BEIRUT: For days, Lebanese TV stations have been blanketed with live coverage as lawmakers held heated debate over a controversial austerity budget meant to salvage the flailing economy, with protests outside parliament and critics denouncing its focus on tax hikes and wage cuts. Mohammed Badran, sitting in his barber shop empty of customers, couldn’t be bothered to watch.
Those officials don’t even know how much bread costs, he scoffed. “They basically don’t know anything about us.” The 33-year-old hair stylist — his hair spiked stylishly in front — sat idle in his salon in central Beirut with the TV tuned to Qur’anic recitals.
Badran said things have gotten worse the past four years. Taxes, utility bills and prices have increased, while his income hasn’t changed. Once, he kept about three quarters of his earnings; now he pockets only about a quarter, he said.
“Things have been turned upside down,” Badran said.
As the economic crisis deepens in Lebanon, so has the public’s distrust in the ability of the old political class, widely viewed as corrupt and steeped in personal rivalries, to tackle major reform. Many fear a Greek-style bankruptcy, without the European Union to fall back on and with potentially more violent social unrest in the small country wedged between war-torn Syria and Israel.
A new budget that reduces public debts, improves governance and reforms infrastructure could unlock some $11 billion in aid promised to Lebanon last year by European countries. But after weeks of delay amid haggling among the government and lawmakers, the result is a bill that mostly taps into the pockets of average Lebanese, while critics say it does little to tackle structural issues and deeply entrenched corruption at the root of the crisis.
The final vote on the budget is expected Friday, unless more delays occur. It is expected to pass overwhelmingly.
Still, during three days of live-televised debate this week, a line of lawmakers took to the podium to rail against it — most of them members in the government that designed it. In his speech Thursday, the finance minister snapped back, saying they were treating the budget like an “abandoned baby” no one would admit to fathering.
Critics said the theatrics were designed to absorb public anger over an economic slump that has hit hard.
Growth reached an all-time low of 0.2 percent last year. It slowed further after the Central Bank halted subsidized housing loans through commercial banks, contracting the real estate market, a main engine for growth since 2012. The budget deficit reached 11 percent of GDP, up from 8.6 percent in 2017, and public debt stands at 150% of GDP, one of the highest in the world. Fuel imports have increased, further deepening a trade deficit.
The downturn has impacted the country’s trusted banking sector. The Central Bank’s foreign assets have receded by around $6 billion since last year, as it props the currency pegged to the dollar. Deposit growth has been the lowest since 2005 as some people transfer savings abroad.
Meanwhile, some businesses have liquidated and shops have closed. More apartments are up for sale, deflating prices.
The budget submitted to the parliament aims to bring the deficit for 2019 down to 7.6 percent, though the International Monetary Fund projects it will likely be at 9.75 percent.
Last year, the government hiked the value-added tax to finance a pay increase it promised to public sector workers. This year’s proposed new budget cuts pay and benefits for government workers and freezes public sector hiring for three years. The VAT hike remains in place, and other taxes are also increased.
Economist Jad Chaaban said the anxiety around a potential Greek-style bankruptcy has allowed government officials to push an emergency fix rather than enact major changes, such as progressive taxes or debt restructuring.
The real problem, he said, is the political elite, which treats the public sector as a jobs source for supporters and covers up corruption that enriches them and drives up debt. Commercial banks are largely owned by ruling politicians and profit from holdings of public debt.
Chaaban and other critics say officials have tried to divert bitterness over the economy by campaigning against the nearly 1.1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, calling for their return and clamping down on illegal labor.
For Badran, economic hardship has curbed even the simplest of dreams. He dropped plans to build a solarium at his salon. After 14 years of owning his shop, he still lives with his parents, unable to afford marriage.
In the last year, his profits maxed at $500 a month in the face of increasing bills, rent and costs. Like all Lebanese, he pays one electricity bill to the government and a separate one to a private generator provider to fill in during daily power cuts caused by the decrepit infrastructure.
“Ever since I can remember, there has been no electricity, no water. Now I am 33 years old, and we still complain of the water and electricity,” Badran said. “Look next door, in Syria, there is war and all that, and it has electricity and water. Here, we have charlatans.”
With mounting costs — hair gel prices have gone up by 30 percent, for example — he has cut back on supplies for the salon as well as personal spending.
Most of his young, stylish clientele have also cut back, coming to his shop once a month instead of three times.
Once the new budget passes, Badran said he’ll likely have to raise his prices for the first time in years, adding to the burden on his regulars, many of whom already work two jobs.
“I have been buttering up my clients so as not to lose them,” he said.
Along one street in the busy commercial neighborhood of Mar Elias, known for its jewelry stores, at least four shops had “For Sale” signs in the window.
Among them was emptied-out family gold shop. Maha, a 34-year-old, staffed the shop with her uncle on a recent day. The family still has its wholesale gold business but can’t keep running an idle retail shop, they said. Both refused to give their last name to protect the family’s commercial reputation and private plans.
Maha said only the middle class feels the economic pain since the wealthy and government officials stash their money abroad.
“People ask why we don’t protest. Look around us what happened when people protested?” she said. “Look at Egypt, or even worse Syria. We will end up in a worse place.”
Lebanese losing faith as politicians fumble over economy
Lebanese losing faith as politicians fumble over economy
- As the economic crisis deepens in Lebanon, so has the public’s distrust in the ability of the old political class
- Many fear a Greek-style bankruptcy, without the European Union to fall back on and with potentially more violent social unrest
Emirates and flydubai resume normal operations after Dubai floods
- Emirates canceled nearly 400 flights and delayed many more as a result of a record storm that hit the desert city of Dubai
Emirates canceled nearly 400 flights and delayed many more as a result of a record storm that hit the desert city of Dubai on Tuesday, said a statement released by the airline’s president, Tim Clark.
Due to the impact of the storm, the airline suspended check-in for passengers departing from Dubai and halted its transit operations through Dubai International Airport, a major global travel hub, leaving thousands of travelers stranded.
The airport has struggled to return to normal operations after the storm flooded taxiways, forcing flight diversions, delays and cancelations.
Flydubai also returned to its full flight schedule from the airport’s Terminal 2 and Terminal 3 on Saturday following the weather-related disruption, a spokesperson for the airline said.
Clark said Emirates had provided 12,000 hotel rooms and 250,000 meal vouchers to customers who were affected. He added it would take days to clear the backlog of rebooked passengers.
The UAE has suffered the impact of the flooding for days, with roads between the city and Abu Dhabi still partially under water as of Saturday. In Abu Dhabi, some supermarkets and restaurants faced product shortages, unable to receive deliveries from Dubai.
Researchers have linked extreme weather events such as Tuesday’s storm to climate change and anticipate that global warming will lead to higher temperatures, increased humidity and a greater risk of flooding in parts of the Gulf region.
A lack of drainage infrastructure to cope with heavy rains in countries such as the UAE can put them at particular risk of flooding.
Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza city of Rafah kills at least 9 Palestinians, including 6 children
Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza city of Rafah kills at least 9 Palestinians, including 6 children
- Strike late Friday hit a residential building in the western Tel Sultan neighborhood of the city of Rafah
RAFAH, Gaza Strip: An Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza’s southernmost city killed at least nine people, six of them children, hospital authorities said Saturday, as Israel pursued its nearly seven-month offensive in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Israel’s war against the Islamic militant group Hamas has led to a dramatic escalation of tensions in an already volatile Middle East.
The strike late Friday hit a residential building in the western Tel Sultan neighborhood of the city of Rafah, according to Gaza’s civil defense. The bodies of the six children, two women and a man were taken to Rafah’s Abu Yousef Al-Najjar hospital, the hospital’s records showed.
At the hospital, relatives cried and hugged the bodies of the children, wrapped in white shrouds, as others comforted them.
The fatalities included Abdel-Fattah Sobhi Radwan, his wife Najlaa Ahmed Aweidah and their three children, his brother-in-law Ahmed Barhoum said. Barhoum also lost his wife, Rawan Radwan, and their 5-year-old daughter Alaa.
“This is a world devoid of all human values and morals,” Barhoum told The Associated Press Saturday morning, crying as he cradled and gently rocked the body of Alaa in his arms. “They bombed a house full of displaced people, women and children. There were no martyrs but women and children.”
No victims were registered from a second overnight strike in the city.
Rafah, which lies on the border with Egypt, currently hosts more than half of Gaza’s total population of about 2.3 million people, the vast majority of whom have been displaced by fighting further north in the territory.
Despite calls for restraint from the international community, including Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States, the Israeli government has insisted for months that it intends to push a ground offensive into the city, where it says many of the remaining Hamas militants are holed up.
Such a ground operation has not materialized so far, but the Israeli military has repeatedly carried out airstrikes on and around the city.
The war was sparked by an unprecedented raid into southern Israel by Hamas and other militant groups on Oct. 7 that left about 1,200 people dead, the vast majority of them civilians, and saw about 250 people kidnapped and taken into Gaza. Israel says about 130 hostages remain in Gaza, although more than 30 have been confirmed to now be dead, either killed on Oct. 7 or having died in captivity.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday the bodies of 37 people killed by Israeli strikes were brought to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours. Hospitals also received 68 wounded, it said. The latest figures bring the overall Palestinian death toll from the Israel-Hamas war to at least 34,049, and the number of wounded to 76,901, the ministry said. Although the Hamas-run health authorities do not differentiate between combatants and civilians in their count, they say at least two thirds have been children and women.
The war has sent regional tensions spiraling, leading to a dramatic eruption of violence between Israel and its archenemy Iran that threatened to escalate into a full-blown war.
On Friday, both Iran and Israel played down an apparent Israeli airstrike near a major air base and nuclear site in central Iran, indicating the two sides were pulling back from what could have become an all-out conflict. Over the past several weeks, an alleged Israeli strike killed two Iranian generals at an Iranian consulate in Syria and was followed by an unprecedented Iranian missile barrage on Israel.
Israel has also faced off with the Hezbollah militant group, an Iranian proxy operating from Lebanon, with the two sides there frequently trading rocket and drone attacks across the Lebanese-Israeli border. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have also joined the fray, launching strikes against merchant ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in what they say is a campaign of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
Tension has also been high in the occupied West Bank, where an Israeli military raid Friday in the Nur Shams refugee camp killed at least four Palestinians, including three militants, according to the Israeli military, Palestinian health officials and a militant group.
Palestinian health authorities said one of those killed was a 15-year-old boy shot dead by Israeli fire. The Islamic Jihad militant group confirmed the deaths of three members, including one who it said was a local military commander. The Israeli military said four Israeli soldiers were slightly wounded in the operation.
Saraya Al-Quds, the military arm of Islamic Jihad, said its fighters had engaged in heavy gunbattles Saturday morning with Israeli forces in the town of Tulkarem, adjacent to Nur Shams. No further details were immediately available. Residents in Tulkarem went went on a general strike Saturday to protest the attack on Nur Shams, with shops, restaurants and government offices all closed.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, more than 460 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank, Palestinian health officials say. Israel stages frequent raids into towns and cities in the volatile territory. The dead have included militants, but also stone-throwers and bystanders. Some have also been killed in attacks by Israeli settlers.
Iran FM downplays reported Israeli retaliation
- Israeli officials have made no public comment on what happened Friday
- Overnight last Saturday-Sunday Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israeli territory
Tehran: Iran’s foreign minister has dismissed as akin to child’s play the reported Israeli retaliation for an unprecedented Iranian strike, and said Tehran would not respond unless Iranian “interests” were targeted.
On Friday, Iran’s state media reported explosions were heard after, according to an official, small drones were successfully shot down.
Media in the United States quoted officials there as saying Israel had carried out strikes in retaliation for Tehran’s drone and missile barrage fired at Israel last weekend.
“What happened last night was no attack,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told NBC News in a Friday interview.
“It was the flight of two or three quad-copters, which are at the level of toys that our children use in Iran.”
He added that, “As long as there is no new adventure on behalf of the Israeli regime against Iran’s interests, we will have no response.”
Friday’s explosions prompted world leaders to appeal for calm and de-escalation with fears of wider conflict against the backdrop of the war in Gaza which began on October 7.
Overnight last Saturday-Sunday Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israeli territory. The barrage was in response to a deadly April 1 air strike on Tehran’s consulate in Damascus, which Iran blamed on Israel.
The Israeli army said the vast majority of the more than 300 missiles and drones fired by Iran were shot down — with the help of the United States and other allies — and that the attack caused only minimal damage.
Israeli officials have made no public comment on what happened Friday, and analysts said both sides are looking to de-escalate, for now.
“If the Israeli regime intends to take another action against our interests, our next response will be immediate and to the maximum,” Amir-Abdollahian said in the interview.
Tehran plays down reported Israeli attacks, signals no further retaliation
- United States received advance notice of Israel’s reported strike on Iran, reports US media
- Countries around the world called on both sides to avert further escalation amid tensions
DUBAI/JERUSALEM: Explosions echoed over an Iranian city on Friday in what sources described as an Israeli attack, but Tehran played down the incident and indicated it had no plans for retaliation — a response that appeared gauged toward averting region-wide war.
The limited scale of the attack and Iran’s muted response both appeared to signal a successful effort by diplomats who have been working round the clock to avert all-out war since an Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel last Saturday.
Iranian media and officials described a small number of explosions, which they said resulted from Iran’s air defenses hitting three drones over the city of Isfahan. Notably, they referred to the incident as an attack by “infiltrators,” rather than by Israel, obviating the need for retaliation.
An Iranian official said there were no plans to respond against Israel for the incident.
“The foreign source of the incident has not been confirmed. We have not received any external attack, and the discussion leans more toward infiltration than attack,” the official said.
Israel said nothing about the incident. It had said for days it was planning to retaliate against Iran for Saturday’s strikes, the first ever direct attack on Israel by Iran in decades of shadow war waged by proxies which has escalated throughout the Middle East through six months of battle in Gaza.
The United States received advance notice of Israel’s reported strike on Iran but did not endorse the operation or play any part in its execution, US media quoted officials as saying.
NBC and CNN, citing sources familiar with the matter and a US official, respectively, said Israel had provided Washington with pre-notification of the strike.
Various networks cited officials confirming a strike had taken place inside Iran, with CNN quoting one official as stating the target was not a nuclear facility.
The two longstanding foes had been heading toward direct confrontation since a presumed Israeli airstrike on April 1 that destroyed a building in Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus and killed several Iranian officers including a top general.
Iran’s response, with a direct attack on Israel, was unprecedented but caused no deaths and only minor damage because Israel and its allies shot down hundreds of missiles and drones.
Allies including the United States had since been pressing hard to ensure any further retaliation would be calibrated not to provoke a spiral of hostilities. The British and German foreign ministers visited Jerusalem this week, and Western countries tightened sanctions on Iran to mollify Israel.
In a sign of pressure within Israel’s hard-right government for a stronger response, Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right national security minister tweeted a single word after Friday’s strikes: “Feeble!.”
Countries around the world called on Friday for both sides to avert further escalation.
“It is absolutely necessary that the region remains stable and that all sides restrain from further action,” EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said. Similar calls came from Beijing and from Arab states in the region.
In financial markets, global shares eased, oil prices surged and US bond yields fell as traders worried about the risks.
NO MENTION OF ISRAEL
Within Iran, news reports on Friday’s incident made no mention of Israel, and state television carried analysts and pundits who appeared dismissive about the scale.
An analyst told state TV that mini drones flown by “infiltrators from inside Iran” had been shot down by air defenses in Isfahan.
Shortly after midnight, “three drones were observed in the sky over Isfahan. The air defense system became active and destroyed these drones in the sky,” Iranian state TV said.
Senior army commander Siavosh Mihandoust was quoted by state TV as saying air defense systems had targeted a “suspicious object.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had warned Israel before Friday’s strike that Tehran would deliver a “severe response” to any attack on its territory.
Iran told the United Nations Security Council on Thursday that Israel “must be compelled to stop any further military adventurism against our interests” as the UN secretary-general warned that the Middle East was in a “moment of maximum peril.”
By morning, Iran had reopened airports and airspace that were shut during the strikes.
Still, there was alarm over security in Israel and elsewhere. The US Embassy in Jerusalem restricted US government employees from travel outside Jerusalem, greater Tel Aviv and Beersheba “out of an abundance of caution.”
In a statement, the embassy warned US citizens of a “continued need for caution and increased personal security awareness as security incidents often take place without warning.”
Israel’s assault on Gaza began after Hamas Islamists attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s military offensive has killed about 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gazan health ministry.
Iran-backed groups have declared support for Palestinians, carrying out attacks from Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, raising fears the Gaza conflict could grow into a wider regional war.
UN warns of new flashpoint in Sudan’s Darfur region
- El-Fasher acts as a humanitarian hub for Darfur, which is home to around a quarter of Sudan’s 48 million inhabitants
United Nations, US: Senior UN officials warned the Security Council on Friday of the risks of a new front opening in Sudan, around the town of El-Fasher in Darfur, where the population is already on the brink of starvation.
After a year of war between the armed forces (SAF) of General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), under the command of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the country is experiencing “a crisis of epic proportions... wholly man-made,” denounced Rosemary DiCarlo, UN under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs.
“The warring parties have ignored repeated calls to cease their hostilities... Instead, they have stepped up preparations for further fighting, with both the SAF and the RSF continuing their campaigns to recruit civilians,” DiCarlo said.
In particular, she voiced concern at reports of a possible “imminent” attack by the RSF on El-Fasher, the only capital of the five Darfur states it does not control, “raising the specter of a new front in the conflict.”
El-Fasher acts as a humanitarian hub for Darfur, which is home to around a quarter of Sudan’s 48 million inhabitants.
Until recently, the town had been relatively unaffected by the fighting, hosting a large number of refugees. But since mid-April, bombardments and clashes have been reported in the surrounding villages.
“Since then, there have been continuing reports of clashes in the eastern and northern parts of the city, resulting in more than 36,000 people displaced,” said Edem Wosornu, a director at for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, noting that Doctors Without Borders has treated more than 100 casualties in el-Facher in recent days.
“The total number of civilian casualties is likely much higher.”
“The violence poses an extreme and immediate danger to the 800,000 civilians who reside in el-Fasher. And it risks triggering further violence in other parts of Darfur,” she warned.
DiCarlo added that fighting in el-Fasher “could unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur” and further hamper the distribution of humanitarian aid in a region “already on the brink of famine.”
The region was already ravaged more than 20 years ago by the scorched-earth policy carried out by the Janjaweed — Arab militiamen who have since joined the RSF — for then-president Omar Al-Bashir.
The new conflict in Sudan, which began on April 15, 2023, has already claimed thousands of lives and displaced more than 8.5 million people, according to the UN.
