BEIRUT: Lebanon's health minister says the financially troubled Mediterranean country, which has so far managed to contain the coronavirus, is sliding toward a critical stage with a new surge in infections after lockdown restrictions were lifted and the airport reopened.
The recently recorded double and triple digits of new infections were coupled with an increase in untraceable cases, raising concerns that a dangerous spread in the community could follow, Minister of Health Hamad Hassan told The Associated Press.
Lebanon’s early lockdown and strict measures to contain the virus were praised for slowing down the initial spread of the pandemic. Authorities have also aggressively tested, carried out random tests, and swiftly isolated infected areas.
But Lebanon’s crippling economic and financial crisis has proven more difficult to manage. In late April, the authorities began gradually easing weeks-long restrictions that threw tens of thousands out of work; Lebanon's only airport reopened on July 1.
Today, the government doesn't appear ready to again tighten restrictions or impose another full lockdown.
So far, Lebanon has recorded more than 2,900 infections and 41 deaths, including one front-line doctor who died Monday at a hospital in the south, two weeks after contracting COVID-19. Hassan said the late diagnosis is to blame for the death of the 32-year-old physician. Some 150 medical staff have been infected, only a few of them becoming sick.
The reopening of the Beirut airport and the subsequent failure of Lebanese returning from abroad and their relatives to adhere to strict isolation measures caused a spike in infections, Hassan said. Many returning expats visited relatives and attended social gatherings, which helped spread the virus. New cases peaked last week with as high as 170 in one day, from an average of less than 20 a day in previous months.
“The danger of community spread is still possible because the country has opened up,” Hassan said in the interview with the AP late Monday.
Despite a low death rate and low level of hospital bed occupancy, the minister warned that more than 20% of the new infections are untraceable.
“When they are untraceable and I can’t trace the clusters that I need to reach, then I start to worry that we are sliding into stage four,” he said. “We are still in the critical period between stage three to stage four.”
Stage four would necessitate return to more lockdown measures, though it's “still too early” to consider that option, he added.
In the beginning, people stayed home for months, helping contain the spread of virus, Hassan said. Now their needs to live must be considered — a dilemma facing all countries grappling with the slowdown of economic activities amid the virus.
Lebanon’s crisis predates the virus, which has only accelerated poverty and unemployment rates, now at 45% and over 30%, respectively.
Before the coronavirus, Lebanon was already going through its worst economic and financial crisis. A highly indebted government bailed on paying its sovereign debt in March; banks imposed informal capital controls to prevent further drying up of liquidity and foreign currency. Nationwide protests demanded major reforms from a government that has failed to gain wide domestic or international support while talks for assistance from the International Monetary Fund stalled.
The crisis put a strain on resources and threatened fuel supplies, which raised alarm among the country’s hospitals that rely on generators and fuel bought at black market rates. Private and public hospitals warned they may not be able to keep up with the surge in infections; private hospitals threatened to shut down, saying accumulated government debt, banking restrictions and a currency crash are making their operations unsustainable.
Hassan said he is counting on the government to continue to provide for hospitals, adding that a “safety belt” of financing until the end of the year is available to ensure that both private and public hospitals continue to operate.
But he also appealed on the health facilities to put up with the economic crunch Lebanon is facing. He said parliament has approved repaying a chunk of outstanding debts, but the currency crash is deepening the pressure.
“Today all these fears are legitimate. We are living from one day to another,” he said. “We should not scare the citizen, who is already under a lot of psychological and moral stress worrying about his food, social and economic security. Let’s not also add to it by undermining his health safety.”
Members of Lebanon's cash-strapped government have accused political rivals of trying to make it fail by seeking to block international aid. The militant Hezbollah group, which backs the current government, has accused the United States of allegedly stopping foreign currency from reaching Lebanon as a way to pressure the Iran-backed group, along with sanctions.
Hassan said his strategy is to strengthen the public health sector, which had been devastated during the country’s civil war that ended in 1990. Lebanon heavily relies on private hospitals, but public facilities have been at the forefront of efforts to combat the coronavirus.
Hassan said he will use a World Bank loan to equip and prepare public hospitals.
“We must cooperate ... to be able to cross this difficult phase that our nation is going through,” he said.
Minister: Lebanon is nearing critical stage in virus cases
https://arab.news/6zdrn
Minister: Lebanon is nearing critical stage in virus cases
- Lebanon’s early lockdown and strict measures to contain the virus were praised for slowing down the initial spread of the pandemic
Israeli tanks push into Gaza’s Rafah, as battles rage in the north
The World Court said it would hold hearings on Thursday and Friday to discuss a request by South Africa seeking new emergency measures over the Rafah incursion
CAIRO: Israeli tanks forged deeper into eastern Rafah on Tuesday, reaching some residential districts of the southern border city where more than a million people had been sheltering, raising fears of yet further civilian casualties.
Israel’s international allies and aid groups have repeatedly warned against a ground incursion into refugee-packed Rafah, where Israel says four Hamas battalions are holed up.
The World Court, also known as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), said it would hold hearings on Thursday and Friday to discuss a request by South Africa seeking new emergency measures over the Rafah incursion, which Qatar says has stalled efforts to reach a ceasefire.
South Africa’s demand is part of a case it brought against Israel accusing it of violating the genocide convention in Gaza, and which Israel has called baseless. Israel will provide its views on the latest petition on Friday, the ICJ said.
Israel has vowed to press on into Rafah even without its allies’ support, saying the operation is necessary to root out remaining Hamas fighters.
“The tanks advanced this morning west of Salahuddin Road into the Brzail and Jneina neighborhoods. They are in the streets inside the built-up area and there are clashes,” one resident told Reuters via a chat app.
Palestinian residents of western Rafah later said they could see smoke billowing above the eastern neighborhoods and hear the sound of explosions following an Israeli bombardment of a cluster of houses.
Hamas’s armed wing said it had destroyed an Israeli troop carrier with an Al-Yassin 105 missile in the eastern Al-Salam district, killing some crew members and wounding others.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the report.
In a round-up of its activities, the IDF said its forces had eliminated “several armed terrorist” cells in close-quarter fighting on the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. In the east of the city, it said it had also destroyed militant cells and a launch post from where missiles were being fired at IDF troops.
’NOWHERE IS SAFE’
Israel issued evacuation orders for people to move from parts of eastern Rafah a week ago, with a second round of orders extending to further zones on Saturday.
They are moving to tracts of land such as Al-Mawasi, a sandy strip bordering the coast that aid agencies say lacks sanitary and other facilities to host an influx of displaced people.
UNRWA, the main United Nations aid agency in Gaza, estimates some 450,000 people have fled Rafah since May 6, warning “nowhere is safe,” in the enclave of 2.3 million.
The war has pushed much of Gaza’s population to the brink of famine, the UN says, and has devastated its medical facilities, where hospitals, if working at all, are running short of fuel to power generators and other essential supplies.
James Smith, a British emergency room doctor volunteering in hospitals in southern Gaza, said he had been told by a World Health Organization official that some emergency fuel had made it into the Gaza Strip, potentially enough for six days.
“Health is still being prioritized over other essential services, so when health looks a bit better it generally means other essential services are struggling,” he told Reuters via a WhatsApp voice note. “It’s a zero-sum game.”
FIERCE GUN BATTLES
Fighting across the Strip has intensified in recent days, including in the north, with the Israeli military heading back into areas where it had claimed to have dismantled Hamas months ago. Israel says the operations are to prevent Hamas, which runs Gaza, from rebuilding it military capacities.
The Palestinian death toll in the war has now surpassed 35,000, according to Gaza health officials, whose figures do not differentiate between civilians and fighters. It said that 82 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours, the highest death toll in a single day in many weeks.
Israel launched its Gaza operation following a devastating attack on Oct. 7 by Hamas-led gunmen who rampaged through Israeli communities near the enclave, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
In the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City in the north, bulldozers demolished clusters of houses to make a new road for tanks to roll through into the eastern suburb.
In northern Gaza’s Jabalia, a sprawling refugee camp built for displaced Palestinians 75 years ago, residents said Israeli forces were trying to reach as deep as the camp’s local market under heavy tank shelling.
Residents said fierce gunbattles were continuing in Jabalia. Hamas and the armed wing of Islamic Jihad said they were fighting Israeli forces there.
“Many people are being trapped in their houses. We lost contact with some relatives after they were warned by the army in phone calls to leave and they refused,” Nasser, 57, a father of six, told Reuters, using an international phone card.
A strike on a house in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, killed seven people and wounded several others, medics said.
The IDF said it had killed dozens of Hamas fighters in Jabalia and dismantled a network of explosives, while in Zeitoun it located tunnel shafts and destroyed several rocket launchers.
With fighting intensifying, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said ceasefire talks, mediated by his country and Egypt, were at a stalemate.
Palestinian truckers fear for safety after aid convoy for Gaza wrecked
- Footage circulated on social media showed at least one burning truck while other images showed trucks wrecked and stripped of their loads
- “Yesterday there was coordination for 70 trucks of aid to go the Gaza Strip,” said Waseem Al-Jabari, Head of the Hebron Food Trade Association
HEBRON, West Bank: Palestinian hauliers said on Tuesday they feared for the security of aid convoys to Gaza, a day after Israeli protesters wrecked trucks carrying humanitarian supplies bound for the enclave, which is facing a severe hunger crisis.
Footage circulated on social media showed at least one burning truck while other images showed trucks wrecked and stripped of their loads, which lay strewn over the road near Tarqumiya checkpoint outside Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
“Yesterday there was coordination for 70 trucks of aid to go the Gaza Strip,” said Waseem Al-Jabari, Head of the Hebron Food Trade Association.
“While the trucks were uploaded with products at the crossing settlers attacked the trucks and they destroyed the products and set fire in trucks,” he said, saying Israeli soldiers had stood by as the attack took place.
Monday’s incident was claimed by a group calling itself Order 9, which said it had acted to stop supplies reaching Hamas and accusing the Israeli government of giving “gifts” to the Islamist group.
No comment was available from the Israeli military. The Israeli police said the incident, in which a number of people were arrested, was being investigated.
The violent protest drew condemnation from Washington, which has urged Israel to step up deliveries of aid into Gaza to alleviate a growing humanitarian crisis in the enclave, seven months since the start of the war.
British Foreign Minister David Cameron also condemned the “appalling” incident, saying Israel must call the attackers to account.
Palestinians and human rights groups have long accused the Israeli military and police of deliberately failing to intervene when settlers attack Palestinians in the West Bank.
Adel Amer, a member of the West Bank-based hauliers’ union, said around 15 trucks had been damaged by Israeli protesters who beat some drivers and caused about $2 million worth of damage.
“The drivers are now refusing to take goods to Gaza because they’re afraid,” he said. “It’s a disaster here because of the settlers.”
Even when the military was present, the convoys were still at risk, he said. “The army says we cannot do anything to the settlers.”
EU ‘concerned’ by Tunisia arrests
- Tunisian authorities ordered Sunday the arrest of two political commentators over critical comments
- Lawyer Sonia Dahmani was arrested late Saturday after criticizing the state of Tunisia on television
BRUSSELS: The European Union on Tuesday expressed concern over a string of arrests of civil society figures in Tunisia.
Tunisian lawyers on Monday protested and launched a nationwide strike over the arrest of a lawyer and political commentator in a weekend police raid.
Tunisian authorities ordered Sunday the arrest of two political commentators over critical comments, a day after security forces stormed the bar association and took a third pundit into custody.
Lawyer Sonia Dahmani was arrested late Saturday after criticizing the state of Tunisia on television.
“The European Union has followed with concern recent developments in Tunisia, in particular the concomitant arrests of several civil society figures, journalists and political actors,” an EU spokeswoman said.
“Freedoms of expression and association, as well as the independence of the judiciary, are guaranteed by the Tunisian Constitution and constitute the basis of our partnership.”
The clampdown is the latest sign of the authorities tightening control over the country since President Kais Saied began ruling by decree after a sweeping power grab in 2021.
Concern over the situation in Tunisia did not prevent the EU last year from inking a major cooperation deal with the North African state aimed at curbing the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean.
Criminal gangs, profiteers thrive in Gaza as cash shortage worsens misery
- After more than 7 months of Israeli bombardment, just a handful of ATMs remain operational in the strip, most of the them in the southern city of Rafah
- Now residents say Israel’s offensive in Rafah has dried up supplies again and stoked prices
CAIRO/GENEVA/BERLIN: A shortage of banknotes is gripping Gaza, fueling criminal gangs and profiteering, after Israel has blocked imports of cash and most banks in the enclave have been damaged or destroyed during the war, according to residents, aid workers and banking sources.
After more than 7 months of Israeli bombardment, just a handful of ATMs remain operational in the strip, most of the them in the southern city of Rafah, where some 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has ordered civilians to evacuate parts of the southern city, sparking fears of a looming offensive. Its tanks entered residential districts there on Tuesday.
Supplies of basic goods had returned to some markets in April and early May for the first time in months after Israel ceded to international pressure to let in more aid trucks amid famine warnings.
But residents and aid workers say that many people haven’t had the cash to purchase them. Now residents say Israel’s offensive in Rafah has dried up supplies again and stoked prices.
Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of desperate people crowd outside ATMs, often waiting days for access. Armed gangs sometimes demand a fee to provide priority access, exploiting the absence of Palestinian police, three Western aid workers and seven residents told Reuters.
Abu Ahmed, 45, a resident of Rafah, said he had waited for as long as seven days and became so frustrated that he turned for help to gang members, who are sometimes armed with knives and guns.
“I paid 300 shekels ($80) of my salary to one of them for accessing the ATM and getting my cash,” said Abu Ahmed, who asked that his last name not be used for fear of reprisals. He earns 3,500 shekels per month as a public servant.
The three Western aid workers described the gangs as improvised groups that have sprung up across the Strip up as desperation has grown.
As of May 13, only 5 branches and 7 ATMs remain operational in the strip, primarily in Rafah, according to the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, a non-profit organization headquartered in the West Bank. Before the war, Gaza had 56 bank branches and 91 ATMs.
The conflict erupted after an Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas, in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage. Israel’s assault on Gaza, aimed at destroying Hamas and returning the hostages, has killed at least 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The Palestinian economy runs on the Israeli shekel. Gaza’s financial system is almost completely dependent on Israel, which must approve major transfers and the movement of cash into the enclave, bankers said.
Israel has blocked cash imports to Gaza since the start of the war in October, according to the Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) and the Association of Banks in Palestine (ABP), a non-profit based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Adnan Alfaleet, the Gaza district manager of Palestine Islamic Bank, which operates the biggest Islamic banking network in the Palestinian Territories, said his bank has no cash left in Gaza.
“We reached the point of complete lack of liquidity now. It can’t get worse,” he said.
The Israeli central bank did not respond to questions about whether transfers had been blocked. It said there were no Israeli banks in Gaza and shekels had circulated there in the past because of trade with and Palestinian workers in Israel.
COGAT, an Israeli Defense Ministry agency tasked with coordinating aid deliveries into the Palestinian territories, did not respond to Reuters’ questions.
POLICE KILLED
Ismail Al-Thawabta, the director of the Hamas-run government media office, said the Palestinian police were trying to protect ATM machines, despite coming under fire from Israeli forces.
A Hamas official, who declined to be named, said police were keeping a low profile and only making surprise raids or patrols at certain locations after officers had been targeted in Israeli strikes.
In February, the top US diplomat involved in humanitarian assistance to Gaza said Israeli forces had killed Palestinian police protecting a UN convoy.
The IDF did not respond to a request for comment on whether its forces have targeted police officers. Reuters could not determine how many police officers have been killed during the war.
Residents said some merchants are profiteering from the shortage. Some money exchange store owners, who can cash Western Union transfers, and even some pharmacists who have credit card machines, were charging heft commissions for access to money, according to two sources.
Azmi Radwan, a union representative of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, said some merchants were charging its staff in Gaza City and the north commission of 20 percent or 30 percent to cash their salaries for them, in the absence of banks.
“This is very dangerous,” he said. “A quarter of the salary that is supposed to feed one’s children is going to these merchants.”
UNRWA employs roughly 13,000 people in Gaza.
Sometimes money changers, after deducting a fee, will then say there are no shekels available and make payments in dollars at an unfavorable exchange rate, according to resident Abu Muhey, who also asked not to be identified by his full name for security reasons.
STUCK IN VAULTS
Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of shekels are stranded inside bank vaults in northern Gaza due to a lack of armored vehicles and fear of looting, according to three UN and banking sources.
Bashar Odeh Yasin, director general of Association of Banks in Palestine (ABP), said the situation remains too unsafe for bank employees or international bodies to transfer the money.
“There’s a real problem in transferring cash from northern Gaza to the south and in bringing in cash from outside the Gaza Strip,” he said.
The number of bank notes in circulation has been further diminished by wear and tear as well as people taking them out when they leave, residents said.
Essential goods such as medicine remain chronically scarce in the enclave, which is also plagued by lengthy power shortages and lack of fuel.
The World Food Programme warned in April of the risk of famine in northern parts of Gaza. Israel this week opened a third crossing to allow more humanitarian aid into the north, but it has shut two checkpoints in the south, including the vital Rafah crossing into Egypt, halting aid deliveries there.
Monday saw fierce fighting in north and south Gaza. Efforts by Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators to secure a ceasefire have so far failed.
“There’s more food, which is provided, but there is definitely a lack of cash for people to buy it,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) representative to the Palestinian territory.
Many people were trading canned food or other aid for items they were missing, or selling them for cash, residents told Reuters.
Aya, a resident of Gaza City who was displaced first to Rafah and then central Gaza by Israeli operations, received ten blankets in aid packages. As her family already had some, she sold 8 of the blankets to buy her sisters and brothers chocolate and Nescafe, she said.
“Despite the misery, I tried to make them feel happy,” she said.
Norway aims to quadruple aid to Palestinians as famine looms
- “The urgent need of aid in Gaza is enormous after seven months of war,” Norway’s Minister of International Development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, said
- Norway intends to dedicate 0.98 percent of its gross national income to development aid this year
OSLO: The Norwegian government Tuesday proposed 1 billion kroner ($92.5 million) in aid to Palestinians this year as humanitarian agencies warn of a looming famine in the Gaza Strip.
Figures in the revised budget presented on Tuesday, show a roughly quadrupling of the 258 million kroner provided in the initial finance bill adopted last year.
“The urgent need of aid in Gaza is enormous after seven months of war,” Norway’s Minister of International Development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, said in a statement.
“The food situation in particular is critical and there is a risk of famine,” she added, criticizing “an entirely man-made crisis” and an equally “critical” situation in the West Bank.
According to the draft budget, Norway intends to dedicate 0.98 percent of its gross national income to development aid this year.
The figures are still subject to change because the center-left government, a minority in parliament, has to negotiate with other parties to get the texts adopted.
For his part, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide again warned Israel against a large-scale military operation in Rafah, a city on the southern edge of the besieged Gaza Strip.
“It would be catastrophic for the population. Providing life-saving humanitarian support would become much more difficult and more dangerous,” Barth Eide said.
He added: “The more than 1 million who have sought refuge in Rafah have already fled multiple times from famine, death and horror. They are now being told to move again, but no place in Gaza is safe.”
As part of the response to the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is determined to launch an operation in Rafah, which he considers to be the last major stronghold of the militant organization.
Many in Rafah have been displaced multiple times during the war, and are now heading back north after Israeli forces called for the evacuation of the city’s eastern past.
On May 7, Israeli tanks and troops entered the city’s east sending desperate Palestinians to flee north.
According to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), “almost 450,000” people have been displaced from Rafah since May 6.
