BEIRUT: Lebanon on Friday marked 20 years since former prime minister Rafic Hariri’s assassination, with seismic political changes underway that have weakened Hezbollah and its backers and could herald a comeback for Hariri’s son Saad.
Rafic Hariri, a towering political figure who oversaw Lebanon’s reconstruction era after the 1975-1990 civil war, had recently resigned as premier when he was killed on February 14, 2005.
In 2022, a UN-backed court sentenced two Hezbollah members in absentia to life imprisonment for the massive suicide bombing that killed him and 21 others, though the group has refused to hand them over.
His son Saad, who served three times as prime minister, is based in the United Arab Emirates but has again returned for the annual commemorations.
This time, he is back in a changed Lebanon.
The commemoration comes days before the deadline for implementing a Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire, which ended more than a year of hostilities that weakened the group.
Concerns have mounted for the fragile truce after Beirut rejected Israel’s demand to remain in five southern locations after the February 18 deadline.
But Hezbollah still carries weight, with supporters Thursday blocking the airport road after two Iranian planes were barred from landing.
A day earlier, Israel’s army had accused Iran of sending funds to arm the group through the Beirut airport.
On Friday morning, a few thousand Hariri supporters carrying Lebanese flags gathered near his father’s burial site in downtown Beirut.
“For the first time in 20 years, our joy is double: first because the Syrian regime fell... and second because Sheikh Saad is among us,” homemaker Diana Al-Masri, 52, told AFP.
A source close to Hariri said he was due to give a speech addressing developments “in Lebanon and the region,” though he may not resume political activities right away.
“His supporters are calling on him to return to political life,” said the source, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Until early 2022, Hariri was the main Sunni Muslim leader in a country where political power is shared along sectarian lines.
Once enjoying strong support from Saudi Arabia, Hariri’s relationship with the regional heavyweight deteriorated because of his conciliatory attitude toward Hezbollah.
In 2017, Hariri resigned as premier in a shock address from Riyadh, citing Iran’s “grip” on Lebanon through Hezbollah and prompting accusations he was being held against his will.
French President Emmanuel Macron had to intervene to secure his return to Lebanon, where Hariri rescinded his resignation.
He resigned again as prime minister after nationwide protests in 2019 demanding the wholesale overhaul of Lebanon’s political class.
In a tearful 2022 announcement, he said he had suspended his political activities and those of his party, citing “Iranian influence” among other reasons.
The source told AFP that all these reasons had now “vanished.”
For decades, Hezbollah was Lebanon’s dominant political force, but its arsenal and leadership were decimated during its war with Israel, while Syrian ally Bashar Assad’s ouster cut the group’s vital arms supply lines.
’New chance’
In January, former army chief Joseph Aoun was elected president after a more than two-year vacuum.
He was widely seen as the United States and Saudi Arabia’s preferred choice.
This month, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who had been presiding judge at the International Criminal Court, formed a government. On Friday, Salam visited Rafic Hariri’s tomb to pay his respects.
“Lebanon has been given a new chance as Iranian influence is declining and the international community has returned,” the source said.
Riyadh has recently retaken an interest in Lebanese politics after distancing itself for years over Hezbollah’s influence.
“Saudi Arabia seeks a strong, organized Sunni leadership,” said Imad Salamey, head of the International and Political Studies Department at the Lebanese American University.
“If (Saad) Hariri can present himself as that figure, his return would serve both his interests and those of the kingdom.”
His father’s assassination anniversary “will serve as an opportunity to assess his ability to mobilize support and reassert his leadership within the Sunni community,” Salamey added.
Hariri was thrust into the political limelight following his father’s murder, widely attributed to Damascus and Hezbollah at the time, which triggered massive protests that drove Syrian troops out of Lebanon after 29 years of occupation.
Rafic Hariri was a billionaire and the architect of Lebanon’s reconstruction era after the 1975-1990 civil war.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, is desperate to prove it has not lost ground to political rivals.
After the airport protests, authorities said they were working to bring back Lebanese passengers stranded in Iran using two Middle East Airlines planes.
But on Friday a source from the national carrier told AFP that Tehran had denied them permission to land in a tit-for-tat move.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hezbollah of using Lebanon’s only airport to transfer weapons from Iran, claims the group and Lebanese officials have denied, with the army reinforcing security measures there in past months.
Lebanon marks 20 years since Rafic Hariri killed as power balance shifts
https://arab.news/5y8uf
Lebanon marks 20 years since Rafic Hariri killed as power balance shifts
- A UN-backed court sentenced two Hezbollah members in absentia to life imprisonment for the massive suicide bombing that killed him and 21 others
Gaza's living conditions worsen as strong winds and hypothermia kill 5
- Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged, the UN humanitarian office reported
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Strong winter winds collapsed walls onto flimsy tents for Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four people, hospital authorities said Tuesday.
Dangerous living conditions persist in Gaza after more than two years of devastating Israeli bombardment and aid shortfalls. A ceasefire has been in effect since Oct. 10. But aid groups say that Palestinians broadly lack the shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.
The dead include two women, a girl and a man, according to Shifa Hospital, Gaza City’s largest, which received the bodies.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday a 1-year-old boy died of hypothermia overnight, while the spokesman for the UN’s children agency said over 100 children and teenagers have been killed by “military means” since the ceasefire began.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military said it exchanged fire Tuesday with six people spotted near its troops deployed in southern Gaza, killing at least two of them in western Rafah.
Family mourns relatives killed by wall collapse
Three members of the same family — 72-year-old Mohamed Hamouda, his 15-year-old granddaughter and his daughter-in-law — were killed when an 8-meter (26-foot) high wall collapsed onto their tent in a coastal area along the Mediterranean shore of Gaza City, Shifa Hospital said. At least five others were injured.
Their relatives on Tuesday began removing the rubble that had buried their loved ones and rebuilding the tent shelters for survivors.
“The world has allowed us to witness death in all its forms,” Bassel Hamouda said after the funeral. “It’s true the bombing may have temporarily stopped, but we have witnessed every conceivable cause of death in the world in the Gaza Strip.”
A second woman was killed when a wall fell on her tent in the western part of the city, Shifa Hospital said.
Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were blown away or heavily damaged, the UN humanitarian office reported.
The UN and its humanitarian partners were distributing tents, tarps, blankets and clothes as well as nutrition and hygiene items across Gaza, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The majority of Palestinians live in makeshift tents since their homes were reduced to rubble during the war. When storms strike the territory, Palestinian rescue workers warn people against seeking shelter inside damaged buildings for fears of collapse. Aid groups say not enough shelter materials are entering Gaza during the truce.
In the central town of Zawaida, Associated Press footage showed inundated tents Tuesday morning, with people trying to rebuild their shelters.
Yasmin Shalha, a displaced woman from the northern town of Beit Lahiya, stood against winds that lifted the tarps of tents around her as she stitched hers back together with needle and thread. She said it had fallen on top of her family the night before, as they slept.
“The winds were very, very strong. The tent collapsed over us,” the mother of five told AP. “As you can see, our situation is dire.”
On the shore in southern Gaza, tents were swept into the Mediterranean. Families pulled what was left from the sea, while some built sand barriers to hold back rising water.
“The sea took our mattresses, our tents, our food and everything we owned,” Shaban Abu Ishaq said, as he dragged part of his tent out of the sea in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis.
Mohamed Al-Sawalha, a 72-year-old man from the northern refugee camp of Jabaliya, said the conditions most Palestinians in Gaza endure are barely livable.
“It doesn’t work neither in summer nor in winter,” he said of the tent. “We left behind houses and buildings (with) doors that could be opened and closed. Now we live in a tent. Even sheep don’t live like we do.”
Residents aren’t able to return to their homes in Israeli-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip.
Child death toll in Gaza rises
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the 1-year-old in the central town of Deir Al-Balah was the seventh fatality due to the cold conditions since winter started. Others included a baby just seven days old and a 4-year-old girl, whose deaths were announced Monday.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, says more than 440 people were killed by Israeli fire and their bodies brought to hospitals since the ceasefire went into effect. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
UNICEF spokesman James Elder said Tuesday at least 100 children under the age of 18 — 60 boys and 40 girls — have been killed since the truce began due to military operations, including drone strikes, airstrikes, tank shelling and use of live ammunition. Those figures, he said, reflect incidents where enough details have been compiled to warrant recording, but the total toll is expected to be higher. He said hundreds of children have been wounded.
While “bombings and shootings have slowed” during the ceasefire, they have not stopped, Elder told reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva by video from Gaza City. “So what the world now calls calm would be considered a crisis anywhere else,” he said.
Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has been struggling to keep the cold weather and storms at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the winter months. It’s the third winter since the war between Israel and Hamas started on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others into Gaza.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 71,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive.
