BEIRUT: Egypt’s foreign minister arrived in Damascus on Monday, the first visit by an Egyptian foreign minister to Syria since its civil war began in 2011 and another sign of warming ties between President Bashar Assad and Arab states that once shunned him.
Assad has benefited from an outpouring of Arab support for Syria since a Feb. 6 earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkiye and neighboring Syria.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry was received at Damascus airport by his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad, according to the Syrian state news agency (SANA) and a tweet by Egypt’s foreign ministry spokesperson.
An Egyptian foreign ministry statement on Sunday said Shoukry would “convey a message of solidarity from Egypt” during visits to both Syria and Turkiye on Monday.
Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah El-Sisi spoke with Assad by phone for the first time on Feb. 7 and on Sunday a delegation of top parliamentarians from around the region — including Egypt’s parliament speaker — met Assad in Damascus.
Following the earthquake, the foreign minister of Jordan, which once backed the Syrian opposition, has also visited Damascus for the first time since the civil war began.
Assad had been isolated by regional states over the government’s crackdown on protests in 2011 and the Arab League suspended Syria’s membership in 2011.
The United Arab Emirates, which began normalizing ties with Assad several years ago has poured aid into Syria since the earthquake.
Washington has voiced opposition to any moves toward rehabilitating or normalizing ties with Assad, citing his government’s brutality during the conflict and the need to see progress toward a political solution.
The earthquake killed at least 5,900 people in Syria, the bulk of them in the rebel-held northwest.
Shoukry’s visit to Turkiye underlines a thaw in Egypt’s ties with Ankara.
Diplomatic relations between Egypt and Turkiye were severed after El-Sisi, then army chief, led the 2013 overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi, who had enjoyed Turkish support during his short-lived presidency.
Egypt’s top diplomat in Damascus, meets with Syria’s Assad
https://arab.news/wzhre
Egypt’s top diplomat in Damascus, meets with Syria’s Assad
- It is the first visit by an Egyptian foreign minister to Damascus since Syria’s conflict erupted in 2011
Israel attacking Lebanon every 4 hours on average: Research
- Independent conflict monitoring organization recorded 1,846 Israeli attacks since start of ceasefire
- UN has recorded more than 10,000 violations, killings of 127 Lebanese civilians
LONDON: Israel is attacking Lebanon at a rate equal to one strike every four hours despite the reaching of a ceasefire more than a year ago, new data has shown.
ACLED, the independent conflict monitoring organization, recorded 1,846 Israeli attacks on Lebanon since the beginning of the ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Only two days each month since then has not seen an Israeli attack on average, Sky News reported.
In recent weeks, Israeli has ramped up cross-border strikes, with December seeing an average of six per day, or one every four hours. It is the fastest pace of attacks by Israel since May.
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon said the ceasefire has been violated more than 10,000 times, or once every 53 minutes on average.
That figure includes more than 2,500 ground activities by the Israel Defense Forces and more than 7,800 violations of Lebanese airspace.
UNIFIL has discovered more than 360 weapon and ammunition caches south of the Litani river. These are reported as ceasefire violations.
The discovery of the caches is proof that Hezbollah is seeking to rearm in the south, Israel has claimed.
But Kandice Ardiel, UNIFIL’s deputy spokesperson, said: “None of these weapon caches were guarded. They had no obvious signs of recent use and were presumably abandoned. Many were even destroyed already, or half-destroyed.”
According to UN figures, at least 127 civilians in Lebanon have been killed by Israeli strikes since the beginning of the ceasefire.
Israel has argued that the ceasefire agreement stipulates Hezbollah’s complete disarmament, not only in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah disputes this, and has conditioned its disarmament on Israel’s complete withdrawal from Lebanese territory.
Israel was supposed to withdraw from Lebanon by Jan. 27 this year, with a later extension to Feb. 18.
But Israel has instead ramped up its presence in Lebanon, constructing a new base in February. Four other bases are held by Israel in Lebanon, on hilltops across the south.
The Lebanese government has raised objections to the Israeli bases with the UN, which found that two sections of Israel’s new border wall cross into Lebanese territory.
More than 64,000 Lebanese remain displaced from their homes. One resident of the now-destroyed town of Aita Al-Shaab said: “Anyone who comes to rebuild is attacked (by Israel).”
