BEIRUT (Sputnik) — Buses with Syrian militants and their families who were staying in Lebanese refugee camps crossed back into Syria late on Wednesday, sources with Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement told Sputnik. Members of Jabhat Fatah al Sham terror group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front were granted safe passage to Syria through the mountainous Aarsal region […]

By Susan B. Glasser, Article represents opinion of the author and does not represent khazen.org

Russia won in Syria thanks to President Barack Obama’s inaction. The Middle East unraveling of the past decade is due in no small part to America not listening to her allies in the region. Never mind President Donald Trump’s Muslim-bashing rhetoric, he may just be a better partner. For months, leaders of America’s Arab allies in the Mideast have telegraphed this view of the world, and it helps explain why the gilded palaces of the troubled, war-torn region are the few places on the planet — outside Russia — where Trump has been more popular than the president he succeeded.This is the case Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri laid out in an exclusive interview for The Global Politico at the end of a weeklong visit to Washington. The tone was measured, but taken together his comments amount to a striking and stark indictment of Obama and much recent U.S. policy in the Middle East. “The unfortunate consequence of not acting” there, Hariri argued, has been Russia’s restoration as a regional heavyweight, the resurrection of Bashar Assad’s bloody regime in Syria and the failure to produce an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

“Clarity,” the prime minister said, and the hope for a more decisive approach is the reason why he and other Arab leaders prefer Trump, despite the bombast and uncertainty the first six months of his presidency have unleashed. Unstated, but by all accounts just as significant, is the expectation that Trump will take a more hawkish approach toward Syria’s backers in Iran, and Hariri repeatedly brought up concessions Obama made toward Tehran to get his nuclear deal as an example of how the U.S. lost its way in the region. Given the bloody six-year war in next-door Syria that has come close to overwhelming tiny Lebanon, sending a flood of 1.5 million refugees into a fragile nation of just 4.5 million people and putting the terrorist group ISIS right on their border, it’s a case worth listening to — even if you think it absolves the Arab world of accountability for its own actions.

FLEITA, Syria, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) — Tens of buses are ready to transfer thousands of militants and civilian refugees from Lebanon into an insurgent-held city in northern Syria. Convoys of buses entered the Lebanese side of the mountainous barrens of Qalamoun region in western Syria on Tuesday, as part of a deal between the Lebanese […]

BEIRUT, July 31 (Xinhua) — A Lebanese warplane struck the Islamic State group (IS) posts in the outskirts of Ras Baalbeck Monday, which resulted in injuries of the militants, the local LBCI TV reported. The strikes come following reports that the Lebanese Army has reinforced areas around the northeastern towns of Ras Baalbeck and Al-Qaa […]

by  Philip Issa, The Associated Press –  BEIRUT – Hezbollah and a Syrian affiliate to Al-Qaida exchanged the bodies of dead fighters along the Lebanese-Syrian border on Sunday in the first stage of an agreement to restore order to a contested frontier zone. The al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front is expected to leave the border region in the coming stages, following two weeks of battles with Hezbollah and the Syrian army. But the Front announced Sunday it had captured three Hezbollah fighters, one day after Hezbollah admitted a group had gone missing in the Arsal border region. It was not immediately clear whether the revelation would affect the deal underway to resettle the Fatah al-Sham Front. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah handed over the bodies of nine al-Qaida fighters in exchange for the bodies of five of its own, according to the Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station. Lebanese Red Cross spokesman George Kattani says a woman and child were also handed over to the al-Qaida affiliate, known as the Nusra Front and recently rebranded as Fatah al-Sham Front. The exchange, like the battles that preceded it, underscores Hezbollah’s clout in regional affairs as it clears the border of al-Qaida and Islamic State group militants, with the Lebanese government largely a bystander. U.S. President Donald Trump credited the Lebanese government with standing up to Hezbollah, last week, but the Lebanese Army assumed a defensive position behind Hezbollah lines in the course of the battles in the Arsal badlands. Hezbollah is also a member of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s government. The U.S. classifies Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The Syrian military provided air support to Hezbollah’s ground operations around Arsal.

Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a speech Wednesday his fighters fought “shoulder to shoulder” with Syrian soldiers on the Syrian side of the border. Twenty-six Hezbollah fighters and between 47 and 90 Al-Qaida fighters were killed in the fighting, Hezbollah media officials told reporters on a tour of the Arsal badlands on Saturday. The fighting ended with a cease-fire Thursday for negotiations to allow refugees, fighters, and family members to leave to Syria’s northwest Idlib province, leaving Hezbollah and the Lebanese and Syrian states in control of this corner of the border. Up to 9,000 Syrians could be seeking resettlement, al-Manar reported.

Editor: Mu Xuequan – BEIRUT, July 28 (Xinhua) — Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun stressed Friday that Lebanon was fully committed to the implementation of all the provisions of United Nations’ Security Council Resolution 1701. According to a statement by the presidential media office, Aoun told UN Special Coordinator Sigrid Kaag that “our country is fully […]

by https://phys.org –  In the most recent whole-genome study of ancient remains from the Near East, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute scientists and their collaborators sequenced the entire genomes of 4,000-year-old Canaanite individuals who inhabited the region during the Bronze Age, and compared these to other ancient and present-day populations. The results, published today (27 July) in the American Journal of Human Genetics suggest that present-day Lebanese are direct descendants of the ancient Canaanites.The Near East is often described as the cradle of civilisation. The Bronze Age Canaanites, later known as the Phoenicians, introduced many aspects of society that we know today – they created the first alphabet, established colonies throughout the Mediterranean and were mentioned several times in the Bible.  However, historical records of the Canaanites are limited. They were mentioned in ancient Greek and Egyptian texts, and the Bible which reports widespread destruction of Canaanite settlements and annihilation of the communities. Experts have long debated who the Canaanites were genetically, what happened to them, who their ancestors were and if they had any descendants today.

In the first study of its kind, scientists have uncovered the genetics of the Canaanite people and a firm link with people living in Lebanon today. The team discovered that more than 90 per cent of present-day Lebanese ancestry is likely to be from the Canaanites, with an additional small proportion of ancestry coming from a different Eurasian population. Researchers estimate that new Eurasian people mixed with the Canaanite population about 2,200 to 3,800 years ago at a time when there were many conquests of the region from outside.