarian organizations have been preparing for the worst case scenario of a very significant escalation for months now, but the reality on the ground, including access constraints due to the security risks will always remain a challenge.
“We call on the parties to the conflict to uphold the provisions of international humanitarian law, including taking measures to avoid and minimize loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects as well as protecting all humanitarian personnel and operations.”
With international funding already stretched due to crises in Gaza, Ukraine and other conflict zones, there is a fear that Lebanon could be overlooked in terms of humanitarian assistance.
Imran Riza, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, has allocated a $24 million emergency aid package from the Lebanon Humanitarian Fund to address the urgent needs of those impacted by the hostilities. Those needs are now likely to grow rapidly, however.
Lebanon is “grappling with multiple crises, which have overwhelmed the country’s capacity to cope,” Riza said in a statement.
“As the escalation of hostilities in south Lebanon drags on longer than we had hoped, it has led to further displacement and deepened the already critical needs.”
Charities such as MedGlobal are now mobilizing to deliver essential items to the temporary shelters.
“We are going to distribute food that is pre-prepared, because they don’t have cooking supplies, but also mattresses, winterization kits, blankets — because winter is on the doorstep, so they need to be prepared,” Baban said.
“The people who are coming into the shelters, a lot of them are elderly people who left their medications, who left their money, who need to get their medicine for their chronic illnesses as well.
“We’re talking about diabetes, heart problems, hypertension, and some patients are on dialysis. Some patients are maybe on chemotherapy, and we haven’t even begun to speak about the risk of communicable diseases.
“These are going to be overcrowded school turned shelters and winters coming, and we haven’t even discussed flu, COVID-19 and all of that. So it’s a very grim situation.”
Israeli forces have struck multiple targets across Lebanon, leading to the death of almost 600 people, many of them civilians. The strikes followed a synchronized attack last week on Hezbollah’s communication devices, which killed 39 people and injured more than 3,000.
The Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday that it had hit 1,500 “terrorist infrastructure targets in southern Lebanon and deep inside Lebanese territory.”
“Hezbollah today is not the same Hezbollah we knew a week ago,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, claiming that the group “has suffered a sequence of blows to its command and control, its fighters, and the means to fight.”
INNUMBERS
• 500,000 People displaced across Lebanon. • 600 Fatalities, including 50 children and 94 women.
• 1,700 People injured by strikes across Lebanon.
• 60,000 Israelis evacuated from border areas since October.
The violence escalated on Wednesday when Hezbollah said it had launched a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv. Although Israel intercepted the missile, it represents an unprecedented move and a dangerous new phase in the conflict.
Early on Wednesday, Hezbollah confirmed that the commander of its missile unit, Ibrahim Muhammad Qubaisi, had been killed, hours after the Israeli military said that he had been “eliminated” in an airstrike on Ghobeiri in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The escalation comes nearly a year after Hezbollah began launching attacks shortly after the Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw 240 taken hostage.
Israel responded by invading the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, leading to a conflict that has claimed more than 41,000 lives, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict have so far failed. US President Joe Biden, addressing the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, warned of the dangers of full-scale war in Lebanon, urging for restraint from all sides.
“Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest,” Biden said. “Even though the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible.”
For Baban of MedGlobal, the unfolding humanitarian emergency could have serious implications for the wider region.
“Something needs to be done to stop this, to prevent this catastrophe from not only hitting Lebanon but becoming a regional catastrophe.”
Turkiye’s Erdogan tells Lebanese PM urgent international solution needed to stop Israel
- Erdogan has previously condemned Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory
- He called for international steps to halt Israel’s war in Gaza and cross-border fire with Hezbollah
ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Wednesday that the international community must urgently implement a solution to stop Israel’s aggression, the Turkish presidency said, adding he had also voiced support for Lebanon.
A NATO member, Turkiye has denounced Israel’s devastating military offensive in Gaza prompted by Palestinian militant group Hamas’ cross-border attack last Oct. 7.
Turkiye halted all trade with Israel and applied to join a genocide case against Israel at the World Court. Israel has said the genocide accusations are baseless and has repeatedly denied targeting civilians.
Erdogan has previously condemned Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory, which Israel says are targeting Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure, and has called for international steps to halt Israel’s war in Gaza and cross-border fire with Hezbollah.
Turkiye’s presidency said Erdogan told Mikati in a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York that the international community must urgently implement a solution to stop “Israel’s aggression.”
“President Erdogan said Israel was disregarding fundamental human rights, committing a genocide in front of the world, noting that stopping this and the humanitarian crisis that emerged as a result of the attacks was a humanitarian duty,” the presidency said in a statement.
Earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib in New York that Israel’s attacks in Lebanon were “unacceptable” and meant to “drag the region into chaos,” according to the Turkish diplomatic source.
Bou Habib thanked Fidan for a Turkish shipment of medicine that arrived in Lebanon on Wednesday, the source added, and also briefed Fidan on the latest developments in Lebanon.
Separately, Fidan told a G20 foreign ministers meeting in New York that it was unclear whether the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah would spread further, though the world was facing a wider conflict.
Fidan also reiterated Ankara’s long-standing call to reform the UN Security Council to make it “fully effective,” adding Turkiye wanted to see a structure in which “one country’s veto does not determine another’s destiny,” the source added.
The United States, Russia, China, France and Britain are the permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council. There are 10 non-permanent members that serve two-year terms.
UN Security Council urges peace amid mounting Mideast war fears
- Need to maintain security ‘more pressing than ever,’ joint statement says
- Israeli strikes this week have killed more than 500 Lebanese, injured thousands
NEW YORK CITY: The UN Security Council has issued a statement warning against the “scourge of war” amid heightened fears of regional conflict in the Middle East.
It follows a significant escalation between Israel and Hezbollah this week, with Israeli strikes killing more than 500 Lebanese citizens and injuring thousands.
The UNSC’s focus is also on the Russia-Ukraine war and conflict in Sudan, with representatives from all three countries present in New York City this week for the 79th UN General Assembly.
“The Security Council recalls that the UN was established to save mankind from the scourge of war,” the statement said.
“The need to strengthen resolve to maintain international peace and security, consistent with the UN Charter, is more pressing than ever.”
Issued by the UNSC president for September, Samuel Zbogar, the statement described the UN Charter’s principles as “universal, indispensable and irreplaceable foundations of a more safe, peaceful, just, equal, inclusive, sustainable and prosperous world.” Achieving and sustaining global peace requires a “comprehensive approach,” it added.
The UNSC highlighted its “strong support for the protection of civilians in armed conflict. The council calls upon all parties to armed conflict to comply fully with their obligations under international humanitarian law, in order to respect and protect civilians, including humanitarian personnel, and reiterates its commitment towards accountability for violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.”
Alongside the permanent five members of the UNSC — the US, UK, France, Russia and China — there are 10 non-permanent members: Algeria, Japan, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Switzerland.
The statement added: “The Security Council reaffirms that development, peace and security, and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing.
“The council recognizes that the spirit that guided the creation of the UN should prevail and inspire mankind to persist on the path of peace.”
Head of Libyan Presidential Council hits out at Israel’s ‘crimes of genocide’ in Palestine during UNGA debate
- Mohamed Al-Menfi also addressed “urgent issues” of illegal migration and terrorism facing Libya today
NEW YORK CITY: The head of Libya’s Presidential Council on Wednesday joined growing voices of condemnation at the UN General Assembly of Israel’s actions in the Middle East as he spoke of its “crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing” perpetrated against the Palestinian people.
Mohamed Al-Menfi, who was speaking during the second day of the general debate in New York City, said that Israel’s onslaught in the Gaza Strip amid its battle with Hamas, which has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, was a blatant violation of international law.
He reaffirmed Libya’s solidarity with Palestine, while emphasizing the right of the Palestinian people to determine their own destiny and establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
“In this regard, we refer to Libya’s joining South Africa in the case raised before the International Criminal Court regarding Israel and its serious violations of laws, resolutions, and international charters, to promote accountability for the violations and genocide that the Palestinian people are being exposed to,” he said.
Al-Menfi also addressed the “urgent issues” of illegal migration and terrorism facing Libya today.
He said that his country, one that serves as a major transit point for migrants attempting to reach Europe, bears a burden in managing migration flows, adding it was an issue which required the assistance of the international community to tackle.
“We believe that solving this issue requires collective efforts, while ensuring the consideration of national legislations and humanitarian aspects and protecting the rights of migrants,” he said. “There’s need for a balanced approach that respects the dignity of migrants, acknowledging their vulnerabilities in the face of harsh migration conditions.”
Al-Menfi was frank about the scourge of terrorism on Libya, particularly the threat posed by extremist groups such as Daesh.
He said that while Libya had made strides in combating terrorism with the help of the international community, a coordinated effort from within the country was essential to keeping its impact at bay.
“We continue to work on enhancing internal security and securing the borders through cooperation with the international community to establish security centers for coordinating efforts among various national security forces and neighboring countries,” he said.
“The fight against terrorism is not just a military confrontation, it is a multifaceted phenomenon that requires the concerted efforts of local and international parties, and a comprehensive approach that addresses its various dimensions.
“Despite the importance of the UN’s efforts in this regard, we see the necessity of developing a national mechanism to confront these challenges away from negative interventions,” he added.
During his address, Al-Menfi also urged unity among Libyans to overcome internal divisions and foreign interventions that he said threatened national stability.
He called on the international community to support Libya in its journey toward national reconciliation and to help foster a stable and peaceful future for its citizens by backing legitimate elections.
“A comprehensive political solution is the only path to unify institutions and ensure stability, leading to elections, renewing legitimacy for all institutions, and allowing the Libyan people to determine their destiny,” he said.
“The Libyans should be given the opportunity to decide their future by renewing legitimacy and restoring authority that some parties seek to exclude, the Libyan people are the best to determine their fate, and the people should be the arbiter in choosing their representatives.
“Returning to them through free referendums and holding inclusive elections is the best solution to end any political deadlock.”
