BEIRUT: Lebanon’s new proportional representation electoral system has created a long-awaited opportunity for opponents of Prime Minister Saad Hariri. It gives them a chance to confront him and reject what they consider “the Future Movement’s monopoly over Sunni representation.”
The most prominent clash will be in the Beirut II constituency, where nine electoral lists are competing — the largest number in the country.
The confrontation is a political one, reflected in the campaign speeches of Hariri and his Hezbollah opponents. These did not focus on who will win, but on who will have a majority of seats and influence domestic political decisions as well as Lebanon’s status in the region. They also ruled out any political alliance between the two sides — but they will be forced into “political cohabitation” in the cabinet.
Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem spoke about the identities of those who he thinks will head the parliament and the government. He has decided that Nabih Berri will return as speaker, and declared that “it isn’t necessary for the head of the government to have a large parliamentary bloc or even be a member of parliament.”
His speech suggested that Hezbollah would enter the new era with strong influence regardless of the results at the ballot box.
It seems Hezbollah is also hinting at amending the agreement that made Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) founder Michel Aoun president in exchange for installing Hariri as prime minister. One of Hezbollah’s main conditions is that the new government’s ministerial agenda does not include anything that could affect the role and fate of the resistance.
Former MP Mustafa Alloush, a member of the Future Movement’s political office, said Hezbollah is seizing every opportunity to prevent Hariri’s return to the premiership.
“I believe the presidential settlement will continue if Hariri wins an influential parliamentary bloc in alliance with FPM,” he said. “Hezbollah may seek to unite with all other blocs to face the Future Movement — consensus here becomes an expression of the balance of power.
“The balance may be negative and capable of destroying everything, or it could be positive through which the government can be run and arms control can be imposed, but this cannot change unless the region’s situation is changed.”
In contrast, Hariri’s speech focused on “Lebanon first,” the country’s Arab identity, and the necessity of “an influential bloc in the parliament to be able to hold dialogue with all political parties.”
“Hezbollah cannot cancel me and I cannot cancel Hezbollah,” said Hariri. “I cannot accept their regional strategy nor can they accept mine, but why should the people of Lebanon pay the price? From here rises the importance of the consensus that is being developed under the auspices of the Lebanese president.”
Alloush described Hariri’s words as “a historic speech for ensuring political and security stability, to ensure economic stability and employment opportunities.”
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s speeches suggest the party is worried about a decline in support and public objections to its performance, in terms of losses in Syria and lack of attention to domestic development.
Hezbollah has altered its campaign rhetoric from a focus on the military to providing health and old-age benefits, improving education, supporting the Lebanese University, and improving economic and financial policies, among other promises.
“For the first time, the leader of the Hezbollah militia is trying to make his political rhetoric different than before,” Alloush said. “Nasrallah is forced to discuss developmental issues and corruption because the resistance’s logic and arms can no longer be the sole focus during this stage, because Hezbollah’s community is now criticizing the party’s performance in developmental areas, and Hezbollah has not offered any economic or developmental vision for Lebanon or the areas it influences.”
Political analyst Hussam Itani believes “the political settlement will continue in Lebanon.”
He said: “I don’t believe Hezbollah would want to start an internal political conflict in Lebanon with the Sunni community in light of the current tension between Iran and Israel.”
Lebanese election fuels confrontation between bitter political rivals
Lebanese election fuels confrontation between bitter political rivals
- The most prominent confrontation will be in the Beirut II constituency, where nine electoral lists are competing.
- Hezbollah has altered its campaign rhetoric from a focus on the military to providing health and old-age benefits, improving education, supporting the Lebanese University, and improving economic and financial policies.
Egypt rejects Israeli plans for Rafah crossing, sources say
- An Israeli official said a delegation traveled to Egypt amid rising tension between the two countries
Officials from Israeli security service Shin Bet presented the plan on a visit to Cairo on Wednesday, amid rising tension between the two countries following Israel’s military advance last week into Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by war have been sheltering.
The Rafah crossing has been a main conduit for humanitarian aid entering Gaza, and an exit point for medical evacuees from the territory, where a humanitarian crisis has deepened and some people are at risk of famine. Israel took operational control of the crossing and has said it will not compromise on preventing Hamas having any future role there.
The Israeli proposal included a mechanism for how to manage the crossing after an Israeli withdrawal, the security sources said. Egypt insists the crossing should be managed only by Palestinian authorities, they added.
An Israeli official who requested anonymity said the delegation traveled to Egypt “mainly to discuss matters around Rafah, given recent developments,” but declined to elaborate.
Egypt’s foreign press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Egypt and Israel have a long-standing peace treaty and security cooperation, but the relationship has come under strain during the Gaza war, especially since the Israeli advance around Rafah.
The two countries traded blame this week for the border crossing closure and resulting blockage of humanitarian relief.
Egypt says Rafah’s closure is due solely to the Israeli military operation. It has warned repeatedly that Israel’s offensive aims to empty out Gaza by pushing Palestinians into Egypt.
Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said on Wednesday that Egypt had rejected an Israeli request to open Rafah to Gazan civilians who wish to flee.
The Israeli delegation also discussed stalled negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza during their Cairo visit, but did not convey any new messages, the Egyptian sources said. Egypt has been a mediator in the talks, along with Qatar and the United States.
Israel’s Gaza offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, with at least 82 killed on Tuesday in the highest single-day toll for weeks.
Hamas-led gunmen killed some 1,200 people and abducted 253 in their Oct. 7 raid into Israel, according to Israeli tallies.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives in Manama for Arab League Summit 2024
MANAMA: Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was among the Arab delegates who arrived in Manama for the Arab League Summit.
The one-day summit will discuss the situation in Gaza, propose ceasefire and push for a two-state solution in Palestine to achieve regional peace.
Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, UAE’s Vice President and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Rashid, Kuwait’s Prime Minister Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, and Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad were among the arrivals on Thursday.
It is the first time the Arab bloc has come together since the extraordinary summit in Riyadh in November where the leaders condemned Israel’s “barbaric” actions in Gaza.
Lebanon media says Israel struck Hezbollah eastern stronghold overnight
- Israel and Hamas ally Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire following the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza
Beirut: Lebanese state-run media reported Thursday an overnight Israeli air raid on eastern Lebanon, where Hezbollah holds sway, hours after the Iran-backed armed group launched an attack deep into Israeli territory.
Israel and Hamas ally Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire following the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, now in its eighth month.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said that “the outskirts of the eastern Lebanon mountain range, at midnight (2100 GMT Wednesday), was subjected to five enemy raids.”
The strikes in the Baalbek area “slightly injured a citizen” and caused fires, the report added.
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that one of the strikes “hit a Hezbollah military camp.”
An Israeli army spokesman told AFP: “I can confirm that an airstrike was indeed conducted deep in Lebanon against a terror target related to Hezbollah’s precision missile project.”
The area of Baalbek in the Bekaa valley is a Hezbollah bastion, bordering Syria.
Hezbollah launchrocket barrage at Israeli positions
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it launched on Thursday “more than 60” rockets at Israeli military positions in retaliation for overnight air strikes.
Hezbollah fighters “launched a missile attack with more than 60 Katyusha rockets” on several Israeli military positions including in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, the group said in a statement, adding it was “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks last night on the Bekaa region” in Lebanon’s east.
The cross-border fighting has killed at least 413 people in Lebanon, mostly militants but also including dozens of civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israel says 14 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed on its side of the border.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in areas on both sides of the border.
The top UN court holds hearings on Israeli military incursion into Rafah
- It is the fourth time South Africa has asked the ICJ for emergency measures
- South Africa has asked the court to order Israel to withdraw from Rafah
THE HAGUE: The United Nations’ top court opens two days of hearings on Thursday into a request from South Africa to make sure Israel halts its military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population has sought shelter.
It is the fourth time South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice for emergency measures since the nation launched proceedings alleging that Israel’s military action in its war with Hamas in Gaza amounts to genocide.
According to the latest request, the previous preliminary orders by The Hague-based court were not sufficient to address “a brutal military attack on the sole remaining refuge for the people of Gaza.”
Israel has portrayed Rafah as the last stronghold of the militant group, brushing off warnings from the United States and other allies that any major operation there would be catastrophic for civilians.
South Africa has asked the court to order Israel to withdraw from Rafah; to take measures to ensure unimpeded access for UN officials, humanitarian organizations and journalists to the Gaza Strip; and to report back within one week on how it is meeting these demands.
During hearings earlier this year, Israel strongly denied committing genocide in Gaza and said it does all it can to spare civilians and is only targeting Hamas militants. It says Hamas’ tactic of embedding in civilian areas makes it difficult to avoid civilian casualties.
In January, judges ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive that has laid waste to the Palestinian enclave.
In a second order in March, the court said Israel must take measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, including opening more land crossings to allow food, water, fuel and other supplies to enter.
Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced since fighting began.
The war began with a Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which Palestinian militants killed around 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages. Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants in its count.
South Africa initiated proceedings in December 2023 and sees the legal campaign as rooted in issues central to its identity. Its governing party, the African National Congress, has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Blacks to “homelands.” Apartheid ended in 1994.
On Sunday, Egypt announced it plans to join the case. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Israeli military actions “constitute a flagrant violation of international law, humanitarian law, and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 regarding the protection of civilians during wartime.”
Several countries have also indicated they plan to intervene, but so far only Libya, Nicaragua and Colombia have filed formal requests to do so.
Israeli defense chief challenges Netanyahu over post-war Gaza plans
- Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vows to oppose any long-term military rule by Israel over Gaza
- Netanyahu accuses Gallant of making ‘excuses’ for not yet having destroyed Hamas in the conflict
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was publicly challenged about post-war plans for the Gaza Strip on Wednesday by his own defense chief, who vowed to oppose any long-term military rule by Israel over the ravaged Palestinian enclave.
The televised statement by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant marked the most vocal dissent from within Israel’s top echelon against Netanyahu during a seven-month-old and multi-front conflict that has set off political fissures at home and abroad.
Netanyahu hinted, in a riposte which did not explicitly name Gallant, that the retired admiral was making “excuses” for not yet having destroyed Hamas in a conflict now in its eight month.
But the veteran conservative premier soon appeared to be outflanked within his own war cabinet: Centrist ex-general Benny Gantz, the only voting member of the forum other than Netanyahu and Gallant, said the defense minister had “spoke(n) the truth.”
While reiterating the Netanyahu government’s goals of defeating Hamas and recovering remaining hostages from the Oct. 7 cross-border rampage by the faction, Gallant said these must be complemented by laying the groundwork for alternative Palestinian rule.
“We must dismantle Hamas’ governing capabilities in Gaza. The key to this goal is military action, and the establishment of a governing alternative in Gaza,” Gallant said.
“In the absence of such an alternative, only two negative options remain: Hamas’ rule in Gaza or Israeli military rule in Gaza,” he added, saying he would oppose the latter scenario and urging Netanyahu to formally forswear it.
Gallant said that, since October, he had tried to promote a plan to set up a “non-hostile Palestinian governing alternative” to Hamas — but got no response from the Israeli cabinet.
The format of his broadside, a pre-announced news conference carried live by Israeli TV and radio, recalled Gallant’s bombshell warning in March 2023 that foment over a judicial overhaul pursued by Netanyahu was threatening military cohesion.
At the time, Netanyahu announced that Gallant would be fired — but backed down amid a deluge of street demonstrations. Some defense analysts believe Gallant’s prediction was borne out by Hamas’ ability to blindside Israeli forces a few months later.
Asked on Wednesday whether he was worried he may again face being ousted, Gallant said: “I’m not blaming anyone. In a democratic country, I believe, it’s appropriate for a person, especially the defense minister who holds a position, to make it public.”
Gallant’s Gaza criticism recalled that of Israel’s chief ally, the United States, which has sought to parlay the war into a role for the internationally backed Palestinian Authority (PA), which wields limited governance in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu has refused this, describing the PA as a hostile entity — and repeated this position in a video statement he issued on social media within an hour of Gallant’s remarks.
Any move to create an alternative Gaza government requires that Hamas first be eliminated, Netanyahu said, finishing with the demand that this objective be pursued “without excuses.”
Netanyahu’s ruling coalition includes ultra-nationalist partners who want the PA dismantled and new Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Those partners have at times sparred with Gallant, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, over policy.
Netanyahu has said Israel would retain overall security control over Gaza after the war for the foreseeable future. He has stopped short of describing this scenario as an occupation — a status Washington does not want to see emerge — and has signalled opposition to Israelis settling the territory.
Over the last week, Israeli ground forces have returned to some areas of northern Gaza that they overran and quit in the first half of the war. Israel describes the new missions as planned crackdowns on efforts by Hamas holdouts to regroup, while Palestinians see evidence of the tenacity of the gunmen.
Briefing reporters on Tuesday, chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari was asked whether the absence of a post-Hamas strategy for Gaza was complicating operations.
“There is no doubt that an alternative to Hamas would generate pressure on Hamas, but that’s a question for the government echelon,” he responded.
