BEIRUT: Lebanon’s new government on Wednesday won a confidence vote in Parliament, with the support of Hezbollah’s bloc, even though the government statement adopted took a swipe at the group’s weapons.
Ninety-five out of 128 lawmakers supported the government of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, a prominent jurist who previously headed the International Court of Justice. He was appointed last month to form a new government after a devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah, which killed over 4,000 people and caused widespread destruction.
The government statement adopted said that only Lebanon’s armed forces should defend the country in case of war. Unlike previous statements, it did not include the phrase “armed resistance,” which had been seen as legitimizing Hezbollah’s possession of weapons outside of state control.
Hezbollah has kept its weapons over the past decades saying they are necessary to defend the country against Israel. Calls for the group’s disarmament, however, intensified during the latest war, which ended with a US-brokered ceasefire on Nov. 27, 2024.
Hezbollah did not support Salam’s bid to be prime minister. But Hezbollah’s parliamentary leader, Mohammad Raad, on Tuesday announced his bloc’s confidence in his Cabinet on Tuesday.
Salam said the government asserts that Lebanon has the right to defend itself in case of any “aggression” and only the state has the right to have weapons. He also said the government takes measures to liberate land occupied by Israel “through its forces only.”
Legislators from the Amal movement, led by parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri — who brokered the ceasefire and is allied with Hezbollah — also voted for the new government. Hezbollah and the Amal Movement collectively hold about 27 seats designated for the Shi’ite community.
The Marada Movement, a Christian political party aligned with Hezbollah, and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a secular nationalist party aligned with Hezbollah, also offered the government their confidence.
The Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb, Christian parties that oppose Hezbollah and call for its disarmament and reduced Iranian influence, also backed Salam’s government.
Meanwhile, 12 legislators withheld support while four others abstained from voting, criticizing the ministerial statement as vague and lacking a clear plan. The “Strong Lebanon” bloc led by Gebran Bassil of the Free Patriotic Movement, previously aligned with Hezbollah, voted against the new government.
Among the key issues raised by parliamentarians for the government to address are Israel’s ceasefire violations and demands for its full withdrawal from Lebanese territory. While Israeli troops pulled out under the ceasefire terms, they remain in five strategic outposts along the border and continue to conduct airstrikes, saying they are targeting Hezbollah fighters and weapons caches.
Legislators also urged the government to tackle reconstruction following the war, Lebanon’s severe economic and banking crisis and implement long-overdue judicial and banking reforms.
Lebanon’s government wins confidence vote, says only armed forces should defend country in war
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Lebanon’s government wins confidence vote, says only armed forces should defend country in war
- Salam said the government asserts that Lebanon has the right to defend itself in case of any “aggression” and only the state has the right to have weapons
- He also said the government takes measures to liberate land occupied by Israel “through its forces only”
Syrian Druze leaders slam ‘unjustified armed attack’ near Damascus
Jaramana’s Druze religious leadership in a statement condemned “the unjustified armed attack” that “targeted innocent civilians and terrorized” residents, adding that the Syrian authorities bore “full responsibility for the incident and for any further developments or worsening of the crisis.”
Tunisia’s Saied slams ‘blatant interference’ after international criticism
- Tunisian President Kais Saied rejected foreign criticism of opposition trials, calling it unacceptable interference in internal affairs
TUNIS: Tunisian President Kais Saied on Tuesday struck out at “comments and statements by foreign parties,” after the country came under sharp international criticism over a mass trial of opposition figures.
“The comments and statements by foreign parties are unacceptable... and constitute blatant interference in Tunisia’s internal affairs,” Saied said in a statement posted by the presidency on Facebook.
France tries Syrian Islamist rebel ex-spokesman on war crime charges
- French authorities arrested Majdi Nema in the southern city of Marseille in 2020
- He was spokesman for a Syrian Islamist rebel group called Jaish Al-Islam
PARIS: A Syrian Islamist rebel ex-spokesman is to go on trial in France on Tuesday under the principle of universal jurisdiction, accused of complicity in war crimes during Syria’s civil war.
French authorities arrested Majdi Nema, now 36, in the southern city of Marseille in 2020, after he traveled to the country on a student exchange program.
He was detained and charged under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows states to prosecute suspects accused of serious crimes regardless of where they were committed.
This is the first time that crimes committed in Syria’s civil war have been tried in France under the universal jurisdiction.
Nema – better known by his nom-de-guerre of Islam Alloush – has been charged with complicity in war crimes between 2013 and 2016, when he was spokesman for a Syrian Islamist rebel group called Jaish Al-Islam.
However, Nema has said he only had a “limited role” in the armed opposition group that held sway in the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus during that period.
Jaish Al-Islam was one of the main opposition groups fighting Bashar Assad’s government before Islamist-led fighters toppled him in December but it has also been accused of terrorizing civilians in areas it controlled.
Nema, who faces up to 20 years in jail if found guilty, has in particular been accused of helping recruit children and teenagers to fight for the group.
His arrest came after rights groups, including the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), filed a criminal complaint in France in 2019 against members of Jaish Al-Islam for their alleged crimes.
It was the FIDH that discovered Nema was in France during research into Jaish Al-Islam’s hierarchy and informed the French authorities.
Marc Bailly, a lawyer for the FIDH and some civil parties in the trial that runs to May 27, said the case would be “the opportunity to shed light on all the complexity of the Syrian conflict, which did not just involve regime crimes.”
Born in 1988, Nema was a captain in the Syrian armed forces before defecting in 2012 and joining the group that would in 2013 become known as Jaish Al-Islam.
He told investigators that he left Eastern Ghouta in May 2013 and crossed the border to Turkiye, where he worked as the group’s spokesman, before leaving the group in 2016.
He has cited his presence in Turkiye as part of his defense.
Nema traveled to France in November 2019 under a university exchange program and was arrested in January 2020.
The defendant was initially indicted for complicity in the enforced disappearances of four activists in Eastern Ghouta in late 2013 – including prominent rights defender Razan Zaitouneh – but those charges have since been dropped on procedural grounds.
Jaish Al-Islam has been accused of involvement in the abduction, though it has denied this.
France has since 2010 been able to try cases under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which argues some crimes are so serious that all states have the obligation to prosecute offenders.
The country’s highest court upheld this principle in 2023, allowing for the investigation into Nema to continue.
A previous trial in May of Syrians charged over their actions in the war took place because French nationals were the victims, rather than under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
A Paris court in that trial ordered life sentences for three top Syrian security officials linked to the former Assad government for their role in the torture and disappearance of a French-Syrian father and son in Syria in 2013.
They were tried in absentia.
Syria’s conflict has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more from their homes since it erupted in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.
Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘live-streamed genocide’ against Gaza Palestinians
- Rights group charges that Israel acted with ‘specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide’
- Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip has left at least 52,243 dead
PARIS: Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a “live-streamed genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.
In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with “specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide.”
Israel has rejected accusations of “genocide” from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.
The conflict erupted after the Palestinian militant group Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.
“Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide,” Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.
“States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools,” she added.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons’ tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.
The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.
The lack of fuel “threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers,” it said in a statement.
Amnesty’s report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza “displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water.”
Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had “documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.”
It said Israel’s actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza’s population, and “deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.”
Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, “the world’s governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire.”
Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of “apartheid.”
“Israel’s system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians,” it said.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced “the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year” as well as “the world’s complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it.”
Tragedy as another refugee boat sinks in the Mediterranean
- Tunisia’s coast guard recovers bodies of eight African victims from sea, 29 survive
TUNIS: Tunisia’s coast guard on Monday recovered the bodies of eight African refugees who drowned after their boat sank off the country’s coast as it tried to cross the Mediterranean toward Europe. a security official told Reuters, adding that 29 other people were rescued.
The vessel sank in waters off the city of Abwabed near Sfax, a departure point often used by African migrants. Search operations were underway for survivors and 29 had been found alive, national guard officer Houssem Eddine Jebabli said. The refugees were “all foreigners,” including some from sub-Saharan Africa and others of different nationalities, he said.
Tunisia is grappling with an unprecedented migration crisis and has replaced Libya as a major departure point for both Tunisians and others in Africa seeking a better life in Europe. It is a key transit country for thousands of sub-Saharan refugees seeking to reach Europe by sea each year, with Italy’s island of Lampedusa only 150 kilometers away.
This month authorities began dismantling informal camps near Sfax holding thousands of migrants, mainly from Sub-Saharan African countries. With the EU’s mounting efforts to curb migrant arrivals, many refugees feel stranded in Tunisia.
Tunisia signed a $290 million deal with the EU In 2023, nearly half of it earmarked for tackling irregular migration. The deal, strongly supported by Italy’s hard-right government, aimed to bolster Tunisia's capacity to prevent boats leaving its shore.
Frontex, the EU's border agency, has said that irregular border crossings were down 64 percent last year until September for the central Mediterranean route.
