TRIPOLI: Its arch is cracking and its vast pavilions lie empty, but the crumbling Rachid Karami International Fair in Lebanon’s port city Tripoli now has hope of revival, having been added to the United Nations’ list of world heritage sites in danger.
Designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1962, the collection of structures on the 70-hectare plot is considered one of the key works of 20th century modernism in the Middle East.
But the fair park has slowly decayed due to repeated rounds of fighting over the last 60 years, poor maintenance and most recently Lebanon’s crippling, three-year-old financial crisis.
“It was placed on the World Heritage List exceptionally, quickly and urgently – and on the list of heritage in danger because it’s in a critical situation,” said Joseph Kreidi, UNESCO’s national program officer for culture in Beirut.
Its elegant arch is missing concrete in some parts, exposing the rebar underneath. Rainwater has pooled at the locked entrances. One section is sealed off by a sign that reads, “Unsafe building entry.”
“Placing it on the World Heritage Danger List is an appeal to all countries of the world, as if to say: this site needs some care,” said Kreidi.
He said it was up to the Lebanese authorities to draw together a plan for the site’s protection and rehabilitation but that UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency, could help search for funding and provide technical expertise.
Lebanon has five other sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, most of them citadels and ancient temples.
Niemeyer is recognized as one of the fathers of modern architecture and the site in Tripoli was an early foray into the Middle East.
Construction of the fairground began in the 1960s but was delayed when civil war erupted in Lebanon in 1975. Fighters used the site to stage operations and stored weapons underneath its concrete dome.
Mira Minkara, a freelance tour guide from Tripoli and a member of the Oscar Niemeyer Foundation’s Tripoli chapter, has fond – but rare – memories of the fairground as a child.
For the most part, it was off-limits to Tripoli’s residents given safety concerns. But Minkara remembered her first visit during a festival of pan-African culture and crafts.
She hopes that UNESCO’s recognition could bring new festivals, exhibitions and economic benefits to Tripoli – already one of the poorest cities on the Mediterranean before Lebanon’s financial meltdown began.
Lebanon’s cultural heritage has been hit hard in recent years. The 2020 Beirut port blast tore through 19th-century homes in historic neighborhoods and power outages caused by the financial crisis have cut supplies to the national museum.
“We hope things change a little,” Minkara said. “It’s high time for this fairground to emerge from this long sleep, this almost-death.”
Lebanon hopes UNESCO danger listing could save crumbling modernist fairground
https://arab.news/nwedp
Lebanon hopes UNESCO danger listing could save crumbling modernist fairground
- Rachid Karami International Fair has decayed due to conflict, poor maintenance and country’s financial crisis
Israeli drone falls in Syria during routine activity, Israeli military says
A military statement said there had been no breach of information and the incident was under investigation. It did not provide further details.
‘Starving’ retired army personnel protest against Lebanon’s ‘corrupt’ political elite
- ‘Retired soldiers are now paid peanuts amid the sharp increase in the dollar exchange rate and the dollarization of food prices’
- ‘We need international protection to save us from corrupt politicians. We are no longer able to secure our food’
BEIRUT: Retired military personnel took to the streets of downtown Beirut on Wednesday to protest against the increasing financial hardships they said they are facing as a result of Lebanon’s economic crisis and rampant corruption.
Their angry demonstration followed the latest sharp decline in the value of the Lebanese pound on Tuesday, which prompted calls on social media for civil disobedience and public protests. Many of the protesters carried Lebanese flags and placards denouncing the government and its financial policies.
“Where is the conscience of the ruling powers?” said one of the demonstrators Arab News spoke to.
“Don’t they feel guilty about the retired members of the military who have served their country all their lives, given that they are currently starving and not able to access medical care services? Hospitals are holding their bodies in morgue freezers because their families cannot afford the hospital bills.”
Another retired military man told Arab News: “Retired soldiers are now paid peanuts amid the sharp increase in the dollar exchange rate and the dollarization of food prices.
“We need international protection to save us from corrupt politicians. We are no longer able to secure our food. We do not follow any political party or militia. We only belong to our homeland. They are criminals, endangering their country. Let it be known that the people will have no mercy on the tyrants.”
The drastic collapse of the exchange rate of the Lebanese pound against the dollar means that the value of monthly salaries paid to retired military personnel, and public-sector workers, has fallen to between $20 and $60.
“We came to discover whether there is still any state and to claim our salaries and rights to medical care with dignity,” retired Brig. Gen. Chamel Roukoz told Arab News: “The state has a duty toward us. Taking to the streets was our only solution.”
The protesters refused to meet any representatives of the Forces of Change, new members of parliament who were elected last year with the promise of representing the popular mood of opposition to the political status quo, because “they did nothing to benefit the people.” They said that MP Paula Yacoubian and the activist Wassef Al-Harakeh had been expelled from the demonstration.
The protesters breached barbed wire fences surrounding the Grand Serail, the headquarters of caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and declared their intent to break in. In response, security and riot control officers used tear gas to disperse the crowd. The majority of the protesters were elderly and a number were treated by the Red Cross for suffocation.
“Wouldn’t it be better if they had given hungry soldiers money instead of spending it on bombs?” said one injured demonstrator.
Later, the protesters met Mikati and warned of “an unprecedented escalation if promises to fulfill the demands are not met, notably paying the public sector and retirees’ salaries based on the Sayrafa platform’s exchange rate, which is 25,000 pounds against the dollar, instead of the current rate of 90,000 pounds.”
In a separate incident, in the Jnah neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut, fishermen blocked a road in protest against their deteriorating financial situation.
Elsewhere, members of an association that represents public administration employees protested in front of the Finance Ministry, demanding that the government “give public sector employees their rights by revising their salaries and transportation allowance, and securing their healthcare and education grants.”
Similar protests took place in Sidon, Tyre and Nabatieh.
An International Monetary Fund delegation, headed by Ernesto Rigo Ramirez, on Wednesday met the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon, Walid bin Abdullah Bukhari. Embassy sources said that they discussed “the (overall) developments and conditions needed for Lebanon to recover from the political and economic crisis, in addition to issues of common concern.”
Meanwhile, in an address to the nation at the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Deryan warned of “the emerging chaos whose price will be paid by citizens.” It is necessary to “resort to the constitution immediately, elect a president and stop wasting time,” he said.
“We cannot wait any longer; people have started to lose the basic necessities of life, and the political class and citizens live in two different worlds,” he added.
Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel will not revive settlements evacuated in 2005
- Lawmakers earlier voted to annul part of a law banning Israelis from living in areas of the occupied West Bank the government evacuated in 2005
JERUSALEM: Israel has “no intention” of reviving West Bank settlements evacuated nearly two decades ago, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, after a parliamentary vote sparked US ire.
Lawmakers voted Tuesday to annul part of a law banning Israelis from living in areas of the occupied West Bank the government evacuated in 2005.
That year Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip and removed Jewish settlers from the coastal territory, as well as from four settlements in the northern West Bank.
Netanyahu’s office said the parliamentary vote scraps “a discriminatory and humiliating law, that prohibited Jews from living in areas in northern Samaria, which is part of our historic homeland,” using the biblical name for the northern West Bank.
“Having said that, the government has no intention of establishing new communities in these areas,” the statement added.
Netanyahu returned to power in December and vowed to expand settlements across the West Bank, which are deemed illegal under international law.
His assertion that the government will not formally allow settlers to return to the four sites evacuated in 2005 comes after Washington said it was “extremely troubled” by the parliamentary vote.
“The legislative changes announced today are particularly provocative,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters Tuesday.
Patel said the move was in “clear contradiction” of promises made by prime minister Ariel Sharon to US president George W. Bush, as well as assurances given just two days ago by the Netanyahu administration.
The decision by lawmakers was heralded by Israel’s settler movement which has made one of the sites — Homesh — a symbol of their cause.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a far-right settler, tweeted that it marked a step toward regularizing the Israeli presence at Homesh.
A small group of activists returned to the site in 2009 and set up a Jewish seminary, which was cleared repeatedly by Israeli troops before the military eventually allowed them to stay.
Building collapse in Qatar’s capital kills 1, search ongoing
DOHA: A building collapsed Wednesday in Qatar’s capital, killing at least one person as searchers clawed through the rubble to check for survivors, authorities said.
Qatar’s Interior Ministry described the building as a four-story structure in Doha’s Bin Durham neighborhood. It said rescuers found seven survivors, while the one person killed had been inside the building at the time of the collapse.
Authorities offered no immediate explanation for the building’s collapse. Online video showed car alarms sounding after the collapse, with one part of the building falling into another nearby.
Civil defense and police surrounded the site after the 8 a.m. collapse, with multiple ambulances and an excavator at the scene. Residents were asked to evacuate for their safety.
Qatar hosted the FIFA World Cup last year.
Pro-Kurdish party gives tacit support to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival in Turkey polls
- Peoples’ Democratic Party decision reduces the possibility of a damaging split of the anti-Erdogan vote
- Boosts the chances of the opposition alliance’s joint candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu
ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s main pro-Kurdish party said Wednesday it would not field a presidential candidate in May elections, giving tacit support to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival in the crucial vote.
The decision by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) reduces the possibility of a damaging split of the anti-Erdogan vote, boosting the chances of the opposition alliance’s joint candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Winning more than 10 percent of the vote in the past three national elections, the HDP was widely seen as a kingmaker in the tightly contested race.
“We will not field a candidate in the presidential elections,” Pervin Buldan, the party co-chairwoman, told reporters.
“We will fulfil our historic responsibility to end one-man rule in the coming elections,” she said, condemning Erdogan’s consolidation of power over his two decades as prime minister and president.
The HDP’s decision strips Erdogan of a key voting bloc in what is widely seen as Turkiye’s most important election of its post-Ottoman history.
Erdogan enjoyed some support from Kurdish voters earlier in his rule.
His government once worked with HDP politicians in an effort to put an end to a decades-long fight by Kurdish insurgents for an independent state that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
But he now accuses the HDP — parliament’s third largest party — of being the political wing of the PKK militants.
The leftist party denies the charges and says it is being singled out for its fierce criticism of the government’s social and economic policies.
Erdogan and his far-right allies in parliament are now trying to dissolve the HDP over its alleged terror ties.
Turkiye’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday rejected the HDP’s request to delay the outcome of the case until after the May 14 election.
The HDP was excluded from a six-party opposition alliance that has rallied around Kilicdaroglu’s candidacy.
The anti-Erdogan alliance includes staunchly nationalist parties that refuse to work with the HDP.
Meeting with HDP leaders on Monday, Kilicdaroglu promised to remove restrictions on the Kurdish language and address other Kurdish concerns.
