BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri vowed on Monday to hold intensive meetings to complete the 2018 budget in line with a March 5 deadline set by the parliament speaker.
The finance minister has said Lebanon will not be able to ask international donors for support at forthcoming conferences unless it first passes the 2018 budget to show backers that Beirut is serious about reforming the heavily indebted state.
“The country needs reforms, the budgets of ministries should be reduced and we have to send real positive signs to the states participating in the forthcoming international conferences,” Hariri said in a statement from his press office on Monday.
Lebanon hopes to win billions of dollars of international investment at a Paris conference due to take place on April 6. It is seeking funding for a 10-year $16 billion capital investment program aimed at lifting economic growth.
Lebanon’s public debt was estimated above 150 percent of GDP at the end of 2017, and is expected to rise rapidly with a budget deficit above 10 percent over the forecast horizon, the International Monetary Fund said this month.
The country has one of the world’s highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world and its economic growth is very weak, battered by domestic tensions and conflict in neighboring Syria. Political deadlock had left it without a government budget from 2005 until it agreed one last year.
The IMF report said passing the 2018 budget and preparing for the Paris conference could provide opportunities to launch much-needed reforms.
Hariri said: “We will hold consecutive sessions to finish it before the date set by Speaker Nabih Berri on March 5, because everyone will be busy afterwards to prepare for the parliamentary elections.”
Parliamentary elections are due to take place on May 6.
Lebanon’s PM vows push to finish 2018 budget
Lebanon’s PM vows push to finish 2018 budget
NGOs condemn settler attack on activists in West Bank
- Herzog said on X he strongly condemned the violence that “stands in complete opposition to the values of the State of Israel“
- The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Qusra in the northern West Bank
JERUSALEM: Two Israeli NGOs denounced an attack Friday in which settlers used sticks to beat two activists in the occupied West Bank, calling the incident “state violence” and “Jewish terrorism.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on X he strongly condemned the violence that “stands in complete opposition to the values of the State of Israel.”
“This serious incident adds to a series of recent... unacceptable events that harm, above all, the (West Bank colonization) enterprise and the reputation of the State of Israel,” he added.
The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Qusra in the northern West Bank.
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem released a video filmed by one of the activists, which showed at least four masked men armed with sticks jumping out of a four-wheel drive vehicle that arrived at high speed.
Someone was then heard yelling “No, please, no” in Hebrew, followed by thuds and cries of pain, before the attackers departed.
Two people were left on the ground, one of them motionless and stretched out face down with a bleeding head.
Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom said the two wounded individuals, who are in their fifties, were taken by helicopter to a hospital in Israel.
The Israeli military said it was searching for suspects.
Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements and outposts, which are illegal under international law.
Around three million Palestinians live in the territory, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
In recent months, attacks attributed to Israeli settlers have multiplied in the West Bank, targeting Palestinians, Israeli and foreign anti-settlement activists and sometimes Israeli soldiers.
The Israeli government, considered one of the most right-wing in the country’s history, has fast-tracked settlement expansion.
B’Tselem said “the unrestrained attacks carried out by settlers throughout the West Bank constitute state violence.”
“They are carried out with full backing, participation, and assistance from state authorities, as part of a strategy of Israel’s apartheid regime seeking to advance and complete the takeover of Palestinian land,” it added.
Avi Dabush, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, said “the blood of our friends is on the hands of those who support and finance Jewish terrorism, either directly, through the government or by turning a blind eye.”
He also condemned “the army’s impotence” in a statement that called on “Israeli society to pull itself together ... in order to put an end to this endemic terrorism.”
