English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese,
Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For December 26/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/eliasnews19/english.december26.20.htm
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Bible Quotations For today
When they saw that the star had stopped, they were
overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his
mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their
treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew
02/01-12./:”In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of
Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem,
asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed
his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’When King Herod heard
this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all
the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the
Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has
been written by the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by
no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is
to shepherd my people Israel.” ’Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and
learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them
to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have
found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they
had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that
they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child
was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On
entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down
and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts
of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to
return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials
published on December 25-26/2020
Elias Bejjani/Video-Text: Christmas Is A Holy Event For
Openness Prayers, Contemplation, & Forgiveness/Elias Bejjani/December 25/2020
No Solution In Lebanon Without A UN Military Intervention/Elias Bejjani/December
26/2020
Health Ministry: 2136 new cases of Corona, 14 deaths
US dollar exchange rate against Lebanese pound
Pope Francis calls on Lebanese leaders to put public interest ahead of personal
gain
Pope Offers Christmas Message for Lebanon
Coronavirus Dampens Christmas Joy in Lebanon
Rahi Delivers Christmas Message in Aoun’s Absence
Lebanon’s Rai Urges Politicians to Form Government
Rahi receives “Strong Republic” Bloc delegation:
Israeli Jets Fly Low over Lebanon to Strike Syria's Hama
Billion-dollar Captagon pills seized in Italy smuggled by Hezbollah, not ISIS:
Report
Report: Caesar Act Blamed for Increasing Power Cuts in Lebanon
Report: Lebanon Denies Depositing Maritime Border Maps with UN
Health Ministry has no sole authority to stop flights from Britain,' says Hassan
Drug quantity seized at Beirut Airport, suspect arrested
Hariri: May God inspire some so we can reach a government capable of stopping
the collapse
Abdel Samad on honoring Lebanese journalists abroad: Creativity despite all
challenges
Lebanon Says First Case of New Coronavirus Variant Detected on Flight from
London
Explosions reported in Syria after Israeli jets fly over Lebanon capital Beirut
The Blast that Blew Away Lebanon's Faith in Itself/Samia Nakhoul/Reuters/December
25/2020
Lebanese lose hope their country can rise up
Titles For The
Latest
English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published
on
December 25-26/2020
Pope Says Fraternity the Watchword 'at This Moment in
History'
Christian minorities celebrate Christmas across the Middle East, pandemic
dampens spirit
At least 6 dead in airstrikes on Iranian missile factories in Syria
Israeli strikes on Syria kill six Iran-backed fighters: Monitor
Democrats Back Biden’s ‘Unconditional’ Return to Iran Nuclear Deal
We want better ties with Israel'
Sisi: Success of Upcoming AU Summit Depends on Addressing Urgent Issues
Explosion Hits Gas Pipeline in Egypt's Sinai
Warning Message from US to Region: Do Not Weaken Our Ability to Pressure
Damascus
Aboul Gheit: World May Face New Cold War, Arabs Must Be Vigilant
Trump Hails Truce as Libyans Celebrate Independence
Pompeo Says US Began Work to Set up Consulate in Western Sahara
Judge Orders Detention of Tunisian Media Magnate Karoui
Kuwait on alert over ISIS threat in end-of-year plot
Jordan’s Brotherhood excluded from parliamentary committees
EU and Britain Seal Post-Brexit Trade Deal
Titles For The Latest
The Latest LCCC English analysis &
editorials from miscellaneous sources published
on
December 25-26/2020
The Post-Pandemic World: A View from the Saudi Angle/Dr. Ihsan Ali
Buhulaiga/Asharq Al-Awsat/December 25/2020
Biden Meddles with Donald Trump's Middle East Legacy at his Peril/Con Coughlin/Gatestone
Institute./December 25/2020
How Islam Deified Tribalism/Raymond Ibrahim./December 25/2020
The Russian bear can still roar and claw at the global
order but it lacks any power to change it/Dr. John C. Hulsman/Arab News/December
25/2020
Syria’s pain forgotten but not foregone this holiday season/Tala Jarjour/Arab
News/December 25/2020
Can Turkey tidy up its foreign policy in 2021?/Sinem Cengiz/Arab News/December
25/2020
The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 24-25/2020
Elias Bejjani/Video-Text: Christmas Is A Holy Event For Openness Prayers,
Contemplation, & Forgiveness
Elias Bejjani/December 25/2020
#Elias_Bejjani_Christmas_Wishes
فيديو ونص: ذكرى الميلاد هي فرصة مقدسة للصلاة والتأمل والإنفتاح على الغير والمسامحة
Today in the town of David a Savior has been born
to you; he is Christ the Lord. (Luke 02/11)
Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men (Luke 02/14)
The holy birth of Jesus Christ bears numerous blessed vital values and
principles including love, giving, redemption, modesty and forgiveness.
Christmas is a role model of love because God, our Father Himself is love.
Accordingly and in a bid to cleanse us from our original sin He came down from
heaven, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and became
man.
This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.
(John15/12)
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
(John15/13)
Christmas is way of giving …God gave us Himself because He is a caring,
generous, forgiving and loving and father.
Christmas embodies all principles of genuine redemption. Jesus Christ redeemed
us and for our sake He joyfully was crucified, and tolerated all kinds of
torture, humiliation and pain
Christmas is a dignified image of modesty ..Jesus Christ accepted to be born
into a manger and to live his life on earth in an extremely simple and humble
manner.
Let us continuously remind our selves that when our day comes that could be at
any moment, we shall not be able to take any thing that is earthly with us for
the Day of judgment except our work and acts, be righteous or evil.
Christmas is a holy act of forgiveness ….God, and because He is a loving and
forgiving has Sent His Son Jesus Christ redeem to free us from the bondage of
the original sin that Adam and Eve committed.
Christmas requires that we all genuinely pray and pray for those who are hurt,
lonely, deserted by their beloved ones, feel betrayed, are enduring pain
silently pain, suffer anguish, deprived from happiness, warmth and joy .
Christmas is ought to teach us that it is the duty of every believer to practice
his/her faith not only verbally and via routine rituals, but and most
importantly through actual deeds of righteousness….
Christmas’ spirit is not only rituals of decorations, festivities, gifts and
joyful celebrations…But deeds in all ways and means by helping those who need
help in all field and domains.
Christmas’s spirit is a calls to honour and actually abide by all Bible
teachings and values.
In this realm we have a Biblical obligation to open our hearts and with love
extend our hand to all those who are in need, and we are able to help him
remembering always that Almighty God showered on us all sorts of graces and
capabilities so we can share them with others.
Christmas is a time to hold to the Ten Commandments, foremost of which is
“Honour your father and your mother”.
Christmas is a good time for us to attentively hear and positively respond to
our conscience, which is the voice of God within us.
Christmas should revive in our minds and hearts the importance of fighting all
kinds temptations so we do not become slaves to earthly wealth, or power of
authority.
Christmas for us as patriotic and faithful Lebanese is a time to pray for the
safe and dignified return of our Southern people who were forced to take refuge
in Israel since the year 2000.
Christmas for each and every loving and caring Lebanese is a holy opportunity
for calling loudly on all the Lebanese politicians and clergymen, as well as on
the UN for the release of the thousands of Lebanese citizens who are arbitrarily
and unjustly imprisoned in Syrian prisons.
Most importantly Christmas is a time for praying and working for the liberation
of our dear homeland Lebanon, from the Iranian occupation.
No one should never ever lose sight for a moment or keep a blind eye on the
sacrifices of our heroic righteous martyrs who willing sacrificed themselves for
our homeland, identity, existence, and dignity. Our prayers goes for them on
this Holy Day and for peace in each and every country, especially in the chaotic
and troubled Middle East.
May God Bless you all and shower upon you, your families, friends, and beloved
ones all graces of joy, health, love, forgiveness, meekness and hope.
Click Here To Read The Arabic Version Of The Above Piece
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyUmzlLftrQ&feature=youtu.be
No Solution In Lebanon Without A UN Military Intervention
Elias Bejjani/December 26/2020
Sadly most of the free and patriotic Lebanese from all walks of life, and
specially those who are living the in Diaspora, like myself, all strongly
believe there is no way any more or any slight hope that the Lebanese themselves
are alone able to rescue their own country and free it from both, the Iranian
occupation and the local Mafiosi political class.
The country has reached a stage of chaos that made the Lebanese helpless and unable to do any thing, but to leave if this option is available for them.
practically, Lebanon and the Lebanese are both kidnapped by the armed Iranian terrorist proxy, Hezbollah by force, intimidation, murder, oppression and all kinds of barbaric and savage evil means.
Meanwhile all the ruling officials, as well as the political class from the top to the bottom of the governing hierarchy especially and foremost the president and both the Prime Minster and the House speaker as well as the Parliamentary majority are mere puppets, mercenaries and Trojans.
The satanic occupation formula that is destroying systematically every this in Lebanon is a marriage between the armed and terrorist Iranian Militia which is Hezbollah, and criminal Mafia which is the political class with no one exception.
Corruption, chaos, and all kinds of crimes are invading the country on all levels and in all domains in both the public and the private sectors.
Banks are holding peoples' assets and money and impoverishing them, while the majority of the financial experts believe that the these banks are all heading towards bankruptcy very soon.
There is no way that the Lebanese and their country who are both kidnapped and taken by Iran and its Hezbollah hostages can free themselves alone without a regional and international serious and powerful military help via the United Nations assembly.
The only window of help that the Lebanese are hoping to see is the formal and official UN declaration of Lebanon as a rouge-failed country.
Lebanon sooner and later Must be declared a rogue-failed country and put under the UN clause # 07..
A UN urgent military intervention under clause number 07 is the only left vehicle to rescue the hostage, occupied and kidnapped Lebanon.
In conclusion, there is No hope from the political Lebanese rotten and corrupted
class, or from getting rid of the terrorist Iran military proxy, Hezbollah
without an urgent UN foreign military intervention
Health Ministry: 2136 new cases of Corona, 14 deaths
NNA/Friday, 25 December, 2020
The Ministry of Public Health announced, on Friday, that 2136 new Corona cases
have been reported, thus raising the cumulative number of confirmed cases
to-date to 168,069.
It also indicated that 14 death cases were also registered during the past 24
hours.
US dollar exchange rate against Lebanese pound
NNA/Friday, 25 December, 2020
The Syndicate of Money Changers announced the exchange rate of the US dollar
against the Lebanese pound for Friday, December 25, 2020, as follows:
Buying price at a minimum of 3,850 LL/$
Selling price at a maximum of 3,900 LL/$
Pope Francis calls on Lebanese leaders to put public
interest ahead of personal gain
NNA/Friday, 25 December, 2020
Pope Francis, the chief pastor of the worldwide Catholic Church, included a
message to the Lebanese people in his Christmas address from the Vatican on
Thursday.
Speaking of his sorrow at the suffering that has engulfed Lebanon in 2020, he
said. “It is even more painful to see you deprived of your precious aspirations
to live in peace and to continue being, for our time and our world, a message of
freedom and a witness to harmonious coexistence.” The pope appealed to Lebanon’s
political and spiritual leaders to place the common good ahead of personal gain,
borrowing a passage from one of the pastoral letters of Patriarch Elias Howayek,
who played a leading role in the independence of Lebanon and the birth of the
Greater Lebanon state in 1920: “You are responsible, you are the judges of the
earth, you are the people’s representatives, who live on behalf of the people,
you are obligated, in your official capacity … to pursue the common good. Your
time is not devoted to your interests, and your job is not for you, but for the
state and for the nation that you represent.”Pope Francis said he hoped that the
Lebanese would benefit “from the current fluctuations of circumstances to
rediscover their identity,” stressing that they should not desert their “homes
or inheritance, nor give up on the dream of the future of a beautiful and
prosperous country.”
The pope said he would visit Lebanon “ as soon as possible” and called on the
international community to “help Lebanon stay out of regional conflicts and
tensions.”On Thursday, Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Bechara Al-Rai devoted part
of his traditional Christmas message to his failed initiative to facilitate the
formation of a new government. He also criticized politicians and discussed the
crises facing Lebanon. Al-Rai said: “The victims and the afflicted of the Beirut
Port blast were assassinated with uncontrolled weapons, and their hearts (are)
caves of grief. What is painful is that the forensic investigation revolves
around itself and the jurisprudence and authorities. But the disaster is greater
than everyone and surpasses everyone’s immunity.”
Al-Rai added: “Rarely has a nation experienced such a serious crisis, and (seen
its) leaders as reluctant to save it as our leaders. This crisis would not have
occurred had it not been for the poor performance of this political group from
years ago to today. They see politics as an art to serve their interests and
disrupt public life and constitutional entitlements — humiliating the people,
corrupting institutions, obstructing the judiciary, and hammering the economy
and the currency, as if this political group is managing an enemy state.”
Al-Rai warned, “There are those who want to destroy Lebanon, intentionally or
ignorantly. But we are determined to meet the challenges, no matter how many
there may be, and to save a democratic, neutral, and independent Lebanon — the
Lebanon of sovereignty, partnership and sophistication.”
Al-Rai also spoke of “hidden and fabricated difficulties impeding the formation
of the new government.” He said, “We were betting on conscience. But we regret
the failure of the promises that were given to us. The formation of the
government returned to the starting point. It would be preferable if those
concerned would talk openly to the people about the reasons for not forming the
government. The people have the right to know their reality and fate.”
Al-Rai also echoed the pope’s call for the international community to ensure
Lebanon does not become embroiled in regional conflicts.
President Michel Aoun called Al-Rai on Thursday to apologize in advance for not
attending the celebratory mass in Bkerke on Friday — Christmas Day — due to the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Sources close to Aoun said that the president’s rejection of the suggested
cabinet lineup presented to him by Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri two
weeks ago was that it “lacked balance and fairness in the distribution of
portfolios among the sects” and that Hariri had demanded “the two portfolios of
Justice and the Interior, that is, the equation of security and the judiciary.
It is illogical for the government to be run by one person.”
On Thursday evening, large numbers of Lebanese expatriates arrived at Rafic
Hariri International Airport in Beirut to spend the holidays with their
families, resulting in long queues for the PCR tests that would mean they could
avoid quarantine.
The Ministry of Health said more than 17,000 PCR tests had been conducted on
Thursday alone, and also renewed its instructions to respect preventive measures
during family gatherings over the holidays.
The ministry is reportedly braced for a huge increase in the number of COVID-19
infections after the holidays. Wednesday’s total of 2,246 new infections in the
country was the highest since the pandemic began. --- Arab News
Pope Offers Christmas Message for Lebanon
Naharnet/Friday, 25 December, 2020
Pope Francis expressed his desire to visit crisis-hit Lebanon and urged
political leaders to seek the best interest of the Lebanese people in Christmas
Eve message. Lebanon was plunged into its worst economic crisis in decades by
the devastating port blast in Beirut in August. In a message to cardinal Beshara
el-Rai, the patriarch of the Maronite Church, the 84-year-old pontiff said
Thursday he hoped to visit Lebanon "as soon as possible". "Beloved sons and
daughters of Lebanon, I am deeply troubled to see the suffering and anguish that
has sapped the native resilience and resourcefulness of the Land of the Cedars,"
he said. He appealed to Lebanon's leaders "to seek the best interest of the
public" and for the international community to "help Lebanon to surmount this
grave crisis and resume a normal existence".
Coronavirus Dampens Christmas Joy in Lebanon
Associated Press/Friday, 25 December, 2020
While many places around the globe were keeping or increasing restrictions for
Christmas, Lebanon was an exception. With its economy in tatters and parts of
its capital destroyed by a massive Aug. 4 port explosion, Lebanon has lifted
most virus measures ahead of the holidays, hoping to encourage spending. Tens of
thousands of Lebanese expatriates have arrived home for the holidays, leading to
fears of an inevitable surge in cases during the festive season. Lebanon has the
largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East — about a third of its 5
million people — and traditionally celebrates Christmas with much fanfare. But
even with restrictions relaxed, a severe economic crisis was pouring gloom over
the holidays this year. The streets of Beirut, traditionally lit with Christmas
lights, are more subdued. Shops may have new products, but few people are buying
A giant Christmas tree in downtown Beirut is decorated with the uniforms of
firefighters to commemorate those who died in the port explosion. Another tree
represents Beirut’s ancient houses destroyed in the blast. “People around us
were tired, depressed and depleted, so we said let’s just plant a drop of joy
and love,” said Sevine Ariss, one of the organizers of a Christmas fair along
the seaside road where the explosion caused the most damage.
Rahi Delivers Christmas Message in Aoun’s Absence
Naharnet/Friday, 25 December, 2020
Maronite Patriarch Beshara el-Rahi, expressed his dissatisfaction on Friday with
the failure of his initiative to accelerate the formation of a rescue
government, the National News Agency reported. Rahi's remarks came during a
Christmas mass which was held in the absence of President Michel Aoun over fears
of the COVID-19 pandemic. "We were expecting the formation of a salvation
government. We were surprised by the conditions and counter-conditions set (by
parties) and how the formation is linked to the regional and world conflicts. We
therefore found ourselves lacking a constitutional procedural authority in the
midst of this collapse,” said Rahi. The Patriarch added: “If the reasons for not
forming the government are internal, then the catastrophe is great because it
reveals irresponsibility. And if it’s external, then the calamity is even
greater because it exposes loyalty to other than Lebanon. In both cases people
feel that change has become an urgent matter to stop the process of national
collapse.”"We had hoped that President Michel Aoun and PM-designate Saad Hariri
would form one team above all parties, and that they would be liberated, even
temporarily, from all pressures and cooperate by forming a government of
non-politicians in order to gain confidence from the people and the world, but
our desires collided with unjustified conditions," Rahi added. In this context,
the Patriarch stressed that "the distribution of ministerial portfolios is
important, but considering the people's demands is more important…"Finally, he
stressed the need for politicians to be honest with the people, which would
benefit those responsible in critical crises.
Lebanon’s Rai Urges Politicians to Form Government
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 25 December, 2020
Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rai urged politicians on Friday to rid
themselves of external pressure and form a government to end political deadlock
and help resolve a severe financial crisis. Fractious politicians have been
unable to agree on a new administration since the last one quit in the aftermath
of the cataclysmic Aug. 4 Beirut port explosion, leaving Lebanon rudderless as
it sinks deeper into economic crisis. Veteran politician Saad Hariri was named
premier for a fourth time in October promising to form a cabinet of specialists
to enact reforms necessary to unlock foreign aid, but political wrangling has
delayed the process. If the reasons for not forming government are internal than
"the problem is great" because it shows lack of responsibility, but if they are
external "it is greater" because it exposes loyalties beyond Lebanon, Rai said
at Christmas Mass. His repeated calls for the nation to be free from regional
influences are widely understood as references to Lebanon's Hezbollah movement
that is backed by Iran. "What conscience allows for Lebanon to be tied to
struggles it has no relation to?" he added. Prime Minister-designate Hariri and
President Michel Aoun aired their differences over the government in statements
on Dec. 14.The financial crisis came to a head last year after decades of
corruption and bad governance, sinking the currency by some 80%, freezing savers
out of their deposits and causing poverty to soar.
Rahi receives “Strong Republic” Bloc delegation:
NNA/Friday, 25 December, 2020
Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, met this evening in Bkirki
with a "Strong Republic" Bloc delegation headed by former Minister May Chidiac,
including MPs Shawki al-Daccash, Antoine Habshi, Ziad al-Hawat, Pierre Bou Assi,
Fadi Saad, Joseph Ishaq and Imad Wakim, as well as former Minister Melhem Riachi.
The delegation conveyed to the Patriarch the Christmas greetings of Lebanese
Forces Party Chief Samir Geagea, with talks centering on the general situation
prevailing in the country. In a brief word on behalf of the delegation following
the visit, Chidiac said: "We came as a 'Strong Republic' Bloc delegation to
congratulate His Beatitude on the occasion of Christmas, the time of salvation
of humanity through the birth of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. We are the
country of hope, and we must constantly believe that peace and salvation are on
their way...It is wrong for those who think that we are despaired or frustrated,
because we are children of the resurrection, the resistance and the struggle,
and we will continue our path in this context." She added: "We came to affirm
the historical relationship between the Lebanese Forces and the Maronite
Patriarchate. We came to assert this basic historical line that constitutes the
guarantee for Lebanon and for coexistence." Chidiac reiterated her Party's
strong emphasis on the notion of "neutrality" initiated by the Patriarch,
saying: "We, as Lebanese Forces, when visiting Bkirki, cannot but mention the
issue of neutrality, for we believe that there is no salvation for Lebanon
without this headline raised by His Beatitude the Patriarch, far-reaching its
implementation, especially since His Holiness Pope Francis touched on this issue
in the letter he addressed to the Lebanese yesterday."
Chidiac went on to express her Bloc's understanding of the Patrriach's
relentless efforts and endeavor to form a government, particularly with the
rising financial and economic crisis in Lebanon that has reached a point where
the citizen can no longer afford to live because of the distress and lack of
resources. However, she voiced her Bloc's belief that with such a ruling class,
it is a hopeless and useless case! "We do understand the concerns of our
Patriarch, yet we assured him of our conviction that the best solution is to
press for early parliamentary elections, for said elections are a salvation, a
refuge and a gateway to changing the current majority that controls the fate of
the Lebanese," Chidiac corroborated. She added that they also stressed during
their talks on the need to put an end to the state of security chaos in the
country, and reiterated the necessity of forming an international fact-finding
committee under the supervision of the United Nations to look into the Beirut
Port explosion, bringing together all that has been accomplished so far by
France, the United States and other international bodies. On a different note,
the Patriarch continued to receive well-wishing visitors and messages marking
the blessed season, whereby he met with former Bar Association Head Antoine
Qlimos, and received congratulatory calls from Prime Minister-designate Saad
Hariri, former PM Tammam Salam, Mufti of the Republic Sheikh Abdul-Latif Derian,
Head of the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council Sheikh Abdel-Amir Qablan, MP Bahiya
Hariri, Ambassador Mustafa Adib and Mrs. Mona Hrawi.
Israeli Jets Fly Low over Lebanon to Strike Syria's Hama
Agence France Presse/Associated Press
Israeli warplanes violated Lebanon's airspace late Thursday to carry out a
strike in neighboring Syria, sparking panic among residents on Christmas Eve.
The jets were heard flying at low altitude over Beirut and Sidon shortly before
the strikes. Social media reports also said that blasts were heard in the
northern regions of Akkar and Tripoli. It was not immediately clear whether
those were bombardment sounds or the sounds of jets breaking the sound barrier.
Israeli jets regularly violate Lebanese airspace and have often struck inside
Syria from Lebanese territory. But the Christmas Eve flights were louder than
usual, frightening residents of Beirut who have endured multiple crises in the
past year, including the catastrophic Aug. 4 explosion at the city's port that
killed over 200 people and destroyed parts of the capital. That explosion
resulted from the detonation of a stockpile of ammonium nitrates that was
improperly stored at the facility.
Syria's state news agency SANA said Syrian air defenses intercepted missiles
fired by Israel on the western province of Hama.
"Our air defenses intercepted an Israeli attack on the Masyaf area" in rural
Hama, SANA reported. Syrian state TV aired footage purporting to show air
defenses responding to the Israeli attack. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights also reported strikes on Masyaf, saying Israel was "likely
responsible." The war monitor said the attack targeted "positions of regime
forces and Iran-backed militias," without providing additional details.Israel,
which did not immediately comment on the reports, has launched hundreds of
strikes in Syria since the start of the civil war in 2011. It has targeted
government troops, allied Iranian forces and fighters from Lebanon's Hizbullah.
It rarely confirms details of its operations in Syria, but says Iran's presence
in support of President Bashar al-Assad is a threat and that it will continue
its strikes.
Billion-dollar Captagon pills seized in Italy smuggled by Hezbollah, not ISIS:
Report
Al Arabiya English/Friday 25 December 2020
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/94235/%d9%83%d8%a8%d8%aa%d8%a7%d8%ba%d9%88%d9%86-%d8%ad%d8%b2%d8%a8-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%84%d9%87-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a5%d9%8a%d8%b7%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a7-%d8%b6%d8%a8%d8%b7-%d8%b4%d8%ad%d9%86%d8%a9-%d8%a8/
Italian authorities confirmed that nearly 15 tons of smuggled Captagon
amphetamine pills seized last year appeared to have originated from the
Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group and not ISIS, according to the Italian Nova
news agency. A Naples prosecutor said the financial value of the confiscated
drugs amounted to about one billion dollars. The drugs were contained in three
suspicious containers that included papers intended for industrial use and iron
wheels. As part of an investigation broadcast by the BBC, the Italian Financial
Crimes Unit provided details of the shipment, saying that it arrived from Syria
and was seized last summer in an operation described as the largest of its kind.
Italian authorities previously believed that ISIS was behind the drug smuggling
operation but investigations showed that the Syrian regime and Hezbollah were
behind it.
Report: Caesar Act Blamed for Increasing Power Cuts in
Lebanon
Naharnet/Friday, 25 December, 2020
The US Caesar Act that punishes sides who cooperate with the Syrian regime,
caused the electricity that Lebanon draws from Syria to be cut off more
frequently, the Saudi Asharq el-Awsat reported Friday. Member of Hizbullah’s
Loyalty to the Resistance Parliamentary bloc, MP Hussein Hajj Hassan, said that
“Lebanon does not pay the price of the electricity it rents from Syria, and
hesitates to renew the contract,” fearing “Caesar Act,” said the newspaper.
Lebanon draws annually from Syria about 220 megawatts of electricity to supply
Lebanon’s electrical grid, which suffers from a production problem.
Hajj Hassan reportedly told a delegation from the town of al-Tufail on the
border with Syria, who met him complaining about electricity cut offs, “the
problem is not only in Tufail, but in Lebanon as a whole.”"We are importing
electricity from Syria to support the entire Lebanese electricity grid, but
unfortunately, after the Caesar Act, some officials in Lebanon got frightened,
even though importing electricity from Syria is a need for Lebanon, because
electricity production in Lebanon is not enough,” the daily quoted Hassan as
saying. He added that “Lebanon is hesitant to renew the contract with Syria, and
is not paying its dues, because of the confusion in its internal and regional
Lebanese policies, and the fear of unjustified sanctions from American arrogance
dominating the world.”
Report: Lebanon Denies Depositing Maritime Border Maps with
UN
Naharnet/Friday, 25 December, 2020
Lebanon reportedly denied depositing with the United Nations, new maps that
include its claim to the maritime borders with Israel, that are being negotiated
indirectly under the UN and US auspices, noting that the only maps deposited in
the international organization are the land borders map drawn in 1922, the Saudi
Asharq el-Awsat reported on Friday. The daily added that Tuesday’s statements
made by the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the maritime border
demarcation sparked “confusion,” when he said the “US remains ready to mediate
constructive negotiations,” between Lebanon and Israel. He “encouraged both
sides to continue discussions based on the respective claims they have
previously deposited at the United Nations.”“Lebanon did not deposit new maps
with the UN, given that the maps are sent upon conclusion of the agreement and
the demarcation of the borders,” caretaker Foreign Minister Charbel Wehbe said
in remarks to the daily. “As long as the border demarcation agreement has not
been completed with the Israeli side, and is in the process of negotiation, the
only maps deposited with the UN are the maps of the land borders drawn in 1922
between Lebanon and Palestine, and deposited with the League of Nations in 1923,
and were confirmed in the armistice agreement between Lebanon and Israel in
1949,” added Wehbe. The Minister said that “Pompeo aimed to send a political
message, rather than a technical one. He meant to say that the US continues to
play a mediating role in the indirect negotiations,” affirming that Lebanon
“welcomes that role to help reach an agreement.” The border demarcation talks
between the Lebanese and Israeli sides experience additional complications, in
light of Lebanon's demands for rights based on the international land border
point established in 1922, which gives it an additional marine area of 2,290
square kilometers. Meanwhile, Israel rejects the Lebanese maps “supported by
topographical, historical and geographical documents,” and wants to start from
old coordinates, which is a memorandum sent to the United Nations in 2011,
including a notice of initial agreement on a border point between their maritime
borders, which limits the border dispute to only 860 square kilometers.
Health Ministry has no sole authority to stop flights from
Britain,' says Hassan
NNA/Friday, 25 December, 2020
"The Ministry of Health has no sole authority to suspend flights from Britain,
but rather to raise its recommendation to the Disaster Authority and its
technical committee, as well as the governmental committee in confrontation of
the epidemic, which was done last Monday...As for adopting the recommendation
and approaching social, humanitarian, economic and other challenges, it is up to
the committee as a whole, not just our ministry," explained Caretaker Public
Health Minister, Hamad Hassan, via his Twitter account today.
Drug quantity seized at Beirut Airport, suspect arrested
NNA/Friday, 25 December, 2020
After receiving information from the central anti-drug smuggling office about
the arrival of a passenger from Brazil in possession of an amount of drugs, the
Administrative and Justice Police at Beirut Airport immediately identified the
passenger upon his arrival at the Airport, NNA correspondent reported.
Consequently and in coordination with the Airport Customs Office, a thorough
search was conducted into the passenger's luggage, whereby the quantity of drugs
was found hidden in an innovative and professional way inside perfume and
shampoo bottles. The drugs were then confiscated and the suspect was handed over
to the Customs Office for further investigation.
Hariri: May God inspire some so we can reach a government
capable of stopping the collapse
NNA/Friday, 25 December, 2020
Prime Minister-designate, Saad Hariri, tweeted this morning on the occasion of
Christmas, saying: “May the Lord bless the Lebanese in general, and members of
the Christian sects in particular, with better days bearing the good news of
controlling the Corona pandemic, and I hope that God will inspire some so that
we can reach a government capable of stopping the collapse and starting a
reconstruction workshop for what the port explosion has destroyed.”
Abdel Samad on honoring Lebanese journalists abroad:
Creativity despite all challenges
NNA/Friday, 25 December, 2020
Caretaker Information Minister, Dr. Manal Abdel Samad Najd, tweeted Friday on
honoring Lebanon’s journalists abroad, saying: “Yesterday, His Highness Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani’s International Prize to journalist @riadkobaisi for
excellence in combating corruption, and today, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin
Rashid Al Maktoum’s Award to the Chairman of the Board of Directors of An-Nahar
Newspaper @naylatueni for her efforts in support of local and Arab press…It is
the creativity of the Lebanese media despite all the challenges!”
Lebanon Says First Case of New Coronavirus Variant Detected
on Flight from London
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 25 December, 2020
Lebanon has detected its first case of the new variant of the coronavirus, which
has been spreading rapidly in parts of Britain, on a flight arriving from
London, it said on Friday.
"The detection of the first case of the new variant of Covid-19 on Middle East
Airlines flight 202 coming from London on Dec. 21," the country’s caretaker
health minister said on Twitter, urging all passengers on the flight and their
families to take precautionary measures. A surge in coronavirus infections is
straining Lebanon's healthcare system, which was already struggling amid a
financial crisis and following the huge port explosion in August which damaged
hospitals in Beirut. Lebanon, with an estimated population of 6 million people,
has reported more than 1,000 deaths as a result of COVID-19.
Explosions reported in Syria after Israeli jets fly over Lebanon
capital Beirut
The Associated Press, Beirut/Friday 25 December
2020
Israeli jets flew very low over parts of Lebanon early Friday, terrifying
residents on Christmas Eve, some of whom reported seeing missiles in the skies
over Beirut. Minutes later, Syria's official news agency reported explosions in
the central Syrian town of Masyaf. Other Syrian media said Syrian air defenses
responded to an Israeli attack near the town in the Hama province. There was no
immediate word on what the target was or whether there were any casualties.
Israeli jets regularly violate Lebanese airspace and have often struck inside
Syria from Lebanese territory. But the Christmas Eve flights were louder than
usual, frightening residents of Beirut who have endured multiple crises in the
past year, including the catastrophic August 4 explosion at the city's port that
killed over 200 people and destroyed parts of the capital. That explosion
resulted from the detonation of a stockpile of ammonium nitrates that was
improperly stored at the facility. There was no immediate word from Israel on
Friday's flights and alleged attacks on Syria. In the past few years, Israel has
acknowledged carrying out dozens of airstrikes in Syria, most of them aimed at
suspected Iranian weapons shipments believed to be bound for Hezbollah. In
recent months, Israeli officials have expressed concern that Hezbollah is trying
to establish production facilities to make precision guided missiles. Masyaf is
a significant military area for Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime that
includes a military academy and a scientific research center. Israel has struck
targets there several times in the past.
The Blast that Blew Away Lebanon's Faith in Itself
Samia Nakhoul/Reuters/December 25/2020
They gather in groups, wearing black, in the shadow of buildings gutted by the
explosion that shook this city on Aug. 4. Men, women and children from Christian
and Muslim sects cradle portraits of their dead.
Beirut has been blown back to the vigils of its 1975-1990 civil war. Then,
families demanded information about relatives who had disappeared. Many never
found out what happened, even as the country was rebuilt. Today’s mourners know
what happened; they just don’t know why.
Four months on, authorities have not held anyone responsible for the blast that
killed 200 people, injured 6,000 and left 300,000 homeless. Many questions
remain unanswered. Chief among them: Why was highly flammable material knowingly
left at the port, in the heart of the city, for nearly seven years?
For me, the port explosion rekindled memories I’ve spent 30 years trying to
forget. As a reporter for Reuters, I covered the civil war, the invasion and
occupation of Lebanon by Israel and Syria – and the assassinations, air strikes,
kidnappings, hijackings and suicide attacks that marked all these conflicts.
But the blast has left me, and many other Lebanese, questioning what has become
of a country that seems to have abandoned its people. This time, the lack of
answers over the catastrophe is making it difficult for an already crippled
nation to rise from the ashes again. “I feel ashamed to be Lebanese,” said
Shoushan Bezdjian, whose daughter Jessica – a 21-year-old nurse – died while on
duty when the explosion ripped through her hospital.
False hope
It took 15 years of sectarian bloodletting to destroy Beirut during the civil
war. It then took 15 years to rebuild it – with lots of help from abroad. In
1990, billions of dollars poured in from Western and Gulf countries and from a
far-flung Lebanese diaspora estimated to be at least three times the size of the
country’s 6 million population.
The result was impressive: Beirut was reincarnated as a glamorous city featured
in travel magazines as an exciting destination for culture and partying.
Tourists came for the city’s nightlife, to international festivals in Graeco-Roman
and Ottoman settings, to museums and archaeological sites from Phoenician times.
Many highly educated expatriates – academics, doctors, engineers and artists –
returned to take part in the rebirth of their nation. Among them was Youssef
Comair, a neurosurgeon who had left Lebanon in 1982 to pursue a specialization
in the United States.
Comair had then worked as assistant professor of neurosurgery at UCLA and head
of the epilepsy department at the Cleveland Clinic, where he pioneered the use
of surgery as a therapy for epilepsy. When he landed back in Beirut to work as
head of surgery at the American University of Beirut, Comair believed the
country had turned a corner. Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, the
industrialist-turned-politician who had rebuilt post-war Beirut, was in power
and promised a renewed age of prosperity.
“I was yearning for a life and a place ... receptive to all kinds of
civilizations. This is what we were in Lebanon before the war,” recalled Comair.
Behind the splendor of Beirut, however, post-civil war Lebanon was being built
on shaky political ground.
At the end of the war, militia leaders on all sides took off their fatigues,
donned suits, shook hands after the 1989 Saudi-brokered Taif peace accord and
largely disarmed. But the nation’s political leaders, it seemed to many here,
continued to pay more attention to a revolving door of foreign patrons than to
the creation of a stable state.
The country’s Shiites turned to Iran and its Arab ally Syria, whose troops
entered Lebanon in 1976 and stayed for three decades. The Sunnis looked to
wealthy oil producers in the Gulf. Christians, whose political influence was
heavily curtailed in the post-war deal, struggled to find a reliable partner and
shifted alliances over the years. Domestic policy was dictated, at different
times, by the foreign power with the deepest wallet.
Comair’s return to Beirut was propitious for me, too. While I was covering the
US invasion of Baghdad in 2003, I was badly wounded in the head by shrapnel from
a US tank shell fired at the Reuters office in the Palestine Hotel. After
emergency surgery in Baghdad, I was evacuated by US Marines to neighboring
Kuwait and then on to Lebanon for further treatment. Beirut had become a medical
center of excellence for the region – and Comair was my doctor. For years,
during my sojourns in Dubai and London, I regularly returned to Beirut and
Comair to ensure I was healing.
But my country was once again under strain. After the Iranian-backed Hezbollah
drove out Israeli forces in south Lebanon in 2000, the group was steadily
increasing its military and political influence. In 2005, Hariri was
assassinated, once more dealing a blow to those who thought Lebanon had a bright
future. Once again, Lebanese top professionals emigrated. Comair took up a
position at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston in 2006. I settled in
London.
Both of us were determined to return, however. For me, a return home was a way
to expose my children, who were in elementary school at the time, to my family
and culture. The so-called Arab Spring in 2010 provided the moment. While
protests erupted and dictators were toppled in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya,
Bahrain and Yemen, Lebanon seemed like an oasis in a troubled region. Beirut was
once again bustling. By 2012, both Comair and I were back in Beirut.
We were lulled into a sense of security: traditional Sunday lunches with family;
sunset on the decks of Beirut beaches; music and film festivals; skiing on Mount
Lebanon’s slopes. Friends and family began visiting in greater numbers, as
Lebanon’s wartime reputation began to be forgotten. Tourism peaked in Lebanon in
2010, when the number of visitors reached almost 2.2 million, a 17% increase
from 2009, according to official statistics.
Life stopped
Yet again, however, Lebanon’s foundations were weak. The country was living
beyond its means, with successive governments piling up debt, which rose to the
equivalent of 170% of national output in March 2020, according to Lebanon’s
finance ministry. This time, national banks bore the brunt of the nation’s
spending. By early last year, their losses on loans to the state totaled $83
billion, considerably more than Lebanon’s annual gross domestic product. The
banks reacted by shutting their doors, freezing all accounts – effectively
shutting down Lebanon’s economy.
For more than a year now, people in Lebanon have not been able to transfer money
or withdraw more than $500 a week. The closure of the banks blocked another key
stream of income for Lebanon’s economy – money from the diaspora.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Lebanon’s economic output had shrunk by
6.7% in 2019. In 2020, the economy is projected to shrink by another 20%. More
than 50,000 children have left private schooling and enrolled in state education
over the past year, government figures show, a trend that underscores the
erosion of the country’s middle class. Nearly 700 doctors have left Lebanon over
the past year, according to Sharaf Abou Sharaf, head of the doctors’ union.
What many Beirutis didn’t know before August is that an even bigger threat lay
in their midst. In 2013, a ship had docked at the Beirut port with a stash of
the highly flammable chemical ammonium nitrate. It wasn’t – and isn’t to this
day – clear why the ship had headed to Lebanon. But the arrival and storage of
the material was known to a revolving door of port and national security
officials – installed by various government factions – who were never able to
agree on how to remove the chemical shipment. It lay untouched for more than six
years in a warehouse at the Beirut port, a short walk from the busy city center.
When I covered the civil war, I chronicled the deaths of dozens of victims
overlooked amidst the bigger events: two sisters who drowned at sea in a
desperate attempt to flee shelling; three brothers immolated in a supermarket;
young school children hit in shelling that targeted their bus. One morning in
1989 I found myself walking into a morgue with a mask that could not stifle the
suffocating stench of 20 army soldiers shot in the head, their hands still tied
behind their backs.
But I will never forget the terror in the eyes of my twin children on that
afternoon in August when our car was suddenly thrown toward the side of the road
as an orange and white mushroom cloud of dust and debris rose over our heads.
“Duck and cover,” I yelled, instantly thrown back to the bombs of my
conflict-zone reporting days. Glass and bricks from collapsing buildings fell
near the car; uprooted trees blocked the roads. People ran everywhere; wailing
ambulances struggled to reach the wounded.
“Life stopped on August 4,” said Rita Hitti, whose son Najib was a firefighter
who was killed along with two other family members as they battled the flames
that ignited the explosives at the port.
“I no longer have any feeling towards anything – my country or anything else.”
After the blast, the government resigned in the face of popular anger. But
Lebanon’s different ruling factions remain too divided to create a new
government that can help rebuild the city – and Lebanon’s economy. Their
loyalties are split between foreign powers, including Europe, the United States,
Iran and Syria. Attempts by France’s President Emmanuel Macron to help cobble
together a new administration have thus far failed.
A society divided
Today, the split between Lebanon’s elite and the wider population is wide.
Lebanese tycoons regularly feature on the Forbes list of the world’s richest
people. Among the six listed in 2020 were members of the family of al-Hariri,
the assassinated prime minister, and another former premier, Najib Mikati, and
his brother Taha. Other leaders, many of them former militia heads, now live in
grand villas, surrounded by security, in Beirut’s wealthy suburbs or secluded
hilltops.
In 2019, the richest 10% owned about 70% of the country’s personal wealth,
according to a report by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for
Western Asia. More than half the population is in poverty, the report added.
Samia Doughan, 48, recently joined a protest at the Beirut port against the
nation’s leaders. She sobbed as she held a picture of her dead husband. “Every
day, we wake up crying and we sleep crying,” said Doughan, the mother of twin
girls. “These leaders should have been toppled a long time ago. They ruled us
for 30 years, it’s enough.”
In contrast to the post-civil-war period, when overseas support flowed in,
foreign donors say they will not finance Lebanon until a new administration can
show that their money will not be squandered.
During the civil war, many Lebanese emigrated. This time, too, people are
starting to look for an exit. Information International, a Beirut-based research
firm which has done extensive research about migration, said an estimated 33,000
people left in 2018 and 66,000 left in 2019.
Immediately after the August blast, searches in Lebanon for the word
“immigration” on Google Trends hit a 10-year peak, and a recent search by the
Arab Opinion Index revealed that four out of five Lebanese aged 18 to 24 are
considering emigration. Sharaf, head of the doctor’s union, says he receives
between five and 10 requests a day for recommendations from doctors seeking jobs
in foreign hospitals.
The heart of the capital, ordinarily packed over Christmas, is deserted. Stores
and restaurants are closed. Martyrs Square, which during the Civil War was the
frontline between Muslim west and Christian east Beirut before being rebuilt, is
no longer lit up at night.
Comair and I are both now thinking of leaving Lebanon again. My doctor spends
his days trying to rebuild his hospital, which was destroyed during the
explosion. But he has little faith in the country’s long-term revival.
“We are witnessing the annihilation of Lebanon,” he told me. “I have no hope
that this country can rise up.”
Lebanese lose hope their country can rise up
The Arab Weekly/December 25/2020
BEIRUT –They gather in groups, wearing black, in the shadow of buildings gutted
by the explosion that shook this city on August 4. Men, women and children from
Christian and Muslim sects cradle portraits of their dead. Beirut has been blown
back to the vigils of its 1975-1990 civil war. Then, families demanded
information about relatives who had disappeared. Many never found out what
happened, even as the country was rebuilt. Today’s mourners know what happened;
they just don’t know why. Four months on, authorities have not held anyone
responsible for the blast that killed 200 people, injured 6,000 and left 300,000
homeless. Many questions remain unanswered. Chief among them: Why was highly
flammable material knowingly left at the port, in the heart of the city, for
nearly seven years?“I feel ashamed to be Lebanese,” said Shoushan Bezdjian,
whose daughter Jessica, a 21-year-old nurse, died while on duty when the
explosion ripped through her hospital.
False hope
It took 15 years of sectarian bloodletting to destroy Beirut during the civil
war. It then took 15 years to rebuild it with lots of help from abroad. In 1990,
billions of dollars poured in from Western and Gulf Arab countries and from a
far-flung Lebanese diaspora estimated to be at least three times the size of the
country’s 6 million population. The result was impressive: Beirut was
reincarnated as a glamorous city featured in travel magazines as an exciting
destination for culture and partying. Tourists came for the city’s nightlife, to
international festivals in Graeco-Roman and Ottoman settings, to museums and
archaeological sites from Phoenician times. Many highly educated expatriates,
academics, doctors, engineers and artists returned to take part in the rebirth
of their nation. Among them was Youssef Comair, a neurosurgeon who had left
Lebanon in 1982 to pursue a specialisation in the United States.
Comair had then worked as assistant professor of neurosurgery at UCLA and head
of the epilepsy department at the Cleveland Clinic, where he pioneered the use
of surgery as a therapy for epilepsy. When he landed back in Beirut to work as
head of surgery at the American University of Beirut, Comair believed the
country had turned a corner. Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, the
industrialist-turned-politician who had rebuilt post-war Beirut, was in power
and promised a renewed age of prosperity. “I was yearning for a life and a place
… receptive to all kinds of civilisations. This is what we were in Lebanon
before the war,” recalled Comair.
Behind the splendour of Beirut, however, post-civil war Lebanon was being built
on shaky political ground. At the end of the war, militia leaders on all sides
took off their fatigues, donned suits, shook hands after the 1989 Saudi-brokered
Taif peace accord and largely disarmed. But the nation’s political leaders, it
seemed to many here, continued to pay more attention to a revolving door of
foreign patrons than to the creation of a stable state. The country’s Shia
Muslims turned to Iran and its Arab ally Syria, whose troops entered Lebanon in
1976 and stayed for three decades. The Sunnis looked to wealthy oil producers in
the Gulf. Christians, whose political influence was heavily curtailed in the
post-war deal, struggled to find a reliable partner and shifted alliances over
the years. Domestic policy was dictated, at different times, by the foreign
power with the deepest wallet. Lebanon, in brief, was once again under strain.
After the Iranian-backed Hezbollah drove out Israeli forces in south Lebanon in
2000, the group was steadily increasing its military and political influence. In
2005, Hariri was assassinated, once more dealing a blow to those who thought
Lebanon had a bright future. Once again, Lebanese top professionals emigrated
and Comair took up a position at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston in
2006. He was, however, determined to return. The “Arab spring” in 2010 provided
the moment. While protests erupted and dictators were toppled in Tunisia, Egypt,
Syria, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen, Lebanon seemed like an oasis in a troubled
region. Beirut was once again bustling. By 2012, Comair was back in Beirut. He
was lulled into a sense of security: traditional Sunday lunches with family;
sunset drinks on the decks of Beirut beaches; music and film festivals; wine
tasting in the vineyards of Mount Lebanon’s foothills, skiing on its slopes.
Friends and family began visiting in greater numbers, as Lebanon’s wartime
reputation began to be forgotten. Tourism peaked in Lebanon in 2010, when the
number of visitors reached almost 2.2 million, a 17% increase from 2009,
according to official statistics.
Life stopped
Yet again, however, Lebanon’s foundations were weak. The country was living
beyond its means, with successive governments piling up debt, which rose to the
equivalent of 170% of national output in March 2020, according to Lebanon’s
finance ministry. This time, national banks bore the brunt of the nation’s
spending. By early last year, their losses on loans to the state totalled $83
billion, considerably more than Lebanon’s annual gross domestic product. The
banks reacted by shutting their doors, freezing all accounts, “effectively
shutting down Lebanon’s economy. For more than a year now, people in Lebanon
have not been able to transfer money or withdraw more than $500 a week. The
closure of the banks blocked another key stream of income for Lebanon’s economy,
money from the diaspora. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Lebanon’s
economic output had shrunk by 6.7% in 2019. In 2020, the economy is projected to
shrink by another 20%. More than 50,000 children have left private schooling and
enrolled in state education over the past year, government figures show, a trend
that underscores the erosion of the country’s middle class. Nearly 700 doctors
have left Lebanon over the past year, according to Sharaf Abou Sharaf, head of
the doctors’ union.
What many Beirutis didn’t know before August is that an even bigger threat lay
in their midst. In 2013, a ship had docked at the Beirut port with a stash of
the highly flammable chemical ammonium nitrate. It wasn’t and isn’t to this day
clear why the ship had headed to Lebanon.
But the arrival and storage of the material was known to a revolving door of
port and national security officials, installed by various government factions,
who were never able to agree on how to remove the chemical shipment. It lay
untouched for more than six years in a warehouse at the Beirut port, a short
walk from the busy city centre. “Life stopped on August 4,” said Rita Hitti,
whose son Najib was a firefighter who was killed along with two other family
members as they battled the flames that ignited the explosives at the port.
“I no longer have any feeling towards anything, my country or anything else.”
After the blast, the government resigned in the face of popular anger. But
Lebanon’s different ruling factions remain too divided to create a new
government that can help rebuild the city and Lebanon’ s economy. Their
loyalties are split between the United States, Europe and the Gulf states on one
side and Iran and Syria on the other. Attempts by France’s President Emmanuel
Macron to help cobble together a new administration have thus far failed.
A divided society
Today, the split between Lebanon’s elite and the wider population is wide.
Lebanese tycoons regularly feature on the Forbes list of the world’s richest
people. Among the six listed in 2020 were members of the family of al-Hariri,
the assassinated prime minister, and another former premier, Najib Mikati, and
his brother Taha. Other leaders, many of them former militia heads, now live in
grand villas, surrounded by security, in Beirut’s wealthy suburbs or secluded
hilltops. In 2019, the richest 10% owned about 70% of the country’s personal
wealth, according to a report by the United Nations Economic and Social
Commission for Western Asia. More than half the population is in poverty, the
report added. Samia Doughan, 48, recently joined a protest at the Beirut port
against the nation’s leaders. She sobbed as she held a picture of her dead
husband. “Every day, we wake up crying and we sleep crying,” said Doughan, the
mother of twin girls. “These leaders should have been toppled a long time ago.
They ruled us for 30 years, it’s enough.”
In contrast to the post-civil-war period, when overseas support flowed in,
foreign donors say they will not finance Lebanon until a new administration can
show that their money will not be squandered. During the civil war, many
Lebanese emigrated. This time, too, people are starting to look for an exit.
Information International, a Beirut-based research firm which has done extensive
research about migration, said an estimated 33,000 people left in 2018 and
66,000 left in 2019. Immediately after the August blast, searches in Lebanon for
the word “immigration” on Google Trends hit a 10-year peak, and a recent search
by the Arab Opinion Index revealed that four out of five Lebanese aged 18 to 24
are considering emigration.
Sharaf, head of the doctors’ union, says he receives between five and 10
requests a day for recommendations from doctors seeking jobs in foreign
hospitals. The heart of the capital, ordinarily packed over Christmas, is
deserted. Stores and restaurants are closed. Martyrs Square, which during the
Civil War was the frontline between Muslim west and Christian east Beirut before
being rebuilt, is no longer lit up at night. Comair and I are both now thinking
of leaving Lebanon again. My doctor spends his days trying to rebuild his
hospital, which was destroyed during the explosion. But he has little faith in
the country’s long-term revival. “We are witnessing the annihilation of
Lebanon,” he told me. “I have no hope that this country can rise up.”
The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 25-26/2020
Pope Says Fraternity the Watchword 'at This Moment in
History'
Agence France Presse/December 25/2020
Pope Francis said in his Christmas message Friday that fraternity was a
watchword for these unusually troubled times exacerbated by the coronavirus
pandemic. "At this moment in history, marked by the ecological crisis and grave
economic and social imbalances only worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, it is
all the more important for us to acknowledge one another as brothers and
sisters," he said in his "Urbi et Orbi" message.
Christian minorities celebrate Christmas across the Middle East, pandemic
dampens spirit
The Arab Weekly/December 25/2020
BETHLEHEM, West Bank – Bethlehem on Thursday ushered in Christmas Eve with a
stream of joyous marching bands and the triumphant arrival of the top Catholic
clergyman in the Holy Land, but few people were there to greet them as the
coronavirus pandemic and a strict lockdown dampened celebrations in the
traditional birthplace of Jesus. Similar subdued scenes were repeated across the
Middle East as the festive family gatherings and packed prayers that typically
mark the holiday were scaled back or cancelled altogether, generally replaced
with symbolic scenes and initiatives.
In Iraq, it wasn’t Santa on a sleigh, but it was close: just before dusk on
Christmas Eve, a busload of volunteers pulled into the Iraqi Christian town of
Qaraqosh to deliver holiday happiness. Under a pinkish sky, they disembarked
from their charter bus with cardboard boxes full of Christmas cards, bearing
hand-written messages from across Muslim-majority Iraq. “A special greeting to
our Christian brothers,” read one card, signed in the overwhelmingly Muslim
southern port city of Basra the previous day.
”Beautiful initiative”
On foot, members of Iraq’s Tahawer (Dialogue) initiative and other volunteers
delivered some 1,400 cards across the northern town, which was ravaged by
jihadist rule after the Islamic State group advanced east across the Nineveh
Plains in 2014.
“It’s a beautiful initiative,” said Rand Khaled, after receiving a Christmas
card outside the Syriac Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qaraqosh.
She was dressed in her Christmas Eve finest, with a chic chocolate-coloured coat
shielding her from the cold.
“We need initiatives like this every once in a while, because people who don’t
know these areas absolutely should get to know them,” Khaled said. Iraq’s
Christians number around 400,000 today, down from some 1.5 million before the
US-led invasion toppled longtime dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
It is a tiny minority in a country of 40 million people, most of whom are Shia
Muslims. The cards came from all over Iraq: from the capital Baghdad and the
Shia shrine city of Najaf, from mainly Sunni Arab Salahaddin province in the
west and the Kurdish city of Dohuk in the far north. They were packed into
dozens of boxes and transported up to 950 kilometres (600 miles) through
military checkpoints before reaching Qaraqosh. “I don’t know how to describe
it,” said Nishwan Mohammad, Tahawer’s programme manager. “People were ecstatic —
they never expected someone to come visit them, much less bring them letters
from all over Iraq,” he said.
Renewing hope
In Bethlehem, officials tried to make the most out of a bad situation.
“Christmas is a holiday that renews hope in the souls,” said Mayor Anton Salman.
“Despite all the obstacles and challenges due to corona and due to the lack of
tourism, the city of Bethlehem is still looking forward to the future with
optimism.”
Raw, rainy weather added to the gloomy atmosphere, as several dozen people
gathered in the central Manger Square to greet Latin Patriarch Pierbattista
Pizzaballa. Youth marching bands playing Christmas carols on bagpipes,
accompanied by pounding drummers, led a joyous procession ahead of the
patriarch’s arrival early in the afternoon.
“Despite the restrictions and limitations we want to celebrate as much as
possible, with family, community and joy,” said Pizzaballa, who was to lead a
small Midnight Mass gathering later in the evening. “We want to offer
hope.”Thousands of foreign pilgrims usually flock to Bethlehem for the
celebrations. But the closure of Israel’s international airport to foreign
tourists, along with Palestinian restrictions banning intercity travel in the
areas they administer in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, kept visitors away. The
restrictions limited attendance to residents and a small entourage of religious
officials. Evening celebrations, when pilgrims normally congregate around the
Christmas tree, were cancelled, and Midnight Mass was limited to clergy. The
coronavirus has dealt a heavy blow to Bethlehem’s tourism sector, the lifeblood
of the local economy. Restaurants, hotels and gift shops have been shuttered.
While many places around the globe were keeping or increasing restrictions for
Christmas, Lebanon was an exception. With its economy in tatters and parts of
its capital destroyed by a massive August 4 port explosion, Lebanon has lifted
most virus measures ahead of the holidays, hoping to encourage spending.
Tens of thousands of Lebanese expatriates have arrived home for the holidays,
leading to fears of an inevitable surge in cases during the festive season.
Lebanon has the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle
East — about a third of its 5 million people — and traditionally celebrates
Christmas with much fanfare.
“People around us were tired, depressed and depleted, so we said let’s just
plant a drop of joy and love,” said Sevine Ariss, one of the organisers of a
Christmas fair along the seaside road where the explosion caused the most
damage.
New addition
Christmas is usually celebrated in Arab states with a Christian minority but the
newest addition to the list of countries where the season was marked this year
is Saudi Arabia. Christmas trees and glittery ornaments were for sale at Saudi
gift shops, a once unthinkable sight in the cradle of Islam where all public
non-Muslim worship is banned. In recent years, festive sales have gradually
crept into the capital Riyadh, a sign of loosening social restrictions after
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz pledged to steer the conservative
Gulf kingdom towards an “open, moderate Islam.”
Until barely three years ago, it was almost impossible to sell such items openly
in Saudi Arabia, but authorities have been clipping the powers of the clerical
establishment long notorious for enforcing Islamic traditions. For decades,
Christmas sales were largely underground, and Christians from the Philippines,
Lebanon and other countries celebrated behind closed doors or in expat enclaves.
“It was very difficult to find such” Christmas items in the kingdom, said Mary,
a Lebanese expat based in Riyadh who preferred to be identified by her first
name.
“Many of my friends used to buy them from Lebanon or Syria and sneak them into
the country,” she said. Saudi Arabia is the custodian of Mecca and Medina,
Islam’s two holiest sites.
Local officials say school textbooks, once well-known for degrading Jews and
other non-Muslims, are undergoing revision as part of Prince Mohammed’s campaign
to combat extremism in education.
The heir to the Saudi throne has curbed the influence of the once-powerful
religious police, as he permits mixed-gender music concerts, cinemas and other
entertainment, but temples and churches are still forbidden.
Christians around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus on either December 25
or, for the Eastern Orthodox, January 7. It is not a religious occasion for
Muslims but many choose to mark the holiday for its festive and joyous
character.
At least 6 dead in airstrikes on Iranian missile factories
in Syria
Arutz Sheva/December 25/2020
Airstrikes on Iranian militia bases and missile facilities in Syria leave at
least 6 dead, with many more injured, observer group says. At least six
Iranian-aligned combatants were killed and more injured in a series of
airstrikes on militia bases in Syria overnight, according to a report by an
observer group.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday morning that
airstrikes attributed to Israel in northwestern Syria struck missile assembly
facilities maintained by pro-Iranian forces. Six fighters were killed in the
strikes, the SOHR reported, with the death toll expected to rise to the number
of militia members seriously injured in the missile strikes. All six of the dead
were non-Syrian nationals, though it is unclear whether they were Iranian,
Lebanese, or Iraqi.
The missile strikes took place at around midnight from late Thursday into early
Friday morning, and struck facilities used to assemble short and medium-range
missiles in the Masyaf district of northwest Syria. Israel has refused to
comment on the airstrike.
The Syrian Ministry of Defense said that Israeli missiles had been launched from
northern Lebanon toward the Masyaf area. It also claimed that the "air defense
systems have successfully intercepted the attack and shot down most of the
missiles."
Israeli strikes on Syria kill six Iran-backed fighters:
Monitor
AFP, Beirut/Friday 25 December 2020
Israeli missile strikes on Syria killed at least six Iran-backed fighters
Friday, a war monitor said. The dead were all foreign paramilitaries fighting
alongside President Bashar al-Assad's forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human
Right said. The missiles, which were fired from Lebanese airspace, hit positions
held by Iran-backed militias in the Masyaf district of Hama province,
Observatory chief Rami Abdul Rahman said. One also targeted a government-run
research center, where surface-to-surface missiles are developed and stored, the
Britain-based watchdog said. Iranian experts are believed to work in the
research center. The Israeli military said it would not comment on reports in
foreign media. The research center in Masyaf has been hit several times by
Israeli strikes in recent years, the Observatory said. According to the United
States, sarin gas was being developed at the center, a claim denied by Syrian
authorities, who say the country has possessed no chemical weapons since it
dismantled its arsenal under a 2013 agreement. Syrian state news agency SANA
said air defenses intercepted missiles fired by Israel on Masyaf. “Our air
defenses intercepted an Israeli attack on the Masyaf area,” SANA reported. It
said air defenses hit “most” missiles before they reached their target. State
television aired footage purporting to show air defenses responding to the
Israeli attack. The Israeli activity in the skies was heard over parts of
neighboring Lebanon, where many took to social media to denounce the Christmas
Day attack. Israel has launched hundreds of strikes in Syria since the start of
the civil war in 2011. It has targeted government troops, allied Iranian forces
and fighters from Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. It rarely confirms details
of its operations in Syria but says Iran's presence in support of President
Bashar al-Assad is a threat to which it will continue to respond.
Democrats Back Biden’s ‘Unconditional’ Return to Iran Nuclear Deal
Washington - Rana Abtar/Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 25 December, 2020
A letter backing President-elect Joe Biden’s plan to return to the Iran nuclear
deal without any new conditions has garnered 150 signatures from House
Democrats. “We strongly endorse your call for Iran to return to strict
compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States to rejoin the agreement, and
subsequent follow-on negotiations” says the letter, which concluded its
signature-gathering phase on Wednesday and is set to be sent to Biden. According
to them, the diplomatic path endorsed by Biden to prevent Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons is the most effective. They added that the nuclear deal provides
the required framework to achieve this goal. Further, they suggested lifting
some of the sanctions imposed on Iran. In their letter, the Democrats accused
the Trump administration of failing to contain Iran’s destabilizing activities,
which has in turn increased the threat of conflict erupting in the region.
The lawmakers stressed that rejoining the nuclear deal would provide the
required international support to exert pressure on Tehran. They noted that
Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region, such as supporting terrorism,
developing ballistic weapons, violating human rights and detaining political
prisoners, are all matters that call for coordinated international diplomacy.
The signatories include officials who enjoy close ties to Israel and the Israeli
lobby in Washington (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which opposes
the rejoining of the nuclear pact without wide amendments and strict conditions.
We want better ties with Israel'
Arutz Sheva/December 25/2020
Turkish president says talks with Israel are continuing, adding that despite
strong opposition to Israeli policies, he hopes to improve ties. Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Friday his country is looking to improve its
relationship with Israel, despite his continued opposition to Israel’s policies
vis-à-vis the Palestinian Authority. Speaking with reporters in Istanbul after
Friday prayers, Erdoğan said that talks between Israel and Turkey are
continuing, adding that he hopes his country will be able to strengthen its ties
with the Jewish state – a major shift in rhetoric from the hardline leader. But
Erdoğan added that Turkey views Israel’s policies in Judea, Samaria, and the
Gaza Strip as being “unacceptable”. "We are having issues with people at the top
level," he said. "If there were no issues at the top level, our ties could have
been very different," Erdoğan continued. “The Palestine policy is our red line.
It is impossible for us to accept Israel’s Palestine policies. Their merciless
acts there are unacceptable.”Erdoğan’s terms as president, from 2014 on, and as
prime minister, from 2003 to 2014, have seen Turkey’s relationship with Israel
deteriorate dramatically, reaching a nadir in 2010, when Turkish Islamist
radicals on MV Mavi Marmara attempted to force their way through Israel’s
security blockade around the Gaza Strip. When Israeli forces boarded the vessel,
the Turkish Islamists attacked the Israeli soldiers, prompting the troops to
open fire, killing 10. This week, however, it was reported that Azerbaijan, a
Muslim-majority country east of Turkey with ties to Israel, is working to mend
relations between Turkey and the Jewish state.According to senior Israeli
officials, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev raised the Israel-Turkey tensions in a
recent call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Sisi: Success of Upcoming AU Summit Depends on Addressing
Urgent Issues
Cairo - Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 25 December, 2020
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said that the success of the upcoming
African Union (AU) summit will stem from addressing urgent issues that impact
the economic and social development in Africa. This came in remarks as he
participated Thursday via video conference in the AU Bureau Summit with heads of
the Regional Economic Communities (RECs). Sisi highlighted the importance of
doubling efforts to compensate for the damage caused by the novel coronavirus to
the economic condition, health and security of African peoples at the national
and regional levels. Presidential spokesperson Bassam Rady said participants
discussed preparations for the next AU summit, scheduled for February 2021.
According to Akhbar Elyom official news portal, Sisi expressed his appreciation
to the South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, the current AU chair, for his
keenness to hold meetings despite the challenges posed by the virus outbreak. He
further stressed the importance of collective efforts to advance the agenda of
joint African action in light of the current circumstances. Participants agreed
to coordinate in this regard to establish the mechanism for holding the next AU
summit while ensuring its smooth organization and preserving the interests of
the continent and its peoples.
Explosion Hits Gas Pipeline in Egypt's Sinai
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 25 December, 2020
An explosion at a key natural gas pipeline in Egypt's restive northern Sinai
Peninsula caused a fire but no human casualties, a senior official said. North
Sinai Governor Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha said the explosion took pace late
Thursday in el-Arish, the provincial capital. In a statement, he said the
explosion will not affect the pipeline's supply to el-Arish's residential areas
or an industrial zone in central Sinai. An investigation was underway to
determine the cause of the blast, Shousha said, The Associated Press reported. A
similar explosion hit a gas pipeline in northern Sinai last month and was
claimed by ISIS group affiliate. Egypt has for years been battling an insurgency
in northern Sinai that’s now led by the ISIS affiliate.IS has carried out a
number of large-scale attacks in Egypt in recent years.
Warning Message from US to Region: Do Not Weaken Our
Ability to Pressure Damascus
London - Ibrahim Hamidi/Friday, 25 December, 2020
The latest American sanctions against Damascus and the Middle East tour carried
out by Joel Rayburn, US Special Envoy for Syria in the US State Department,
delivered a strong message that a change in administration in Washington does
not mean a change in policy or an end to the regime’s isolation. Even if
tactical changes were to be introduced, strategic changes on Syria will not
happen, he said. The sanctions came with an added “warning” against taking steps
that could weaken Washington’s ability to continue its pressure campaign on
Damascus. The recent sanctions “shut the door for the possibility of holding
negotiations between the US and Syria” and obstruct the possibility of opening
“channels of dialogue.” Rather, they only increase the economic pressure on
Damascus with the central bank being among the latest targets. The impact was
immediate, with foreign banks declaring that they were halting operations in
Damascus.
Coordination with London
Washington blacklisted Asma al-Assad, president Bashar’s wife, her father and
two brothers, as well as businesses they own. In addition, it targeted security,
economic and executive Syrian officials, including Lina Mohammed Nazir al-Kinayeh,
whom the Treasury identified as an official in Assad’s presidential office, her
husband, MP Mohammed Hammam Masouti, and their businesses, and others. The
latest sanctions take to 114 the number of individuals and entities that have
been targeted since the Caesar Act came into effect in mid-June. Reports have
said new sanctions will be announced before US President Donald Trump leaves the
White House on January 20. Rayburn said the latest sanctions were announced a
year after Trump signed the Caesar Act. “The United States remains committed to
carrying out a sustained campaign of economic and political pressure to prevent
the Assad regime and its staunchest supporters from amassing resources to fuel
their war against the Syrian people,” he stressed on Tuesday. “To that end, the
United States is imposing sanctions on 18 more individuals and entities,
including the Central Bank of Syria. These individuals and corrupt businesses
are impeding efforts to reach a political and peaceful resolution to the Syrian
conflict, as called for by UN Security Council Resolution 2254,” he added.
“Among those individuals sanctioned today are Asma al-Assad and some of her
immediate relatives, all of whom are based in the United Kingdom. Asma al-Assad
has spearheaded efforts on behalf of the regime to consolidate economic and
political power, including by using her so-called charities and civil society
organizations. Her and her family’s corruption is one of the many reasons that
this conflict lingers on,” he remarked.
Rayburn said it was “significant” that Asma and her immediate relatives – her
father, Fawaz Akhras; Asma al-Assad’s mother, Sahar Otri Akhras; Asma al-Assad’s
brothers, Firas Akhras and Eyad Akhras – were being targeted. He noted that all
of these figures are dual Syrian and UK citizens and are all based in the UK.
“We coordinated this action with our UK counterparts,” he revealed. “Our UK
counterparts are very, very close partners of ours on the Syria file. And so we
did everything in conjunction with them. We would never surprise them on this
because we’re in a very close strategic partnership with the UK on Syria.”It
remains to be seen whether the British government or European Union will also
sanction the same individuals. Tuesday’s sanctions reveal that Washington will
continue to exert pressure on the Akhras family, Asma and her entourage. They
also send a strong message that Syrians and non-Syrians who cooperate with the
regime may be sanctioned. The third message is that anyone anywhere cooperating
with the regime may be targeted.
Closing the door
Politically, some of the latest blacklisted figures used to play a role in the
“second path” or “second door” of negotiations with American parties. They had
held secret meetings in London to tackle western sanctions on Damascus, among
other issues. Their designation makes such talks “legally impossible” in the
future. The message of the “Syrian file team” in Washington is that “you cannot
be a mediator in London or any other European capital and also a partner to
Damascus.” The Caesar Act bars any dealings with the regime. Significantly, some
of the American officials who were part of this negotiations path will possibly
play a role in managing the Syrian file in Joe Biden’s administration. The
sanctions, effectively, put an end to this option. Rayburn had recently
concluded a tour of the region that included Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Iraq,
northeastern Syria and other countries. The tour served as a “reminder” and a
“warning” to concerned countries of the American goals in Syria: ensuring the
defeat of ISIS, pressuring Iran to pull out from the country and pressuring the
regime to implement resolution 2254. These are not the goals of US Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo or Raybun, but of America. The change in officials, will not
change the goals. A change in administration, does not mean a change in policy.
“I think that those goals already have a consensus behind them in Washington,
and I really don’t think you’re going to see a significant change away from
those goals. You can – there are different people who will come into different
positions; they can have good ideas about how to implement those goals better.
But I don’t think you’re going to see a discarding of those goals,” stressed
Rayburn. “I think you can count on the United States as well as the other
like-minded countries to continue seeking those goals regardless of who is in
the White House,” he added.
Aboul Gheit: World May Face New Cold War, Arabs Must Be
Vigilant
Cairo - Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 25 December, 2020
The world is heading towards a new form of relations between major powers and
China’s rapid rise may lead the world towards a new Cold War, similar to the one
waged between the United States and the Soviet Union, said Arab League Secretary
General Ahmed Aboul Gheit. “Arab countries may find themselves with greater room
to maneuver as the two global forces compete for power, but the race may also
impose restrictions on movements as both sides seek to attract allies,” he
remarked during an opening address of a scientific forum in Cairo on Thursday.
The Arab World and Future Challenges was organized by the Institute for Arab
Research and Studies. The Arabs must be prepared to confront the rapidly
changing developments in the world, Aboul Gheit added. The competition between
China and the US is being managed so that it does not escalate, but errors are
always possible – as history can attest – during such tense conditions, he said.
He noted several changes taking place in the world, such the decline of
globalization, the rise of populism – as demonstrated in Brexit and the election
of Donald Trump as US president. The populist trend will not wane with his
recent reelection defeat. oreover, he said that Russia boasts a military to be
reckoned with and it has aspirations to play a role on the international scene.
China may succeed in luring it to work with it as part of a coalition against
the West, led by the US. Furthermore, he said the cyberwars and artificial
intelligence-powered guided weapons are new unprecedented challenges. The Arab
world, meanwhile, has endured challenges from its regional neighbors, Aboul
Gheit said. He noted that each of Iran and Turkey have ambitions to revive their
past empires in the Arab region and are vying to impose their influence. He
lamented that such regional “bullying” will continue for the foreseeable future
due to the ideologies that Turkey and Iran follow and their exploitation of
“political Islam” to justify their meddling in Arab affairs. Aboul Gheit
stressed that committing to the national state is the salvation for the region
and its countries. “We need to convince our neighbors to stop using religion to
achieve their national interests,” he urged.
Trump Hails Truce as Libyans Celebrate Independence
Cairo – Khaled Mahmoud/Asharq Al-Awsat/December 25/2020
The world is heading towards a new form of relations between ma
Libya celebrated on Thursday the 69th anniversary of its independence amid
accusations between the Libyan National Army (LNA), commanded by Khalifa Haftar,
and the Government of National Accord (GNA), headed by Fayez al-Sarraj, of
amassing forces in Sirte and al-Jufra cities. US President Donald Trump,
meanwhile, congratulated Sarraj and the Libyan people on the occasion of
Independence Day. Trump expressed Washington’s support for Libya to achieve
stability, hailing the recent ceasefire and the launch of the political process.
The United Nations Support Mission in Libya said Libyans “celebrate this
national occasion today with one year to go before national elections planned on
December 24, 2021, as put forth in the roadmap endorsed by the members of the
Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF).” In a statement, it said it “seizes this
opportunity to stress the importance of building on the positive progress
achieved by the Libyans in the various intra-Libyan tracks to end the brutal
fighting; move forward with the full implementation of the comprehensive
Ceasefire Agreement; strengthen confidence-building measures; and, steadily work
towards further improvements in the economic sector.”“While the Mission calls on
Libyans to consolidate their efforts and take courageous steps towards national
reconciliation, and to look forward to a bright future for all Libyans to live
in peace and prosperity, it affirms its full commitment to assisting the Libyan
people in building their unified state. “The Mission will continue to work with
all parties to protect the Libyan people and Libya's resources, realize the
democratic legitimacy of its national institutions; restore the country's
sovereignty; and, end foreign interference,” it vowed. Meanwhile, Sarraj, and
members of his cabinet, all wearing masks due to the novel coronavirus pandemic,
attended a midday parade of military and police forces in Tripoli.He said that
the country was enduring “several challenges and dangers,” hoping that next
year’s celebrations will be held as Libya “celebrates democracy after the people
have their say in presidential and parliamentary elections.”
In the east, Haftar presided over a LNA military parade in the city of Benghazi.
He had kicked off the celebrations by visiting a monument for martyrs and by
launching a tree-planting campaign aimed at combating desertification. On
Wednesday, the LNA said that it had detected the “massive” amassing of “criminal
and takfiri forces, which are armed with advanced Turkish weapons,” in the
region of al-Hisha, al-Qadahya, Zamzam and eastern Misrata.The military warned
that the forces, which also include thousands of mercenaries and foreign
fighters, were preparing to launch an offensive on LNA-held positions in Sirte
and al-Jufra. It slammed the development as a flagrant violation of the
ceasefire, releasing footage of the deployed forces to back its claim.
Pompeo Says US Began Work to Set up Consulate in Western
Sahara
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 25 December, 2020
The US State Department said on Thursday it began the process to set up a US
consulate in Western Sahara, after President Donald Trump’s administration this
month recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the region. In a departure from
longstanding US policy, Washington agreed to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty
over the Western Sahara, a desert region where a decades-old territorial dispute
has pitted Morocco against the Polisario Front, a breakaway movement that seeks
to establish an independent state. The recognition was part of a US-brokered
deal in which Morocco became the fourth Arab country after the United Arab
Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan to normalize ties with Israel in the past four
months. “Effective immediately, we are inaugurating a virtual presence post for
Western Sahara, with a focus on promoting economic and social development, to be
followed soon by a fully functioning consulate,” US Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo said in a statement. “This virtual presence post will be managed by the
US Embassy in Rabat,” Pompeo said, adding that Washington would be continuing to
support political negotiations to resolve the issues between Morocco and the
Polisario within the framework of Morocco’s autonomy plan. Washington’s support
for Moroccan sovereignty over the desert territory represents the biggest policy
concession the United States has made so far in its quest to win Arab
recognition of Israel. The series of normalization deals have been driven in
part by US-led efforts to present a united front against Iran and roll back
Tehran’s regional influence. President-elect Joe Biden, due to succeed Trump on
Jan. 20, will face a decision whether to accept the US deal on the Western
Sahara, which no other Western nation has done. Western nations and the UN have
long called for a referendum to resolve the dispute.
Judge Orders Detention of Tunisian Media Magnate Karoui
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 24 December, 2020
A judge ordered the detention of Tunisian media mogul Nabil Karoui on Thursday
on suspicion of financial corruption, a spokesman for the judicial court said
Thursday. Karoui is the leader of the Heart of Tunisia party, the second-largest
party in parliament, and has previously run for president. His party is one of
three that support the technocratic government in parliament. Karoui’s aides and
party officials were not immediately available to comment. TAP state news agency
said Karoui was to face charges of tax evasion and money laundering. Karoui was
arrested in August 2019 but released a few months later on Oct. 9, in the middle
of the election, though investigations into his case continued. Last year,
Karoui said he was confident of his innocence and that his political opponents,
specifically the Islamist Ennahda Party, were behind his imprisonment. Karoui is
now an Ennahda ally in parliament.
Kuwait on alert over ISIS threat in end-of-year plot
The Arab Weekly/December 25/2020
KUWAIT– Kuwait was put on high security alert starting Thursday evening after
indications of an Islamic State (ISIS) plot over the end-of-year holidays. A
statement on Twitter attributed to Interior Minister Sheikh Thamer Al-Ali said
that the ministry “has deployed foot patrols of fully equipped special forces
units inside residential complexes and shopping malls,” in a “step aimed at
imposing discipline and observing the law.”The statement did not give the
immediate reason for the security alert, but the measure coincided with the
disclosure by local media of what was said to be a plot by ISIS to use Kuwaiti
teenagers to carry out bloody attacks in the country. The disclosure of the plan
came during an exceptionally difficult period in Kuwait resulting from the
consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has affected the normal course of
life in the country, especially commercial traffic and movement of goods and
people in and out of the country. However, the major difficulty the country is
facing currently is the deepening financial crisis resulting from the
significant decline in oil prices, given that the state treasury is almost 100%
dependent on oil revenues. This crisis has reached the point of the government
discussing the possibility of it being unable to pay the salaries of state
employees in the event Parliament refuses to authorise it to resort to borrowing
to meet the deficit. The official investigations related to the case of the
arrested juveniles in the new ISIS case revealed shocking details. Perhaps the
most frightening of them is the fact that ISIS members had tasked these
juveniles with targeting places of worship and commercial complexes on New
Year’s Eve, with firearms seized in their possession.
In the event that the plan is confirmed, it will not be the first time that ISIS
targets Kuwait. The terrorist organisation had, in the summer of 2015, conducted
a suicide attack against a Shia mosque in the Al-Sawaber area in the capital,
killing dozens of victims. ISIS’s exceptional focus on the Kuwaiti arena calls
on opinion leaders and politicians to consider the hypothesis that this
terrorist organisation has perhaps sensed the existence of a basis of religious
militancy in the country that would allow it to infiltrate it and make it an
entry point to destabilise an otherwise stable and secure Gulf region.
The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas quoted, on its website,sources as saying that the
ringleader of the arrested juvenile suspects was the son of a former member of
the National Assembly (Parliament). Apparently, he was the first to be contacted
and enrolled by ISIS members.
The sources added that the results of the investigations, including the
defendants’ confessions, have been submitted to the Minister of Interior, Sheikh
Thamer Al-Ali, and the Undersecretary of the Ministry, Lieutenant General Essam
Al-Naham. The two top officials ordered the strictest security measures in the
vicinity of places of worship, in commercial complexes, and markets, through the
deployment of Special Forces men, as well as undercover officers, in addition to
the regular field security teams.
The sources pointed out that “the security forces had clear and explicit orders
to take all precautions and to deal promptly and decisively with any suspect,
and to report everything that is going on moment by moment to the security
leaders.”
On Wednesday, the Kuwaiti State Security Services arrested six Kuwaiti juveniles
who were in contact with ISIS.
The investigation revealed that they had been recruited and radicalised by ISIS.
Investigators also seized firearms which were found in the possession of some of
them, and confiscated several computers containing correspondence and
coordination messages with the terrorist organisation.
The sources said that one of the arrested juveniles admitted that he was
contacted by a person through one of the famous online games. That person had
deliberately joined the juvenile’s team in the game. A week later, he contacted
him through social media and asked him to embrace the ISIS ideology. He later
asked him to draw ISIS flags inside his room and promised to send him money to
recruit the rest of his friends. The sources indicated that the accused juvenile
in turn spoke to one of his close friends, told him what happened, and
eventually convinced him to join him in embracing the ISIS ideology, pointing
out that that friend in turn recruited four of his friends. The sources also
revealed that the security services managed to arrest the rest of the gang and
referred them all to the competent authority. Investigations are still ongoing.
Jordan’s Brotherhood excluded from parliamentary committees
The Arab Weekly/December 25/2020
AMMAN--The Muslim Brotherhood group in Jordan suffered a new setback, as it
failed to hold a seat in any of the fifteen parliamentary committees. Thus, and
for all practical purposes, the group finds itself outside the parliamentary
equation.
The group, represented by the National Reform Alliance, succeeded in winning
only six seats in the last November 10 parliamentary elections, losing about
two-thirds of the seats it won in the previous legislative elections (16 seats).
The group was unable to form coalitions, as the Parliament’s internal rules
require having 10% of the total members of the parliament to do that, and most
of the committees devolved to the new representatives, who numbered 98 out of
130 deputies.
Most of the committees were constituted through elections, while 5 committees
were formed by consensus. The new assembly is different from its predecessors as
it aims to break the stereotypical image perpetuated by the previous assemblies
through harder and more efficient work hoping to meet the expectations and
aspirations of the Jordanian street. Analysts believe that the Brotherhood’s
failure to be on any of the committees will practically lead to its side-lining
on all issues inside the parliament, and thus, it will lose all influence,
especially in the legislative process.
Parliament used to be the Brotherhood’s only outlet for political action through
the presence of representatives from its political arm, the Islamic Action
Front. But the situation has changed, and this party today has no weight in the
parliament, while the Brotherhood is being dogged by court cases demanding its
dissolution.The Ministry of Social Development recently published an official
announcement in the Jordanian media about the decision issued by the Court of
Cassation, the highest judicial body in the Kingdom, last June, decreeing the
dissolution of the Brotherhood, in a step the latter considered hostile and
indicating the existence of an official will to implement the judicial decision.
The Court of Cassation stated in its decision No. 2013/2020, that “the Muslim
Brotherhood Association, which was established in 1946, is considered dissolved
from the date of June 16, 1953, in implementation of the provision of Article 12
of the Charitable Societies Law No. 36 of 1953 published on page 550 of the
Official Gazette No. 1134, and one month after its publication in the Official
Gazette.”
In its publication, the Ministry of Social Development called on creditors and
civilians to get in touch with it with regard to any financial or other rights
against the association, with supporting documents, within a period of one month
from the publication of the announcement. Reacting to the ministry’s
announcement, the group said that the said announcement “comes in the context of
a broad official campaign targeting the path of reform, democracy, freedoms and
human rights in the country.”
“The strict application of the Defence Law is being expanded such that a wide
range of national forces, parties, trade unions and personalities have been
targeted. The official measures aimed at ending political life, violating
freedoms and human rights, and disrupting the path of national reform continue
without interruption,” the group said in a statement. The statement added that
“the group, which was not surprised by the recent official action, which is the
culmination of the plan to target national forces and official bodies, including
the Muslim Brotherhood, expresses its condemnation of this arbitrary measure.”
The statement further added that “the group is an idea and a message that cannot
be cancelled by a decision, nor by any procedure, and that its realistic
legitimacy that has withstood for more than seven decades is stronger than any
decision or procedure.”
The statement did not fail to allude to a conspiracy, by pointing out that
“targeting the group at this delicate and sensitive time that our country and
nation are going through, which calls for strengthening the home front and
strengthening community cohesion, reflects confusion, narrow-mindedness and
placing narrow considerations and delusional interests above national interests,
especially since the evidence considered for taking the decisions cannot be
considered as a legal argument against the group, especially since it was not a
party to the case that was relied upon in the formation of the committee.”
Observers believe that the Jordanian Ministry of Social Development has
published the judicial decision issued against the group as a prelude to its
implementation on the ground, and that there is an order issued at the highest
level of power to proceed with it.
The executive power had previously hesitated to implement the judicial decisions
issued against the Muslim Brotherhood due to considerations observers said were
political and related to concerns about the group’s reactions.
Observers believe that these concerns have eased in light of the awareness of
decision-makers in the kingdom that the Brotherhood no longer holds great sway
with the public due to the erosion of its popular base, which was confirmed by
its low performance in the last legislative elections.
In recent years, the Muslim Brotherhood has been subjected to fatal blows,
perhaps the most prominent of which were the internal splits that afflicted it
and affected its top leaders.Today, the Brotherhood in Jordan seems to be
constrained by the new reality and no longer possesses the power to manoeuvre or
put pressure on decision-makers in the kingdom, amid expectations that it is
likely to face even greater splits, especially that many of the group’s cadres
and members were reluctant to participate in the last election.
EU and Britain Seal Post-Brexit Trade Deal
Agence France Presse/December 25/2020
Britain and the European Union struck a trade deal Thursday after 10 months of
intense negotiation allowed them to soften the economic shock of Brexit. When
the UK leaves the EU single market at the New Year it will not now face tariffs
on cross-Channel commerce, despite breaking off half a century of close
partnership."We've taken back control of our laws and our destiny. We've taken
back control of every jot and tittle of our regulation in a way that is
complete, and unfettered," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared. EU
Commission president Ursula von der Leyen was more measured.
"At the end of a successful negotiations journey I normally feel joy. But today,
I only feel quiet satisfaction and, frankly speaking, relief," she said, citing
English playwright William Shakespeare: "Parting is such sweet sorrow." She also
warned that, protected by the deal from unfair British competition, "The single
market will be fair and remain so."And she urged the 440 million Europeans
remaining in the 27-nation union to put the drama of the four years since
Britain's Brexit referendum behind them and to look to the future. "I say it is
time to leave Brexit behind. Our future is made in Europe," she said.
Britain formally left the EU in January after a divisive referendum in 2016, the
first country to split from the political and economic project that was born as
the continent rebuilt in the aftermath of World War II. But London remains tied
to the EU's rules during a transition period that runs until midnight on
December 31, when the UK will leave the bloc's single market and customs union.
'Solid foundations'
The final 2,000-page agreement was held up by a last-minute dispute over fishing
as both sides haggled over the access EU fishermen will get to Britain's waters
after the end of the year. Von der Leyen said that although the UK would become
a "third country" it would be a trusted partner. Johnson -- who rode to power
pledging to "get Brexit done" -- insisted it was a "good deal for the whole of
Europe and for our friends and partners as well". Leaders around the continent
were quick to herald the 11th-hour accord that heads off the threat of Britain
crashing out of the EU after 47 years of shared history with no follow-on rules.
Irish premier Micheal Martin -- whose EU member state would have been hard hit
by a no-deal -- said the accord was the "least bad version of Brexit possible".
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was "confident" that the deal was a
"good outcome" with French President Emmanuel Macron -- often portrayed as a
bogeyman by the British tabloids -- saying that "Europe's unity and firmness
paid off".
Christmas present?
Johnson was triumphant on Christmas Eve, calling the deal a "present" for
Britain, but reaction elsewhere in the UK was more restrained. "I think it's
dragged on for too long now," David Ashby, 62, said in Lincolnshire's Boston,
summing up the mood of many.
In London, Shane O'Neill said he was pleased, adding: "It would've been a
disaster if there would've been no deal." But Andy Finch, back in Lincolnshire,
had been against Brexit from the beginning. "I still don't think it's a good
idea," he said. "But that's where we are. And, well, we'll just have to see."
EU states to ratify -
Following the announcement of the political accord, von der Leyen's Commission
will send the text to the remaining 27 European member states. Their ambassadors
will meet on Friday, Christmas Day, and are expected to take two or three days
to analyse the agreement and decide whether to approve its provisional
implementation. The UK parliament will also have to interrupt its end of year
holidays to vote on the deal on December 30, and with the opposition backing its
implementation, it should pass easily. But with Britain outside the EU single
market and customs area, cross-Channel traders will still face a battery of new
regulations and delays with analysts expecting both economies to take a hit.
Despite this, the threat of a return to tariffs will have been removed, and
relations between the former partners will rest on a surer footing.
It will be seen as win by Johnson, as well as a success for von der Leyen and
her chief negotiator Michel Barnier, who led almost 10 months of intense talks
with Britain's David Frost. After the shock 2016 referendum, European capitals
were concerned that if such a large rival on their doorstep were to deregulate
its industry their firms would face unfair competition. Brussels insisted the
only way to keep the land border between Ireland and the UK open was to keep
Northern Ireland, a British province, within its customs union.
And members balked at giving up access to Britain's rich fishing waters, which
support fleets in France, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.
It was the question of fish that emerged as the last stumbling block this week
when London pushed to reduce EU fishing fleets' share of the estimated
650-million-euro annual haul by more than a third, with changes phased in over
three years. The EU was insisting on 25 percent over at least six years.
In the end, the final agreement settled on the EU's figure but cut the length of
the transition period to five-and-a-half years, an EU official said. After this
time access to Britain's fishing grounds will be negotiated on an annual basis.
The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources
published
on December 25-26/2020
The Post-Pandemic World: A View from the Saudi Angle
Dr. Ihsan Ali Buhulaiga/Asharq Al-Awsat/December 25/2020
The year 2020 was rife with extraordinary developments. From the Saudi
perspective, there is a vast difference from the positive time when it assumed
the presidency of the G20 in late November to the emergence of the coronavirus
“hurricane”. The situation was compounded by a weak job market and geopolitical
regional tensions. However, despite the enormous challenges, Saudi Arabia handed
over the presidency of the G20 to Italy after successfully and flawlessly
carrying out its mission. The summit tackled pressing economic, financial,
trade, environment and technical issues. It was year weighed down by the
pandemic and the major responsibility of hosting the G20 summit.
Saudi Arabia handled the responsibilities admirably. The Saudi team and G20
General Secretariat adopted the mentality that opportunity emerges from
hardships. Saudi Arabia proved that cooperation between the members of the G20
amid the pandemic was important more than ever. The pandemic demanded that the
members address how to protect mankind and people’s way of life. They addressed
means to ease the impact of the pandemic and preparedness to confront future
emergencies of this scale and more.
Realizing the danger of the pandemic, Saudi Arabia hosted an extraordinary
virtual G20 summit on March 26. The event in itself was a precedent as it was
the first time that the G20 holds two meetings under the same presidency. The
summits in March and November demonstrated the high level of responsibility
Saudi Arabia displayed in tackling regular and extraordinary world affairs. It
left no issue unaddressed, giving everything its utmost attention in an effort
to seize the opportunities of the 21st century to empower man, protect the
planet and form new horizons.
Coronavirus
Before 2020, Saudi Arabia had unveiled an ambitious budget that estimated
revenues at 833 billion riyals and expenditure at 1.020 trillion riyals. It
predicted a deficit of some 187 billion riyals or 6.4 percent of its GDP. The
Saudi economy suffered from the pandemic similar to all other economies. Its
economy shrank by 7 percent during the second quarter due to a drop in economic
activities. It was hurt further with the contraction of oil market by 8.2
percent. The impact of the pandemic on the economy was most felt during the
second quarter and continued to a lesser degree into the third. This
demonstrated in how despite authorities tripling the Value Added Tax, revenues
in the third quarter increased by only 37 percent compared to the same time in
2019. We must not ignore the dramatic drop in oil revenues to less than 100
billion riyals in the third quarter. This was unprecedented in the 70 years
throughout which oil was the main source of revenue for the Kingdom’s treasury.
Remaining challenges
The current challenge focused on how to fill the deficit amid a drop in oil
revenues and the decline in non-oil economic activities. During the first three
quarters of 2020, the deficit reached 184 billion riyals. Three-fifths of the
deficit was met in the second quarter, at the peak of the pandemic shock. To
tackle the financial challenges, Saudi Arabia implemented a number of economic
measures and introduced a package of initiatives. International estimates
predict that Saudi Arabia’s economy will grow. This is backed by high levels of
spending at trillion-riyal rates for the past four years. Capital spending had
also not ceased amid the pandemic. The 2021 budget reveals a goal to achieve
financial balance. After noting a deficit of some 298 billion riyals in 2020,
the estimated deficit for 2021 is expected to drop to around 141 billion riyals.
The hopes are for the figure to continue to drop to 13 billion riyals by 2023.
Overall, the success of an economy in the post-pandemic world depends on
productivity and how many dollars can be generated in an average one working
hour in any economy. That shows the level of competition of a country. The Saudi
average production rate remains lamentably far behind that of members of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Before being confronted
with the pandemic, Saudi Arabia and its Vision 2030 had changed many concepts
that were believed to be unchangeable. Of course, change for the sake of change
is not justified, but change here underlines the fact that life exists after the
end of the oil era. Five years ago, Saudi Arabia presented its Vision 2030 with
96 goals each posing a major challenge. The economy is witnessing a rewriting of
the rulebook, which will ultimately lead to the restructuring of the entire
economy. It will become an economy that is based on productive activities and
investment. It will create jobs for the citizens, meet local demand and compete
globally.
Biden Meddles with Donald Trump's Middle East Legacy at his
Peril
Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute./December 25/2020
It is worth remembering that, when President Trump took office, the region was
still reeling from the dire consequences of former US President Barack Obama's
inept and naive handling of the region.
By early January 2017, when Mr Trump took office, Iran was squandering the tens
of billions of dollars it received for signing the nuclear deal, which Mr Obama
had helped broker in 2015, on expanding its malign influence across the
landscape of the Middle East. Mr Trump's Middle East legacy... completely
redefined the landscape of the region from the chaos and conflict that prevailed
when Mr Obama left office. Nowadays, the momentum in the region is moving
towards peace, not conflict....
[T]he challenge for the incoming Biden administration now will be to see how it
can pursue a different foreign policy agenda without jeopardising the very
significant achievements that have been accomplished during Mr Trump's tenure.
Certainly, if the incoming Biden administration makes any serious attempt to
undermine Mr Trump's legacy in the Middle East, it will do so at its peril.
President Trump's Middle East legacy is not only impressive -- it has completely
redefined the landscape of the region from the chaos and conflict that prevailed
when Mr Obama left office. Nowadays, the momentum in the region is moving
towards peace, not conflict, as was so often the case during Mr Obama's
presidency. Pictured from left to right: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin
Rashid Al Zayani and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al
Nahyan at the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords at the White House on
September 15, 2020 in Washington, DC.
The incoming Biden administration has indicated that one of its top priorities
will be to adopt a new approach in Washington's dealings with the Middle East.
In particular it wants to revive the flawed nuclear deal with Iran as well as
re-establish a dialogue with the Palestinian leadership, which imposed a
three-year boycott on the Trump administration.
Yet, while the new Biden team, the majority of whom are relics from the Obama
administration, are keen to assert a new policy agenda for the region, they also
need to take care that, in so doing, they do not squander the impressive legacy
US President Donald Trump has built up in the region.
It is worth remembering that, when Mr Trump took office, the region was still
reeling from the dire consequences of former US President Barack Obama's inept
and naive handling of the region.
By early January 2017, when Mr Trump took office, Iran was squandering the tens
of billions of dollars it received for signing the nuclear deal, which Mr Obama
had helped broker in 2015, on expanding its malign influence across the
landscape of the Middle East.
This malign influence included supporting the Assad regime in Syria, the
Hizbollah terrorist organisation in Lebanon, pro-Iranian Shia militias in Iraq
and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which regularly employed Iranian-made drones and
missiles to attack Saudi Arabia, a key US ally.
Attempts to revive the Israeli-Arab peace process, meanwhile, were going nowhere
because of the Obama administration's antagonistic attitude towards Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as maintaining its hopeless quest for
a more constructive relationship with the Palestinian leadership.
In addition, Mr Obama's ambivalence about becoming involved in Syria's brutal
war meant that US forces were hampered in their attempts to destroy the Islamist
fanatics of ISIS, which had succeeded in capturing large swathes of northern
Iraq and Syria.
Mr Trump therefore deserves enormous credit for achieving a complete turnaround
in America's standing in the region during his tenure at the White House.
Thanks to Mr Trump's robust approach to Iran, where he withdrew from the nuclear
deal and re-imposed crippling sanctions against Tehran, the Iranian economy has
been seriously diminished, thus limiting the ayatollahs' ability to peddle their
pernicious creed throughout the region.
ISIS, and its dream of establishing a self-governing "caliphate", has been
completely destroyed, mainly because, soon after taking office, Mr Trump gave US
commanders the authority and freedom to intensify the military campaign against
the Islamist fanatics.
Arguably, Mr Trump's greatest achievement in the Middle East, though, has been
the success he has enjoyed in breaking the impasse in the Israeli-Arab peace
process, with a clutch of Arab regimes - the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain,
Sudan and Morocco -- establishing diplomatic relations with Israel under the
so-called Abraham Accords, with many other Arab governments -- including Saudi
Arabia -- said to be giving serious consideration to following suit.
Mr Trump's Middle East legacy is not only impressive -- it has completely
redefined the landscape of the region from the chaos and conflict that prevailed
when Mr Obama left office. Nowadays, the momentum in the region is moving
towards peace, not conflict, as was so often the case during Mr Obama's
presidency.
So the challenge for the incoming Biden administration now will be to see how it
can pursue a different foreign policy agenda without jeopardising the very
significant achievements that have been accomplished during Mr Trump's tenure.
Certainly, if the incoming Biden administration makes any serious attempt to
undermine Mr Trump's legacy in the Middle East, it will do so at its peril.
*Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a
Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 2020 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
How Islam Deified Tribalism
Raymond Ibrahim./December 25/2020
Aside from its religious veneer, Islam can easily be defined and understood by
one wholly areligious word: tribalism—the bane of any democratic or pluralistic
society.
The fact is, the entire appeal of Muhammad’s call to the Arabs of his time lay
in its compatibility with their tribal mores, three in particular: loyalty to
one’s tribe; enmity for other tribes; and raids on the latter to enrich and
empower the former.
For seventh-century Arabs—and later tribal peoples, chiefly Turks and Tatars,
who also found natural appeal in and converted to Islam—the tribe was what
humanity is to modern people: to be part of it was to be treated humanely; to be
outside of it was to be treated inhumanely. This is no exaggeration: Muslim
philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) described the Arabs of his time (let alone
those from Muhammad’s more primitive era eight centuries earlier) as “the most
savage human beings that exist. Compared with sedentary people they are on a
level with wild, untamable animals and dumb beasts of prey. Such people are the
Arabs.”Muhammad reinforced the dichotomy of tribalism, but by prioritizing
fellow Muslims over blood relatives. Thus, in his “Constitution of Medina,” he
asserted that “a believer shall not slay a believer for the sake of an
unbeliever, nor shall he aid an unbeliever against a believer.” Moreover, all
Muslims were to become “friends one to the other to the exclusion of outsiders.”
Hence the umma—an Arabic word etymologically connected to the word “mother” and
which signifies the Islamic “Super-Tribe” that transcends racial, national, and
linguistic barriers—was born; and its natural enemy remained everyone outside of
it.
The Islamic doctrine of al-wala’ wa’l-bara’ (“loyalty and enmity”), which
Muhammad preached and the Koran commands, captures all this. The latter goes so
far as to command all Muslims to “renounce” and “disown” their non-Muslim
relatives—“even if they be their fathers, their sons, their brothers, or their
nearest kindred”—and to feel only “enmity and hate” for them until they “believe
in Allah alone” (Koran 58:22 and 60:4; see also 4:89, 4:144, 5:51, 5:54, 9:23,
and 60:1). These verses are in reference to a number of Muhammad’s close
companions, who renounced and eventually slaughtered their own non-Muslim
relatives as a show of their loyalty to Allah and the believers: one slew his
father, another his brother, a third—Abu Bakr, the first caliph—tried to slay
his son, and Omar, the second caliph, slaughtered several relatives. (For more,
see the nearly sixty-page treatise, “Loyalty and Enmity,” in The Al Qaeda
Reader.) Hence the jihad was born. As only two tribes existed—the Islamic umma
in one tent and the dehumanized tribes of the world in another—Muslims were
exhorted to attack and subjugate all these “infidels” in order to make their
Super-Tribe supreme.
In short, tribalistic blood ties were exchanged for religious—that is,
Islamic—ties.
This dichotomized worldview remains enshrined in Islamic law’s, or sharia’s,
mandate that Dar al-Islam (the “Abode of Islam”) must battle Dar al-Kufr (the
“Abode of Infidelity”) in perpetuity until the former subsumes the latter.
It also explains why tribal societies other than the Arabs also gravitated to
and found Islam appealing.
For example, in the Turks’ oldest epic, The Book of Dede Korkut (based on oral
traditions), the newly converted Turkic tribes engage in pagan practices either
frowned on or banned by Islam: they eat horse meat and drink wine and other
fermented drinks; and their women are, in comparison to Muslim women, relatively
free. Only in the context of raids on the “infidel”—which comes to replace
“tribal outsider”—are echoes of Islam evident in their lives. “I shall raid the
bloody infidels’ land, I shall cut off heads and spill blood, I shall make the
infidel vomit blood, I shall bring back slaves and slave-girls,” is a typical
pre-battle boast. “They destroyed the infidels’ church, they killed its priests
and made a mosque in its place. They had the call to prayer proclaimed, they had
the invocation [or shahada] recited in the name of Allah Almighty. The best of
the hunting-birds, the purest of stuffs, the loveliest of girls … they
selected,” is a typical account of these new Turkish converts’ pious exploits.
Otherwise, Islam is absent from their lives. Although the Persian and Arab
establishment was originally unimpressed by Turkish piety, they praised the new
converts because they “fight in the way of Allah, waging jihad against the
infidels” (which, then and now, always went a long way to exonerate otherwise
un-Islamic behavior). It was the same for those Mongols who embraced Islam. As
Ricoldo of Monte Croce (d. 1320) once observed, “the Tartars had adopted Islam
because it was the easy religion, as Christianity was the hard one.” Whereas
Islam complemented their preexisting tribal way of life, Christianity only
challenged it. So it is that Muhammad’s most enduring contribution to world
history is that, in repackaging the tribal mores of seventh-century Arabia
through a theological paradigm, he also deified tribalism into a sort of
hyper-tribalism, causing it to outlive its historic setting and dramatically
spill into the modern era. Whereas many world civilizations have been able to
slough off or at least temper their historic tribalism, for Muslims to break
with tribalism is to break with Muhammad and his laws—to break with cardinal
Islamic teachings.
Hence the notorious resistance to assimilation in the West; the creation of
enclaves and clannish no-go zones; the incessant subversive activities of groups
such as the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR; and the sporadic flare outs of
terrorism and hate crimes.
*Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War
between Islam and the West, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom
Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a
Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
The Russian bear can still roar and claw at the global order but it lacks any
power to change it
Dr. John C. Hulsman/Arab News/December 25/2020
Throughout his long tenure in the Kremlin, which began in May 2000, Russian
President Vladimir Putin has managed to ensure his country remains a thorn in
America’s side.
Consistently vexing the West — whether by annexing Crimea, maintaining ruthless
control over Russia’s “near abroad” (the term it uses to refer to the 14 other
Soviet successor states), or cozying up to China — Moscow has cut a swath across
the international stage. But in general it has displayed a mosquito-like ability
to annoy, rather than the power to directly take on the much stronger West.
Until now, that is. With its suspected cyberattacks against the US government
during the past nine months, the Kremlin has graduated from being a mere
annoyance to actually wounding the US. It was reported this month that at least
six government agencies (including the State Department, Homeland Security, and
the Treasury) were hacked, with devastating results. The cyberattacks display
all the hallmarks of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). A backdoor
snooping code was added to standard governmental computer updates issued between
March and June this year. According to Solar Winds, the company whose software
was compromised, about 18,000 US public- and private-sector users downloaded the
infected updates, which provided access to their systems. Russian hacker team
APT29 — a division of the SVR better known as Cozy Bear — is thought to be
responsible.
So pervasive was the infiltration that the unanimous recommendation from experts
is that entirely new computer systems will have to be built for the US
government, an undertaking that is sure to take years and prove highly costly.
The hacking escapade is just the sort of thing that Putin, with his background
in secret-service skulduggery, is particularly good at. But while Russia can
still sting, and even inflict serious wounds, the fact that Putin is able to
play the Kremlin’s strategic cards so expertly cannot alter the basic fact that
Russia remains in decline. Its fundamental political risk choice in the new era
is merely a secondary one: whether to persist on its own as a fading, limited
great power, or to throw in its lot in a subordinated fashion with the rising
China. As we have said before in these pages, we are living in a new era of
loose bipolarity where there two superpowers, the US and China, are clearly
vying for global dominance. However, just below them in terms of importance,
other great powers — such as the Anglosphere countries (English-speaking nations
with historical and cultural ties to the UK), the EU, India, Japan and Russia —
all have extensive room to maneuver and craft independent foreign policies of
their own.
The choice for the first four of these powers is to adopt neutralism in the face
of the Sino-American Cold War, or tilt toward Washington. For Russia, it is
neutralism or an alliance, in one form or another, with Beijing.
A number of structural factors have prevented a formal Sino-Russian alliance
from developing. First and foremost, Putin’s Russia — a government whose
enduring popularity has always been based around its successful resurrection of
Great-Russian nationalism — is loath to play second fiddle to China. Of course,
in any Sino-Russian alliance that is how it would have to be, due to the
relative power of the two countries. For a long time, this structural reality
has kept the two enemies of the US apart.
To put Russia’s decline into context, its economy is smaller than Italy’s, and
seven times smaller than that of rising China. Europe has fully 10 times the
economic strength and three times the population of Russia. To put it mildly,
these are not the characteristics of a rising power. Russia’s hapless economy,
its political risk Achilles heel, has doomed the Kremlin’s efforts to reverse
the country’s geopolitical trajectory — despite Putin’s undisputed mastery in
playing his poor hand of strategic cards as well as he can.
All of this leads me back to my initial political risk assessment: Russia
remains a great power, but one that is in decline. It still matters but more for
the geostrategic choice that lies ahead of it, rather than for any independent
ability to overturn the US-dominated world order.
However, if Russia did decisively throw in its lot with China, it would be the
one great power action of our age that would, at a stroke, significantly remake
the global structure of the world. Even as Biden’s America corrals prospective
allies into its camp — with Japan, the Anglosphere countries, and India likely
converts, and the EU possible — the White House must at the same time do
everything in its power to prevent a Sino-Russian alliance from coalescing and
strengthening.
This means that a continuation of the policy of containing the Russian bear is
the way forward. To do so the US and NATO must draw clear lines between alliance
and non-alliance countries in Eastern Europe. Those within NATO must be defended
and supported to the hilt, and those outside the alliance tacitly left to be
what they are in practice now: part of the Russian sphere of influence.
The continuation of this de facto strategy makes it highly unlikely that a
Russia obsessed with its status in the world will accept a subordinate role in
an alliance with China.
Analytically acknowledging the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of modern-day
Russia is, in this larger light, of the utmost geopolitical importance.
*Dr. John C. Hulsman is the president and managing partner of John C. Hulsman
Enterprises, a prominent global political risk consulting firm. He is also
senior columnist for City AM, the newspaper of the City of London. He can be
contacted via chartwellspeakers.com
Syria’s pain forgotten but not foregone this holiday season
Tala Jarjour/Arab News/December 25/2020
She may be around 5 or quite possibly older, but she is small. Her little hands
are clutching four clear plastic bags. The top one is a goody bag with a handful
of small local chocolates. Then there is a coloring book, sliding from between
the goody bag and her elbow. Her left hand is working hard to prevent two more
slippery bags containing warm clothes — most likely from benevolent donors —
from falling. I do not know her name, but I know she is in Aleppo. I will call
her Salma.
She is very elegant, wearing a tastefully assorted turtleneck and vest with tiny
embroidered flowers. Her little skirt is hidden under the bags she is clutching,
but we know she is dressed up by her clean white tights. If I can venture
another guess, Salma has a creative mother or grandmother somewhere — someone
taking care of her who has decided that she will be wearing something nice for a
Christmas party this year, in shades of indigo and blue that go very well with
her purple eyeglasses. Salma looks like a small tower of cute color and shiny
plastic wrap, on top of which sit giant ear warmers, not exactly her size but
justified by the snowman glued at the top, complete with his green hat and red
bowtie. Unlike Salma, the snowman is wearing a giant grin.
She is posing for a picture, probably intended for the donors whose gifts
generated the plastic objects tumbling between her tiny limbs. But Salma is not
smiling. Take the color away and you might think the child is about to burst
into tears. Her expressionless face can hardly conceal the reproaching stare in
her eyes. “Why have you forgotten me?” I imagine her saying to the beholder. It
is the sort of picture that says a million words.
Mufid’s words, much like Salma’s eyes, are staring the world in the face with
one plea: To see their pain, and to make it just that little bit less unbearable
Looking at it on my computer screen this Christmas Day, too many miles and light
years of safety away, I am stirred by shame. Salma lives in Aleppo. She is not
the only one unable to draw a smile for the camera on this occasion. Dozens of
children around her are hugging goodies but barely any are able to smile. Even
in this year of ominous global suffering, Salma's portrait strikes a chord. The
pain this child’s eyes are sending to the world is unbearably condemning.
I scroll down to a post from Mufid, not his real name, who is a respected
cardiologist in Damascus. The senior doctor’s social media postings are
typically terse, formal and often scientific. His careful notes come across as
non-partisan, encouraging, edifying and always respectful. This week, his
Christmas greeting is a telling read: “In this blessed season, we — Syrians —
will complain. To this world. To God.”
Mufid’s opening sentence gives way to a litany of one-line supplications, each
starting with “ya Rabb” (oh Lord). English-speaking Christians would call this
text a prayer of intercession. Muslims would use the Arabic word “Du’aa.” In
either case, this prayer is a plea from the heart, the suffering heart.
“We are not well, oh Lord,” goes the doctor’s invocation. “We are bearing more
than we can … We are living our present moment in fear and have almost lost hope
in our future.” The prayer of a few lines is not short of inflictions: Pain,
cold, hunger, thirst, darkness, illness, feeling abandoned and, worst of all,
not knowing why. At its end, the prayer asks for one thing: Rest. A tall order
in today’s Syria.
Mufid’s words, much like Salma’s eyes, are staring the world in the face with
one plea: To see their pain, and to make it just that little bit less
unbearable. This is the abandoned Syrian people’s wish for the holidays. May
heaven’s mercies, and those of the earth, touch little Salma’s heart and reach
the forgotten corners of Syrian pain.
• Tala Jarjour is author of “Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo.” She is
a visiting research fellow at King’s College London and associate fellow at Yale
College.
Can Turkey tidy up its foreign policy in 2021?
Sinem Cengiz/Arab News/December 25/2020
2020 has been a challenging year for Ankara, in both the domestic and foreign
spheres. In addition to the foreign policy issues inherited from 2019, the
coronavirus, devastating earthquakes, currency crises, and difficulties in the
economy have dominated the agenda throughout the year. In the domestic realm,
issues related to the reopening of Hagia Sophia as a mosque, the debate on the
Istanbul Convention regarding violence against women, strict restrictions on
social media, and talks over new political alliances occupied the chatter
Turkish streets.
Yet, Turkish foreign policy was immune to domestic and global challenges. While
approaching the end of this year, it is worth taking a closer look at what has
happened in the Turkish foreign sphere in the shadow of the global pandemic.
Which incidents have tested Turkey’s limits? How has Ankara teetered on the edge
with the EU and the US?
During the first half of the year, Syria, Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean, and
the issue of Turkey’s Russian-built S-400 missile defense systems were the
topics that made Turkish policymakers busy. Almost every day, there was a new
development in the Eastern Mediterranean that caused tension to escalate between
the two warring parties, and Turkey was one of the main actors. Also, the
diplomatic dispute over Varosha put a further strain on relations between Greece
and Turkey. The EU leaders have now agreed to impose sanctions on Turkey due to
gas drilling activities in the Eastern Mediterranean, but they have postponed
further decisions.
While in the second half of the year, Turkey became part of a hot conflict in
the Caucasia. Besides the Eastern Mediterranean, Syria, and Libya, Turkey was
involved in the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia, throwing its support to
Baku. The tension that started in late-September between Azerbaijan and Armenia
over the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region soon turned into a conflict. The
Turkish public have watched developments from this conflict with great interest.
Throughout the year, Libya and Syria were the areas that brought the military
dimension of Turkey’s foreign policy agenda back to the surface.
Throughout the year, Libya and Syria were the areas that brought the military
dimension of Turkey’s foreign policy agenda back to the surface. Nowhere has
Ankara’s securitized foreign policy gained more attention than this. The share
of military tools and methods in the conduct of Turkish foreign policy have
gradually expanded this year when compared to previous years. Turkey’s foreign
policy discussions have reached a point where policy concepts and military
terminology have increasingly intertwined. This led the country’s opposition to
criticize the government for having a “lack of vision” in conducting the
country’s foreign affairs.
Turkey has had to face severe problems and has taken foreign policy steps that
prioritize its own interests in the face of difficult actors such as the US and
Russia. On Dec. 14, the US imposed sanctions on Turkey over its acquisition of
the Russian S-400 missile defense system. The sanctions come at a delicate
moment in the fraught relations between Ankara and Washington as Joe Biden gears
up to take office on Jan. 20, replacing Republican Donald Trump.
This week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that Turkey hoped to open
a new chapter in its relations with the EU and the US in the new year. “We do
not view our versatile political, economic, and military ties as an alternative
to our well-established relations with the US. We also hope that the EU gets rid
of the strategic blindness that moves Turkey away (from the bloc).” He added
that “artificial agendas” have tested Turkey’s ties with the EU and the US in
2020, but he hopes that things would improve.
A brief prediction of the Turkish foreign policy for 2021 is that Ankara is
likely to enter into tight negotiations with the two actors; namely the US and
the EU. Although several reports have been published over a possible
rapprochement between Turkey and Israel or with other regional countries that
Ankara has frosty relations with, it is yet not clear that such reconciliation
might happen since there is no open statement from Ankara.
However, we can see an open call when it comes to the US and the EU as the
stakes are high. Needless to say, new administrations come to power with the
promise of solving problems, not to complicate them. So, causing further
problems with Turkey would not be the Biden administration’s first agenda,
particularly when Ankara calls to open a new page in relations.
The negotiations with the EU are likely to focus on the common concern over the
refugee issue, but also the democratization and human rights issues in Turkey.
The S-400 air defense system will not be the sole item in the Turkish-US talks,
but also over issues related to Russia, China, and the Middle East. If a new
page is to open between Ankara and Washington, it is going to happen in the
shadow of the US competition between Russia and China, two actors that will
follow the process in Turkish-American relations closely and also try to
influence the course of the negotiations.
For 2021, let’s hope that diplomacy, rather than military means, will be the
effective tools in Turkey’s foreign policymaking, and dialogue, rather than
threats of sanctions, will be the dominant rhetoric of the EU and the US toward
Ankara.
*Sinem Cengiz is a Turkish political analyst who specializes in Turkey’s
relations with the Middle East. Twitter: @SinemCngz