aawsat.com — Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri condemned on Friday Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil for his “unilateral” decision to freeze the residency applications of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees employees in Lebanon. Hariri’s aide, Nadim al-Mounla revealed that the PM had highlighted to the minister the severity of his decision, urging him to reverse […]

by catholicherald.co.uk — Chartres sonne, Chartres t’appelle! Gloire, honneur au Christ-Roi!” Under a radiant sky a stream of singing pilgrims stretches across the French countryside. It is Pentecost weekend and roughly 12,000 people are walking from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris to Chartres, the cathedral town about 50 miles south of the capital. The pilgrimage, which […]

by Robert Fisk Tarshish, central Lebanon independent.co.uk — — Rarely are journalists lost for words. But how do you describe the destruction of entire mountains, the slashing down of tens of thousands of pine trees, the very shape of the landscape changed by more than 3,000 quarries which have ripped apart the geography of Lebanon and made a new map of its blessed and ancient land – the Massacre of the Mountains? Is that good enough for a story which should shock the world if it occurred in Europe or America? I call it the Castration of Lebanon. Its fruits are dirt and crumbled rock and contaminated lakes. The tops of entire mountainsides – millions of tons of sand and rock – have been ripped away by diggers, excavators and bulldozers to provide concrete for Beirut’s canyons of grotesque high-rise apartments: for its villas and gated city suburbs and the Lebanese Mediterranean coastal hotels. Greed, corruption, poverty and a shameful, selfish, confessional government are to blame. Even now, as Lebanon’s sectarian parties fight for seats in a new cabinet, their nation is being physically torn apart. All they need to do is pass a law – just one piece of legislation – to stop this anarchy.

“Your Lebanon is a political knot, a national dilemma, a place of conflict and deception,” the nation’s most famous poet, Khalil Gibran, wrote in despair of his country almost a hundred years ago. “My Lebanon is a place of beauty and dreams of enchanting valleys and splendid mountains….Your Lebanon is empty and fleeting, whereas my Lebanon will endure forever.” Not any more. Come with me to Mayrouba, high on a mountain above Bikfaya, where Elias Saadeh stands on a plateau of mud and broken rock and roads – government highways – which end suddenly in sheer 500-foot chasms of stone, carved and hacked at by giant cranes and stone cutters whose claws have grooved out the inside of these mountains. Ridges, valleys and watercourses have disappeared. “There is not a building in the ‘new’ Beirut,” Saadeh says cynically, “which does not have part of Mayrouba in its walls and foundations. They call our land here ‘gold sand’ – the best you can buy to build apartment blocks, and it’s the most expensive. But this is crazy. “More than 120,000 of our pine trees have been cut down. We had thirty water ‘ein’ (wells) – but today we only have two left and they are both polluted.”

The two of us stare out towards mountains we’ve known and looked at for decades – but the mountains are not there. For this is now a lunar landscape whose creeping fog and damp winds prove that image reflects reality. We are looking at a lost land. Why? “Because the people who did this are not educated,” Elias says. “Because they only see the dollar. These people make $5,000 a day. They made people rich, but they remained uneducated. They have never learned how to love land. “They don’t give a shit about the nation, about wild life or the environment – nothing! Now we are going towards desertification.” Saadeh sounds like a modern-day Gibran. The poet’s body lies scarcely a hundred miles to the north, sealed into a cave, his tomb weighted down with chains in case his worshippers try to take his bones. “Splendid mountains” indeed.

by SPUTNIK news — Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri plans to attend the opening of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. “The prime minister will visit Moscow next Wednesday and will be present at the opening of the FIFA World Cup,” Russia’s press service said, adding that Hariri could also hold a bilateral meeting with Russian President […]

by .dailymail.co.uk — “Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Gebran Bassil issued instructions… to stop the requests for residency presented to the ministry and (those already submitted) for the UNHCR in Lebanon until further notice,” a statement said. “Bassil asked for the study of other progressive measures… in the case that the UNHCR is determined […]

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said Iranian and Hezbollah forces will not withdraw from Syria until the country is “liberated” and its “territorial integrity is restored”, Russia’s RIA news agency reported on Wednesday. Iran-backed forces such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a close political ally of Berri, have been key allies alongside Russia in […]

by sputniknews.com – The Israeli Navy has successfully completed a military drill that simulated two possible ways Hezbollah might attack gas exploration and extraction systems in Israel’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The Israeli Navy’s first scenario included a drone simulating a cruise missile fired by the enemy at a gas rig. According to the Jerusalem […]

by the dailystar.com.lb — Ex-General Security chief Jamil al-Sayyed launched a scathing attack on the U.N. body tasked with investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri Tuesday, saying the investigation should have been left to the Lebanese authorities. “Had the investigation been left in our hands I’m sure we would have reached a solution,” Sayyed, currently a Hezbollah- affiliated member of parliament, said while giving evidence to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in Leidschendam, the Netherlands. Sayyed, who was detained in 2005 for four years by Lebanese authorities due to suspected involvement in the case, asked, “The real question is why the investigation was sidetracked for four years, and in whose interest was it?”

President of the Trial Chamber Judge David Re criticized Sayyed’s treatment at the hands of the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission at the beginning of the day’s session, saying he wished to put on the record “how badly you were treated in custody … It is far below accepted international standards.” According to Re, Sayyed’s detention “breaches every international human rights standard.” Re’s fellow trial chamber judge Janet Nosworthy pressed Sayyed on certain actions taken by Lebanese authorities in the immediate aftermath of Hariri’s assassination that might be deemed suspicious, such as the quick removal of the vehicles destroyed in the bombing that killed the former prime minister. Sayyed conceded there were a lot of mistakes but maintained there had been no foul play by the Lebanese authorities. “I don’t see that any of the institutions were intentionally trying to eradicate evidence,” he said.

Sayyed resigned from his position due to political pressure shortly after the assassination. “The crime was bigger than all the institutions in place,” Sayyed said, claiming the crime scene investigators “didn’t have the right experience,” to which he attributed any mistakes made. Sayyed went so far as to accuse investigators from the IIIC of having demanded he fabricate evidence to make it seem as though the Syrian government had perpetrated the assassination. “I refused to be a false witness against Bashar Assad so [the commission] produced false witnesses against me,” Sayyed said. A number of testimonies provided to the IIIC in the early days of its investigation were subsequently revealed to be false. Sayyed said his treatment at the hands of the IIIC had changed his perceptions of international investigators. “I had the impression that the West had their own criteria, standards and ethics,” he said. “I have seen monsters … When they act in our countries they become worse.” He said he had told one IIIC investigator, “When I look into your glassy eyes I realize that Hitler isn’t dead, he’s still living in you.”

by ANSA — Lebanon has the highest number of refugees per capita in the world, hosting nearly 1.5 million refugees. In September 2017 at the UN General Assembly, Lebanese President Michel Aoun called for commencing returns of refugees from Syria without the need to ensure that returns were voluntary. “We, and virtually everybody else in […]

by the daily star.com.lb — Lebanon’s top officials discussed a response to an Israeli proposal to solve a land dispute between the two states, with Beirut saying it wants any talks to include the maritime borders as well. “Israel wants to discuss only the land borders while Lebanon wants that, in addition to Block 9,” a political source said. Block 9 is an energy block containing potential offshore oil and gas reserves, part of which has been claimed by Israel. Lebanon, which views Israel as an enemy, has an unresolved maritime border dispute with its neighbor over a triangular area of sea of around 860 square kilometers. The zone extends along the edge of three of the five offshore energy blocks that Lebanon put to tender early last year. Block 9 is 1,700 square kilometers in size, of which 145-148 square kilometers are disputed.

Israel sent the proposal to Lebanon via UNIFIL and President Michel Aoun called for a meeting with Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri and Speaker Nabih Berri to discuss a response. “Their [the Lebanese leaders’] message is clear that they will not accept negotiations without including Block 9,” the political source added. General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim is leading on Lebanon’s position and the Lebanese Army officials that partake in the tripartite meetings between Lebanon and Israel headed by UNIFIL report back to him. Few details of the meeting were revealed by attendees, however. Berri confirmed the talks touched on the border demarcations without going into further details. Hariri spoke to reporters, saying, “We are trying to be positive in working toward making progress with regards to the land and maritime border demarcations, and this meeting took place at the request of President Aoun to unify our thoughts and a decision to this topic.”