By Hazem Saghieh — english.aawsat.com — Those following the Syrian and Lebanese-Syrian news over the past few weeks notice two tendencies: the first is what is happening in Syria and can be summed up in the following events: As Russian aircrafts launched strikes on rural Idlib, six of them according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Right Observatory. These same Russians sponsored talks to bring Daraa back to the regime’s embrace. Destruction and forced displacement, which are part and parcel of Moscow’s “diplomatic activity,” stirred fears of Iranian militias and Lebanese militias loyal to Iran replacing Daraa’s original inhabitants. Their entry into Daraa al-Balad on September 9 for the first time since 2013 ended a siege that had begun early this summer, while the regime had recaptured Daraa’s surroundings two and a half years ago. Thus, the south of “useful Syria” was captured and nothing remains but extending control to the north of “useful Syria,” Idlib.

Syrian regime forces and their allies’ advances were accompanied by another event: Amnesty International issued an extensive report on sexual violence in Syrian prisons and border crossings. This time, it is the Syrians who believed Bashar al-Assad and Gebran Bassil’s claims that they could “return to the embrace of the homeland” who were the victims. Amnesty International documented 66 cases of men, women and children being assaulted by security officials, including 13 children between 3 weeks and 17 years of age, 15 women and 38 men. The report was not given the title: “You are Going to Syria.” A more eloquent and accurate title was given: “You are Going to your Death.”

Meanwhile, as news about Rami Makhlouf died down over the past few weeks, news about Rifaat al-Assad returned to the fore. He was sentenced to four years in prison for embezzlement and fraud after having amassed a fortune of around 70 million euros divided between apartments, mansions and horse stud farms. For those who have forgotten, Rifaat is Bashar’s uncle and Hafez’s brother and partner in power for the first half of the latter’s reign (1970-84). He is among the most prominent if not the most prominent architect of Hafez’s bloody reign, especially with what he did in Palmyra in 1980 and in Hama in 1982. His dispute with his older brother was only about inheritance. Beyond that, “blood does not turn into water.”

by libyanexpress.com — Despite the threat of possible US sanctions, Hezbollah has arranged up to 80 oil tankers carrying Iranian diesel fuel to arrive in Lebanon via Syria on Thursday. The tankers are destined for Baalbek, about 67 kilometers northeast of Beirut, where the fuel will be discharged into tankers owned by the Iran-backed Hezbollah. The group has also organized a ceremony to celebrate the shipment, which is expected to contain 3 million liters of fuel. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the militant group, said in August that an Iranian fuel tanker will sail toward Lebanon “within hours,” warning Israel and the US not to intercept it. The move, Hezbollah said, was to help ease Lebanon’s crippling fuel shortage that has paralyzed the country for weeks. Raymond Ghajar, Lebanon’s caretaker energy minister, said he “did not receive any request to approve fuel importation” undertaken by Hezbollah.

The delivery would violate US sanctions imposed on Tehran after former US President Donald Trump pulled out of a nuclear deal between Iran and other world powers three years ago. Hezbollah’s step is also likely to expose Lebanon to similar US sanctions. Nasrallah said on Monday the Iranian ship docked on Sunday night in Syria’s Banias port and started to discharge diesel fuel in Syrian tankers that will arrive in Baalbek on Thursday. “The vessel destined for Baalbek will arrive through Hermel,” Nasrallah said. There are no legal border crossings in the region as Hezbollah allegedly uses the Hermel crossing for smuggling. Al-Amana, a US-sanctioned company that belongs to Hezbollah, is expected to receive the transported Iranian fuel. Nasrallah claimed he “spared Lebanon embarrassment by docking the ship in a Syrian port and not a Lebanese one.” However, the arrival of diesel tankers in Lebanon will reveal the state’s vulnerability regarding the violation of its borders and the importation of fuel without its knowledge or approval. The US previously warned that any Iranian fuel ship that brings fuel for Lebanon would equate to “providing Hezbollah with funds.”

by thenationalnews.com — Lebanon’s former prime minister, Hassan Diab, has left the country for the US days before he was scheduled to appear for questioning at the investigation into the Beirut port blast. Mr Diab said from a plane that he was visiting the US for four weeks, travelling via Istanbul, on a planned trip to see his two sons who are studying medicine in America. His wife, a lecturer at the Lebanese American University, has stayed in Lebanon. Mr Diab said he had made it clear that he intended to travel after a government was formed. He will be unable to appear for questioning despite having been summoned by Judge Tarek Bitar to a hearing scheduled for Monday.

Mr Diab had been out of office less than a week before his departure on Tuesday after 13 months of leading a caretaker government. He earlier failed to appear for questioning when summoned on August 26, prompting Mr Bitar to issue an “enforceable summons” for him to appear next Monday. In December, Mr Diab was charged, alongside three other former ministers, with negligence in connection to the explosion at Beirut port on August 5, 2020, in which more than 200 people were killed. He resigned as prime minister, alongside his cabinet, in the days after the blast.

QLEIAT, Lebanon (AP)  by By BASSEM MROUE and FAY ABUELGASIM — Saydi Mubarak and her mother share a bond that goes beyond a close mother-daughter relationship: They were both diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago and underwent months of chemotherapy at a Beirut hospital, together facing the anxiety, the hair loss and the uncertainty for the future. Now they share the fear of not being able to get the medication they need to complete their treatment because in Lebanon, where a devastating economic crisis has upended daily life, there are almost no drugs to be found. The small Mediterranean country — once a medical hub in the Middle East — is grappling with severe shortages in medical supplies, fuel and other necessities. The economic crisis, described as one of the world’s worst of the past 150 years, is rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by a political class that has accumulated debt and done little to encourage local industries, forcing the country to rely on imports for almost everything.

But those imports are hard to come by since the Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value since 2019, and the Central Bank’s foreign reserves are drying up. The crisis was worsened by a massive explosion that destroyed the country’s main port last year. For months, pharmacy shelves have been bare, exacerbated by panic buying and suppliers holding back drugs, hoping to sell them later for higher prices amid the uncertainty. Hospitals are at a breaking point, barely able to secure diesel to keep generators and life-saving machines operating day to day. The drug shortages threaten tens of thousands of people, including cancer patients. In desperation, many have taken to social media or turned to travelers coming from abroad. Visitors and Lebanese expats these days often arrive with suitcases full of pills, vials and other medical supplies for relatives and friends.

by kataeb.org — Resigned Kataeb lawmaker Nadim Gemayel on Tuesday stressed the need to continue with the struggle for a better Lebanon, saying that 39 years have passed and yet the torch of martyr President Bachir Gemayel hasn’t been extinguished yet. “September 14, 1982; 39 years have passed and yet the dream did not come […]

في شباط ٢٠١٩ وازاء تريث لبنان بالتبادل التجاري مع ايران خوفاً من العقوبات زار وزير الخارجية جواد ظريف لبنان ليعرض تسهيلات للاستيراد والدفع بالعملة الوطنية وازاء تريث لبنان مرة ثانية ارسلوا بواخر النفط لبيعها بالليرة اللبنانية ….

By REBECCA ANNE PROCTOR — arabnews.com — DUBAI: A busy traffic scene in downtown Beirut set to the backdrop of the crumbling silos destroyed in last year’s devastating port explosion tells the tale of a city fighting to get through another day. Life is anything but normal in the bustling Mediterranean city, and from the dockyard debris a crane lifts a foreboding large statue onto a truck as people hurl curses toward it. The statue is transported into the Lebanese mountains to be placed among piles of trash at a new landfill site that surrounds the home of the Badri family. This is the opening scene of Lebanese director Mounia Akl’s first fiction-feature film, “Costa Brava,” which premiered on Sept. 5 at the Venice Film Festival. The film also segues from Akl’s acclaimed 2015 short movie “Submarine” about Lebanon’s 2015 garbage crisis and the corruption behind it.

The opening images, with the sinister Beirut port silos lurking in the background, were not at first intended to be included in her film — a script she began writing four years ago. The 32-year-old filmmaker’s haunting and upsetting feature was originally meant to depict a dystopian Lebanon in 2030 at its worst. “I tried to imagine this dystopian future where none of our problems had been solved and the country was an extreme version of itself,” she told Arab News. “It was somehow a way for me to imagine the worst for myself in the same way you sometimes want to explore your trauma in a cathartic way. It was a way for me to imagine the worst in my mind as a way of avoiding the worst happening in my mind and in life.”

By Maha El Dahan — reuters — BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Lebanon’s new Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who took office last week promising to revive IMF talks to unlock aid, said on Monday there was no time to lose and no easy path to tackle one of history’s worst economic meltdowns. The new government, formed after more than a year of political stalemate, met for the first time on Monday, replacing a caretaker administration that had quit in the aftermath of last year’s Beirut port explosion that killed hundreds, injured thousands and left large swathes of the capital destroyed. read more “It is true that we don’t have a magic wand. The situation is very difficult,” Mikati, a billionaire-turned-politician told the cabinet, according to a statement published after the government’s first meeting. Lebanese hope the new administration will plot a path out of a crisis that has sunk the currency by some 90% since late 2019 and forced three quarters of the population into poverty.

Mikati pledged to help resolve shortages of fuel and medicine, supplies of which have dried up as the import-dependent nation’s hard currency reserves have run out. State electricity is available for a few hours a day, if at all, and most Lebanese homes and establishments increasingly rely on private generators. A generator at a dentist’s clinic in Tyre exploded on Monday leaving seven people injured, a reflection of the safety hazards of relying heavily on the alternative source of power.

وثيقةُ الوفاقِ الوطني، وبكونها العقد الاجتماعي بين ال#لبنانيين، تُشَكّلُ القاعدة المرجعية التي انبثق منها #الدستور اللبناني، والدستور هو قانونُ الدولة السياسيّ ويَتَضَمّنُ مجموعة من القواعد الأساسية التي تنظّمُ العلاقة بين سلطات الدولة كما تحدّد اختصاص كلٍّ منها وطرق ممارسة صلاحياتها بهدف إدارة شؤون الدولة الداخلية والخارجية. 

من المُسَلّم بهِ أنّ العقد الاجتماعي يتَّصف بعدم الثبات نظراً الى اتّصاله بالسلوك الانساني والاجتماعي الذي يتّسم هو الآخرُ بالتّحوّل والتَغَيّر، وبخاصة في الدول التعدّدية مثل لبنان، حيث يتعرّض لِلاهتزاز تبعاً للتطور الديموغرافي ولتطور الأوضاع في الدول المحيطة بها، فيؤدي ذلك إلى خلل في تطبيق الدستور وإلى عدم الالتزام بروحه بسبب التباين في فهم وتفسير المفردات والمصطلحات المتعلقة بالاستقلال والحرّية والسيادة والديموقراطية والهوّية والعيش المشترك…لذلك ينبغي العمل على تحصين هذا العقد كي يبقى صالحاً لفترات طويلة ممّا يُرسي استقراراً سياسياً ينعكس نمواً اقتصادياً واستقراراً أمنياً وقانونياً واجتماعياً. إن عملية التحصين لا تَتِمّ إلّا عبر استكمال تطبيق الدستور وسَنّ القوانين وإصدار المراسيم التنظيمية الضرورية للتفسير والتطبيق كما والاجتهاد من ضمن روحية القانون بُغية الوصول إلى تعديلات تشرح بوضوح آليات حسن التنفيذ من دون أن تمسّ بجوهر العقد الاجتماعي أو بصلاحيات وبمسؤوليات مختلف السلطات التشريعية والاجرائية والقضائية. 

by english.alaraby.co.uk — Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Sunday that his new cabinet’s priorities are to mend ties with Arab nations and solve the country’s pressing issues, particularly the energy crisis. “Now is not the time for political (bickering), but rather the time to get to work to lift Lebanon from its crises, put a stop to the collapse, and speed up work on solving the electricity crisis and finding quick solutions to it,” Mikati said in comments to Almodon. Lebanon was plunged into an exacerbating energy crisis this year due to fuel shortages necessary for power plants and private generators, as the Lebanese Central Bank gradually lifts subsidies because of dwindling US dollar reserves. Mikati had previously said that the new government will be forced to lift subsidies completely on fuel, which could push the country further into crisis if no solutions are found immediately.

A 2009 agreement with Egypt recently brought back to light could see Lebanon import natural gas, as well as electricity from Jordan, to help solve the crisis. Electricity expenditure accounts to about half of Lebanon’s sovereign debt. Speaking to Almodon, Mikati preferred not to touch on sensitive political topics to avoid division in his new cabinet, but instead said he looked forward to cooperating with President Michel Aoun to achieve what was necessary. “This must start with a new governmental and political methodology, topped with restoring relations with all states, especially Arab countries. This is what should be focused on in the ministerial statement,” he said. Ties between Lebanon and Gulf states have been rattled in recent years due to repeated attacks on their leaders by Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah. Gulf states have accused the Shia paramilitary group of assisting other Iranian-backed militias, such as Yemen’s Houthis, in launching drone attacks on Saudi Arabia.