BEIRUT: When Nadine Abi Nasr and her Italian fiance Marco decided to have a civil marriage, they turned to a travel agency for help to escape Lebanon’s tangled bureaucracy and strict religious rules. Nadia Travel provided them with a tailor-made package and return tickets for the 30-minute flight to the nearby east Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where the couple tied the knot.
Despite a long-running campaign by civic groups, civil weddings still have no legal basis in Lebanon, a tiny country of around four million people who belong to 18 different religious communities, mainly Christian and Muslim.
The Lebanese authorities recognize civil weddings only if they have been registered abroad, but such ceremonies are banned from taking place inside the country because of strong opposition from religious leaders.
Religious faiths have their own regulations governing marriage, divorce and inheritance, and mixed Christian-Muslim weddings in Lebanon are frowned upon and downright discouraged unless one of the potential spouses converts.
Here’s the full list of countries polled, accompanied by opinion results on whether Obama “will do the right thing in world affairs”: U.S. (74), Canada (88), Britain (86), France (91), Germany (93), Spain (72), Poland (62), Russia (37), Turkey (33), Egypt (42), Jordan (31), Lebanon (46), Palestinian territories (56), China (62), India (77), Indonesia (71), Japan (85), Pakistan (13), South Korea (81), Argentina (61), Brazil (76), Mexico (55), Kenya (94), Nigeria (88).
The Survey did not cover Syria, but in Lebanon there are some interesting trends. For one thing, the Favorability rating here (now at 55%) for the United States has been steadily climbing, although not by much, which seems to support the notion that Lebanon has long been an outlying proponent of George W. Bush in the region. (In 2005, Bush helped encourage Lebanon’s effort to oust Syrian troops from the country.) Lebanon emerges as the only polled country which gave Bush a higher confidence rating than Bin Laden among its Muslim citizens in recent years, although this surely relates as much to Bush’s support for the anti-Syrian movement as it does to so much of the Muslim population’s support here for Nasrallah. No room for Bin Laden’s shenanigans here.
Other points:
-The Obama support is highly polarized: “Only 2% of Lebanese Shia express a positive attitude toward the U.S., barely an improvement from last year’s 0%. But a remarkably high 90% of Lebanese Sunni hold a positive view of the U.S., up from 62% in 2008. Sunnis now have more favorable views of the U.S. than the country’s Christian population – 66% of Lebanese Christians express a positive opinion of the U.S., down from 75% in 2008.”
-Lebanon shows some of the most dramatic change in its Muslim citizens’ response to a question about whether suicide bombing is ever justified. In 2002, 72% of the country’s Muslims answered yes; today that figure is 38%.
'Some 30,000 tourists from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates arrived via Syria on Sunday,' an official at the Masnaa border checkpoint told the German Press Agency, dpa. The Ministry of Tourism expects 2 million Arabs and other nationalities to come by the end of 2009. 'This will be a record,' said tourism ministry director Nada Sardouk. About 1.3 million tourists visited Lebanon in 2008, up 30 per cent from the previous year, the ministry's records show. An official at Beirut International Airport told dpa that planes are arriving packed with tourists from Gulf states. 'I can say people are flocking into the country to spend their summer vacations, and our airport staff are working around the clock to speed up their entry,' he said. The tourism boom is visible in the capital's hotels, beach resorts and restaurants.
Pierre Achkar, head of Lebanon's Hotel Association, said occupancy in most hotels in Beirut reached to 90 per cent in mid-July. Car rental owners are also delighted with business. 'This is a season the likes of which we have never witnessed before,' said Ali Chabani, owner of a taxi and car rental firm. I can say Beirut is reclaiming its position as the Jewel of the Middle East for tourists from he Arab world and Europe,' Sardouk said. This year's summer festivals, which include famous names like rock group Deep Purple, have also added to the attractions for visitors. Nada Attayeh, a Jordanian national, said she came to Lebanon to see her favourite group perform in the ancient city of Baalbeck.
'I bought my tickets two months ago to watch Deep Purple play on July 25. At the same time I came to enjoy the nightlife in Beirut,' she said. Famous bars and restaurants are crowded with visitors who usually stay well into the night, dancing and enjoying the music. 'We are fully booked every day until the end of September,' a waiter at the famous open-air dance club Sky Bar told dpa. La Creperie restaurant located at the sea front of Kaslik overlooking the bay of Jounieh is also receving many tourists daily from European countries, Arab, Americas and Australia has informed us their manager: "It is just different from any other previous year where tourists are not only the Lebanese from aborad but it is Arabs, Europeans Americans from all over"
(AFP) – 47 minutes ago
BEIRUT — The United States has pledged another 30 million dollars to the rebuilding of a Palestinian refugee camp destroyed in a battle between Islamists and the Lebanese army, a UN refugee agency said on Monday.
"The amount of 25 million dollars (18 million euros) will be allocated towards the reconstruction of Nahr al-Bared camp and five million dollars (four million euros) towards the Relief and Early Recovery Appeal," said the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
The grant raises to 71.8 million dollars (51 million euros) the amount donated by the United States to the reconstruction of the camp in north Lebanon that was almost completely destroyed in a 15-week battle between the army and an Al-Qaeda-inspired militant group in 2007.
The UN refugee agency has collected over 92 million dollars (65 million euros) of the estimated 450 million dollars (290 million euros) needed to rebuild the camp and 15 nearby villages.
More than 400 people, including 168 soldiers, were killed in the Nahr al-Bared battles and the camp's 31,000 residents were transferred to nearby camps, some of whom have since returned.
BEIRUT, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said Monday that his ministry is cooperating with the army and the UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to investigate Saturday's clashes in south Lebanon, local LBC TV reported.
"The Lebanese Foreign Ministry is carrying out necessary contacts with army officers, while the investigation is still going on" about the incident between UNIFIL and the residents of Khirbet Selm village Saturday, Salloukh said.
About 14 UNIFIL soldiers were wounded on Saturday when Lebanese Shiite protesters prevented them from searching a location suspected of containing arms.
Salloukh said the "UNIFIL did not coordinate with the Lebanese army when it entered the village for search, thinking that the army was already deployed there," adding "but today coordination is present between them."
Ammunition depot in an abandoned house in the village of Khirbet Selm, 20 kilometers from the Israeli border, exploded on Tuesday in an area widely seen under control of Shiite Lebanese group of Hezbollah.
The UNIFIL patrols were attacked by around 100 protesters from Khirbet Selm village. They hurled stones to the windows of UNIFIL vehicles and the two sides were engaged in fistfights.
However, military sources told As-Safier daily Monday that "UNIFIL had no right, under UN resolution 1701, to raid houses or set up checkpoints without prior coordination with the Lebanese army."
"We, as civil society organizations, want to confirm the existence of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons," said Ghazi Aad, founder of Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE), an NGO which has longed worked to uncover the fate of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons. Parents and relatives of Lebanese citizens who disappeared between 1975 and 2005 gathered around 10:30 a.m. next to the presidential palace in Baabda, where Moallem was expected to arrive. Many protestors held pictures of their detained or lost relatives as well as banners with slogans written in Arabic such as "no [diplomatic] relations before the return [of the Lebanese held in Syrian prisons]" or "not only are there [prisoners] in Israel, but in Syria as well." As Moallem's convoy was about to reach the presidential palace, demonstrators tried to block the road and were aggressively pushed and beaten up by LAF forces. Some demonstrators suffered wounds as a result. In a news conference after his parliamentary bloc's meeting on Monday, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said clashes between demonstrators and the LAF "were truly unfortunate," adding that the new government would "double efforts" to uncover the fate of detainees in Syrian prisons issue as "the fate of these missing people could not be ignored." According to a researcher with Human Rights Watch, Nadim Houri, who took part in Monday's protest, the demonstrators were "violently pushed by the LAF who used the bottoms of their rifles" to move the crowd away. He said that none of the protesters was armed, so there was "no need to resort to such kind of violence." Houri told The Daily Star that mothers of detainees were violently pushed in the process, saying that the "LAF ought to adopt strict guidelines that ban the use of violence to disperse demonstrators." Meanwhile, Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said after a meeting of his Reform and Change parliamentary bloc on Monday that a Lebanese minister of state should be assigned the duty of following up on the issue of Lebanese detainees in Syria.
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a member of the anti-Syrian majority in parliament, said he hoped Muallem's comments were not just "empty promises". "The minimum acceptable would be to cancel the Syrian-Lebanese Higher Council as well as unfair accords involving Lebanon that must be reconsidered from scratch," Jumblatt said in a statement as the foreign minister left. The council was born from a 1991 "friendship and cooperation" treaty which effectively formalised Syria's role as powerbroker in Lebanon. The plans to establish ties were announced at a summit in Paris on July 13 that marked Assad's return to the international stage after several years of diplomatic isolation over the Hariri assassination.
(AFP) - Israeli security officials warned on Thursday that Lebanese murderer Samir Kantar, who was freed in a prisoner swap after nearly three decades behind bars, should now fear for his own life. "Every terrorist who committed an act of terror against Israel, especially someone like Kantar, who killed a little child and two other people, is a target," one of the officials told AFP. "If there is a chance for Israel to close the file on Kantar, Israel won't hesitate," he added, speaking on condition of anonymity. Kantar, who turns 46 next week, was just 17 when he was sentenced to five life terms for a 1979 triple murder in one of the most notorious attacks in Israeli history. He was convicted of killing a police officer, a civilian and a four-year-old girl, whose skull he was accused of crushing with his rifle butt, in a raid in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. Kantar, the longest-serving Arab prisoner in Israel, was freed on Wednesday along with four Hezbollah fighters captured in the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite guerrilla group. Another security official said Kantar "has become a target for killing." "Now that he is out of jail, we have no obligation towards Kantar, a loathsome murderer whose accounts will be settled in the end," the unnamed official told the top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
AABEY, Lebanon (AFP) - Samir Kantar said on Thursday he had no regrets over the triple murder three decades ago that put him behind bars. I haven't for even one day regretted what I did," he told AFP as he arrived at his family home in the Druze village of Aabey, southeast of Beirut, where he was given a hero's welcome. "On the contrary I remain committed to my political convictions." Kantar, who turns 46 on July 22, was just 17 when he was sentenced to five life terms for a 1979 triple murder in one of the most notorious attacks in Israeli history. I feel enormous joy because I have returned to the ranks of the resistance and to my family," he said with defiance, dressed in a Hezbollah military uniform. People showered Kantar with rice and flower petals as he neared his humble home, where two men sacrificed a lamb in his honour. "A 16-year-old is different to a 46-year-old but his facial expressions and his smile are the same," his step-mother Siham Kantar, 71, told AFP. Druze leaders Walid Jumblatt and Talal Arslan as well as Labour Minister Mohamed Fneish, a member of Hezbollah, took part in the ceremonies in Aabey, lauding Kantar as a hero of the resistance. He was released by Israel along with four Hezbollah fighters on Wednesday in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured in a deadly cross-border raid by the Shiite guerrilla group two years ago. Funerals were held for the two soldiers on Thursday. Their capture sparked a 34-day war between Hezbollah and Israel in which more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and over 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed. "We are very happy on this beautiful day, this is a victory for Lebanon and the national resistance," said Yusra Khaddaj, 39, as she stood with her three young daughters on the road leading to Aabey. "Samir Kantar is the son of all the Lebanese," she added. One banner along the road leading to Aabey read: "From Palestine, to Iraq to Lebanon, the resistance is victorious." Israel on Wednesday also handed over the remains of 199 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters killed in recent years. Hundred of supporters threw rose petals and rice and some cheered as four tractor-trailers carrying the bodies arrived in Beirut from the border town of Naqura where Wednesday's swap took place. The mothers of some of the Palestinian fighters killed in battles with Israeli troops during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war wept and tried to touch the coffins draped in Lebanese or Palestinian flags. Other family members carried pictures of their missing sons, as the bodies of the fallen fighters were unloaded from the vehicles into a schoolyard where a communal prayer was to be held for them. Hezbollah has dubbed the swap "the Radwan operation" after the alias used by notorious Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughnieh, who was killed in a bombing in Syria in February blamed on Israel. Kantar visited Mughnieh's tomb in Hezbollah's stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut before heading to his village. His release and return to a jubilant hero's welcome in Lebanon drew condemnation in Israel, where security officials warned he was now a target for killing. "Every terrorist who committed an act of terror against Israel, especially someone like Kantar, who killed a little child and two other people, is a target," one official told AFP.
BEIRUT Middle east online - Lebanon's new telecommunications minister on Thursday accused Israel of bombarding Lebanese people with threatening phone calls, a day after a prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah. "Hundreds of people throughout Lebanon received threatening phone calls on their landlines from Israel," Gibran Bassil said. "The phone would ring, the person would answer and they would hear a message saying, 'This is from the state of Israel. Abandon Hezbollah or there will be another war, like there was in 2006,'" he said. Bassil, a member of the Free Patriotic Movement, the main Christian party in the opposition, said he has written a letter of protest to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. "We consider this to be a clear violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701," Bassil said, referring to the resolution which ended the devastating 34-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah. No comment was immediately available from Israel. Many Lebanese had received similar phone messages urging them not to support Hezbollah during the course of the war which killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. The news comes a day after the bodies of two Israeli soldiers were exchanged for five Lebanese prisoners and the remains of almost 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters.
Five Lebanese prisoners freed by Israel arrived to a hero's welcome in Lebanon Wednesday, hours after Hizbullah handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers seized two years ago. They were then flown by helicopters to Beirut, where they were accorded a red-carpet welcome by Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, the entire Cabinet and a host of lawmakers and religious leaders. The five - Kontar and Hizbullah fighters Khaled Zidan, Maher Kourani, Mohammad Srour and Hussein Suleiman - stood on a platform as Sleiman spoke before shaking hands with politicians lined up to greet them. "Your return is a new victory and the future in your presence will be a path in which we will realize the sovereignty of our territory and the liberty of our people," Sleiman said. "I tell Samir and his companions that they have a right to be proud of their country, their army and their resistance." Kontar kissed his mother, Siham, 71, after the meet and greet with the politicians as crowds and the media swarmed around him. His mother had burst into tears earlier while waiting at the airport when she was told her son had arrived in Naqoura and was indeed free after more than 28 years in jail. "I never gave up hope for a day," she said, choked by emotion. "This moment makes up for 30 years of waiting. I want to hug and kiss him. My only wish is to see him." The four freed Hizbullah fighters were captured in the July-August 2006 war. They and Kontar were the last remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israel. "This new victory completes the victory of the July war," Kontar told Hizbullah television Al-Manar. Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech in Beirut's southern suburbs, where tens of thousands of people gathered Wednesday evening to hail his success in emptying Israeli jails of Lebanese prisoners. The five prisoners were released in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured on July 12, 2006. The fate of the two soldiers was not known until their bodies were returned to Israel Wednesday morning. "Today we hand over Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev," Hizbullah official Wafiq Safa said in Naqoura, as men placed two black coffins on the ground amid a crowd of onlookers. The mood in Israel had been sombre as it waited to learn the fate of Goldwasser and Regev.
LEBANON/ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) - Israel handed over five Lebanese prisoners to Hezbollah via the Red Cross on Wednesday after the group returned the bodies of two Israeli soldiers seized in a cross-border raid in 2006. Among the men who arrived at the border in an International Committee of the Red Cross convoy was Samir Qantar, Israel's longest-serving Lebanese prisoner. Wearing jeans and a grey sweater, he was mobbed by reporters and well-wishers on arrival. Hezbollah has prepared a triumphal welcome for the five men freed under a deal seen by many Israelis as a painful necessity, two years after the two soldiers' capture sparked a 34-day war that killed about 1,200 people in Lebanon and 159 Israelis. Israel retrieved the corpses of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev only after agreeing to release Qantar, who had been serving a life term for the deaths of four Israelis, in a 1979 Palestinian guerrilla raid on an Israeli town.
Hezbollah also received the bodies of almost 200 people, including the body of Dalal al-Maghrebi, a female fighter with the Palestinian Fatah movement. Before the exchange there had been speculation that at least one of the Israeli soldiers had been alive, but Hezbollah TV confirmed that both were dead. Two coffins containing the bodies were taken in Red Cross vehicles across the border from Lebanon into Israel to be identified. 'Difficult decision' The prisoners were brought across the border in a convoy of four International Committee of the Red Cross vehicles and were greeted by Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah's chief prisoner swap negotiator."The Israeli cabinet agonised over it [the exchange] and voted in favour of it against the advice of the Israeli intelligence service ... which thinks it will only encourage kidnappings," David Chater, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Israel, said. "But the bulk of Israeli public opinion is behind this deal," he said, reporting from Rosh Hanikra - the Israeli side of the border - where he said there was a strong military presence ahead of the exchange. Miri Eisin, a former aide to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said Israel found the release of Kuntar an "incredibly difficult decision". "Today in Israel we are mainly reflecting on the price we pay in our country to defend our borders," she told Al Jazeera. At the family home of reservist Regev, a crowd of about 50 mourners gathered and his family wept, seeing their son's coffin displayed on television for the first time. "Eldad! Eldad! What have they done to you?" Hana, Regev's aunt, said.
The four others are Hezbollah fighters captured in the 2006 conflict. All five were to be flown to Beirut ahead of a huge Hezbollah rally to welcome them in the evening. President Michel Suleiman, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri were all expected to greet the former captives at the airport in a show of unity in Lebanon, which marked the occasion with a public holiday. The ICRC drove the five released men to the headquarters of U.N. peacekeepers at the border village of Naqoura, where Hezbollah earlier handed over two black coffins containing the Israeli soldiers. The Israeli army later said forensic teams had identified the cadavers as those of its missing men. Hezbollah had never disclosed whether they were alive or dead. It has not been clear how they met their deaths. "The Israeli side will now hand over the great Arab mujahid (holy warrior) ... Samir Qantar and his companions to the ICRC," Hezbollah official Wafik Safa said after delivering the bodies.
PARIS (AFP) - Lebanon and Syria have agreed to establish diplomatic relations, opening embassies in each others' capitals for the first time since their independence from colonial rule. French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the landmark decision Saturday following talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, whose election in May ended a drawn-out political crisis in Lebanon. "For France, this is historic progress," Sarkozy told a press conference. "Of course there are a number of legal questions that have to be settled... but for us... this announcement is absolutely historic. It is great news for all those who love Lebanon and are concerned by developments there," he said. Presidents Assad and Sleiman confirmed the news at a joint press conference later on Saturday. "Our position is that there is no problem for the opening of embassies between Syria and Lebanon," said Assad. "If Lebanon is willing to exchange embassies, we have no objections to doing it," he added. For Lebanon, Sleiman confirmed that the two governments were going to "work together to put everything in motion as soon as possible."
by Rana Moussaoui AYTARUN, Lebanon (AFP) - The large building near the border with Israel was already earmarked to be a green pioneer in Lebanon when it was blown apart by two missiles during the short sharp summer war of 2006. Now the demolished building has been rebuilt -- and with it a ground-breaking environmental project has risen from its own ashes. In a country with serious waste management problems, the war-ravaged small town of Aytarun in the south lies in the vanguard of recycling, setting an example it is hoped will be followed by others. Located just metres (yards) from the frontier, Aytarun was devastated by the 34-day war two years ago. On the village's edge is the Centre for Solid Waste Management a 700-square-metre (875-square-yard) structure rebuilt with Italian assistance after the conflict.
The centre refuses to dump any waste at all. "Everything is recycled, nothing is thrown away," says Ziad Abichaker of Cedar Environmental, a group that specialises in recycling technology. "We wanted to create the example of a rural town which not only gets rid of its waste but also uses it to benefit organic agriculture. "Some things are stored as we research and develop outlets for them," Abichaker adds, saying shoes can be used in a special cement for the manufacture of public benches. The facility's five employees patiently sort through potato peelings, plastic bottles and old clothing before recycling proper can begin. In many rural areas of Lebanon municipalities burn solid waste, causing an unbearable stench and often sparking wildcat forest fires. "People did not like the smell of burning rubbish. This project is a blessing for them," Abichaker says of the traditional method of incineration. Sawsan Bou Fakhreddine of the Association for Forests, Development and Conservation says domestic waste forms 90 percent of all the country's rubbish.
The opposition took the coveted posts of foreign minister, telecommunications minister and deputy premier in the new Cabinet, while the ruling bloc kept the Finance Ministry. The president, who himself only took office four days after the Doha accord, filling a post left vacant since November, made three appointments, including Elias Murr, who kept the defense portfolio despite opposition reservations. He also appointed lawyer and electoral law expert Ziyad Baroud to head the Interior Ministry, which will be responsible for organizing legislative elections next year. Finance Minister Mohammad Shatah, who was appointed by the ruling bloc, served as Siniora's senior adviser in the previous cabinet. The government includes one woman, MP Bahia Hariri, sister of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. She is to head the Education Ministry. Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun, whose party had not been represented in the previous government, took four posts in the new one, plus the deputy premiership. Hizbullah was allocated three seats in the Cabinet, but only one of them went to a Hizbullah member - Labor Minister Mohammad Fneish.
by Omar Ibrahim TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) - Deadly gunbattles between rival sectarian factions in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli ended Thursday as the army reinforced troop numbers to shore up a fragile ceasefire, an AFP correspondent said. Fighting that erupted late on Tuesday in the northeastern Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen districts of the port city died down early Thursday when dozens of army vehicles moved into the flashpoint areas. The fighting, which claimed the lives of four people and left 58 wounded, had raged into the flashpoint areas. The fighting, which claimed the lives of four people and left 58 wounded, had raged into the night despite a ceasefire that was supposed to come into effect at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT) on Wednesday "In order to put an end to the breach of residents' security, the army command has announced that it is reinforcing its presence in the sensitive areas," an army statement said. "The army will confront those who fire first and calls on all parties to show calm and allow the military to take control of the situation," it added.
Militants armed with rockets, sniper rifles and grenades fought in the streets on Wednesday, causing panicked residents to flee and shops and schools to close. The dead included two brothers killed by snipers, a Palestinian nurse and a resident of the Jabal Mohsen district which is dominated by members of the Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, which support the opposition. The latest unrest followed the eruption of similar battles two weeks ago in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city after the capital Beirut, that left nine people dead and dozens wounded.
by Omar Ibrahim TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) - Four people were killed and dozens wounded in street battles between rival sectarian camps armed with rockets, sniper rifles and grenades in the north Lebanese city of Tripoli on Wednesday. Panicked residents were fleeing the scene of the fighting which first erupted late on Tuesday in two districts of northeastern Tripoli, while several roads were blocked and local shops and schools were closed, an AFP correspondent said. A security official said four people were killed and another 58 were wounded in the violence, which followed the eruption of similar battles two weeks ago in the port city that left nine people dead and dozens wounded. The latest fighting comes amid continued efforts by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora to form a national unity government which have been hampered by bickering between rival factions over cabinet posts. Fighting raged on a main road separating the areas of Bab al-Tebbaneh -- where most residents are Sunni supporters of the Western-backed premier -- and Jabal Mohsen, which is dominated by members of the Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
The two sides announced that they had agreed to observe a cease-fire from 8 p.m. and allow the deployment of the army in the two neighborhoods affected by the fighting. "The army will deploy to maintain security and prevent any armed presence," said a statement released after indirect negotiations between the two sides held under the auspices of the Sunni mufti of North Lebanon, Sheikh Malek al-Shaar. Later on Wednesday, the Lebanese Armed Forces warned gunmen on both sides that soldiers would fire on them if they were seen on the streets after 9 p.m., security officials said. The army was sending reinforcements to the area. President Michel Suleiman and other officials have been consulting with Shaar, who has acted as a mediator between the two sides since the fighting broke out several weeks ago. Panicked residents were fleeing the scene of the fighting which erupted again late on Tuesday in two districts of northeastern Tripoli, while several roads were blocked and local shops and schools were closed.
هل تخفق النخبةُ كما فشِل السياسيون
النهار في 30 حزيران 2008
سجعان قزي
حين يتحدّث البعضُ عن الـنُـخبة يظـنّها جنساً مُجتمعـيّـاً ممـيَّـزاً، ويَضعُها آلـيّـاً في مواجهةِ الشعب (متفوِّقـة عليه) والطاقمِ السياسيّ (أكفأ منه)، في حين أنّ الـنـخبةَ تنتمي إلى كلّ فئات الشعبِ وطبقاته. ولا قيمةَ إضافية للنخبة إلا مِقدار ما تساهمُ في التقدِّم العام وتلتزمُ مسؤوليةَ نهضةِ المجتمع. الـنُـخبةُ ليست طبقةً بل نوعـيّـة، والـنُـخبويّ ليس مُبشِّراً بل قُدوة.
بين أفضلِ عشرِ شخصيات نُخبويّـة اختارها الفرنسيّـون العامَ الماضي، لم يَرِد اسمُ أيِّ شخصيّـة سياسيّـة مع أنّ السياسيّين الفرنسيّين، عموماً، نخبويّون بامتياز. بَرز طاهٍ وكاتبٌ وموسيقار وتقنيّ ومهندس معماري وفـنّـانٌ تشكيلي ومُخرج سينمائي. وعام 2006، صنّـفت مجلةُ فوربس Forbes العالمية الطاهي الفرنسي ألان دوكاس Alain Ducasse ضُمن أهمِ مئةِ شخصٍ مؤثّرين في العالم.
النخبة إذن متعدِّدةُ الطاقاتِ والمستويات وعابرةُ كلّ المهن: هناك النخبُ الفقيرة والغنـيّـة، الأكاديمـيّـة والنقابيّـة. هناك النخب التقليديّـة والتجديديّـة، الدينـيّـة والعَلمانـيّـة. هناك النخب الشعبيّـة والبورجوازيّـة، المدينيّـة والمناطقـيّـة. هناك النخب اليمينـيّـة واليساريّـة، العسكريّـة والأمنـيّـة. هناك نخبٌ تَستهويها السياسةُ سبيلاً إلى عملٍ وطنيّ، وأخرى تتلـهّـف إلى السياسة شَغفاً بوجاهة. هناك نخبٌ تحبّ الشأن العامَّ كجُزءٍ من عملٍ اجتماعيٍّ وإنساني، وأخرى تُفضِّل الشأن الخاص رافداً يَصبُّ في الازدهار العام. وهناك "نخبٌ" تَجـتَـرُّ أنانـيّـتَها ونرجسيّـتَها وتعيش في عالمٍ آخر: نيرفانا التفاهة.
BEIRUT: Lebanon expects over 1.3 million tourists this year thanks to the positive political atmosphere following the election of a new president, outgoing Tourism Minister Joe Sarkis said Friday. The minister made the remarks during a tour of Rafik Hariri International Airport, adding that most of the hotels in Beirut and the mountain are fully booked. According to the figures released by Rafik Hariri International Airport, arriving passengers totaled 598,392 in the first five months of the year, while departing passengers amounted to a higher 633,255.
The minister said Lebanon is heading toward a promising tourism season, adding that the Tourism Ministry plans to launch widespread media campaign to encourage foreigners and Arabs to visit Lebanon. "Once a new government is formed, I expect Lebanon to experience a steady rise in the number of visitors," he said. In 2007, less than a million visitors arrived in Lebanon and authorities said most of the arrivals were Lebanese working in oil rich Gulf states and Africa.
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel received a report from Hezbollah hat an Israeli airman reported missing in Lebanon since 1986 has been dead for more than 10 years, the Haaretz daily reported on Friday. Israel had demanded that the militia provide a report on the fate of navigator Ron Arad as a precondition for a prisoner swap expected to take place in about 10 days. In the report Hezbollah describes its efforts to locate Arad, says it failed to find him but concludes he has been dead for more than a decade, the daily said. The report was passed to Ofer Dekel, the Israeli negotiator in the prisoner swap talks that are being held through a UN mediator.
As part of the deal Israel delivered a report on the fate of four Iranian diplomats who disappered in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, saying that the men were dead. It said they were killed by a Christian militia in Lebanon after being stopped at a roadblock, and that it was unclear where their remains are. Iran's embassy in Lebanon insisted on Thursday that the four are still alive and being held in Israel. The exchange of reports was the first step in a deal under which Hezbollah will hand over the remains of two Israeli soldiers in exchange for prisoners. Hezbollah is to release the remains of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev whom the Israeli authorities say died after they were captured by Hezbollah in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a 34-day war in Lebanon. In exchange Israel will free five jailed Lebanese prisoners, among them Samir Kantar, a Palestine Liberation Front militant serving a 542-year sentence for the brutal killing of two men and a four-year-old girl in a 1979 raid on northern Israel.
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman has set July 9 as a deadline to conclude the formation of a new government in the country, well informed sources were quoted by Xinhua news agency. The president is due to leave for Paris on July 12 to participate in the international conference on Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, the report added, hinting that a new government should be formed before the president leaves. Over five weeks have passed since designated-Prime Minister Fouad Seniora was assigned by the president to form a national unity government, but all efforts were fruitless as Lebanese leaders were unable to reach an agreement on the cabinet line-up.
Sources close to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who is in the opposition camp, told a local daily Star that "Prime Minister Seniora' s performance with respect to forming the cabinet lacks transparency." Meanwhile, the ruling majority is accusing Christian opposition Leader MP Michel Aoun of being responsible for the cabinet deadlock because of his demands to get certain key portfolios. The Doha agreement reached on May 21 resulted in the election of a new president after six months of vacancy in the seat. The second phase of the agreement called for the formation of a national unity government, a step that is not implemented yet.
BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's Byblos Festival will still go ahead this weekend despite continuing political tensions and security worries in the country, the organisers said on Friday. The Mediterranean country's usually vibrant cultural scene has been massively curtailed since last year's devastating war
But in Byblos, the show will go on, albeit with fewer stars on the bill than originally planned."We have decided to go ahead with the festival, having considered cancelling it like the other festivals, because of the uncertain atmosphere," festival communications director Mona Hakim told AFP.Festivities kick off on Saturday with a concert by French rockers Nouvelle Vague in the ancient Phoenecian fortress of Jbail, 38 kilometres (24 miles) north of Beirut Italian tenor Alessandro Safina will give two recitals on August 2 and 3, while a Lebanese opera about Zenobie, the legendary queen of Palmyria, will be shown from August 15 to 19.
على اللبنانيين اخراج وطنهم من سياسة المحاور الاقليمية والدولية"الخازن: مؤتمر سان كلو اعاد التواصل وخلق اجواء ايجابيـــــةوالحـــــل الامثل حكومــــة وحدة تمهد للاستحقاق الرئاسي
المركزية - اعتبر عضو تكتل "التغيير والاصلاح" النائب الدكتور فريد الخازن ان "مؤتمر سان كلو خلق الاجواء الايجابية واعاد التواصل بين الاطراف"، داعياً الى "ضرورة دعم المبادرات لحل الازمة". وشدد على "اهمية قيام حكومة وحدة وطنية تمهد للانتخابات الرئاسية".ولفت الى ان "الحل الامثل للازمة ككل هو عمل اللبنانيين على اخراج وطنهم من سياسة التجاذب والمحاور الاقليمية والدولية".كلام النائب الخازن جاء في حديث الى اذاعة "صوت لبنان"، حيث قال: "سان كلو خلق مناخا حواريا وتواصلا والسقف الذي كان موضوعا كان واضحا قبل المؤتمر وبحدود معينة ادى واعطى هذه النتيجة الايجابية وخلق هذه الاجواء، لإعادة التواصل بين الاطراف اللبنانية لكن الموضوع الاساسي هو كيف يمكن البناء على ما حصل في سان كلو وكيف يمكن متابعة الحوار والمبادرات التي تتقاطع مع سان كلو خصوصا الدور الفرنسي في هذا الموضوع".اضاف: "عمليا، هناك جانب لبناني- لبناني في سان كلو، وهناك جانب فرنسي بالنسبة الى الدور الفرنسي في متابعة الحوار وايجاد الحلول للأزمة اللبنانية. ولم يكن متوقعا ان تأتي الحلول من سان كلو لكن اليوم فرنسا مسلحة باللقاء وتواصل المبادرة، والسفير كوسران سيكمل جولاته في سوريا ومصر والسعودية، وهناك تواصل مع الجامعة العربية. ومن هذا الباب بالذات المتابعة الفرنسية اليوم بعد لقاء سان كلو سيكون لها وزن وربما تأثير اكبر عما كانت عليه قبل اللقاء".واشار الى "ان موضوع المبادرات سواء كانت فرنسية او مبادرة الجامعة العربية تتواصل، لأن الازمة في لبنان متواصلة ولأن هناك حاجة لإيجاد الحلول لها والتمهيد لوضع طبيعي يرافق الانتخابات الرئاسية بعد شهرين او ثلاثة. وهذه هي المسائل المطروحة امامنا اليوم، والحلول والطروحات معروفة سواء كان بالنسبة الى حكومة انقاذ وحكومة وحدة وطنية او بالنسبة الى موضوع الرئاسة ومن البديهي ان تتم المعالجة سواء في لبنان او في بلد آخر في العالم يواجه ازمات من هذا النوع وهي ازمة كبيرة خصوصا على خلفية الوضع الامني المتردي والتحديات الامنية المرتقبة".
"I'm worried about everything," said Elie Khalil, an employee at clothing store Oxygene. "The situation with Fatah al-Islam, the upcoming presidential elections, some are even saying there might be another war this summer ... this is not good for business at all. "The thing is people want to go out and go shopping, but they are afraid. Business has been steadily going down." Mischa Kahwagi, manager of a neighboring clothes store, painted a similar picture of muted economic activity during normally bustling summer months.
"Business has not been good at all over the last month because the customers are afraid of the bombs," Kahwagi said. "Both the Lebanese and the tourists are afraid of the situation and fear another war breaking out." One of the larger explosions that rocked the country occurred last month in an industrial area in Zouk, a few hundred meters away from the commercial center of Kaslik. The blast resulted in the death of one man and in several hundreds of thousand of dollars worth of damage.
The battle which broke out on May 20 has now cost the lives of 101 soldiers, out of a total death toll of about 200. Dozens of militants have been killed, but the exact number is unknown as the group cannot be contacted. A military spokesman said three soldiers were killed in Monday's fighting with the Al-Qaeda-inspired Sunni extremists around Nahr al-Bared.
PARIS (Reuters) - Rival Lebanese politicians met at a state-owned chateau near Paris on Saturday in a French-sponsored attempt to discuss ways of ending the 8-month-old political crisis gripping their country. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, hosting the closed-door two-day meeting at the Chateau de Celle-Saint Cloud, first addressed the gathering with a few words in Arabic.
"The minister made an opening statement and then there was a round during which everybody expressed their point of view," a ministry spokeswoman said.The delegates will dine together and resume their talks on Sunday, ending with a news conference in the evening.
About 30 politicians representing parties across Lebanon's broad political spectrum are at the meeting as well as some civic society leaders. Among the guests are representatives of Hezbollah, making its first official visit to France. "At first we planned to renounce going to Paris because such comments are biased. But a clarifying statement by the French authorities has since rectified things," Hezbollah delegation leader and former Energy Minister Mohammed Fneish told Le Figaro newspaper. The talks could only succeed if all parties accepted the others as partners, he said. "It is exceptional to be meeting again, after all the obstructions," said Ibrahim Kenaan representing General Aoun. The meetings Saturday and Sunday at La Celle Saint Cloud west of Paris mark the first time the 14 parties are meeting since a national dialogue conference in November that failed to resolve the tensions.
The talks have no set agenda. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and other French diplomats were there, but as observers, not mediators.France, Lebanon's former colonial ruler, is playing a delicate diplomatic game in the volatile region. French envoys discussed plans for the meetings with American and Iranian counterparts
The report, which was made available to the 15 members of the UN Security Council, pointed to the ongoing fighting between the Lebanese Army and Islamic militants as well as to the assassination of March 14 MP Walid Eido and the attack on a convoy of UN peacekeepers that left six of them dead in South Lebanonlast month. The report also takes note of the coming into force of the international court to try suspects in the Hariri murder in line with a Security Council resolution adopted May 30.
RABIEH, Lebanon (AFP) - Retired General Michel Aoun with less than 11 weeks to go before presidential elections, sees his candidacy as the only way out for a Lebanon deep crisis. "Maybe I am the key because I am independent, love Lebanon, and am a free man, with no foreign capital behind me ... I can be the bridge between all sides," he said. "I can't guarantee anybody else. I know my country, our politicians ... I don't want a mistake," Aoun told AFP in an interview at his villa headquarters in the affluent mountain resort of Rabieh, northeast of Beirut
The Maronite Christian opposition leader said he was opposed to a "weak" consensus candidate coming forward in a bid to break the deadlock, warning that such a scenario could spark further instability and "destroy the country."All-party talks taking place near Paris this weekend were "an opportunity for all parties to expose their points of view ... and for a possible initiative born of a synthesis," Aoun said."If we are not optimistic, why go to Paris? We have to give a chance to all initiatives," he said.Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement won a vast majority of the Christian vote in 2005 legislative elections, after Syria ended its almost three decades of military domination of Lebanon under international pressure following former premier Rafiq Hariri's murder.
Apparently trying to ease the military pressure and expand the battles outside the camp, the al-Qaida-styled militants unleashed a volley of Katyusha rockets at the army. A total of nine rockets crashed into nearby villages, as well as in orange and grape groves, security officials and the state-run National News Agency said. The rockets caused some damage but no casualties, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media."It has more a psychological effect than a military effect," said Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese army general.Fatah Islam gunmen also traded heavy fire with the troops circling them in the refugee camp, soldiers said. "They shot back with rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns," said a soldier sitting in a military jeep a few hundreds meters from the camp. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
The army had reported four soldiers died in the previous day's fighting, but a senior military official raised the death toll to six on Friday.The six soldiers, including an officer, were killed by shrapnel or gunfire during the fierce fighting Thursday when the army unleashed one of its heaviest bombardments against the Fatah Islam militants, said a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make statements.
الأسبابُ الموجِبة لبيان المطارنة
- Sejean Azzi, جريدة "النهار" في 11 تموز 2007
مَن لم يُسلِّم بأن "مجدَ لبنان أعطي له" ومَن يَسْعَ لنقلِه إلى مكانٍ آخرَ حديثٍ أو مُستَحدَث، فليُسَلِّم، على الأقل، بأن نقدَ بكركي الحكمَ حقٌّ باقٍ لها...والأقربون إلى بكركي، وهم تيّارُ السيادةِ والاستقلال، أَوْلى بالنقدِ حين يُخطِئون أو يَغضُّون الطرْفَ (لعلَّ وعسى).
لكنَّ نقدَ الأقربين لا يُخفِّفُ من أخطاءِ غيرِهم ولا يُعفيهم من مسؤوليةِ تعليقِ "مبادئِ المنفى" وتغطيةِ أسلمةِ لبنان من نافذةٍ أخرى. نعم، هناك مشاريعٌ لا مشروعٌ واحدٌ لأسلمةِ لبنان، وقد بدأت منذ اليومِ الأوّل لتطبيقِ اتفاقِ الطائف بإشرافِ الاحتلالِ السوري والحكمِ اللبناني والحكوماتِ والمجالسِ النيابيةِ المتعاقِبة.
وإذا كانت الوقايةُ خيرَ عِلاجٍ، فالتحذيرُ أفضلُ وقايةٍ من الأعظم الذي يَخشاه البطريركُ الماروني. والمفارَقةُ أنَّ مَرجِعاً دينياً (مجلس المطارنة الموارنة) يدعو إلى دولةٍ مدنيةٍ من خلالِ رفضِ مشاريعَ قوانين تُؤججُ الطائفية، بينما مَرجعاً مدنياً (الحكومة) يَعمل لمضاعفةِ الحالة الدينية. غير أنَّ هذا المرجعَ الديني، الذي أعطى مؤسسةَ قوى الأمن الداخلي مثلاً لاختلالِ التوازنِ الصيغوي، كان أصاب أيضاً وأكثر لو أعطى أمثلةً أخرى كـ مؤسسات الأمنِ العام والجيشِ والحرسِ الجمهوري وشرطةِ مجلسِ النواب والجمارك وبلديةِ بيروت وعددٍ من الوزاراتِ والإداراتِ الرسمية، ناهيكم عن الحالاتِ العسكريةِ الخارجةِ عن سلطةِ الدولةِ كحزبِ الله والمخيمات الفلسطينية.
The Baalbek Festival in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon has also been called off, Maya al-Halabi said, although no decision has been taken yet on a third festival in Byblos, to the north of Beirut. Shakira, the Colombian superstar with Lebanese roots, was to have performed in the capital as part of the Beiteddine events.He was to have conducted his orchestra at the Roman temples in Baalbek
Last summer, instead of droves of culture vultures descending on the country, tens of thousands of foreigners fled in a massive evacuation from a war that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians.Tourism Minister Joseph Sarkis had announced only two months ago that the festivals would go ahead despite a political crisis that has gripped the country since November. But the army has since been locked in a deadly battle with Islamist militants in northern Lebanon and a string of bomb blasts have struck Beirut and tourist areas."We want to change the image of Lebanon with an international media campaign in order to attract tourists again," Sarkis said in May, recalling that Lebanon had been banking in 2006 on a record year in tourism revenues.
BBC, July 9 - Lebanese troops have fought new battles with Islamist militants around a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the country, reports say. Militants fired mortars from the Nahr al-Bared camp, the official Lebanese news agency said. The army was reported to have responded with artillery fire. Militants from the Fatah al-Islam group have been besieged in the camp for seven weeks, during which time more than 200 people have been killed. The violence has been Lebanon's worst internal conflict since the end of the civil war in 1990.
Much of Nahr al-Bared has been destroyed during the fighting, in which the army has bombarded the camp in an effort to flush out the militants within. Virtually all of the residents of the camp, which was previously home to some 30,000 people, have fled their homes. Last month the government claimed victory over Fatah al-Islam, a radical Palestinian splinter group with an ideological link to al-Qaeda. But clashes have broken out sporadically since then, with an unknown number of militants remaining in the camps.
Beirut - Syria on Monday July 9 - 2007- reportedly handed over to Lebanon the stolen car used in the November 22, 2006 assassination of Lebanese industry minister Pierre Gemayel. According to a Lebanese security official the broken down Honda was found abandoned on the international highway linking Syria with Turkey. Reporting on the same story, the daily As-Safir said an insurance company that took delivery of the car handed it over to the Internal Security Forces' intelligence bureau and that after thorough examination, it was confirmed that the vehicle was used in Gemayel's murder. As-Safir said an investigation of Lebanese suspect Mohammed Merhi uncovered that the al-Qaeda-inspired group Fatah al-Islam had a hand in the murder of Gemayel, a scion of Lebanon's most prominent Christian family and a leading opponent of Syria, who was gunned down near Beirut. The leading daily An-Nahar on Saturday said that based on an interrogation with Fatah al-Islam detainees, the perpetrator of the Gemayel crime was the terrorist group led by Shaker Abssi. The as-Safir report comes a few days after other media reports that Ahmed Jebril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine- General Command also played a role in the crime.
( لو 10: 3).
يتحدّث السيد المسيح عن موجبات القيام بالرسالة، وهي تفترض، بحسب ما أعطى تلاميذه من تعليمات، الثقة بأن الله هو من يرسل المرسلين، وهو من يزوّدهم الوعي، والجرأة، والحكمة، لقول ما يجب أن يقولوه. وقد نبّههم الى ما سيجدون، لدى القيام برسالتهم، من صعوبات ، وسيلقون ما يلقاه الخراف من الذئاب. أي الاضطهاد، ونكران الجميل، واللامبالاة، أن لم يكن العداوة السافرة. وقد نبّههم الى وجوب الاعتماد على العناية الإلهية في ما يحتاجون اليه من شؤون الدنيا، لذلك قال لهم:" لا تحملوا كيسا، ولا زادا، ولا حذاء، ولا تسلّموا على أحد في الطريق". هذا يعني الاتكال في الحصول على هذه كلها، من متطلّبات الحياة اليومية، على الله وعنايته. ويضيف: اينما اتجهتم نادوا بالسلام. وبعدُ فالفاعل يستحق أجرته.
وهو يحذّر من الهوس والتطرّف، وهو ويريد في الوقت عينه أن يختبر ايمان الرسل . ومن أراد السلام لسواه، عليه قبل كلّ أن يضع السلام في قلبه. وعسير على الانسان أن يقترب من انسان آخر ان لم يكن السلام في قلبه. ولا يستطيع أحد أن يضع السلام في قلوب الآخرين ان لم يضعه أولا في قلبه.
واذا أردنا اشاعة السلام في مجتمعنا، كان لزاما علينا أن نضع هذا السلام في قلبنا. ومن كان السلام في قلبه، فلا تخيفه الذئاب.
وننتقل الى الكلام عن العائلة التي خرجت عن المألوف، والتي بطلت، في زعم بعضهم، أن تكون مؤسسة، كما أرادها الرب، بل أصبحت شواذا تفتقر الى الطمأنية والسلام. والعائلة في مفهومنا التقليدي هي التي أرادها الله مؤلفّة من رجل وامرأة وأولاد، وعلى الوالدين أن يعنيا بتربية أولادهما على مبادئ الدين، والأخلاق السليمة، ليستطيعوا العيش في مجتمعهم في جوّ من الإلفة، والمحبة، والتعاون المخلص، والسلام.
1- شواذات عائلية
ان هناك شواذات كثيرة تتعلّق بالعائلة منها أنه هناك، في زعم القائلين، نظرية جديدة، باستطاعة شخصين من نوع واحد أن يقوما مقام الوالدين، عن طريق التبنّي، وهذه نظرية تقول بأن الفرق بين الرجل والمرأة جنسيا لا قيمة له. ويزعمون أن المجمتع هو الذي يعطي كلا من المرأة والرجل دوره في المجتمع، وذلك ليس بفضل الطبيعة، بل بفضل نتاج الثقافة. وهذه الثقافة هي التي تعزو الى كل من الرجل والمرأة ما لهما من دور في المجتمع. وأمّا الثقافات التقليدية القديمة، فقد تخطّاها الزمن، بحسب قولهم، لا بل يجب القضاء عليها، لكونها غالبا ما تسحق المرأة في اطار الزواج التقليدي. وتحرير المرأة، يقتضي، في زعم القائلين بهذه النظرية، ثقافة جديدة تحرّرها من نير الزواج والايلاد. وهذه النظرية تضع في دائرة الجدل العلاقة القائمة بين الرجل والمرأة ضمن العائلة التي يجب أن يقوم بين أفرادها تضامن وتكافل. وهكذا تتعطّل الأدوار في العائلة القائمة على اختلاف الجنس، وهذا يحمل على تطوير ثقافة عائلية جديدة. وهي ثقافة تفضي الى الاعتراف بدور يقوم به الأشخاص الذين هم من جنس واحد.
الوضع في لبنان لن يستقيم اذا بقي البلد ساحة للتجاذب ولسياسة المحاور" فريد الخازن: الحفاظ على الاستقلال مسؤولية لبنانية بالدرجة الاولـــى
انسحبت سوريا ولم تَخرج وعادت ولن تَدخل.
جريدة "النهار" في 04 تموز 2007
مرة أخرى، يُستخدم الوجودُ الفلسطيني قاعدة لشن حرب على لبنان: دولة وكياناً ونظاماً وصيغة، إنما هذه المرة بثلاثة فوارق: الأول هو أن الجيش اللبناني، لا الأحزاب المسيحية، واجه الحرب الجديدة رغم الخلاف القائم حول شرعية المؤسسات الدستورية الرئيسية (رئاسة الجمهورية، الحكومة ومجلس النواب). الثاني هو أن جميع الطوائف اللبنانية المسيحية والإسلامية دعمت الجيش اللبناني في مقاومته رغم الانقسام السياسي الحاد بين فريقي 8 و 14 آذار. والثالث هو أن المنظمات الفلسطينية الرئيسية شجبت مشروع حركة "فتح الإسلام" رغم الانشقاق القوي بين حركتي فتح وحماس.
غير أن موقف الجيش لا يعني عودة الدولة وسقوط الدويلات، وموقف الطوائف اللبنانية لا يجسد وحدة الوطن وسقوط المشاريع الطائفية والمذهبية، وموقف المنظمات الفلسطينية لا يؤكد وحدة القرار الفلسطيني حيال لبنان وسقوط مشاريع التوطين فيه. إن الأحداث لا تزال في بداياتها وقد تتداخل فيها قريباً تطورات إقليمية ودولية تؤثر على مسارها الحالي وتكشف أبعادها وملابسات توقيت انفجارها. وما لم تحدث هذه التطورات الخارجية، ستكون سوريا، على المدى القريب، الرابح الأساسي مما يجرى في مخيم نهر البارد وفي مخيمات أخرى لاحقاً، حتى لو حسم الجيش اللبناني المعركة.
من خلال أحداث مخيم نهر البارد، نجحت سوريا في تسجيل أهداف ماهرة في أكثر من ملعب لبناني وعربي وإقليمي ودولي، أبرزها:
1. خلقت حال عدم استقرار شامل في لبنان أربكت الحكومة اللبنانية وأثارت تساؤلات حول مدى قدرتها على استباق الفتن وحكم البلاد وتوفير الأمن والسلم الأهلي ناهيكم عن السيادة الحقيقية والاستقلال الناجز.
BKIRKI: The Council of Maronite Bishops extended support on Wednesday to the Lebanese Army in its fight against Fatah al-Islam militants at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, near Tripoli. "The national cohesion and courage displayed by the Lebanese Army during indispensable fights deserves acknowledgment from all the Lebanese, especially since the army has shown a strong sense of patriotism," Monsignor Youssef Tawk, secretary to the Maronite Patriarchate, said. Tawk was reading the minutes of the bishops' monthly meeting held in Bkirki and headed by Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir.
Tawk urged the Lebanese to "despise" all attempts aiming to incite conflicts and reinforcing"blind sectarianism." "Lebanon is characterized by its sectarian diversity, manifested by the 18 Christian as well as Muslim sects cohabiting in an atmosphere of cultural as well as religious freedom, which makes this country a true model for coexistence; thus all attempts to expose such atmosphere are totally unacceptable," he said. Tawk hoped the Lebanese would be able to enjoy their summer vacation "away from the sounds of shells and gunfire and the smell of gunpowder." The council expressed fears that the cancelling of the contest for recruiting new staff at the Internal Security Forces (ISF) "put the performance and standing of this institution at risk."
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora and House Speaker Nabih Berri said after the number of casualties became known that 'there will be no negotiations with Israel until there is an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.' Seniora also later called for an emergency meeting of the United Nation Security Council to discuss an end to the violence. Sunday's death toll in the bombing at Qana was the highest in any single incident since the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas began on July 12.'Fifty-one Lebanese civilians were killed, among them 27 children, also we have 17 wounded,' a hospital source in Tyre said. The building hit Sunday was housing refugees in the village of Qana, east of Tyre. An Israeli artillery strike which hit the same village in 1996 killed 109 people and forced Israel to suspend its 'Grapes of Wrath' operation against Hezbollah. TO VIIEW THE PICTURES PLS CLICK READ MORE and also NEWS ARCHIVE for previous days.
"Disarming Hizbollah will not be part of the mandate for the (peacekeeping) mission for now," a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. "However it is supposed to strengthen the Lebanese army, the responsibility of which will be to implement UN security council.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel saw the full implementation of resolution 1559 as "the only real way to solve the problem in Lebanon."Asked if Israel was demanding Hizbollah's immediate disarmament, Regev said: "Hizbollah has to be disarmed as soon as possible."France has emerged as the potential leader of a multinational force but has ruled out deployment until a ceasefire and political agreement have been reached, Western diplomats say.
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah's leader on Saturday threatened more attacks on central Israeli cities, a day after guerrillas for the first time fired a rocket powerful enough to reach the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, speaking on Hezbollah's TV station, said he supported Lebanon's efforts to negotiate a peace deal, but suggested tentative promises for the guerrillas to disarm would be off if conditions aren't met.Israel has not made a "single military accomplishment" in its offensive on Lebanon, he said, speaking on the group's Al-Manar television.
Nasrallah announced that Israel suffered a "serious defeat" in ground fighting around a Lebanese border town after Israeli troops pulled back Saturday afternoon. Israel said they left Bint Jbail because they accomplished their mission of wearing down Hezbollah fighters after a week of heavy battles.On Friday, a Hezbollah rocket hit outside the Israeli town of Afula, the farthest strike yet. Hezbollah said it targeted an Israeli military base, but the rockets fell in an empty field.
"The bombardment of Afula and its military base is the beginning ..., Nasrallah said. "Many cities in the center (of Israel) will be targeted in the 'beyond Haifa' stage if the savage aggression continues on our country, people and villages."
"It is about 10,000 tonnes of oil, but because of the security situation we cannot go into the sea to see what the real situation is," said a spokeswoman at the ministry, who requested anonymity. There are fears that more oil could spill into the sea due to a fire at the facility that began on Thursday and now threatens a undamaged tank that contains 15,000 tonnes of oil. The fire at the facility has created a thick cloud of black smoke that has polluted the air over Beirut and its suburbs. Government officials say although the fire poses a environmental hazard in the long-term it is less damaging than a spill into the sea. "It's good in a way because air pollution is the better of the two evils," the spokeswoman said.
Other Israeli aircraft blasted targets in and around several villages and towns in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim south, and artillery batteries opened up from Israel's side of the border.Hizbollah guerrillas killed nine Israeli soldiers in house-to-house fighting in a border town and a nearby village on Wednesday, as senior international diplomats failed at a Rome conference to agree on calling for an immediate ceasefire.
An Israeli general said the offensive, which has killed 433 Lebanese, mostly civilians, would go on "for several more weeks." The fighting began on July 12 when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid.A total of 51 Israelis have been killed in Hizbollah attacks that have included rockets being fired into northern Israel.Foreign ministers at the Rome conference pledged to work urgently for a "lasting, permanent and sustainable" ceasefire but did not call for the fighting to stop now, as Lebanon and its Arab allies had demanded.
DAY 14 - BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hizbollah vowed on Wednesday not to accept any "humiliating" conditions for a truce with Israel, as the Israeli killing of four U.N. observers piled pressure on an international conference in Rome to end the 15-day conflict.United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan demanded an Israeli investigation into the "apparently deliberate targeting" of a U.N. post in southern Lebanon where an Israeli air strike killed the four U.N. military observers on Tuesday.Lebanon and its Arab allies will plead at the Rome conference on Wednesday for an immediate ceasefire in Israel's war against Hizbollah guerrillas, but the United States will insist a lasting solution needs to be agreed first.
Israel, with apparent U.S. approval, has said it would press on with its campaign against the guerrillas. It also said it planned to set up a "security strip" in Lebanon until international forces deploy.Arab leaders and Annan want the Rome meeting, due to start at 0800 GMT, to call a quick halt to the war, which has killed 418 people in Lebanon and 42 Israelis since July 12. But U.S. Secretary Condoleeza Rice, who arrived in Italy late on Tuesday after visiting Beirut and Jerusalem, says she prefers to get conditions right for "a durable solution."Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the conflict with Israel had entered a new phase and that Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon would not stop Hizbollah rocket fire into northern Israel.
"Any peace is going to have to be based on enduring principles and not on temporary solutions," Rice told reporters in Jerusalem before dinner with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Despite the diplomacy, Israeli forces battled Hizbollah in southern Lebanon and planes kept up daily air raids. At least 378 people in Lebanon and 41 Israelis have died in the conflict, ignited by Hizbollah's capture of two soldiers on July 12.
While saying she has no plan for Middle East shuttle diplomacy, Rice's schedule this week resembles just that. She headed to Jerusalem after a surprise visit to Beirut and will also visit Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. Among issues on the table are an international force for south Lebanon and getting Hizbollah to move back from the border as well as return the soldiers it seized in a cross-border raid.
TIME, The journey to Tyre in South Lebanon from Beirut, normally a one hour drive, has become a white-knuckle tear through twisty mountain roads and a bombed-out coastal highway that takes five hours.
We left for Tyre this morning after loading up on food and water for several days. Other correspondents have told us the situation is grim there, and that we need to bring our own supplies. We also considered bringing our own fuel, because the Israelis have reportedly bombed most gas stations in the area, so a black market for fuel has developed. Five gallons of gas now cost $50
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israeli warplanes struck a minibus carrying people fleeing the fighting Sunday in southern Lebanon, killing three people, Lebanese security officials said, and two people were killed as about 90 Hezbollah rockets fell on northern Israel.
Syria, one of Hezbollah's main backers, said it will press for a cease-fire to end the fighting
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Fewer restaurants than usual are open, making the narrow street appear dimmer. A staff shortage has owners tending bar, and the menus have thinned.Still, despite the death and destruction wrought by an Israeli offensive against Hezbollah militants, a small and tenacious coterie of war clientele have clung to Beirut's famed nightlife, hoping for a moment of reprieve from the violence.
The fact that the restaurants and bars lining trendy Gouraud Street, a narrow one-way thoroughfare cutting through Beirut's downtown, are still open and drawing clientele is a testimony to the resilience of a city and a country too painfully accustomed to war.Even at the height of the 1975-1990 civil war, Beirut residents braved militia fighting and Israeli bombing to head to the beach for a dip or to cafes and restaurants for an evening meal.While the conflict now is different, the expressions they wear on their faces are eerily reminiscent of those worn by Lebanese during the earlier war.
At one pub along the street, Sana Taweeleh sits next to her young son, Maxim Abi-Aad, at the long wooden bar dominating the tiny room. The outing was a treat for Abi-Aad, who was spending the weekend with his mother. Taweeleh and her husband are divorced."Do I look happy?" asked Abi-Aad from behind a giant glass of a frothy, pink fruit cocktail. "Well, at least this is better than being bored at home."
TYRE, Lebanon -- Soldiers laid 72 coffins in two trenches, a mass grave for victims of the Israeli bombardment. Elsewhere, mounds of rubble sat undisturbed; rescue workers were too fearful of missiles to search for bodies.
Lebanese have streamed out of south Lebanon since fighting erupted between Israel and Hezbollah last week, leaving some villages almost deserted. But many people are believed trapped in their homes - too poor to live anywhere else, too afraid to travel or unable to go because bridges and roads have been destroyed.
An estimated 400,000 Lebanese make their home south of the Litani River, 20 miles from the Israeli border, and it's not known how many remain - but those that do risk being caught up in an Israeli ground offensive against Hezbollah.
"It is not looking good and it's going to last for some time," Ali Sayegh, a 39-year-old furniture salesman from Tyre, said of the Israeli offensive.
"There are not many people left in Tyre, very few walk the streets and there is a shortage of fresh produce," said Sayegh, who moved to a seaside hotel after sending his wife and two daughters abroad last week.
As the death toll rose to 330 in Lebanon as well as at least 31 Israelis, Lebanese streamed north into the capital and other regions, crowding into schools, relatives' homes or hotels. Taxi drivers in the south were charging up to $400 per person for rides to Beirut
After more than a week of punishing Israeli aerial and artillery strikes, Hizb'allah chief Hassan Nasrallah says his group is easily absorbing all that Israel has thrown at it, and continues to successfully control the direction of the current fighting.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Nasrallah firmly denied Israeli reports that some 50 percent of Hizb'allah's fighting capabilities have been eliminated by the IDF, and said his group remains as strong as ever and is ready to unleash more "surprises."
"All of the reports of the Israelis, that they struck 50 percent of our capabilities, are not true. They didn't succeed up to now in hitting anything in this range. Hizb'allah up to now has stood firm, it is succeeding in absorbing the attacks, in returning its own attacks, and it will return more in the future."
He also said Israel had failed miserably in its effort to decapitate the Hizb'allah leadership when it dropped some 20 tons of bombs on a Beirut bunker Wednesday night.
"The Hizbullah leadership wasn't hit at all - not in yesterday evening's attack. There was a huge number of planes and they hoped they would hit us but it was wrong."
With its leadership and fighting capabilities intact, Nasrallah suggested it is Hizb'allah that is controlling the direction of this war.
DAY 8, BEIRUT -- At least 55 Lebanese civilians were killed as Israeli warplanes pounded the capital and countryside, making today the deadliest day in a week of attacks and pushing this country's civilian death toll to more than 300. Fearful Westerners fled the country in droves.Violence also struck northern Israel, where two children were killed in a rocket attack in the town of Nazareth.
For the first time since fighting erupted last Wednesday, killing eight Israeli soldiers, Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops engaged in a deadly border clash today. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and one guerrilla was killed, the Israeli army said. The clash took place near the Israeli border farming community of Avivim, north of Safat, and continued for several hours.The deaths bring Israeli military losses to 14 soldiers and sailors over eight days, a toll comparable to those during the height of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, that began in 2000.In recent days, small contingents of Israeli ground forces have been operating along the frontier to demolish Hezbollah outposts and clear terrain, but there has been no large-scale movement of troops. However, the border zone began to reflect more signs of an Israeli military buildup. Tank carriers lumbered northward on roads heading to the frontier.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has ordered five military ships and thousands of Marines and sailors to help transport U.S. citizens out of Lebanon, a move that could sharply speed up the evacuation as fighting continues.
The U.S. Navy said on Tuesday the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit were ordered to head to the area to help evacuate thousands of Americans.
The group includes the three ships in the Iwo Jima group -- the helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima, amphibious transport dock USS Nashville and the dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island, together carrying 2,200 Marines and sailors.
Two other ships were also ordered to join the Iwo Jima -- the amphibious transport dock USS Trenton and a High Speed Vessel Swift, a catamaran with an aluminum hull.
Helicopters from the Marine expeditionary force have evacuated 68 Americans over the past two days. Those flights continued on Tuesday, the Navy said.
A humanitarian disaster appears to be unfolding among the hills and valleys of south Lebanon, where for five days Israel has hammered home a devastating onslaught against Lebanon's Hizballah guerrillas, a campaign that Israel says must end with the crushing of the Shi'ite group's military capabilities.
"This is terror. There are no red lines. They are shooting at ambulances on the road preventing them from coming here," says a distraught Mona Mrowe, an administrator at the Jabel Amel hospital in Tyre, her voice sounding shrill with tension and anger. "I have felt death very close. Yesterday was really ...." Her voice trails off into silence.
DAY 6, By Joel Greenberg, Tribune foreign correspondent, Israeli warplanes continued their onslaught on the Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, reducing apartment buildings to rubble and knocking out power in wide areas. The army said it warned residents of seven villages near the border with Israel to vacate their homes before a heavy assault. Hezbollah militants fired volleys of rockets at Israel's third-largest city Sunday, killing eight people and wounding more than 20 in the worst single attack in Israel in five days of widening conflict with the Lebanese guerrilla group. Waves of Israeli air strikes across Lebanon killed at least 28 people.
The death toll since Wednesday was believed to exceed 200. Most of those killed have been civilians, and most have been Lebanese.The rocket attacks on Haifa emptied the streets of the port city of 270,000. Residents hunkered down in their homes and took cover in bombproof rooms and shelters as sirens warned of missile strikes. Pedestrians ran for cover as the sirens wailed, and motorists stopped their cars beneath overpasses. Pls click READ MORE to view more pictures, and click on news archive to view pictures of day1 and day2.
Egyptian and other Arab journalists angrily grilled the officials on what Arab governments are doing to stop Israel`s blockade and relentless air strikes against Lebanese civilian targets and infrastructure. At least 100 Lebanese have been killed and more than 250 others injured, most of them civilians, since Israel launched a military offensive against the country Wednesday following a cross-border operation by Lebanon`s Hezbollah guerillas, in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two others captured.
Hezbollah rockets Sunday slammed into Israel`s port city of Haifa, killing nine Israelis, while four other civilians were killed in four days of Hezbollah rocket attacks.
Some 12 Israeli civilians have also been killed and between 325 to 340 people wounded by the more than 450 rockets Hezbollah has fired at the Jewish state. Fur Israeli sailors were also killed when an Iranian-produced c-802 missile fired from the Lebanese coast hit a missile boat off the coast of Lebanon Friday night.
Hezbollah's deadliest rocket barrage so far took place Sunday morning, when around ten missiles slammed into Haifa, Israel's third largest city. Eight people were killed, and dozens wounded, in the strike, which Hezbollah said was carried out by Raad 2 and Raad 3 missiles. Pls click READ MORE to view more pictures, and click on news archive to view pictures of day1 and day2.
Israel has expanded its campaign launched after Hezbollah militants seized two Israeli soldiers. More than 70 Lebanese have been killed. Hezbollah has responded with rockets. Several have hit the town of Tiberias in the deepest such attack in Israel. Three Israeli sailors are missing after their ship was hit by a Hezbollah missile on Friday. The body of a fourth was found, according to Israeli media.
An Israeli missile wrecked a van near the southern port of Tire, killing 15 passengers and wounding six, police said. The van was carrying families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes. Israeli aircraft also bombed a Hizbollah office in southern Beirut's Haret Hreik district, and attacked roads, bridges and petrol stations in north, east and south Lebanon, killing at least 12 people and wounding 32, security sources said.
Israel's campaign, launched after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight on Wednesday, has killed 93 people, all but two civilians, and paralyzed Lebanon's economy. It aims not just to force Hizbollah to free the soldiers, but to destroy its ability to launch rocket attacks on northern Israel, where four civilians have been killed this week. Israel's aerial assault on Lebanon has drawn mounting world criticism but the White House has said President Bush would not press Israel to halt its military operation. To view more pictures pls click READ MORE, or to view pictures of 1st day and 2nd day pls click NEWS ARCHIVE
Lebanon's only international airport was often the scene of conflict in the past, including the hijacking in 1985 of a TWA passenger jet and the subsequent murder of a US navy diver by fighters loyal to Hezbollah.But it has since been renovated and reinvented as a hub for tourism and commerce.However, with further bombs hitting the airport on Friday, several airlines, including Qatar Airways and Gulf Air, have suspended flights to and from Beirut. Gulf Air operates 12 flights a week between Bahrain and Beirut, and a spokesperson said the suspension would continue indefinitely.
Jad Tohme works at the airport and lives in the nearby village of Kfarchima. He was about to leave for work when the first bombs landed on the runway. "My company has told me they would call me when the airport opens and I can return to work, but it's not looking very likely," he said. "The airport closure means that it has lost a lot of money."
M Chirac used his traditional Bastille Day live television interview to criticise the Israeli offensive. "One may well ask if there isn
Hundreds of Lebanese nationals and foreigners crowded into Beirut's bus depot Friday and bid for the last remaining seats on taxis and buses heading for the Syrian border as Israel intensified its air campaign against the country's infrastructure, leaving the main highway to Syria impassable.
Families camped in the filthy underpass of the Charles Helou terminal amid piles of suitcases, appliances, and other hastily collected belongings. A group of Syrian workers holding $14 bus tickets shoved each other as they fought their way onto one crowded vehicle. The men in front tried to squeeze their arms into the closing doors as the driver looked on helplessly...
Meanwhile, lost-looking Westerners and wealthy Gulf tourists were trying to haggle with the few available cab drivers left in the station and willing to make the now arduous journey from Beirut to Masnaa. Cabbies charged upward of $150 per person for the four-to-six-hour trip, which used to cost $10 and take about two hours on the Damascus Highway before it was cut by Israeli bombs...
The attack alarmed Israel because initial information indicated the guerrillas had used a drone for the first time to attack Israeli forces.But the army's investigation showed that Hezbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan."We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press.
DAY 3, BEIRUT, July 15 (Reuters) - Residents on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border braced on Saturday for a dramatic spike in violence after Hizbollah's chief declared open war on Israel following its bombardment of his Beirut home and stronghold. "You wanted open war. We are going to open war," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a call to Hizbollah television.
"Look at it burn", he urged listeners, announcing an attack which set ablaze an Israeli warship that had earlier hit Beirut. Four Israeli troops were missing after the attack, which comes amid the bloodiest violence in Lebanon in over a decade, started by a cross-border attack on Wednesday in which Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight. The violence in Lebanon coincided with an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip launched last month to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire. To view more pictures pls click READ MORE, to view pictures of the first day and second day pls click NEWS ARCHIVE
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The fighting that erupted in Lebanon has prompted the Pentagon to develop scenarios for evacuating American citizens, estimated to number around 25,000, military sources told CNN.
The rapid widening of the Mideast conflict this week has created great concern in the U.S. government, which doesn't want Americans in Lebanon caught in the middle of a shooting war.
Such moves would start small, if they happen at all, the sources said. There has been no immediate request for help and no order to move any military personnel.
The State Department has set up a Middle East Task Force to coordinate policy and share information. Defense Department officials are part of the team to talk about any possible plans for American evacuation -- a customary move, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
"The continuing destruction by Israel of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and in Palestinian territory (and) the disproportionate use of force from which civilian populations suffer cannot be understood and justified," [Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mikhail Kamynin] said."The attack on Beirut international airport is a dangerous step on the way to military escalation," he added, calling on all sides to stop a slip towards war.
"The continuing destruction by Israel of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and in Palestinian territory (and) the disproportionate use of force from which civilian populations suffer cannot be understood and justified," [Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mikhail Kamynin] said.
"The attack on Beirut international airport is a dangerous step on the way to military escalation," he added, calling on all sides to stop a slip towards war.
But Hizbollah did not escape condemnation, some of it coming from Arab states. The Associated Press reports that while King Abdullah II of Jordan condemned Israel's "targeting innocent civilians and the Lebanese infrastructure," he also had harsh words for Hizbollah, saying that "Jordan stands against whoever exposes the Palestinian people and their cause, Lebanon and its sovereignty to unexpected dangers"
DAY 2: By SAM F. GHATTAS (AP), Israel has hit hundreds of targets in Lebanon as part of its effort to force the release of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas, a top Israeli general said Thursday.
Israel intensified its attacks against Lebanon on Thursday, blasting Beirut's airport and two Lebanese army air bases near the Syrian border, and imposing a naval blockade. More than 50 people have died in violence following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants.Warplanes punched holes in the runways of Beirut's international airport and two military air bases, attacks that could draw the Lebanese army into the conflict.Israel has information that Lebanese guerrillas who captured two Israeli soldiers are trying to transfer them to Iran, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Spokesman Mark Regev did not disclose the source of his information.
Speaking to reporters, Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, the chief of Israel's northern command, said Israel was targeting infrastructure in Lebanon that held rockets and other arsenals belong to Hezbollah.Hezbollah guerrillas launched more than 80 rockets and mortars into Israel on Thursday."I imagine over time that we will be able to rid ourselves of this threat entirely," he said.He also said the army was not ruling out sending ground troops into Lebanon.
Israel's army chief Brig. Gen. Dan Halutz warned that "nothing is safe" in Lebanon and said Beirut itself
Beirut, July 12, (BNA) The Lebanese cabinet which held an emergency meeting today to discuss the Israeli assaults, decided to call back its Ambassador to US, Fareed Abboud, for giving what were described as irresponsible statements that contradict with his country's stance and policies. The Lebanese cabinet decided as well to keep its sessions open to monitor Israel's aggressions against the country, calling on the citizens to preserve their national unity and solidarity to confront external dangers.
Lebanon's Ambassador to the U.S. called Wednesday for an exchange of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah for Arab prisoners held by Israel and the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanese territory. "If there is a solution to be found, (it) should be...negotiations to the withdrawal of the Israelis from the Lebanese-occupied territories and the release of Lebanese prisoners," Farid Abboud, Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S., said on Cable News Network. "An exchange would be appropriate and it would solve the problem." Two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon early Wednesday. Israeli troops then entered Lebanon. Seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting with Hezbollah.
"This morning's Hezbollah raid has puzzled many Lebanese people as well as satisfying their supporters. The obvious explanation as to why the group has decided to open a second front with Israel is that it wants to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and put pressure on Israel with their own hostage negotiation.
"That said, I've spent the morning driving through Shia villages in southern Lebanon where there has been a feeling of happiness and celebration. Children are flying yellow Hezbollah flags and cheering supporters have set up impromptu roadside stops to hand out sweets, a traditional gesture of celebration.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called Wednesday for the immediate release of kidnapped Israeli soldiers and condemned Israel
New York Times BEIRUT, Lebanon, July 7 (Agence France-Presse)
They broke out during a dispute over the display of political posters in the town of Jahliye, south of Beirut. The security forces moved in to stop the fighting. It was not clear which side began the shooting, but acting Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said all the casualties appeared to be supporters of Mr Jumblatt.
Tensions, This is not the first clash between the two groups. In April, Mr Wahhab's bodyguards shot and wounded two civilians who objected to his presence at a funeral in a Druze mountain village. Tensions between supporters and opponents of Syria's influence in Lebanon have increased since the assassination of the former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri, in February 2005.
BEIRUT: Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir responded on Thursday to what he described as former Minister Suleiman Franjieh's "misplaced" verbal attack on a bishop. Sfeir said he regretted Franjieh's comments and wished the former MP had not made them.
"We know that ... Franjieh is the son of the Maronite Church and a citizen of Zghorta, and that he is concerned about the Maronite Church, its children and its respect, so when he attacks a bishop I believe the attack is misplaced," Sfeir said. The prelate's response came ahead of his departure on a visit to the United States expected to last at least 20 days. During his visit Sfeir is expected to participate in a commemoration of the Maronite Church's founding in the US 40 years ago.
While the patriarch noted the importance of resolving the issue before it escalated, he stated unequivocally that "a bishop must be respected." On Wednesday, Franjieh accused Bishop Youssef Beshara of having sided with MP Saad Hariri, the leader of the parliamentary majority.
Cardinal Sfeir will arrive at Lawrence Airport on the afternoon of July 12, and will celebrate a Pontifical Liturgy at 7:30 p.m. at St. Anthony's, 145 Amesbury Street, in Lawrence. Cardinal Sfeir will celebrate a second liturgy at 9 a.m. the next morning, followed by a press conference at 11 a.m. A third liturgy will be celebrated at 9 a.m. on Friday, July 14, prior to the Cardinal's departure. As Patriarch, Cardinal Sfeir is head of the 12-15 million-member Maronite Catholic Church. There are approximately 200 million Eastern Catholics throughout the world. Cardinal Sfeir is the President of the Assembly of all Eastern Catholic Patriarchs.
As Patriarch, Cardinal Sfeir is head of the 12-15 million-member Maronite Catholic Church. There are approximately 200 million Eastern Catholics throughout the world. Cardinal Sfeir is the President of the Assembly of all Eastern Catholic Patriarchs. Cardinal Sfeir also is a central figure in the Catholic Church. He offered the homily during Pope John Paul II's 25th anniversary Mass and presided over the Mass at St. Peter's Basilica honoring the deceased Vatican leader.
"When politics intervenes, it is sometimes hard to see people living together," said Sfeir. "But religion has no material interest. Religion has only God, and if we all pray to God as one, all humanity will be together as brothers."The patriarch is one of the most significant religious figures to visit St. Louis since Pope John Paul II came to the city in 1999.The Maronite Church, an ancient Eastern Rite branch of Catholicism, is based in Lebanon. St. Raymond's, in St. Louis' LaSalle Park neighborhood, is the seat of one of two eparchies, or dioceses, of the Maronite Church in the U.S. Sfeir lives in Bkerke, north of Beirut.
WASHINGTON
By Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Congresswoman)), Last month, the people of Lebanon said no to fear. They would not be silenced or intimidated as they rejected the corrupt government imposed on them by the Syrian regime. However, the recent elections represent only the first step toward the full restoration of independent democratic governance in Lebanon.The current election was conducted under a 2000 Syrian-inspired law which denies fair and equitable electoral treatment to one of the most significant sectors of the Lebanese population. This law breaks Lebanon into large constituencies, thereby marginalizing one of Lebanon's largest communities and continuing to enable Syrian and Iranian proxies to perpetuate the undue influence of their terrorist states. The United States must help the people of Lebanon in their efforts to restore the separation of powers and the rule of law by promoting electoral reform. Concurrently, we must help rebuild and strengthen Lebanese civil society so that the Lebanese people can once again thrive under independent democratic rule, free from the tentacles of Syrian manipulation. While some of Syria
Lebanese anti-Syrian Christian leader Samir Geagea (R) speaks to his wife Strida after being released from prison in Beirut July 26,2005. Geagea, the only militia chief punished for his part in Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, left jail on Tuesday after 11 years in a step toward reconciliations after the end of the Syrian tutelage he bitterly opposed. REUTERS/Dalati Nohra/Pool
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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Samir Geagea, the only Lebanese warlord punished for his role in the 1975-90 civil war, left jail after 11 years on Tuesday in a step toward reconciliation after the end of the Syrian tutelage he bitterly opposed. Welcomed by supporters throwing rice and roses, the leader of the Lebanese Forces, the most powerful Christian wartime militia, was freed under an amnesty law the newly elected parliament, now dominated by foes of Damascus, passed last week.Geagea, 52, was driven to Beirut airport, where he embraced well-wishers and thanked old foes who united to help end Syria's 29-year grip on Lebanon in April and push for his release. "O Lebanese people, you left the large prison you were put in and took me with you out of the small jail I was put in," said Geagea in the first speech after his release, before leaving with his wife and aides on a flight to France. Taking aim at Syria's postwar sway, he said: "The Lebanese house has been shaken and unbalanced as a result of 15 years of frustration, but we will spare no effort to boost understanding with our allies to make the necessary rehabilitation."Geagea had been serving four life sentences for political murders during the civil war, including the 1987 killing of Prime Minister Rashid Karami, and spent most of his jail time in solitary confinement in an underground defense ministry cell. He has always proclaimed his innocence and said he was victimized for his staunch opposition to Syria. Syria withdrew its troops after the February assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri caused world outcry. Many Lebanese blamed Syria for the killing. Damascus denied any role.
Lebanese civil defense workers and firefighters inspect the car that exploded for any possible casualties in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, July 22, 2005. A bomb exploded on a busy Beirut street known for its restaurants, bars and nightlife late Friday, wounding two persons, security officials said. The blast came hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice left Beirut after a surprise visit in support of Lebanon's new government. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla) To view More Pictures pls click READ MORE AP - Jul 22 1:57 PM
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A bomb exploded on a narrow street crowded with bars and restaurants late Friday, wounding 12 people just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the area, officials said. The blast, from a bomb placed near a car parked in front of a restaurant, panicked the hundreds of people dining or smoking water pipes in the bustling sidewalk cafes on popular Monot Street. Lebanese families and Arab tourists, including black-veiled women visiting from the Gulf, scattered.Three cars were damaged by the 50-pound bomb. Security and hospital officials said 12 people were wounded.Lebanon has seen a string of bomb assassinations of politicians and other figures in recent months
BEIRUT (Reuters) - A loud explosion in the Lebanese capital Beirut wounded seven people near a busy street of restaurants and bars on Friday, security sources said. Security forces first reported the blast, which came hours after a short visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had killed one person.The blast was caused by a small bomb near a car parked outside a restaurant in Rue Monot. It destroyed two cars and sprayed the street, bustling with nightlife, with shards of glass.Four of the wounded were sent to hospital, security sources said. Three others were treated with minor injuries. Police cordoned off the area and evacuated the street after the blast.Lebanon has been hit by a string of bombings since a massive car bomb killed former Primer Minister Rafik al-Hariri in February. But no politician was apparently targeted by the latest bombing. Friday's blast was the first explosion since a new government, the first since Syrian troops withdrew, took office on Thursday.
MASNAA BORDER POST, Lebanon - Sheltering from the searing heat in the shade of his truck, a red-faced and sweating Ali Bakri glared angrily at the endless line of cargo trucks stranded on the Lebanese-Syrian border. "We are being treated like animals. We have no food, no water to wash. How long can this go on?" the 35-year-old Jordanian trucker said Monday.Fresh fruits are turning to mush as customs officials carry out excruciatingly thorough searches, spending up to an hour with each vehicle. Previously, Syrian officials gave only cursory searches and often simply waved drivers through. Truckers now wait in line a week or more.The drivers and their cargo are a casualty of the souring relations between Lebanon and Syria since Damascus was forced to relinquish its three-decade-long military grip on Lebanon three months ago.Many Lebanese say Syria has clamped what amounts to a land and sea siege on its tiny neighbor to exact revenge following the withdrawal of thousands of troops. But the Syrians say the strict measures are aimed at catching saboteurs and militants.France, a close Lebanese ally, has criticized the Syrian border actions. U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen briefed European Union foreign ministers on the dispute Monday and urged Lebanon and Syria to end the impasse.Lebanon's only land outlet is via its shared border with Syria, through which 60 percent of Lebanese exports pass on their way to other Arab and Gulf markets, officials say. The dispute is estimated to be costing Lebanon over $300,000 a day.
Lebanon's parliament has approved an amnesty for Christian militia leader Samir Geagea, who is currently serving a life sentence. He is the only Lebanese warlord to be punished for crimes during the long civil war which ended in 1990. A campaign for his release has gathered strength since the assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri, which unleashed a wave of anti-Syrian feeling. Geagea led the Lebanese Forces militia. The LF successor's are now in a coalition with the Future Movement led by Hariri's son and political heir Saad, which holds a majority in Lebanon's newly elected parliament. About 100 MPs voted for Geagea's release in the first legislative session since the elections ended last month. Flag waving Supporters of the LF have been celebrating the parliamentary vote, firing volleys of gunfire in Geagea's former stronghold, the town of Besharre in northern Lebanon. Others waved flags outside parliament in the capital and the northern and eastern suburbs where most Christians live. Inside parliament another amnesty bill was approved, in the case of a number of suspected Muslim militants being tried for endangering state security. Geagea is held in solitary confinement in cell below the defence ministry building in Beirut. He was found guilty in 1994 of ordering four political assassinations, included the killing of PM Rashid Karami in 1987 and the unsuccessful attempt on the life of Defence Minister Michel Murr in 1991. He denied all the charges. He was given four death sentences in, each of which were commuted to life in prison with hard labour.
BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanon's prime minister designate proposed forming a mixed cabinet of MPs and unelected figures after he got backing from Shiite militant group Hezbollah and its allies, and his own supporters rejected a government solely of techocrats. Fuad Siniora, speaking after a meeting with President Emile Lahoud on Friday, said "such a cabinet, composed of deputies and non-deputies, has received the support of more than 100 deputies, or 78 percent of parliament."He said he was waiting for the president's response.Siniora described what is the fourth proposed lineup since he was designated on June 30 to form a government as a "homogeneous working team qualified to face the political, economic and security challenges facing the country". "We face a political vacuum and a deterioration of the security situation, as well as various attempts, at home and abroad, to demonstrate that the Lebanese are not capable of governing themselves." He said his proposed line-up was the "best possible formula for a reformist cabinet." It also had the "agreement" of Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal, although not that of Christian firebrand Michel Aoun. Any role for Hezbollah in the new government is likely to complicate international demands for the disarmament of its military wing, which still exclusively patrols the formerly Israeli-occupied south, in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution passed last September.Earlier, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt spoke out strongly against Siniora's previous proposal, only made on Thursday, which called for an entirely non-party government. "We refuse to discuss a government of technocrats," Jumblatt told the Al-Mostaqbal daily, owned by the family of the bloc's leader Saad Hariri.
BEIRUT, July 14 (Reuters) - Lebanon's prime minister said on Thursday he would seek to form a government of technocrats after failing to win agreement on a cabinet drawn from political groups no longer forced to bend to Syria's will.Fouad Siniora, a member of a coalition that pushed for Syria's pullout from Lebanon, made the announcement after talks with pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud confirmed that squabbles had scuppered his proposed cabinet of politicians.The next government, the first since Syria ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April, faces many challenges including reestablishing stability after a series of bombings and assassinations, political reform and tackling a huge debt. It also has to deal with a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding the disarming of anti-Israeli Hizbollah guerrillas. "I agreed with his excellency the president that we go ahead with preparing a government line-up from outside parliament, from people who have political know-how but are not members of parties," the prime minister-designate told reporters. He indicated the cabinet would be made up of 24 ministers. Political sources said Siniora would now have to come up with a team of technocrats with political links so that they would win the backing of the various parties.
Maria el-Beissari, center, wife of Lebanese Col. Elias al-Beissari, chief of security of Lebanon's outgoing deputy Prime Minister Elias Murr, is comforted in the hospital after her husband was seriously injured in a car bomb that hit the motorcade of Murr in the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. The car bomb, slightly wounded Murr and killed at least one other person, Tuesday, officials said. A string of bombings has hit Lebanon this year. The explosion left one vehicle a charred and twisted wreck, and several nearby cars and buildings were damaged. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Tawil)
Lebanese security forces and civilians gather at the scene of a car bomb attack in Beirut. Lebanon's defence minister was wounded by a car bomb outside Beirut that killed at least two and injured nine others in the latest attack on a leading political figure, state TV reported.(AFP/Joseph Barrak) For more pictures pls click READ MORE
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A car bomb hit the motorcade of Lebanon's outgoing deputy prime minister Tuesday, wounding him and killing at least one other person, officials said. A string of bombings has hit Lebanon this year. The blast left one vehicle a charred and twisted wreck and damaged several others in the motorcade of Elias Murr, who is also the outgoing defense minister. Murr, who was slightly wounded, later released an audiotape from the hospital saying his was all right. At least 12 other people, including the Mexican ambassador's wife, were also wounded, officials said.President Emile Lahoud, Syria's staunchest ally in Lebanon, has reportedly been pressing for Murr
Deputy Assistant Secretary Dibble: Good morning. I am delighted to be back in Beirut after almost a year since my last visit. I just had very good discussions with Ambassador Assaker. We discussed regional and Lebanese developments. The United States looks forward to further supporting Lebanon once the government is formed. We hope that this will happen as soon as possible to enable us to further to offer assistance and for Lebanon to move forward. So again thank you. I am delighted to be here.Question: Are you planning to meet Minister Trad Hamade?Deputy Assistant Secretary Dibble: No, I have no plans to meet him. The purpose of my visit is to participate an American Chamber of Commerce event tomorrow evening. But I am taking advantage of my time here to have other meetings and to get the latest on the situation. Question: What is your opinion now about the change in politics in Lebanon? Because before eleven months you have been here, how do find Lebanon now?Deputy Assistant Secretary Dibble: Well, I think Lebanon is at a crossroad. There is a window of opportunity to move forward on important issues of political and economic reform. We look forward to working with the new government when it is formed. We hope it is formed quickly, so that the people of Lebanon can get on with the business at hand and the international community can offer its support to Lebanon
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said Friday he will abide by any decision that Lebanon takes on disarming Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon. Lebanon hosts more than 350,000 Palestinian refugees, including thousands of armed guerrillas from the mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction, in densely populated camps around the country that are off limits to the Lebanese government.Authorities fear there would be bloodshed if they go into the camps, where many Islamic militant fugitives are known to be hiding. The first refugees came to Lebanon after the 1948 war that saw the creation of Israel."We are guests in Lebanon, temporary guests, and we are subject to Lebanese laws just like everybody else in Lebanon," Abbas said after talks with President Emile Lahoud. Abbas arrived in Beirut Friday from neighboring Damascus where he met with Syrian President Bashar Assad. Besides meeting with Lahoud, Abbas will see Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and outgoing Prime Minister Najib Mikati. He is also scheduled to meet with a Palestinian delegation from refugee camps in Lebanon.Abbas is widely expected to discuss the issue of disarming Palestinians living in the country as demanded by U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, which calls on Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias to give up their weapons.The resolution of last September refers to the Lebanese Shiite Muslim Hezbollah guerrilla group
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Prime Minister-designate Fouad Siniora said on Wednesday he was making progress in efforts to form Lebanon's first government since Syrian troops withdrew from the country. The announcement of the new government has been delayed by demands and counter-demands over cabinet portfolios from Siniora's anti-Syrian friends and powerful allies of Damascus."I believe we are making progress toward forming this government," Siniora said after a meeting with President Emile Lahoud, a close Syria ally. Political sources familiar with the talks said reaching an agreement between various political factions still required more time, ruling out an imminent breakthrough."Progress is slow. We are getting there but more time is needed to dismantle all hurdles," one source said.One stumbling block is a demand by a Shi'ite Muslim alliance loyal to Syria to appoint a Shi'ite foreign minister. Hizbollah group, which swept the Shi'ite Muslim vote in last month's elections to win 14 parliament seats, will join the cabinet for the first time and asked Siniora for two ministerial posts.While Siniora, a Sunni, had agreed to this but has rejected demands by Hizbollah and allied Amal group over the Foreign Ministry. He held talks with Hizbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday. CHRISTIAN REPRESENTATION Political sources say Siniora wants to give the portfolio to former Foreign Minister Fouad Boutrous, a Christian.
BEIRUT (AFP) - Shiite militant group Hezbollah said it was seeking cabinet posts for the first time in the new Lebanese government, in a move likely to complicate UN demands for its disarmament. The announcement followed the collapse of prime minister designate Fuad Siniora's efforts to bring in the party of firebrand Christian former general Michel Aoun to a new coalition."It has become our right to participate directly and not just through our allies, in the decision-making process," said Mohammed Raad, head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc, which holds 14 of the legislature's 128 seats.Fellow Hezbollah MP Mohammed Fneish said the movement, which was involved in deadly clashes with Israeli troops in a disputed border zone just last week, was seeking "two cabinet posts".Hezbollah competed for last month's elections in alliance with rival Shiite faction Amal on a single-issue ticket opposing disarmament of its military wing in compliance with Resolution 1559 passed by the UN Security Council last September.The Future Movement of the prime minister designate -- led by Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim -- formed some electoral deals with Hezbollah and spoke out during the campaign against disarming the "resistance".Hezbollah's push to join the government came after Siniora abandoned efforts to woo Aoun, whose Free Patriotic Movement was the only major faction to advocate compliance with Resolution 1559, albeit through negotiations with the militant group.
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Prime Minister-designate Fuad Saniora on Friday got down to trying to form Lebanon's first government without Syrian influence in three decades. Saniora consulted former prime ministers and legislators a day after President Emile Lahoud asked him to form a Cabinet. He was given the position after a record number of lawmakers
WASHINGTON -- The United States froze yesterday the US assets of Syria's interior minister and a second official, accusing them of leading military and security operations in Lebanon, as the Bush administration increased its pressure on Syria. The Treasury Department said Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan and Rustum Ghazali, identified as the chief of Syrian military intelligence for Lebanon, had helped destabilize the region. Tensions between the United States and Syria have increased over US allegations that Damascus was hiding agents in Lebanon, undermining efforts to stabilize Iraq and supporting terrorism in the region. In May, President Bush extended for another year the economic sanctions imposed on Syria and said the Arab country remained a threat to the United States. (Reuters)
هرج ومرج وطبل ! علي حماده, مؤسف، لا بل مؤسف جدا، ان يعتبر العهد الميمون ان محاولة اللبنانيين فتح نقاش في الاستحقاق الرئاسي الذي يخصهم ويهمهم، هو هرج ومرج وطبل!
ومؤسف اكثر، لا بل مفجع، ان يعتبر تصديق الناس لمفهوم "لبننة الاستحقاق" التي نادى بها الرئيس بشار الاسد، نقاشا من دون طائل! فهل معنى هذا ان اعلان زوار العهد صباحا ترشيح الرئيس نفسه لتجديد ولايته (لم يقل لنا كيف)، قد محاه غروب الشمس لتعود السليقة اياها، سليقة الصمت والحجر على آراء الناس؟ ام تراه التراث البوليسي الثقيل الذي لا يفرح الا بالليل او الظلمة يلفان ارض لبنان؟
BEIRUT (AFP) - Visiting US congressman Ray LaHood said that the United States was opposed to amending the Lebanese constitution to allow President Emile LaHood to renew his term in office.
