English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For March 03/2025
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 06/16-21: “‘Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 02-03/2025
Elias Bejjani/ Text and Video: Hezbollah, Like Its Mullah Masters, Understands Only the Language of Force and Deterrence
Fasting is prayer, contemplation, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God/Elias Bejjani/March 02/2025
Lebanon’s president heads to Saudi Arabia and Egypt on first foreign trip – what to expect
Lebanon's president hosts tribute to LBCI reporter Hoda Chedid, honoring her perseverance and patriotism
Prominent Lebanese Druze leader says he will visit Syria soon as tensions with Israel simmer
Death Toll from Israel’s War on Hezbollah in Lebanon Tops 6,000
Reset in ties expected as Riyadh braces to receive Lebanese president/Faisal J. Abbas/Arab News/March 02, 2025
President Joseph Aoun’s pivotal visit to Riyadh/Dr. Fawzi Kabbara/Arab News/March 02, 2025
Jaber, Hajjar and Rasamny inspect airport after $2.5M seized
A New Chapter for Lebanon in Saudi Arabia and the Arab Summit/Bassam Abou Zeid/This is Beirut/March 02, 2025
Lebanon's Positive Neutrality: A Principle That Bothers Hezbollah
Al-Rahi: Neutrality does not mean resignation from the "Arab League", the "Organization of the Islamic Conference", and the "United Nations", but rather it modifies Lebanon's role and makes it a partner in finding solutions
Return to the last Sunday Mass of the Preparatory Season for Lent: We support the New Testament and its government in order to rebuild our country on solid foundations that can withstand all harmful winds
Family Killed by Gas Tanker Explosion in Akkar

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 02-03/2025
Israel has cut off all supplies to Gaza. Here’s what that means
Outrage as Israel cuts off Gaza aid to pressure Hamas to accept new ceasefire proposal
UN urges Israel to restore Gaza aid as Hamas sees ‘coup’ against truce
Rubio Signs Declaration to Expedite Delivery of $4 Billion in Military Aid to Israel
Frankly Speaking: Should Israel pay for rebuilding Gaza?
Egyptian foreign minister stresses importance of maintaining Gaza ceasefire
Saudi Arabia condemns Israeli decision to block humanitarian aid to Gaza as ‘blackmail’
Syria forces deploy in Damascus suburb after deadly unrest: state media
Turkiye’s Kurds say PKK militants heeding jailed leader’s peace call is the right move
Egypt rejects attempts to form parallel Sudanese government
Ukraine ready to sign minerals deal: Zelensky
Trump Aide Waltz Says US Needs Ukrainian Leader Who Wants Peace
White House row with Ukraine raises stakes for European summit in London
Drone hits apartment building in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, injures seven, mayor says
Iran’s Parliament Fires Minister of Economy over Plummeting Rial, Mismanagement
Pope Francis No Longer Needs Ventilation, Is Stable, Vatican Says

Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on March 02-03/2025
'A Variety of Tactics Designed to Induce Conversion': The Persecution of Christians, January 2025/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute./March 02, 2025
The Israeli-Palestinian Impasse...Trump was not the first to introduce Arab transfer into the political conversation/Mordechai Nisan/New English Review/March 02/ 2025
Is Trump following Project 2025?/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al-Awsat/March 02, 2025
A turning point for Gaza and the Palestinian issue/Dr. Khaled Manzlawiy/Arab News/March 02, 2025
Starmer switches UK’s focus from soft to hard power/Mohamed Chebaro/Arab News/March 02, 2025

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 02-03/2025
Elias Bejjani/ Text and Video: Hezbollah, Like Its Mullah Masters, Understands Only the Language of Force and Deterrence
March 02, 2025
Whoever raises the slogan of reconciliation with Hezbollah—the cancerous entity occupying Lebanon—is unfit to be a politician. Those who lack the understanding, culture, and courage to confront the jihadist-Iranian terrorist militia must step aside, resign, and spare the Lebanese people from their ignorance, cowardice, and Dhimmitude.
This message is directed at the majority of the Lebanese politicians who are nothing but slanderers, merchants of war, profiteers masquerading as resistance figures, hypocritical contractors of so-called liberation, and puppet officials. Enough with the humiliation, the servitude, the stupidity, and the disgrace of licking the boots of occupiers! Hezbollah, like its Iranian mullah masters, understands only the language of force and deterrence.
In this context, MP Sami Gemayel, the new government, President Joseph Aoun, and Nawaf Salam must fully grasp the ideology, schemes, and culture of Iran’s religious dictatorship under "Wilayat al-Faqih" (Guardianship of the Jurist). The same applies to every politician, cleric, and activist who continues to indulge in humiliating compromises and self-inflicted defeats.
Every Lebanese—whether in Lebanon or the Diaspora—must comprehend Hezbollah’s true nature: its extremist doctrine, its absolute subordination to Iran, and its role as a mere tool of the mullah regime. Those who remain ignorant of Hezbollah’s mission, education, and the sectarian obligations imposed by "Wilayat al-Faqih" religious doctrine have no business in politics and should resign immediately.
Meanwhile, extending a hand to the Shiite community is an essential national-human priority, but it must be done with clarity—supporting the true victims: the Shiite population that has been hijacked, terrorized, and taken hostage by Iran’s occupying Hezbollah. The Lebanese people must stand with the oppressed, The Shiites community, not with their oppressors, Hezbollah and its masters the Iranian Mullahs.

Fasting is prayer, contemplation, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God
Elias Bejjani/March 02/2025
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2025/03/83444/
The Lenten (Fasting) period begins with the Holy Miracle at the Wedding of Cana and culminates in the glorious celebration of Easter. In the Maronite Church, Lent starts on Ash Monday, with the preceding Sunday known as Al-Marfah Sunday (أحد المرفع) or Forgiveness Sunday (أحد الغفران).
Lent is a sacred season meant to be dedicated to deep contemplation, self-humility, repentance, penance, forgiveness, prayer, and reconciliation with oneself and others. It is a privileged time of interior pilgrimage toward Jesus, the fountain of all love, mercy, and salvation. During this spiritual journey, Christ Himself accompanies us through the desert of our human frailty, sustaining us as we move toward the profound joy of Easter.
Lent is a spiritual battle, a conscious choice to resist bodily desires and earthly temptations, striving instead for purity in thought and deed. It is a time to fortify our faith and hope, resisting the snares of Satan and keeping far from the despair and corruption of sin. Through prayer and contemplation, we affirm that Almighty God is our protector, guiding our steps throughout this sacred period.
By fasting and praying, we carve out time for God, embracing His eternal truth: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” (Mark 13:31). In this sacred practice, we enter into profound communion with Jesus, ensuring that no force can shake our faith and hope.
Fasting is a spiritual discipline through which we seek to emulate Christ, who, during His time of fasting in the wilderness, overcame Satan’s temptations. Inspired by His victory, we endeavor to purify our hearts, minds, and souls, striving for holiness and unwavering devotion.
With trust in the Lord as our Shepherd, we hold firm to the words of Psalm 23:4:”Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff comfort me.”
Reading the Holy Bible and engaging in deep prayer immerse us in the divine Word of God, strengthening our souls and minds with His truth. By meditating on His teachings and listening attentively to His voice, we nourish the faith that was instilled in us at Baptism.
Through fasting and prayer, we gain a renewed understanding of time, redirecting our steps toward boundless hope, divine joy, and eternal salvation.

Lebanon’s president heads to Saudi Arabia and Egypt on first foreign trip – what to expect
LBCI/March 02, 2025
 On Monday, Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun and the foreign minister will travel to Saudi Arabia. This marks his first trip abroad since being elected president. His last visit to the kingdom was as army commander at the end of 2024. According to available information, the visit will begin with an official reception, followed by an extended meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the presence of both Lebanese and Saudi delegations. A one-on-one session between the president and the crown prince will follow, concluding with a formal dinner. During the meeting, the president will express gratitude to Saudi Arabia for its role in Lebanon, particularly in advancing the presidential election process and its ongoing support. He will also emphasize the importance of continued political, economic, and military assistance.
The visit will also pave the way for a broader meeting expected to take place after Ramadan, during which 22 agreements between the two countries will be signed.
That number represents broad agreement categories, meaning the actual number of agreements and memorandums of understanding is higher. On Tuesday morning, the president will travel to Egypt to participate in an emergency Arab summit and hold sideline meetings, which are customary during such gatherings. Lebanon's speech is expected to be significant. It will reaffirm the country's commitment to the Palestinian cause and the Arab Peace Initiative launched at the 2002 Beirut Summit, which is based on the land-for-peace principle and the two-state solution. The speech is also expected to highlight the heavy price Lebanon has paid in defending this cause.

Lebanon's president hosts tribute to LBCI reporter Hoda Chedid, honoring her perseverance and patriotism
LBCI/March 02, 2025
Baabda Palace was filled with emotional moments and heartfelt words earlier on Sunday as it hosted writer, journalist, and correspondent Hoda Chedid, who has dedicated over thirty years to her work there. The tribute was organized and attended by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and First Lady Nehmat Aoun. The recognition of Chedid, who has never known the meaning of surrender in her work or in facing life's challenges, celebrated her remarkable journey. Her battle with illness and her ability to endure pain with faith was acknowledged as a testament to her professional dedication, perseverance, and commitment to continue giving. In a post on X, President Aoun praised Chedid for maintaining her objectivity and patriotism throughout her career. "You have kept your professionalism and national commitment in your journalistic message. No tribute can match the endurance you’ve shown through your trials," he said.

Prominent Lebanese Druze leader says he will visit Syria soon as tensions with Israel simmer
AP/March 02, 2025
BEIRUT: A prominent Druze leader in Lebanon said Sunday that he will soon visit Syria to meet its interim leader as tensions simmer between members of the minority group, the war-torn country’s interim government, and Israel. “The free Syrians must be cautious of the plots of Israel,” veteran Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said at a news conference Sunday, accusing Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of creating sectarian division and chaos in the country. “In Syria there is a plot for sabotage. There is a plot for sabotage in the region and for the Arabs’ national security.”Syrian Druze gunmen have clashed in recent days with government security forces on the city of Jaramana, on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus. Since the downfall of President Bashar Assad in December, Israel has pushed its forces into southern Syria to create a demilitarized buffer zone. Israel’s defense ministry said Saturday that it was instructing the military to prepare to defend Jaramana and protect the Druze.In the Druze-majority southern province of Sweida, many who protested against the Assad government in recent years have also protested against Israel’s airstrikes and military push into the country. The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. Over half of the roughly one million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. Jumblatt is one of Lebanon’s most prominent political leaders and arguably the Mideast’s most powerful Druze figure. He is both an outspoken critic of Israel and a supporter of the Palestinians, but also spoke out against the Assad dynasty in Syria. He last visited Syria in December, days after a lightning insurgency led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham overthrew Bashar Assad, and met with interim leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa. In 2015 during the Syrian civil war, Jumblatt negotiated with Syrian opposition in Idlib, following reports of persecution and attacks on the Druze who lived in the northwestern province by extremist groups.

Death Toll from Israel’s War on Hezbollah in Lebanon Tops 6,000
Beirut: Nazeer Rida/Asharq Al-Awsat/March 02, 2025
The death toll from Israel’s latest war on Hezbollah in Lebanon rose to 6,000 after medics were able to retrieve the bodies of the deceased from under the rubble in border villages in southern Lebanon. The retrieval wasn’t possible sooner because Israel was still occupying some of the border regions. A ceasefire in the fighting had been declared on November 27. Several Hezbollah fighters were still among the missing and their bodies couldn’t be retrieved for the past 80 days because Israel kept its forces in the areas where they were killed. Medical teams were barred from entering those regions. Mohammad Chamseddine, a researcher at Information International, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the latest figures showed that over 6,000 people were killed in Lebanon during the war. The figure covers the beginning of the conflict on October 8, 2023 when Hezbollah launched its “support front” in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. The number covers civilians and fighters killed, added Chamseddine. Lebanese sources following the retrieval of the bodies said that DNA tests were performed on remains that were uncovered. They told Asharq Al-Awsat that more people remain unaccounted for and they will continue to be labeled “missing” until they are found. Israel’s pullout from a number of border villages and towns on February 18 allowed Hezbollah to carry out the funerals of the newly discovered bodies. On Friday, it held the funeral of 130 fighters and civilians in the towns of Aitaroun and Aita al-Shaab. The funeral was the largest since Israel’s withdrawal. Speaking at the funeral, Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah said: “These martyrs paid their lives in defending the nation, the South and the Palestinians.” “We have paid heavy prices and given sacrifices for our nation and dignity,” he added. “We have entrusted the state with the responsibility of ending the Israeli occupation,” he went on to say.

Reset in ties expected as Riyadh braces to receive Lebanese president
Faisal J. Abbas/Arab News/March 02, 2025
A reset in Saudi-Lebanese ties is expected as President Joseph Aoun arrives in Riyadh on Monday, his first international destination since his election on Jan. 9.
This is significant because Saudi-Lebanese relations have been deteriorating since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 at the hands of Hezbollah. Although Riyadh never broke off bilateral ties officially, the relationship with Beirut has lacked warmth and eventually worsened, given Hezbollah’s provocative statements, its role in exporting captagon and even its provision of military aid and expertise to the Kingdom’s enemies. Aoun — who was elected without interference from Hezbollah or the Assad regime, given the dramatic changes that saw the former weakened and the latter collapse last December — is expected to reach out to reset the relationship with the Kingdom, where more than 100,000 Lebanese live and work. It is also hoped that a ban on Saudis traveling to Lebanon will be lifted.
Saudi-Lebanese relations have been deteriorating since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. In his inaugural address, President Aoun sent several — and long-awaited — reassuring messages. He pledged to fight corruption and restrict the right to bear arms and declare war to the government exclusively. And addressing Gulf countries, Aoun pledged that Lebanon will only export “the best of what it has.”His pledges have been warmly welcomed. In a recent interview, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal expressed optimism over the changes occurring in Lebanon.
Talking to Arab News’ “Frankly Speaking” program, he said: “The Kingdom has wholeheartedly supported the actions of the Lebanese parliament in electing the president.”He rightly pointed out that the Lebanese people were tired of having to be the sacrificial lamb, “for either sectarian or other political factions, whether they be Hezbollah or some other Lebanese parties in the course of the development in the future.”Prince Turki also said that what he hears from Saudis is “that they’re willing and anxious to be able to go back to Lebanon. Those who have not invested yet, I think, are also thinking of the opportunities there.”Lebanese people were tired of having to be the sacrificial lamb, for either sectarian or other political factions. ⁠The prince’s sentiments were corroborated by the Lebanese ambassador to the Kingdom, Dr. Fawzi Kabbara. Writing in this newspaper in an exclusive column, Dr. Kabbara states that Aoun’s visit to Riyadh is not just an exercise in diplomacy, but “a pivotal moment that could redefine Lebanese-Saudi relations.”Dr. Kabbara points out that Saudi Arabia’s support is more significant than ever, serving as a beacon of hope and opportunity for Lebanon’s future.
As such, it is highly likely that Saudi-Lebanese ties are set to soar following the president’s visit. But Lebanon’s road to recovery is going to be a bumpy one; this is why a firm and determined president such as Joseph Aoun deserves full support from Saudi Arabia and the world at large.
*Faisal J. Abbas is the editor-in-chief of Arab News. X: @FaisalJAbbas

President Joseph Aoun’s pivotal visit to Riyadh
Dr. Fawzi Kabbara/Arab News/March 02, 2025
President Joseph Aoun is scheduled to visit Riyadh on Monday, marking a significant milestone in Lebanese-Saudi relations. This official visit has profound political and economic implications, aiming to solidify the deep-rooted ties between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, remove all recent political obstacles between the two countries and thank Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his sincere efforts that resulted in the filling of the presidential vacancy in Lebanon. Moreover, President Aoun’s commitment to making Saudi Arabia his first international destination is a strategic and symbolic gesture. It highlights the importance of Saudi-Lebanese diplomatic ties, emphasizes the necessity of strengthening economic collaborations and reaffirms Lebanon’s engagement in regional stability efforts. This decision conveys a message of solidarity and partnership, acknowledging Saudi Arabia’s pivotal role as a key ally and investor in Lebanon’s socioeconomic fabric. It sets the tone for a balanced and cooperative foreign policy, seeking mutual growth and regional harmony. Lebanon and Saudi Arabia have shared a robust relationship for decades, since the time of King Abdulaziz, built on mutual respect and cooperation.
The visit underscores Lebanon’s acknowledgment of Saudi Arabia’s peaceful and influential role in Middle Eastern politics. The Kingdom has been an ally, offering economic aid, investing in infrastructure and providing humanitarian assistance to Lebanon during its many upheavals over the years. The two countries, which share cultural ties and a common interest in maintaining regional stability, have cemented a long-standing partnership that both are eager to enhance. President Aoun’s visit signifies a renewed push to strengthen these bonds amid global uncertainties and local adversities. The visit underscores Lebanon’s acknowledgment of Saudi Arabia’s peaceful and influential role in Middle Eastern politics and the importance of maintaining robust bilateral relations amid Lebanon’s ongoing economic and political turmoil. Strengthening diplomatic support ensures Lebanon’s political autonomy and sovereignty are respected on the international stage. As a result, Saudi Arabia’s backing in international forums can significantly aid Lebanon’s standing and negotiation abilities, while also signaling a reinforced commitment to working together to tackle regional challenges and ensure Middle Eastern stability.
President Aoun’s visit to Riyadh is not just an exercise in diplomacy but a pivotal moment that could redefine Lebanese-Saudi relations. As Lebanon endeavors to navigate its myriad challenges, Saudi Arabia’s support is more significant than ever, serving as a beacon of hope and opportunity for Lebanon’s future. The success of this visit could very well determine Lebanon’s path forward in these turbulent times.
*Fawzi Kabbara is Ambassador of Lebanon to Saudi Arabia and Permanent Representative of Lebanon to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. X: @FawziKabbara

Jaber, Hajjar and Rasamny inspect airport after $2.5M seized
Naharnet/March 02, 2025
Finance Minister Yassine Jaber, Interior Minister Ahmad al-Hajjar and Public Works and Transport Minister Fayez Rasamny have made a joint inspection visit to Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport, days after $2.5 million in cash were seized in the possession of a Lebanese man coming from Turkey. The National News Agency said the three ministers inspected the security and logistic measures at the facility. They also met with the airport’s security and civilian chiefs, discussing the administrative and technical needs for facilitating the movement of incoming and outbound passengers, enhancing security measures, and activating baggage and shipment scanners. The three ministers also toured the airport’s various sections with the aim of devising an “integrated work plan.”Airport authorities have recently arrested Mohammad H. who arrived aboard a Turkish Pegasus plane. The young man is being investigated about the source of the money and its destination, amid reports that the cash was destined for Hezbollah. Israel had claimed that Iranian envoys and Turkish citizens had been smuggling money from Tehran and Istanbul to Beirut. Lebanese authorities later suspended inbound and outbound flights to Iran indefinitely after the United States, which helped broker a November 27 Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire, warned Lebanon that Israel might shoot the planes down. The move prompted protests from supporters of Hezbollah, who blocked the road to the country's only international airport, while Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem said the government's decision to halt flights from Iran was "implementing an Israeli order."

A New Chapter for Lebanon in Saudi Arabia and the Arab Summit
Bassam Abou Zeid/This is Beirut/March 02, 2025
The first visit of President of the Republic, Joseph Aoun, to Saudi Arabia marks the beginning of a series of future visits to the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly expressed its willingness to support a Lebanon that is committed to reforms, stability, and fostering strong ties both with the international community and Arab countries. This trip to Riyadh fulfills a promise made by President Aoun, to choose Riyad for his first official visit abroad. The visit follows the government's successful vote of confidence in Parliament, which was delayed by a week and takes also place during Ramadan. As a result, the ministerial delegation accompanying President Aoun will be smaller, as ministers were unable to prepare the 22 agreements to be signed with the Kingdom in such a short time. Sources close to the matter indicate that this visit will serve as a chance to lay the groundwork for an expanded partnership between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, emphasizing an environment conducive to Saudi investments and the return of Saudis to Lebanon. In turn, Saudi Arabia will reaffirm its trust in President Aoun and the government of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam for their efforts to lead Lebanon from its current challenges to a path of stability and prosperity. Several key issues will be discussed at the Saudi-Lebanese summit and later raised by President Aoun at the Arab League summit in Egypt, with the situation in Palestine being a focal point. The discussions will naturally also touch on the situations of neighboring countries, such as Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. President Aoun is expected to address the consequences of the recent conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, as well as the repercussions of the Gaza conflict, especially regarding the displacement of Palestinians. Lebanon, which hosts hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, insists on the need for their return to their homeland as part of a comprehensive resolution to the Palestinian conflict based on a two-state solution. The Lebanese president will also caution against the dangers of the continued Israeli occupation of certain Lebanese areas, fearing that this occupation may become part of a broader Middle East solution. He will underscore that diplomacy remains the only viable solution to this issue, as any alternative would only deepen the suffering of the Lebanese people. During the visit to Saudi Arabia and at the Arab summit, president Aoun will also emphasize that it has entered a new phase, where the state now exercises full control over all political, military, economic, and financial matters. The primary goal is to restore confidence in the state, with the aim of benefitting Lebanon and its people, particularly in securing funding for the reconstruction process in the aftermath of the devastation caused by the war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Lebanon's Positive Neutrality: A Principle That Bothers Hezbollah
This is Beirut/March 02, 2025
Lebanon's neutrality is a principle that greatly displeases Hezbollah. It deprives the group of a significant lever and considerably limits its room for maneuvering as an instrument of Iran in the region, not just in Lebanon. Ahmad Kabalan, the Jaafari mufti and unofficial spokesperson for the pro-Iranian group, has reiterated Hezbollah's rhetoric in a statement on Sunday, arguing that neutrality cannot be applied when “national interests” are at stake — though he did not specify which interests. To support his argument, he claimed that “the world is a jungle where force and brutality prevail over fundamental and communal rights,” which, according to him, makes it essential to implement “national policies that protect Lebanon, surrounded by external threats.” “It is therefore crucial to take a stand for Lebanon, as there is no room for neutrality when it comes to national interests. This is an international and regional reality, and we are not on Mars,” said the mufti, indirectly criticizing the positions of President Joseph Aoun and the government. “The positions announced to revive the country are important, but they are not enough to achieve a true national recovery. Lebanon’s history is complex,” he added. The mufti was also responding, once again, to Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Bechara al-Rai, who reiterated his call for Lebanon’s neutrality in his Sunday homily. Al-Rai welcomed the fact that the government had received a vote of confidence from Parliament on Wednesday, stating that President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s ministerial team “now have the responsibility to turn this confidence into reforms, reconstruction, economic revival, the revitalization of public institutions and the achievement of national reconciliation based on belonging to a single nation, Lebanon.”“Next, the country must move forward toward the implementation of positive neutrality. It is important to emphasize that neutrality does not mean withdrawing from the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) or the United Nations. On the contrary, it implies strengthening Lebanon’s role within these institutions and at other levels so that it becomes a partner in the search for solutions, rather than remaining a victim of divisions and conflicts,” the patriarch continued. It is worth recalling that Lebanon’s positive neutrality was mentioned by President Aoun in his inaugural speech, as well as by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam when he presented the ministerial statement to Parliament on Tuesday.

Al-Rahi: Neutrality does not mean resignation from the "Arab League", the "Organization of the Islamic Conference", and the "United Nations", but rather it modifies Lebanon's role and makes it a partner in finding solutions
NNA/March 02, 2025
Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Mar Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi presided over Sunday Mass at the Church of Our Lady in the Patriarchal Palace in Bkerke. After the Holy Gospel, Al-Rahi delivered a sermon entitled: "There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee" (John 3:1). In its political aspect, he said: "The Lebanese community was pleased with the government of President Nawaf Salam obtaining the confidence of ninety-five votes, which is an image of the confidence of the Lebanese and the countries, in addition to their confidence in the person of the President of the Republic, General Joseph Aoun. And here they are faced with the duty of investing this confidence in reforms, reconstruction, economic revival, and the restoration of public institutions from within, and the establishment of the state and its institutions, and carrying out reconciliation between the Lebanese on the basis of belonging to one homeland, And equality among them all, so that "Lebanon is the final homeland for all its sons" as stipulated in Article 1 (a) of the introduction to the Constitution, that the loyalty of all Lebanese is to this one homeland. And then proceeding towards declaring positive neutrality in all its concepts. It is worth noting that neutrality does not mean resigning from the "Arab League", the "Organization of the Islamic Conference", and the "United Nations", but rather adjusts and activates Lebanon's role in all these institutions and others, and makes it a partner in finding solutions instead of remaining a victim of differences and conflicts. The Patriarch concluded: "Let us pray, brothers and sisters, that the season of Lent will be an acceptable season, renewing and restoring our relationships with ourselves, with God, and with our needy brothers. To the Holy Trinity be all glory and thanks, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever, Amen."

Return to the last Sunday Mass of the Preparatory Season for Lent: We support the New Testament and its government in order to rebuild our country on solid foundations that can withstand all harmful winds
NNA/March 2, 2025
The Metropolitan of Beirut and its Dependencies for the Greek Orthodox, Bishop Elias Awda, presided over the service of the last Sunday Mass of the Preparatory Season for Lent, at the Cathedral of Saint George, in the presence of a crowd of believers.
After the Gospel, he delivered a sermon in which he said in its political part: He added: “Our country has gone through difficult circumstances during which disagreement, hatred, transgressions, the exchange of accusations and insults prevailed, and sometimes resorting to weapons and killing, which left wounds in the souls and a collapse in the country. Fifty years have passed since what was called the civil war or the wars of others on Lebanese soil, with Lebanese tools and Lebanese blood. The Apostle Paul says: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Our hope and prayer is that this page will be turned irrevocably, and that love will prevail instead of hatred, and harmony and peace instead of violence and killing, and that we will begin a new era based on acknowledging mistakes, and on the forgiveness that our religions teach us, and on the love that we are called to embrace as a permanent behavior, so that we join together for the common good, and support the new era and its government, which we congratulate on gaining the confidence of most parliamentarians, in order to rebuild our country on solid foundations that resist all harmful winds. The Apostle Paul tells us: “It has The night is over and the day is at hand, so let us leave the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk worthily.” He concluded: “As we heard in today’s Gospel: ‘Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth... but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven... for where your treasures are, there will your hearts be also’ and ‘Your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.’ May the word of the Lord, at the beginning of this Lenten season, be a be a beacon for us and guide our way to the heavenly kingdom.”

Family Killed by Gas Tanker Explosion in Akkar
This is Beirut/March 02, 2025
A woman and her three children were killed on Sunday in the explosion of a gas tanker in the village of Doussa, in Akkar. The cause of the tragedy, which raises serious concerns about the transport of hazardous materials and security methods applied, is still unknown. An investigation has been launched. The explosion triggered fires in the area.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 02-03/2025
Israel has cut off all supplies to Gaza. Here’s what that means
AP/March 03, 2025
Hunger has been an issue throughout the war for Gaza’s over 2 million people, and some aid experts had warned of possible famine.
Israel has cut off the entry of all food and other goods into Gaza in an echo of the siege it imposed in the earliest days of its war with Hamas. The United Nations and other humanitarian aid providers are sharply criticizing the decision and calling it a violation of international law. “A tool of extortion,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said. “A reckless act of collective punishment,” Oxfam said. Key mediator Egypt accused Israel of using “starvation as a weapon.”Hunger has been an issue throughout the war for Gaza’s over 2 million people, and some aid experts had warned of possible famine. Now there is concern about losing the progress that experts reported under the past six weeks of a ceasefire. Israel is trying to pressure the Hamas militant group to agree to what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government describes as a US proposal to extend the ceasefire’s first phase instead of beginning negotiations on the far more difficult second phase. In phase two, Hamas would release the remaining living hostages in return for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and a lasting ceasefire.
Here’s a look at what Israel’s decision means and the reactions.
No word from the US
The ceasefire’s first phase ended early Sunday. Minutes later, Israel said it supported a new proposal to extend that phase through the Jewish holiday of Passover in mid-April. It called the proposal a US one from Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff. Israel also warned it could resume the war after the first phase if it believes negotiations are ineffective. Negotiations on the second phase were meant to start a month ago, increasing the uncertainty around the fragile truce. Hamas has insisted that those talks begin. Later Sunday, Israel announced the immediate cutoff of aid to Gaza.The Trump administration has not issued a statement about Israel’s announcement or its decision to cut off aid. It’s also not clear when Witkoff will visit the Middle East again. He had been expected to visit last week. The US under the Biden administration pressed Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, threatening to limit weapons support. Aid organizations repeatedly criticized Israeli restrictions on items entering the small coastal territory, while hundreds of trucks with aid at times waited to enter. Israel says it has allowed in enough aid. It has blamed shortages on what it called the UN’s inability to distribute it, and accused Hamas militants of siphoning off aid. For months before the ceasefire, some Palestinians reported limiting meals, searching through garbage and foraging for edible weeds as food supplies ran low.
600 trucks of aid a day
The ceasefire’s first phase took effect on Jan. 19 and allowed a surge of aid into Gaza. An average of 600 trucks with aid entered per day. Those daily 600 trucks of aid were meant to continue entering through all three phases of the ceasefire. However, Hamas says less than 50 percent of the agreed-upon number of trucks carrying fuel, for generators and other uses, were allowed in. Hamas also says the entry of live animals and animal feed, key for food security, were denied entry. Still, Palestinians in Gaza were able to stock up on some supplies. “The ceasefire brought some much-needed relief to Gaza, but it was far from enough to cover the immense needs,” the Norwegian Refugee Council said Sunday. Israel’s announcement came hours after Muslims in Gaza marked the first breaking of the fast during the holy month of Ramadan, with long tables set for collective meals snaking through the rubble of war-destroyed buildings. The sudden aid cutoff sent Palestinians hurrying to markets. Prices in Gaza “tripled immediately,” Mahmoud Shalabi, the Medical Aid for Palestinians’ deputy director of programs in northern Gaza, told The Associated Press.
Legal implications
Prominent in the immediate criticism of Israel’s aid cutoff were statements calling the decision a violation. “International humanitarian law is clear: We must be allowed access to deliver vital lifesaving aid,” said the UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher. Hours after Israel’s announcement, five non-governmental groups asked Israel’s Supreme Court for an interim order barring the state from preventing aid from entering Gaza, claiming the move violates Israel’s obligations under international law and amounts to a war crime: “These obligations cannot be condition on political considerations.”Last year, the International Criminal Court said there was reason to believe Israel had used “starvation as a method of warfare” when it issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. The allegation is also central to South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide. On Sunday, Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch, said Israel as an occupying power has an “absolute duty” to facilitate humanitarian aid under the Geneva Conventions, and called Israel’s decision “a resumption of the war-crime starvation strategy” that led to the ICC warrant.

Outrage as Israel cuts off Gaza aid to pressure Hamas to accept new ceasefire proposal
AP/March 02, 2025
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher called Israel’s decision “alarming,” noting that international humanitarian law makes clear that aid access must be allowed
TEL AVIV, Israel: Israel faced sharp criticism as it stopped the entry of all food and other supplies into Gaza on Sunday and warned of “additional consequences” for Hamas if a fragile ceasefire wasn’t extended. Mediators Egypt and Qatar accused Israel of violating humanitarian law by using starvation as a weapon. The ceasefire’s first phase saw a surge in humanitarian aid after months of growing hunger. Hamas accused Israel of trying to derail the next phase Sunday hours after its first phase had ended and called Israel’s decision to cut off aid “a war crime and a blatant attack” on a truce that took a year of negotiations before taking hold in January. In the second phase, Hamas could release dozens of remaining hostages in return for an Israeli pullout from Gaza and a lasting ceasefire. Negotiations on the second phase were meant to start a month ago but haven’t begun. Israel said Sunday that a new US proposal calls for extending the ceasefire’s first phase through Ramadan — the Muslim holy month that began over the weekend — and the Jewish Passover holiday, which ends on April 20.
Under that proposal, Hamas would release half the hostages on the first day and the rest when an agreement is reached on a permanent ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. The militants currently hold 59 hostages, 35 of them believed to be dead. The US had no immediate comment. Netanyahu said Israel is fully coordinated with the Trump administration and the ceasefire will only continue as long as Hamas keeps releasing hostages. Saying the ceasefire has saved countless lives, the International Committee of the Red Cross said that “any unraveling of the forward momentum created over the last six weeks risks plunging people back into despair.”UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher called Israel’s decision “alarming,” noting that international humanitarian law makes clear that aid access must be allowed. Medical charity MSF accused Israel of using aid as a bargaining chip, calling that “unacceptable” and “outrageous.”Five non-governmental groups asked Israel’s Supreme Court for an interim order barring the state from preventing aid from entering Gaza, claiming the move violates Israel’s obligations under international law: “These obligations cannot be condition on political considerations.”The war has left most of Gaza’s population of over 2 million dependent on international aid. About 600 aid trucks had entered daily since the ceasefire began on Jan. 19, easing fears of famine raised by international experts. But residents said prices shot up as word of the closure spread. From the heavily destroyed Jabaliya urban refugee camp, Fayza Nassar said the closure would worsen dire conditions.“There will be famine and chaos,” she said. Hamas warned that any attempt to delay or cancel the ceasefire agreement would have “humanitarian consequences” for the hostages. The only way to free them is through the existing deal, the group said. Families of hostages again pressed Israel’s government. “Postponing the negotiation on the deal for everyone’s (release) can’t happen,” Lishay Miran-Lavi, wife of hostage Omri Miran, said in Tel Aviv. “Hostages don’t have time to wait for an ideal deal.”
Israel was accused of blocking aid throughout the war
Israel imposed a siege on Gaza in the war’s opening days and only eased it under US pressure. UN agencies and aid groups accused Israel of not facilitating enough aid during 15 months of war. The International Criminal Court said there was reason to believe Israel had used “starvation as a method of warfare” when it issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu last year. The allegation is also central to South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide. Israel has denied the accusations. It says it has allowed in enough aid and blamed shortages on what it called the UN’s inability to distribute it. It also accused Hamas of siphoning off aid — an allegation that Netanyahu repeated Sunday. Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch, said Israel as an occupying power has an “absolute duty” to facilitate humanitarian aid under the Geneva Conventions, and called Israel’s decision “a resumption of the war-crime starvation strategy” that led to the ICC warrant. The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostage. Israel’s offensive has killed over 48,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It says more than half of those killed were women and children. It does not specify how many of the dead were combatants. Israeli bombardment pounded large areas of Gaza to rubble and displaced some 90 percent of the population.

UN urges Israel to restore Gaza aid as Hamas sees ‘coup’ against truce
AFP/March 02, 2025
JERUSALEM: The United Nations on Sunday called on Israel to immediately allow aid into Gaza, hours after it suspended humanitarian deliveries into the war-battered territory as talks on a truce extension appeared to hit an impasse. With uncertainty looming over the truce, both Israel and Palestinian sources reported Israeli military strikes in the Gaza Strip which the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said killed at least four people. The 42-day first phase of the ceasefire drew to a close, and early on Sunday Israel announced a truce extension until mid-April that it said US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff had proposed. Hamas has repeatedly rejected an extension, instead favoring a transition to the truce deal’s second phase that could bring a permanent end to the war. The Palestinian group, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the fighting, said the “decision to suspend humanitarian aid is cheap blackmail, a war crime and a blatant coup against the (ceasefire) agreement.” In a statement posted online, UN chief Antonio Guterres called for “humanitarian aid to flow back into Gaza immediately,” urging “all parties to make every effort to prevent a return to hostilities” and militants to release “all hostages.”The head of the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA, Thomas Fletcher, said in a post on X that “Israel’s decision to halt aid into Gaza is alarming” and may be in violation of international law. Following the announcement of the aid suspension, AFP images showed trucks loaded with goods lined up on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing. “Since the morning we haven’t seen any trucks entering,” said Umm Mohammad Abu Laia, a resident of Rafah on Gaza’s southern border. She warned of a “crisis” as the prices of basic commodities surged “as soon as the merchants heard about the closing of the crossing.” The first phase of the truce, which took effect on January 19, saw an increase of aid into Gaza, where the war destroyed or damaged most buildings, displaced almost the entire population and triggered widespread hunger, according to the UN. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, asked by reporters about the risk of starvation, dismissed such warnings as “a lie.”Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had “decided that, from this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will be suspended.”It said there would be “consequences” for Hamas if it did not accept the temporary truce extension, which would cover the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish holiday of Passover.
On a sandy street in Gaza City, Mays Abu Amer, 21, expressed hope the ceasefire can continue “forever.” “We have so much destruction, we need a lot of time for reconstruction,” she said. Mediator Egypt and the International Committee of the Red Cross have appealed for the truce to be maintained. Militant group Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally, accused Israel of “sabotaging” the ceasefire.
According to Israel, the truce extension would see half of the hostages still in Gaza freed on the day the deal came into effect, with the rest to be released at the end if an agreement was reached on a permanent ceasefire. Of the 251 captives taken during Hamas’s October 2023 attack, 58 remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead. In Israel, mourners who turned out to farewell Shlomo Mansour, 85, whose body militants had held in Gaza and returned to Israel on Thursday, said more should be done to get the remaining captives home. “Return all of them immediately,” said Vardit Roiter. Under the first phase of the truce, Gaza militants handed over 25 living hostages and eight bodies, including Mansour’s, in exchange for the release of about 1,800 Palestinian prisoners. Israelis in Jerusalem welcomed the decision to block aid, describing it as a way to pressure Hamas into making concessions. Neria, a 27-year-old teacher who only gave his first name, told AFP it was a “smart move” that could “push forward new things, the release of more hostages and the end of the war.”In southern Gaza on Sunday, the civil defense agency reported shelling and gunfire “from Israeli tanks,” which the army said it was “unaware of.” The Palestine Red Crescent said Israeli drone strikes killed one person in the same area and another in a nearby town. The military said it had conducted an air strike in northern Gaza targeting suspects it said had “planted an explosive device” near its troops.Including the deaths on Sunday, Gaza’s health ministry has recorded 116 people killed by Israel’s military since the ceasefire took effect on January 19, substantially reducing violence. The 2023 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, while Israel’s retaliation in Gaza has killed more than 48,300 people, also mostly civilians, data from both sides show.

Rubio Signs Declaration to Expedite Delivery of $4 Billion in Military Aid to Israel
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 02, 2025
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday he had signed a declaration to expedite delivery of approximately $4 billion in military assistance to Israel. The Trump administration, which took office on January 20, has approved nearly $12 billion in major foreign military sales to Israel, Rubio said in a statement, adding that it "will continue to use all available tools to fulfill America’s long-standing commitment to Israel’s security, including means to counter security threats."Rubio said he had used emergency authority to expedite the delivery of military assistance to Israel to its Middle East ally, now in a fragile ceasefire with Hamas in their war in Gaza. The Pentagon said on Friday that the State Department had approved the potential sale of nearly $3 billion worth of bombs, demolition kits and other weaponry to Israel. The administration notified Congress of those prospective weapons sales on an emergency basis, sidestepping a long-standing practice of giving the chairs and ranking members of the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees the opportunity to review the sale and ask for more information before making a formal notification to Congress. Friday's announcements marked the second time in recent weeks that President Donald Trump's administration has declared an emergency to quickly approve weapons sales to Israel. The Biden administration also used emergency authority to approve the sale of arms to Israel without congressional review. On Monday, the Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era order requiring it to report potential violations of international law involving US-supplied weapons by allies, including Israel. It has also eliminated most US humanitarian foreign aid. The January 19 Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement halted 15 months of fighting and paved the way for talks on ending the war, while leading to the release of 33 Israeli hostages held in Gaza and around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israel. Hours after the first phase of the agreed ceasefire was set to expire, Israel said early on Sunday it would adopt a proposal by Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza for the Ramadan and Passover periods. Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violating the ceasefire, casting doubt over the second phase of the deal meant to include releases of additional hostages and prisoners as well as steps toward a permanent end of the war.

Frankly Speaking: Should Israel pay for rebuilding Gaza?
Arab News/March 02, 2025
RIYADH: Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief and ambassador to the US and UK, has long been vocal about the plight of the Palestinian people and the destruction caused by Israel’s military campaigns. Now, in the wake of the latest war in Gaza, he has called for a fundamental shift in how reconstruction efforts are financed — by forcing Israel to contribute to rebuilding the very infrastructure it has repeatedly destroyed. Appearing on the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking,” Prince Turki laid out his case for why Israel should bear financial responsibility for the damage it has inflicted on Gaza and the West Bank — rather than the Gulf states footing the bill. “I have been saying this for some time now, that there should be a fund, a worldwide fund for the reconstruction, not just in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. And Israel should be forced to chip in to that fund,” he told “Frankly Speaking” host Katie Jensen. “We can’t have Israel, every time we reconstruct Gaza or the West Bank, coming and demolishing what has been reconstructed. That is unacceptable. “And I think from now on, it is an issue of finality rather than temporary or procedural actions that are taken to build and then wait for the next round of destruction that comes from Israel. There has to be a finality for this situation by an end to the conflict.”Israel mounted its military operation in Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, which saw some 1,200 people killed, most of them civilians, and around 250 taken hostage, many of them foreign nationals. At least 50,000 Palestinians were killed in the ensuing conflict and some 1.9 million displaced from their homes before a ceasefire deal was finally agreed on Jan. 19. Much of the enclave now lies in ruins and humanitarian needs are immense. Prince Turki said a permanent ceasefire was the only way to guarantee that reconstruction efforts were not repeatedly undone by future Israeli military operations. “The next phase of the ceasefire, as we have seen, will see a permanent ceasefire come into effect not just in Gaza but all of Palestine,” he said. “That is the only way that we can guarantee that whatever is reconstructed can remain as a viable Palestinian state that can become independent and self-governing with all of the rights of its people.”
While much of the world’s focus has been on Gaza, Prince Turki warned that Israeli policies in the West Bank, where refugee camps have been raided by troops and settler violence has increased, should not be overlooked. “The struggle for Palestine has not ended with the ceasefire in Gaza,” he said. “We see the Benjamin Netanyahu government doing similar things to what they did in Gaza in the West Bank, although at a slower pace than they did in Gaza.” “They’re uprooting people in the West Bank, emptying some of the refugee camps there, and forcibly driving residents of the camps out with no destination. That is unacceptable as well. That is a form of ethnic cleansing. And yet Israel gets away with it, and nobody — especially not the US — condemns it.”
US President Donald Trump recently caused an international stir by sharing an AI-generated video on his Truth Social account depicting Gaza as a luxury holiday resort. In the surreal video, Palestinian children are seen emerging from rubble into a glitzy cityscape with cash raining from the sky. Elsewhere, Trump is seen sipping drinks with Netanyahu on a beachfront.
The video was a reference to comments Trump made in recent weeks about the possibility of removing the Palestinian people en masse to Egypt and Jordan and rebuilding Gaza as a “Riviera of the Middle East.”When asked what Trump was hoping to achieve by sharing the video, Prince Turki said: “I don’t know. No shock can be enough of a reaction to what he’s up to. Some people have said that he does that in order to instigate or to inspire reaction in one form or another. “Well, he doesn’t need to do that, because definitely the brutality of the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians does inspire reactions not just from the Arab world but from the world community.”Despite the controversy, Prince Turki noted that the international community’s response to the war in Gaza had been unprecedented. “I must say that throughout this brutal attack on the Palestinians by the Netanyahu government, the world reaction has been quite good,” he said. “You saw the demonstrations that took place and are still taking place in various places around the world in opposition to this brutality and in support of the freedom and independence of a Palestinian state. That is a very healthy sign.”
With the Arab League holding an extraordinary summit on March 4 in Cairo to discuss alternative proposals for Gaza’s postwar future, among other pressing issues facing the region, Prince Turki was cautious about predicting the outcome of the talks.
“I really have no idea whatsoever,” he said. “Of course, I was not party to the talks and I have not seen any public statement about them. What I read in speculation, you know, in media outlets, whether in Israel or America or the Arab world, I would wait until the meeting takes place and we see what is said by the officials themselves.”Lebanese Army vehicles patrol the area of Marjayoun in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel on October 25, 2024. Israel expanded operations in Lebanon nearly a year after Hezbollah began exchanging fire in support of its ally, Hamas, following the Palestinian group's deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Asked whether Hamas could have a role to play in governing postwar Gaza, perhaps as part of the Palestinian Authority, and whether the West would tolerate such an arrangement, Prince Turki said there were those within the Palestinian militant group who rightly prioritize the needs of the Gazan people who could well be included. “When you say Hamas, there are individuals who are definitely neutral, if you like, and more in terms of not bound by party or by commitment to either Hamas or Fatah or any of the other Palestinian groupings there,” he said. “Those are the people, I think, who should be in charge of Gaza and meeting the needs of the people of Gaza.”Turning to Lebanon, Prince Turki expressed optimism about the country’s new government, headed by President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. Aoun arrives in Saudi Arabia on Monday on his first official trip abroad since being elected president on January 9.
The new government was created after more than two years of political paralysis, which had prevented Lebanon’s recovery from its devastating financial crisis that began in 2019 and the 15-month conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that began in October 2023. “The Kingdom has wholeheartedly supported the actions of the Lebanese parliament in electing the president,” Prince Turki said. “And now the president has designated a prime minister and I think they have announced a (cabinet) that hopefully will take its place as the ruling government of Lebanon.”He added: “I think the Lebanese people are tired of having to be the sacrificial lamb, if you like, for either sectarian or other political factions, whether they be Hezbollah or some other Lebanese parties in the course of the development in the future. “So, it is the Lebanese people, I think, who will be the safeguards of this new direction. And I hope that the support that is coming to Lebanon, not just from Saudi Arabia, but from the world community, will help that government to become more effective in meeting the needs of the Lebanese people.”
Although the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia remains a substantial force in Lebanon, its mauling by Israel has left it severely diminished, allowing the Lebanese state to reassert itself. Prince Turki said Saudi investors are now eager to return to Lebanon.
“I hear from Saudis here that they’re willing and anxious to be able, if you like, to go back to Lebanon,” he said. “Those who have not invested yet, I think, are also thinking of the opportunities there. “The Lebanese people are a very talented people, and Lebanon has always been a commercial hub for the Arab world. I remember my late father, King Faisal, used to say in those days, of course, that Lebanon is the lungs of the Arab world. I hope it returns to that.”The Kingdom recently hosted high-level talks between the US and Russia to discuss a potential peace deal in Ukraine and other topics. In doing so, they reinforced Saudi Arabia’s position as a key player in global diplomacy. “They seem to have set a course forward on a mutual return of diplomatic representation and also mutual cooperation, not only politically but also in terms of commercial and other enterprises that can bring benefit to their two peoples,” Prince Turki said of Moscow and Washington. “It’s good to see that the potential for nuclear war between America and Russia has decreased incredibly. Is a reassuring sign that we do not face a nuclear holocaust, for which there might have been a reason had this meeting not taken place.” Prince Turki, who is a co-founder and trustee of the Saudi-headquartered King Faisal Foundation, an international philanthropic organization, emphasized that the Kingdom’s diplomatic efforts extended beyond Ukraine. Alluding to Riyadh’s facilitation of peace parleys between Eritrea and Ethiopia; Djibouti and Ethiopia; and between the Houthi militia and the UN-recognized government of Yemen, he said: “Saudis are proud that they are the place where people are coming to find solutions.”

Egyptian foreign minister stresses importance of maintaining Gaza ceasefire
Arab News/March 02, 2025
LONDON: Egypt’s Foreign Affairs Minister Badr Abdelatty on Sunday stressed the importance of fully implementing the ceasefire agreement in Gaza after a meeting with Dubravka Suica, the European commissioner for the Mediterranean.
Abdelatty emphasized during a joint press conference in Cairo with Suica the urgent need to immediately begin negotiations for the second phase of the agreement between Israel and Hamas. He highlighted the need to maintain the ceasefire, release all Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners according to the deal’s terms, and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid. The minister said: “Egypt, Qatar, and the US are playing an active role, and we want to emphasize the importance of implementing (the ceasefire). We must begin discussions on the second phase.”Israel blocked aid trucks from entering Gaza on Sunday, escalating a standoff over the six-week ceasefire, prompting Hamas to seek intervention from Egyptian and Qatari mediators. A proposed US temporary ceasefire would pause fighting until the end of Ramadan, around March 31, and the Jewish Passover holiday, around April 20. However, this ceasefire would be contingent upon Hamas releasing half of the hostages, both living and deceased, on the first day. The remainder would be released at the end of the ceasefire period.
Hamas has reaffirmed its commitment to the original ceasefire, intended to lead to negotiations for a permanent end to the conflict in Gaza. Abdelatty stressed that goodwill and commitment from all parties would ensure the success of these discussions for a permanent ceasefire, the Emirates News Agency reported. He stressed that a political process should follow the ceasefire to establish a Palestinian state and called on all parties to ensure effective humanitarian aid delivery to Gaza, rejecting its use as a collective punishment against Palestinians.
Abdelatty said that the reconstruction plan for Gaza would be presented at the upcoming Arab emergency summit this week in Cairo, and that discussions with the EU and other countries to secure international support would take place.
Suica said the EU was “investing in multilateral programs to empower Palestinians and keep Gaza on the map.” She added that she hoped a ceasefire agreement would help in “paving the way for a two-state solution, which the EU supports and believes should come without preconditions.”

Saudi Arabia condemns Israeli decision to block humanitarian aid to Gaza as ‘blackmail’
Arab News/March 02, 2025
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia strongly condemned on Sunday the Israeli government’s decision to halt the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, calling it an act of “blackmail and collective punishment” that violates international law. In a statement on Sunday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its denunciation of Israel’s move, warning that it constituted a direct violation of international humanitarian law amid the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. “The Kingdom renews its call on the international community to stop these serious Israeli violations, activate international accountability mechanisms, and ensure sustainable access to aid,” the statement said. The condemnation comes as Israel blocked the entry of aid trucks into Gaza over the weekend, escalating tensions over a truce that had temporarily halted fighting for the past six weeks. Hamas has called on Egyptian and Qatari mediators to intervene in the standoff. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced that Israel had adopted a proposal from US envoy Steve Witkoff for a temporary ceasefire during the upcoming Ramadan and Passover periods. If agreed upon, the truce would pause hostilities until the end of Ramadan around March 31 and the Jewish Passover holiday around April 20.

Syria forces deploy in Damascus suburb after deadly unrest: state media
AFP/March 02, 2025
Another person was killed in clashes on Saturday and nine more wounded
DAMASCUS: The forces of Syria’s new authorities deployed Sunday in a Damascus suburb following deadly clashes with Druze gunmen, state media said amid tensions after Israeli demands to protect the minority group. Jaramana, a mostly Druze and Christian suburb of the capital, saw a fatal shooting at a checkpoint on Friday, followed a day later by clashes between security forces and local gunmen tasked with protecting the area, according to a war monitor. On Sunday local security chief Hossam Tahhan said that “our forces have begun deploying” in Jaramana to end the “chaos and illegal checkpoints by outlaw groups,” according to a statement on official news agency SANA. He vowed to arrest those involved in Friday’s killing of a defense ministry employee at a checkpoint, saying the culprits had “refused” to hand themselves in.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said another person was killed in clashes on Saturday and nine more wounded. Restoring and maintaining security across Syria remains one of the most pressing challenges for the new authorities after Bashar Assad’s December overthrow. Adding to tensions, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Saturday issued a warning to the new Islamist-led authorities not “to harm the Druze,” who also live in Lebanon, Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Jaramana resident Salah Abdulrazak Al-Amed, 56, called the Israeli remarks “inflammatory and rash statements” that aimed to “polarize sections of the people.”Issa Abdulhaq, 53, said that “Israel can declare whatever it wants... They are just talking to themselves.” The Druze, who make up about three percent of Syria’s population, largely stayed on the sidelines of the country’s war. Tahhan said there was “great cooperation” from Jaramana residents on bringing the suburb under the control of the new authorities. Druze leaders in Jaramana had said in a statement that they would “withdraw protection from all offenders and outlaws,” pledging to hand over anyone proven responsible for the latest violence “to face justice.” Jaramana was one of the first areas where residents, on the eve of Assad’s fall, toppled a statue of his father, former President Hafez Assad.

Syria forms committee to draft transitional constitutional declaration
AFP/March 02, 2025
DAMASCUS: The interim President of the Syrian Arab Republic, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, announced on Sunday the formation of a committee to draft a constitutional declaration for the country’s transition after the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad.
The new authorities are focused on rebuilding Syria and its institutions after Assad’s removal on December 8, ending more than half a century of his family’s iron-fisted rule and 13 years of devastating war.
The presidency announced “the formation of a committee of experts,” including one woman, tasked with drafting “the constitutional declaration that regulates the transitional phase” in Syria. The seven-member committee would “submit its proposals to the president,” it said in a statement, without specifying a timeframe. In late January, Sharaa, leader of Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) which spearheaded Assad’s overthrow, was appointed interim president for an unspecified period. Syria’s new authorities have repealed the Assad-era constitution, and Sharaa has said rewriting it could take up to three years. In late January, Sharaa promised a “constitutional declaration” to serve as a “legal reference” during the country’s transitional period. Sunday’s announcement came “based on the Syrian people’s aspirations in building their state based on the rule of law, and building on the outcomes of the Syrian national dialogue conference,” said the presidency. It also came “with the aim of preparing the legal framework regulating the transitional phase,” it added. A national dialogue conference held this week in Damascus set out a path for the new Syria.
Who are the committee's members?
The committee includes Abdul Hamid Al-Awak, who holds a doctorate in constitutional law and lectures at a university in Turkiye, and Yasser Al-Huwaish, who was appointed this year as dean of Damascus university’s law faculty. It also includes Bahia Mardini — the sole woman — a journalist with a doctorate in law who has been living in Britain, and Ismail Al-Khalfan, who holds a doctorate in law specializing in international law, and who this year was appointed law faculty dean at Aleppo university. Another committee member, Mohammed Reda Jalkhi, holds a doctorate in law specializing in international law from Idlib university, where he graduated in 2023. The final statement of this week’s dialogue conference called for “a constitutional committee to prepare a draft permanent constitution for the country that achieves balance between authorities, sets the values of justice, freedom and equality, and establishes a state of law an institutions.”Syria’s conflict broke out in 2011 after Assad brutally repressed anti-government protests. It spiralled into a complex conflict that has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions more domestically and abroad and battered the economy, infrastructure and industry. In December, a caretaker government was appointed to steer the country until March 1, when a new government was due to be formed.

Turkiye’s Kurds say PKK militants heeding jailed leader’s peace call is the right move
Reuters/March 02, 2025
DIYARBAKIR, Turkiye: Residents in Diyarbakir, Turkiye’s largest Kurdish-majority city, said on Sunday that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) decision to heed its jailed leader’s call for peace was correct and prosperity would follow if the decades-old conflict ended.
On Saturday, the PKK declared an immediate ceasefire, a news agency close to it said, heeding jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan’s disarmament call, in what could be a major step toward ending a 40-year insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people.
President Tayyip Erdogan’s government, its nationalist ally, and the pro-Kurdish DEM Party have voiced support for the peace call. However, Erdogan also warned that Ankara would resume military operations against the militant group if promises are not kept. Zihni Capin, a teacher, said in Diyarbakir that people were “exhausted both mentally and physically” by the conflict, and added he hoped the process would conclude in a way that contributes to “prosperity, peace and happiness” in the region.
“I think it is a very correct and appropriate decision. Hopefully, the process will meet the expectations of all the people in Turkiye and the Middle East,” he said. The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Turkiye and its Western allies. It called on Saturday for greater freedoms for Ocalan, who has been kept in near total isolation since 1999, to advance the disarmament process, but Ankara has said there would be no negotiations. Tuncer Bakirhan, co-chair of DEM, said on Sunday that political and legal adjustments were now “inevitable” after the peace call, and added that Turkiye’s parliament had a “historic role” to play. “This process is not one that should be squandered. It must not remain on paper only,” Bakirhan told DEM members in Ankara. “The call is not one for winning and losing... There is no winner, no loser,” he added.
The ceasefire could have wide-ranging implications for the region if it succeeds in ending the conflict between the PKK — now based in the mountains of northern Iraq — and the Turkish state. It could also give Erdogan a domestic boost and a historic opportunity to bring peace and development to southeast Turkiye, where the conflict has killed thousands and severely damaged the economy. Zulkuf Kacar, who works as a purchasing manager outside Turkiye, said those who lay down arms need to be given amnesty.“Enough is enough, this suffering. This suffering needs to end,” Kacar said in Diyarbakir.

Egypt rejects attempts to form parallel Sudanese government
AFP/March 02, 2025
CAIRO: Egypt rejected on Sunday attempts aimed at establishing a rival government in Sudan, warning that such moves jeopardized the “unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the war-torn country. Sudan has been locked in a war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for nearly two years, plunging the country into what the United Nations describes as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory. A week ago, the RSF and its allies signed a charter in Kenya declaring the formation of a “government of peace and unity” in areas under their control. “Egypt expresses its rejection of any attempts that threaten the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of brotherly Sudan, including the pursuit of forming a parallel Sudanese government,” a statement from Cairo’s foreign ministry said Sunday.
It added that such actions “complicate the situation in Sudan, hinder ongoing efforts to unify political visions and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis.”Egypt also called on “all Sudanese forces to prioritize the country’s supreme national interest and to engage positively in launching a comprehensive political (peace) process without exclusion or external interference.” Last week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty voiced the same stance in a press conference alongside his Sudanese counterpart Ali Youssef. “Sudan’s territorial integrity is a red line for Egypt,” he said, adding that his country “rejects any calls to establish alternative structures outside the current framework.”The paramilitaries’ move to form a rival government has drawn sharp criticism, including from UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who warned it would “further deepen Sudan’s fragmentation.”Saudi Arabia, which previously mediated ceasefire talks between the warring sides, also rejected the RSF’s move. In a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency on Friday, Riyadh’s foreign ministry warned against “any step or illegal measure taken outside the framework of official institutions.”Kuwait echoed that position on Friday, saying it rejected “any unlawful actions taken outside the framework of legitimate state institutions” in Sudan, calling them “a threat to its territorial unity.”At a UN Human Rights Council dialogue on Friday, Saudi Arabia’s Gulf neighbor Qatar also expressed its support for “Sudan’s unity and territorial integrity.”

Ukraine ready to sign minerals deal: Zelensky
AFP/March 03, 2025
LONDON: Ukraine is ready to sign a minerals deal with the United States, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told UK media on Sunday. “The agreement that’s on the table will be signed if the parties are ready,” he told a late-night huddle with some UK media after a landmark summit in London. The deal, which was supposed to be a step toward helping to end the conflict in Ukraine, fell through on Friday after a televised Oval Office clash with US President Donald Trump. “It is our policy to continue what happened in the past, we’re constructive,” Zelensky said, quoted by the BBC.
“If we agreed to sign the minerals deal, we’re ready to sign it.”Zelensky had traveled to Washington for a full White House visit on Friday to sign a US-Ukrainian deal for the joint exploitation of Ukraine’s vast mineral resources, as part of a post-war recovery in a US-brokered peace deal. But in their Oval Office meeting, Trump berated Zelensky, telling him to be more “thankful” for US support in the three-year war and that without US assistance Ukraine would have been conquered by Russia. “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out,” Trump added. “And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.” The US leader had previously said the proposed minerals deal would be “very fair.”The proposal was to give Washington financial benefits for helping Ukraine in a truce, even if Trump has repeatedly refused to commit any US military force as a back-up to European troops who might act as peacekeepers. After the heated exchange, Zelensky drove off in his motorcade shortly after having been asked to leave, without holding a planned joint press conference. The resources deal was left unsigned, the White House said. Ukraine’s allies rallied around Zelensky on Sunday at a summit hosted by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer who said many European leaders had pledged to spend more on security and assemble a coalition to defend any truce. French President Emmanuel Macron, flying back from the London summit, said in a newspaper interview that France and Britain wanted to propose a partial one-month truce with Russia.

Trump Aide Waltz Says US Needs Ukrainian Leader Who Wants Peace
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 02, 2025
A top adviser to President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the United States needs a Ukrainian leader who is willing to secure a lasting peace with Russia but that it is not clear Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is prepared to do so.
Days after a contentious Oval Office exchange between Trump, Zelenskiy and Vice President JD Vance, White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said Washington wants to secure a permanent peace between Moscow and Kyiv that involves territorial concessions in exchange for European-led security guarantees.Asked whether Trump wants Zelenskiy to resign, Waltz told CNN's "State of the Union" program: "We need a leader that can deal with us, eventually deal with the Russians and end this war.""If it becomes apparent that President Zelenskiy's either personal motivations or political motivations are divergent from ending the fighting in his country, then I think we have a real issue on our hands," Waltz added. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson also suggested that a different leader might be necessary in Ukraine if Zelenskiy does not comply with US demands. "Something has to change. Either he needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude, or someone else needs to lead the country to do that," the top congressional Republican told NBC's Meet the Press program. The extraordinary Oval Office exchange on Friday put tensions between Zelenskiy and Trump on public display. As a result, an agreement between Ukraine and the United States to jointly develop Ukraine's natural resources was left unsigned and in limbo. "It wasn't clear to us that President Zelenskiy was ready to negotiate and in good faith towards an end of this war," Waltz said. On ABC's This Week program, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he has not spoken with Zelenskiy since Friday. Rubio also said he has not spoken to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha since Trump and Zelenskiy clashed at the White House and failed to sign an expected minerals deal. "We'll be ready to reengage when they're ready to make peace," Rubio said on the show. US Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, said on "This Week" that she was "appalled" by the clash in the Oval Office and that she met with Zelenskiy before he went to the White House on Friday and he had been excited to sign an expected minerals deal. "There is still an opening here" for a peace deal, she said.

White House row with Ukraine raises stakes for European summit in London
Associated Press/March 02, 2025
It was supposed to cap a week of whirlwind diplomacy advancing the prospect of peace in Ukraine. But a summit of European leaders on Sunday has been overshadowed by the extraordinary scolding by U.S. President Donald Trump of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday for being ungrateful for U.S. support. The London meeting has now taken on greater importance in defending the war-torn ally and shoring up the continent's defenses. "There's a real problem for European leaders to pick up the pieces and try and move forward," Peter Ricketts, the former British national security adviser, told BBC radio on Saturday. "It's going to be a damage limitation exercise. It's going to have to be an exercise in where do we go from here?"The meeting at Lancaster House, a 200-year-old elegant mansion near Buckingham Palace, follows a charm offensive last week to engage with Trump at the White House to put Ukraine at the center of negotiations and tilt his allegiances toward Europe.British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is hosting the leaders of more than a dozen countries and other officials, said he is determined to find an end to Russia's war on Ukraine. "We have an opportunity to come together to ensure a just and lasting peace in Ukraine that secures their sovereignty and security," Starmer said in advance. "Now is the time for us to unite in order to guarantee the best outcome for Ukraine, protect European security, and secure our collective future."The summit will also include leaders from France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Canada, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Romania. The Turkish foreign minister, NATO secretary-general and the presidents of the European Commission and European Council will also attend. Zelenskyy received broad support from leaders across Europe after the White House fiasco, which was exceptional for featuring an attack on an ally — and because it was broadcast on live television. Starmer embraced Zelenskyy when he arrived Saturday for a private meeting — a day before a get-together had been scheduled before the summit. "As you heard from the cheers on the street outside, you have full backing across the United Kingdom," Starmer said. "We stand with you, with Ukraine, for as long as it may take."Europe has been uneasy since Trump initiated direct peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been isolated by most Western leaders since invading Ukraine three years ago. The scramble to remain relevant and protect European interests as their once stalwart ally appeared to be cozying up to Putin was even more troubling when Trump called Zelenskyy a dictator and falsely said Ukraine started the war.
Meetings in recent days had provided some hope — until Zelenskyy's visit to the White House. Visits to the Oval Office by French President Emmanuel Macron, who had declared his visit a "turning point," and Starmer were seen as steps in the right direction. The meetings were cordial and Trump even took a gentler tone toward Ukraine though he would not commit to providing U.S. security guarantees and maintained Europe would need to provide peacekeeping troops. Within 12 hours of Starmer's return from Washington, the talk of peace seemed to collapse as Vice President JD Vance berated Zelenskyy for challenging Trump's assertions that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be trusted. "Starmer did an impressive job of asserting Europe's agency in the war on Ukraine and conveying to President Trump that Europe is willing and able to take a leading role in implementing any credible peace deal," said Rachel Ellehuus, director-general of Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank. "Unfortunately, Friday's White House meeting was a major step backward."
Ukraine can no longer count on military or political support from the U.S. after Trump declared himself neutral in negotiations, Ellehuus said. She said Europe needs to step in and could release some 200 billion euros ($207 billion) in seized Russian assets to help fund that effort. "The immediate goal of the meetings in London must be to keep Ukraine in the fight so it can negotiate from a maximum position of strength," she said.
Starmer pledged this week to boost military spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027. Other European nations may follow suit. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said Saturday that Europe faces a historic test and has to care for itself. He said European countries have to increase their arms spending to reach at least 3% of GDP.
"If we don't increase our effort fast enough and let the aggressor dictate its conditions we won't end up well," he said. Macron, who said it was legitimate for the U.S. to shift its focus to dealing with China and Asia, also called for more defense spending as he called for unity among his neighbors."We should have woken up earlier," Macron said. "I've been saying for years that we need a more sovereign, more united, more independent Europe."

Drone hits apartment building in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, injures seven, mayor says
Reuters/March 03, 2025
A Russian drone struck a multi-story apartment building late on Sunday in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, triggering a fire and injuring eight people, the city’s mayor said. Kharkiv resisted capture in the early days of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and has since been a frequent target of air attacks. A medical center was damaged in one of several drone strikes in the city on Friday. Mayor Ihor Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the fire triggered by Sunday’s attack spread to several apartments on the top floor of the building.
None of the injured had required hospital treatment, he said. Three other residential buildings were damaged, with well over 100 windows smashed. Emergency crews were working at the site, the mayor added.

Iran’s Parliament Fires Minister of Economy over Plummeting Rial, Mismanagement
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 02, 2025
Iran’s parliament on Sunday impeached the country’s economy minister and voted to remove him from office, amid growing concerns over the crashing rial and accusations of mismanagement. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf announced that 182 out of 273 lawmakers voted to dismiss Abdolnasser Hemmati, just six months after President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government took office. Pezeshkian, who defended Hemmati, emphasized that the government is locked in a tough battle with the West. He called for greater unity and cooperation from Parliament to face these challenges. The decision comes amid rising tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and worsening relations with the West. Iran’s economy has been severely affected by international sanctions, especially after the US withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal. In 2015, the rial was worth 32,000 to the dollar, but by the time Pezeshkian took office in July, it had plummeted to 584,000 to the dollar. Recently, it dropped even further, with exchange shops in Tehran trading 930,000 rials for each dollar. During the impeachment proceedings, Mohammad Qasim Osmani, a lawmaker supporting Hemmati, argued that rising inflation and exchange rates were not the fault of the current government or Parliament. He pointed to the budget deficit left by the previous administration, which he said contributed to the economic instability. Osmani also cited recent geopolitical events as factors that undermined public confidence, causing many people to convert their savings into foreign currency, which in turn further devalued the rial. Hemmati acknowledged the tough economic climate during his five months in office, including a 10% reduction in inflation. However, he acknowledged that inflation remained high, standing at 35%. He assured lawmakers that his team was working hard to address the issue, but warned that the process would take time. This latest development is another chapter in Iran’s ongoing political and economic struggles as the country continues to navigate a complex relationship with both its leadership and the international community.

Pope Francis No Longer Needs Ventilation, Is Stable, Vatican Says
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 02, 2025
Pope Francis remained stable through the day on Sunday and no longer required the use of mechanical ventilation to breathe, the Vatican said, in a sign of progress as the 88-year-old pontiff battles double pneumonia. Francis has been in Rome's Gemelli hospital for more than two weeks. He was admitted on February 14 with a severe respiratory infection that triggered other complications. "The clinical conditions of the Holy Father have remained stable throughout the day," said the latest detailed update about the pontiff's condition on Sunday. The pope, it said, no longer needed the use of what the Vatican has called "non-invasive mechanical ventilation" but was continuing to receive oxygen via a small hose under his nose.The statement said the pope had not had a fever on Sunday. It said doctors were keeping his prognosis as "guarded" due to "the complexity of the clinical picture", meaning the pope is not out of danger. Francis, who is spending his 17th night in hospital, met earlier on Sunday with two Vatican officials and offered thanks to well-wishers for their prayers and support in a written message. "I would like to thank you for the prayers," Francis said in a note released by the Vatican in place of his usual Sunday prayer with pilgrims, which the pope was not able to lead for the third week running. "I feel all your affection and closeness and ... I feel as if I am 'carried' and supported by all God's people," the message said.
TREATMENT CONTINUES
Francis also met at the hospital on Sunday with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's number-two official, and Parolin's deputy, said Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni, without giving further details about the meeting. The pope, who is known to work himself to exhaustion, has continued leading the Vatican during his hospital stay and last met Parolin and the deputy at the Gemelli on February 24. A Vatican official, who did not wish to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the pope's health, said earlier on Sunday that Francis was eating normally and moving about his hospital room as he continued his treatment. Francis has experienced several bouts of ill health over the last two years and is prone to lung infections because he had pleurisy as a young adult and had part of one lung removed. Double pneumonia is a serious infection of both lungs that can inflame and scar them, making it difficult to breathe. The Vatican has said the pope's infection is "complex" and had been caused by two or more microorganisms. The pope has not been seen in public since entering hospital, his longest absence from view since his papacy started in March 2013, and his doctors have not said how long his treatment might last.

The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on March 02-03/2025
'A Variety of Tactics Designed to Induce Conversion': The Persecution of Christians, January 2025
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute./March 02, 2025
"Typically, kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of Islamic 'marriages' and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers, rights advocates say. Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children's ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their 'legal wives.' — Morning Star News, February 7, 2025, Pakistan.
In just the three weeks between Christmas 2024 and these attacks of Jan. 15, at least 128 Christians have been slaughtered in the North Kivu region alone. — Congo.
"Paki establishment has created a nation where the rights of minorities are trampled upon with alarming regularity. By empowering hardline groups and allowing them free rein, the Army has nurtured a culture of extremism that targets Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis, and other minorities with brutal precision.... Police rarely act to protect victims, while legal loopholes and vague religious laws, such as the infamous blasphemy law, are weaponized against them. These tools of oppression serve not only to silence dissent but also to provide cover for the perpetrators of violence. In the case of minority girls, the judicial system often works to retain victims against their will, legitimizing forced conversions and marriages under the pretext of religious freedom. This legal framework is no accident—it is the product of an establishment that has long relied on radical Islamists as a tool of power. These alliances have turned Pakistan into a hotbed of extremism, destabilizing not just its internal fabric but the entire region. The unchecked violence against minorities is not an aberration but the inevitable outcome of decades of Army-sponsored radicalization." — News Intervention, January 7, 2025, Pakistan.
"There is also a new emphasis on targeting Coptic women who suffer physical or mental health problems, which make them doubly vulnerable. This enables the abductors to create confusion regarding the circumstances of a disappeared Coptic girl, creating a narrative of a love story utilizing existing relationships and communications, despite orchestrating the entire situation..." — Coptic Solidarity, January 29, 2025, Egypt.
Court documents make clear that these sentencings revolve around religion. — Iran.
According to multiple sources, non-Muslim students, many of whom are Christian, are being "subjected to a variety of tactics designed to induce conversion." — Malaysia.
"Somalia's constitution establishes Islam as the state religion and prohibits the propagation of any other religion, according to the U.S. State Department. It also requires that laws comply with sharia (Islamic law) principles, with no exceptions in application for non-Muslims. The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to mainstream schools of Islamic jurisprudence. An Islamic extremist group in Somalia, Al Shabaab, is allied with Al Qaeda and adheres to the teaching." — Morning Star News, February 7, 2025.
"Christians in Indonesia say they are routinely pressured to make extra payments known as 'grease' to local officials or residents in order to obtain construction permits in the 83.3-percent Muslim country. When Muslim residents opposed to the St. Anthony church construction demonstrated in the street, one Catholic commented on social media, 'Those who demonstrate do it because there was no grease available.'" — Morning Star News, February 8, 2025.
According to an Indonesian attorney speaking on condition of anonymity, this "grease" is "a kind of bribery paid to protestors to keep them from blocking church construction, though not legally acknowledged even when it is paid in full view of police."
During the church funeral of Lucien Haddad, a Christian man who was "murdered by roving gangs of jihadists plaguing minorities" in Latakia, Syria, other Muslims connected with the ruling regime forced the congregation to recite the Koran's Fatiha chapter — which refers to Christians as "those who are astray" — before mourners could proceed with the Lord's Prayer.
The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of January 2025.
The Muslim Abduction, Rape, and Forced Conversion of Christian Girls
Pakistan: On Jan 5, Muhammad Ali, a 35-year-old married Muslim man, abducted Saba Masih, the 12-year-old daughter of his Christian neighbor. He forcibly converted her to Islam, and "married" her through a fake Muslim certificate stating that the girl is 18-year-old, even though "Saba's physical appearance also doesn't match the age stated in the alleged marriage and Islamic conversion certificates," said her father, Shafique Masih: "Whoever facilitated this sham conversion and marriage should be equally punished along with Ali." When he first reported the kidnapping to police, "the police deliberately misstated Saba's age," writing down that she was 16, even though the father kept insisting she was 12. As of last reporting, authorities were intentionally delaying:
"The police told me that they needed official permission to go to Sindh Province to recover Saba, but three weeks have passed and there's no progress in the matter. I'm visiting the police station on a daily basis to plead with them to act, but it seems now that they are not serious in finding my minor daughter."
A Christian lawmaker in Punjab Assembly, Ejaz Augustine, expressed concern over the increasing cases of abduction:
"Forced conversions and marriages of minor girls have become a serious crisis for the Christian community. A bill criminalizing child marriages is pending in the Punjab Assembly since April 2024, but it is very unfortunate that despite our repeated demands for its passage, there's been no movement in this regard."
Separately, on Jan 20, three Muslim men broke into a Christian household and kidnapped Ariha, a 12-year-old girl, at gunpoint. According to Sumera, the girl's mother, the ringleader of the abductors is their 40-year-old neighbor, Sajjad Baloch. When the mother went to the Baloch family and pled for them to intervene and help retrieve Ariha, "The next day I received a phone call from Sajjad in which he threatened to rape Ariha and to sell her to sex traffickers if we pursued the matter."
Although the abductor's family continued to assure the Christian family that they would help, on Jan. 24, they simply relocated and disappeared. According to the girl's father, Gulzar, "We visit the police station every day with the hope that we will get some information about our child, but so far there's no breakthrough." Gulzar further "expressed concern that Ariha could become a victim of sexual exploitation through forced conversion to Islam and involuntary marriage to a man triple her age."
In yet another similar but separate story, on Jan. 9, five Muslims, most of them women, kidnapped a 14-year-old Christian girl. Her father, Sharif Masih, believes that her abductors will forcibly convert and marry her off:
"Saneha was lured out of the house by a Muslim girl whose family had recently moved to our neighborhood. A neighbor, Rehan Razaque, saw her being bundled into a van by the accused, which included two women, one of whom was the mother of the girl who had brought Saneha out of her home."
One of the suspects, the father said, was Muhammad Dildar, who had been making unwelcome advances toward his daughter, which she unequivocally rebuffed. Although police eventually arrested two suspects, and "despite repeated pleas to the police, they are not making any effort to recover Saneha or arrest the other accused," the father said:
"We even gave them some cell phone numbers to trace the whereabouts of Dildar, but nothing has been done to find him... The investigating officer of the case, Assistant Sub-Inspector Ihsan Ullah, is making no effort to track the accused. It's been nearly two weeks Saneha has been missing, and we fear that the accused will force her to convert to Islam and marry Dildar to give a legal cover to their crime."
Since the abduction, his wife has fallen ill and been hospitalized twice over worry for her kidnapped daughter.
Discussing the plight of these Christian girls in Muslim Pakistan, one report states that,
"Typically, kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of Islamic 'marriages' and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers, rights advocates say. Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children's ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their 'legal wives.'
"Recorded cases of abduction and forced conversion numbered 136 in 2023, the highest annual total ever, according to the Center for Social Justice... Unofficial sources suggest that forced religious conversions linked to forced marriages affect as many as 1,000 girls belonging to religious minorities annually."
Egypt: On Jan. 29, Coptic Solidarity published a 53-page report on "The Epidemic of Abductions and Forced Disappearance of Coptic Women and Girls," written by Sonja Dahlmans. According to a Coptic Solidarity:
"The report sheds light on the evolving tactics of Muslim trafficking groups who target Coptic women and minor girls for forced conversion and marriage.... Many hundreds of Coptic women have been forcibly disappeared in the last decades in Egypt, but government officials and legislators in the West have been hesitant to speak out... A major change in tactics by these Islamic conversion groups (assisted by implicit or explicit support by certain authorities) is the use of grooming and/or luring instead of just utilizing abrupt abductions. There is also a new emphasis on targeting Coptic women who suffer physical or mental health problems, which make them doubly vulnerable. This enables the abductors to create confusion regarding the circumstances of a disappeared Coptic girl, creating a narrative of a love story utilizing existing relationships and communications, despite orchestrating the entire situation... Coptic women and their bodies are sometimes [also] used to shame and/or avenge the entire Coptic community."
The Muslim Slaughter of Christians
Nigeria: Headlines of the "pure genocide" of Christians from the month of January follow:
Jan. 7: Herdsmen Destroy Christian Worship Building, Homes in Nigeria
Jan. 8: Christians Slain in Attacks in Plateau State, Nigeria
Jan. 15: Emerging Islamic Extremist Group [Other than Boko Haram] Kills Christians in Northern Nigeria
Jan. 19: Gunmen Kill Celestial Church Leader
Jan. 24: Boko Haram's Latest Attacks Displace Thousands of Christians in Nigeria
Jan. 30: Nigerian Church Leader Killed During Worship Service
Congo: On Jan. 15, at least 53 Christians were massacred, and 16 abducted, over the course of two jihadist raids. The Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP, also known as the Allied Democratic Forces) announced the killings in two social media posts. According to one, "By the grace of Allah Almighty, the soldiers of the Caliphate attacked the village of Makoko in the Lubero region and killed 41 Christians [who] were stabbed with knives." The other post said 12 Christians were killed in the village of Masakuki. In just the three weeks between Christmas 2024 and these attacks of Jan. 15, at least 128 Christians have been slaughtered in the North Kivu region alone.
Syria: According to a Jan. 27 post on X, during the church funeral of Lucien Haddad, a Christian man who was "murdered by roving gangs of jihadists plaguing minorities" in Latakia, other Muslims connected with the ruling regime forced the congregation to recite the Koran's Fatiha chapter—which refers to Christians as "those who are astray" — before mourners could proceed with the Lord's Prayer.
Pakistan: On Jan. 6, "radical Islamists" murdered a Christian mother and severely injured her daughter in the attack. After giving the few known details of the attack, which occurred in Gujranwala, the report elaborates on the causes behind such nonstop abuses against Christians and other non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan:
"The rise of such heinous crimes stems directly from a Pak Army apparatus that has systematically allowed radical Islamists to wreak havoc on vulnerable communities. Paki establishment has created a nation where the rights of minorities are trampled upon with alarming regularity. By empowering hardline groups and allowing them free rein, the Army has nurtured a culture of extremism that targets Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis, and other minorities with brutal precision. The systemic failures of law enforcement and the judiciary further amplify the plight of minorities. Police rarely act to protect victims, while legal loopholes and vague religious laws, such as the infamous blasphemy law, are weaponized against them. These tools of oppression serve not only to silence dissent but also to provide cover for the perpetrators of violence. In the case of minority girls, the judicial system often works to retain victims against their will, legitimizing forced conversions and marriages under the pretext of religious freedom. This legal framework is no accident—it is the product of an establishment that has long relied on radical Islamists as a tool of power. These alliances have turned Pakistan into a hotbed of extremism, destabilizing not just its internal fabric but the entire region. The unchecked violence against minorities is not an aberration but the inevitable outcome of decades of Army-sponsored radicalization."
Muslim Attacks on Christian Freedom: Apostasy, Blasphemy, and Proselytism Laws
Iran: According to "The Tip of the Iceberg: Documented Rights Violations Against Christians," a report published by Article 18 in January, the persecution of Christians, almost all of whom are converts, is worsening. For instance, Islamic courts handed out six times more prison time to Christians in 2024 than in 2023. Also in 2024, 96 Christians were sentenced to a total of 263 years in prison for practicing their faith; by comparison, only 22 were sentenced to a total of 43 years in 2023. Court documents make clear that these sentencings revolve around religion. For example, four converts were sentenced to 10 years each in prison for "engaging in missionary activities." Another Christian was given a 15-year prison sentence for "undermining national security and promoting Zionist Christianity." Others were charged with engaging in "propaganda contrary to the holy religion of Islam."
Egypt: Two Christian men, Abdulbaqi Said Abdo and Nour Gerges, who "unjustly" spent more than three years in prison "on blasphemy charges," to quote the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), were finally released on Jan. 31. They were originally arrested in 2021 after participating in a Facebook group dedicated to helping Muslim converts. Speaking after his release, Abdulbaqi lamented his lost years in prison:
"It isn't right that a government should tear me away from my family, keep me in these awful conditions, only because of the faith in which I peacefully choose to believe."
During their more than three years' imprisonment, Nour was "tortured by prison guards," while Abdulbaqi "was sent to solitary confinement after a fellow inmate told authorities he had written down Bible passages." Although the two Christian men have been released, Egypt has not dropped the charges against them.
Somalia: On Jan. 20, after a Muslim woman found that her husband had a Christian over to study the Bible, she beat him with a heavy iron object which caused him to lose his speech. A month earlier, around Christmas time, when 35-year-old Abdulai Ramadan had become Christian and invited a few other believers over, his wife said to him, "The religion that you have brought to our family is a big embarrassment to family, relatives and Islamic community."
He responded, "I refuse to recant my faith in Christ. I am willing and ready to provide all that you need, but to renounce my faith in Christ is what I cannot do." A month later, on the day of the attack, when she returned home from visiting her parents, she learned from one of her younger children that Abdulai had a friend over, and they studied the Bible and prayed.
The Muslim wife became irate, saying, "We had agreed that no Christian activities are to take place in our home, but instead you continued doing the opposite," at which point she hit him with a heavy metallic object, as one of their children recalled:
"My father fell down only to regain consciousness the following day in the morning. My mother left early in the morning without telling us where she was going. My father removed his phone but could not ring with it. He used some sign language and showed me the person to call."
A pastor soon arrived, and according to him, while he was there, Ramadan's wife and five of her relatives returned. On seeing the Christian preacher, the wife began to cry, "Bad religion, bad religion—go away." The pastor recounted:
"On seeing the mood, I tried to cool the situation, but the wife continued insulting the husband as an infidel. The husband could not utter a word. The in-laws were also demanding a divorce to take their daughter back home with the children."
When other Muslim neighbors and passersby began to congregate, according to the pastor:
"I started sensing danger and quickly put Abdulai inside my car and drove away as the wife was uttering insults. The wife said, 'Disappear immediately and never come back again.' Ramadan had a deep cut in his forehead, his clothes were soaked in blood, and he was in great pain."
According to the report:
"Upon arriving at the hospital, a doctor determined that Ramadan had lost his speech due to the impact of the metal object that hit him, the pastor said. Ramadan, who has four children ages 11, 8, 6 and 3, is still receiving hospital treatment."
The report adds:
"Somalia's constitution establishes Islam as the state religion and prohibits the propagation of any other religion, according to the U.S. State Department. It also requires that laws comply with sharia (Islamic law) principles, with no exceptions in application for non-Muslims.
The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to mainstream schools of Islamic jurisprudence. An Islamic extremist group in Somalia, Al Shabaab, is allied with Al Qaeda and adheres to the teaching."
Pakistan: On Jan. 26, police arrested a mentally handicapped Christian man on blasphemy charges, despite being aware of his condition. Farhan Javed Masih, 28, was arrested after a local villager, Muhammad Bilal Khan, accused him of speaking against Islam, according to the Christian man's mother, Parveen:
"We were at home when Bilal and some other Muslims came and told us that Farhan had committed blasphemy. I pleaded with them to forgive him keeping in mind his mental state, but they did not listen to me and called the police, which arrested him."
The mother, who was widowed six years ago, said that her son's mental condition worsened following his father's death, at which point he also turned to and became addicted to drugs: he was eventually fired and began to "loiter around the village all day saying absurd things. The entire village knows that he is of unsound mind." The man who accused Farhan of blasphemy says he was watering his crops when the Christian appeared "and started speaking absurdities." Farhan reportedly said:
"The holy personages of your [Muslim] religion are false, and I don't want to live among Muslims, because you belong to inferior status."
If convicted, he faces between 5 and 10 years imprisonment.
Sudan: According to a Jan. 16 report, "the Muslim family of a young man... has disowned him and compelled his wife to divorce him because he converted to Christianity."
Problems began last year when a "hardline Muslim" known only as "Sheikh Amaar" first learned about the conversion. He threatened the young man (whose name was withheld for security reasons) "to return to Islam or face serious consequences."
Before long his family also turned against him, telling him "You are no longer a member of our family, because you have changed your religion." He eventually left his family home and village and, last reported, was living in hiding.
Generic Muslim Persecution of Christians
Malaysia: According to a Jan. 16 report, the Malaysian government, "in collaboration with the Islamic institution JAKIM, is employing tactics to pressure non-Muslim students into converting to Islam during university orientation programs." According to multiple sources, non-Muslim students, many of whom are Christian, are being "subjected to a variety of tactics designed to induce conversion." These include:
"Religious indoctrination: Students are exposed to intense religious teachings and propaganda that promote the virtues of Islam and the drawbacks of other faiths.
"Social pressure: Students are also made to feel isolated or excluded if they do not express interest in conversion. They are offered social or academic benefits in exchange for converting.
"Threats or intimidation: In some cases, students are threatened with negative consequences, such as academic repercussions or social ostracism, if they refuse to convert."
The report adds that those students who do convert to Islam are told to keep the conversion secret from their non-Muslim families.
Sudan: Authorities prevented internally displaced Christians from celebrating Christmas in the park where they had taken refuge. They initially gave the Christian refugees permission, but kept making the requirements more stringent. At first, they said all the Christians must do is "refrain from using microphones and other sound system equipment," which they happily agreed to. But when Christmas Day came, the authorities' demands and strictures grew, until the planned celebrations were canceled altogether.
Indonesia: On Jan. 17, 24 and 29, hundreds of Muslims took to the streets to protest the presence of two evangelists at a major gospel event, Peter Youngren, founder in Canada of World Impact Ministries, and Swiss evangelist Jacob Wendesten. The event, Friendship Festival, "was originally planned as an inter-faith event, but the uproar from Islamic groups reportedly compelled authorities to limit it to Christian activities."
Muslims objected to Wendesten because he once made reference in a video to a "small radical Muslim group." Youngren's crime was that he "published a book on efforts to achieve (spiritual) 'victory' in (spiritual) 'enemy territory." According to the report, Muslims protested in part to preserve "harmony":
"Hundreds of Muslims... launched the Jan. 29 demonstration in front of the Aston Hotel, where Youngren and Wendesten were staying in Palu. They reportedly blocked the Friendship Festival venue and called for it to be cancelled. The local Indonesia Ulema Council ... and Muslim figures from other organizations also reportedly repudiated the event on grounds of security and harmony..."
Separately, Muslims "threatened massive protests against the construction of a Catholic church," according to a Jan. 9 report, "in the latest standoff over Christian worship in the world's largest Muslim country." The Muslims also said they were preparing to sue the partially constructed Sang Hyang Hurip St. Anthony Catholic Church for obtaining building permits which local Muslims claim were granted through "improper means and without their permission." While discussing this development, one report stated:
"Christians in Indonesia say they are routinely pressured to make extra payments known as 'grease' to local officials or residents in order to obtain construction permits in the 83.3-percent Muslim country. When Muslim residents opposed to the St. Anthony church construction demonstrated in the street, one Catholic commented on social media, 'Those who demonstrate do it because there was no grease available.'"
According to an Indonesian attorney speaking on condition of anonymity, this "grease" is "a kind of bribery paid to protestors to keep them from blocking church construction, though not legally acknowledged even when it is paid in full view of police."
*Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, Sword and Scimitar, Crucified Again, and The Al Qaeda Reader, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
About this Series
While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by extremists is growing. The report posits that such persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location. It includes incidents that take place during, or are reported on, any given month.
**Follow Raymond Ibrahim on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook
© 2025 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.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21440/persecution-of-christians-january

The Israeli-Palestinian Impasse...Trump was not the first to introduce Arab transfer into the political conversation
Mordechai Nisan/New English Review/March 02/ 2025
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2025/03/140794/
Zionism and the Arabs
Moshe Smilansky, a founder of Rehovot in 1890, became intimately familiar with Arabs in the country. He contended in his essay Be-Moledet (The Homeland) in 1915 that, the Arab would succumb “if he senses you have power … and maintain his hatred for you in his heart.” Facing a harsh reality, the dreaded sea and its waves, there was no alternative to “jumping into the sea, and blessed be that jump for all times.”
Yitzhak Epstein, an educator in the Galilee, pondered the Arab question in his lecture The Hidden Question from 1907. Epstein warned that the Arab is rooted in the land and bound to his village; and he will not gingerly leave when Jews purchase the land where he tills the soil, wander elsewhere, abandoning the graves of his fathers.
Yosef Haim Brenner, a noteworthy author, came to the homeland arriving in Haifa in 1909. Brenner lamented when immediately encountering Arab youth: “Hatred between us [Jews and Arabs] – already exists and will exist.” His was a bitter prognosis for the future of Zionism. Brenner’s own future ended when brutally murdered by Arabs in Jaffa in 1921.
Zev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, explained in his essay The Iron Wall in 1923, that there was no possibility that Arabs would voluntarily accommodate Zionism: “there has never been an indigenous inhabitant anywhere or at any time who has ever accepted the settlement of others in his country.” Zionism needs, figuratively but perhaps also literally, an iron wall which the native population cannot break through.”
Arthur Ruppin headed settlement activities in the Galilee after arriving to Jaffa in 1908. Cognizant of obstacles on the path of Zionism, he questioned in his diary entry from January 12 whether in the long term “Zionist aspirations will be regarded as the beginning of an important historic movement or as a fantastic stupidity.” He perceived the Arabs as the biggest problem, with no hope for genuine reconciliation between the two peoples.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon, renowned Nobel-prize author, lived in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem when the countrywide Arab bloodbath burst out in 1929. He confided to his patron-publisher S. Z. Schocken: “Since the days of the riots my attitude to the Arabs had changed. My attitude is now this: I don’t hate them and I don’t love them, all I want is not to see their faces.” Separation from the Arabs was the optimal choice for the Jews.
War and the Transfer Idea
In April 1920, the Nebi Musa riots in Jerusalem left nine Jews dead and over two hundred injured; in the 1921 Jaffa riot 47 Jews were murdered; and in the pogroms of 1929—in Hebron, Jerusalem, and elsewhere—133 Jews met their brutal death. The Arab Revolt of 1936-39 accounted for approximately 500 dead Jews. British authorities concluded that Zionism was an unsettling provocation and threat to the Arab population.
The idea of Arab emigration, expulsion, or transfer surfaced in Zionist circles. Inter-communal clashes, notoriously initiated by the Arab side, signaled that the presence of two rival peoples in one tiny country was a prescription for tension and war.
Theodor Herzl, the political founder of Zionism, was an early advocate for propelling Arab migration from Palestine. His diary entry from June 12, 1895, was revelatory: “We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab peasant] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries whilst denying it any employment in our own country.” This was a paradigmatic formula to incentivize Arab transfer through economic measures, without the use of force.
David Ben-Gurion, later Israel’s first Prime Minister, did not shy away from the transfer of Arab tenant farmers relocating from Western Palestine to Transjordan across the river. In 1937, when the British Peel Commission recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, it also proposed the transfer of over 200,000 Arabs to the Arab state. It concluded that for Jews and Arabs “within the narrow bounds of one small country…there is no common ground between them. Their national aspirations are incompatible.” The Peel Report recognized “the gulf is wide and will continue to widen.” Ben-Gurion enthusiastically endorsed the possibility of an Arab transfer to Transjordan, or Syria and Iraq.
Berl Katznelson, the conscience of the Labor Movement, believed moreover that transfer “is the best of solutions … this must take place one of these days.” He intended Arab transfer, not to nearby Nablus, but echoing Ben-Gurion to Syria and Iraq.
Yosef Weitz, who headed the Jewish Settlement Department in pre-state years, left the following diary entry in 1940 (quoted in Davar, September 29, 1967): “…it must be clear that there is no room in this country for both peoples. The only solution is Eretz-Israel, at least the Western Israel, without Arabs, and there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries—to transfer them all—not one village, not one tribe should be left.” This radical program of ethnic cleansing enabled Weitz to confront the elephant in the room.
Chaim Weizmann, to be Israel’s first President, opposed transfer through coercion in an article in Foreign Affairs in January 1942. He presumed that Muslims would prefer to evacuate rather than live under an “infidel” Jewish regime.
In 1947, the Arabs rejected the United Nations Partition Resolution and fighting which they initiated raged throughout the country. Arabs fled from Tiberius and Haifa in April of 1948. After the IDF captured Lod in July, Ben-Gurion visited the area and motioned to senior army officers Yigal Allon and Moshe Dayan with a wave of his hand to expel the Arab inhabitants. Fear of living under Jewish rule, yet hope for a final Arab victory, impacted decisively upon thousands of departing inhabitants.
By the end of Israel’s War of Independence, about a half a million Arabs took flight and became refugees. In cases where Jews entreated Arabs to endure the situation and remain, they nonetheless packed their belongings as in Haifa and left the country. Benny Morris concluded in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, that the Arab exodus “had solved the embryonic Jewish state’s chief and agonizing political-strategic problem, the existence in it of a very large actively or potentially hostile Arab minority.”
Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first Foreign Minister, confessed to Weizmann in July 1948, that Arab flight from the fledgling state was an opportunity: “We are determined … to explore all possibilities of getting rid, once and for all, of the huge Arab minority which originally threatened us.”
Alec Kirkbride, senior adviser to the government of Transjordan in the 1920s, understood the path to conflict-resolution. He revealed in his autobiography that the British intended the area east of the river “to serve as a reserve of land for use in the resettlement of Arabs once the National Home for the Jews in Palestine, which they were pledged to support, became an accomplished fact.”
Leopold Amery, a member of the British cabinet dealing with Palestine, addressed a letter to Prime Minister Churchill in 1941: “Taking a long view the ideal policy might be to give the Jews the whole of Palestine and find the money for the transference of the existing Palestinian [Arab] population to Transjordan and Syria and its resettlement there.”
Reality caught up with Kirkbride and Amery during the years from 1948 to 1967. Approximately 250,000 Arabs—one-third of the population—migrated eastward from the West Bank to Amman, Salt, Zarka, and other Jordanian towns. This served as a temporary station for a sizable number who resettled in Kuwait, Chile, Germany, and the United States.
Edward Norman, an American philanthropist, proposed in the 1930s the resettlement of Palestinian Arabs in Iraq. The agricultural potential of Mesopotamia, filled with the waters of the Euphrates valley, could easily support a large Arab immigration. Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt had both expressed their agreement with transfer. John Gunther in his book Inside Asia considered that “something drastic must be done” in the conflict-ridden Palestine arena, mentioning the Turkey-Greece population exchange after World War I as a model to separate the warring protagonists in Palestine one from the other.
Insightful observers who had met with Herzl and aware of his Jewish state idea predicted a violent outcome, which in fact occurred in the 1948 War. Sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz mused on Herzl’s naiveté: “You want to create a state without bloodshed? Where have you ever seen such a thing? Without force and without cunning?” Sidney Whitman, an Englishman familiar with the East, magnified the Zionist quandary: “How, without dispossessing the natives [Arabs], would the Jews obtain the land they needed?” Jews would have to re-enter history with a sword in their hands.
George Antonius, employed by the British administration in Palestine, concluded in The Arab Awakening from 1938: “There is no room for a second nation in a country which is already inhabited … it is not possible to establish a Jewish state in Palestine without the forcible dislodgement of a peasantry who seem readier to face death than give up their land.” The First Arab-Israeli War in 1948 partially confirmed Antonius’s grim prognosis.
Arabs in Israel
Within the renewed Jewish state of Israel in 1948, there remained an Arab minority numbering nine per-cent of the total population, escalating to some twenty per-cent by 2025. Of the two million non-Jews seventy-five per-cent were Muslims. Israel therefore acquired the character of a Jewish-Muslim country or a Jewish-Arab country that compromised the essence of the Zionist ethos. Arab collective confidence soared, many identified as Palestinians, and many accentuated their Muslim faith. All the while, Arab citizens possess voting rights and liberty without the state demanding they fulfill obligations—neither military nor civilian service of any kind.
The Arabs in Israel experienced the benefits of life in the Jewish state. They enjoyed a state-financed Arabic-language educational stream and access to higher education entailing affirmative action criteria for Arab applicants. Job opportunities expanded over the years: nearly a third of Israel’s physicians, a quarter of the nurses, and half of the pharmacists, are Arabs. Israel’s brand of Jewish nationalism was not antithetical to accommodating a diversified and inclusive society.
Arab Knesset representation jumped from two in 1949 to 15 in 2015, dropping to 10 in 2022. Ninety-per cent of Arab voters support the three Arab parties. They all espouse the Palestinian narrative—bemoaning the ’48 Nakba catastrophe, denouncing Israel’s occupation in the post-’67 territories, and demanding an inherently irredentist Palestinian state beside Israel—all the while spouting grievances as victims of discrimination in Israel.
The Arab public, unlike the small Druze community, is decidedly anti-Zionist. Polling conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute found that more than half of the respondents reject the definition of Israel as a Jewish nation-state. Arabs do not identify with the Israel National Anthem, the Israeli flag, and Independence Day celebrations. Indeed, Independence Day is a mournful memory for the loss of Palestine, not forgiving, not forgetting. Popular folklore relates that Arab women, perhaps grandmothers of elderly women of today, would despondently say of Jews/Israelis: “Cursed are the boats that brought you here.
Arab university students in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, protest on campuses against the Army, unfurling the Palestinian flag. This political ritual is the badge of Palestinian national sentiment in Jewish Israel. Arab citizens are notoriously prominent in crime and subversion in and against the state. Intra-Arab murders and Palestinian terror cells feature prominently. Interestingly, a report from November 2023 found that if offered citizenship in a western country, many Arabs—more than among Jews—would leave Israel.
Meanwhile, Arabs stay in Israel and parade their true political colors. In 2017, a delegation of Arab dentists from Israel attended a medical course in Bogota. Each foreign delegation sang its national anthem, but the ‘Israeli’ one refused to sing Hatikva, and chose a Palestinian Arab anthem instead. This outrageous behavior is of a piece with the call by Ra’ed Salah, heading the Islamic Movement in Israel, to hoist the flag of Islam on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Former Member of Knesset Azmi Beshara, suspected of espionage for Hezbollah in the 2006 Second Lebanese War, provided a scandalous case of Arab disloyalty. He subsequently fled Israel to Qatar to escape interrogation and arrest.
Leading Arab agitators and instigators included parliamentarians Hanin Zoabi, Ayman Odeh, and Jamal Zahalka. MK Ahmed Tibi praised “martyrdom terrorism” and defined the Land of Israel as a [Zionist] colonial phrase. In a meeting with President Reuven Rivlin in 2019, he showed unflinching arrogance. Stating: “We [Arabs] did not immigrate here [unlike the Jews]. We are the owners of this land.”
Mahmoud Darwish, the soi-disant Palestinian national poet, had earlier depicted Jews in his poem “Identity Card” as strangers destined to go away: “So leave our country, our land, our sea … Everything and leave.”
Sample polling has examined the attitude of Jewish respondents toward Arab fellow-citizens. The Israel Democracy Institute found a majority of Jews favoring revoking Arab citizenship or denying them the right to vote and sit in the Knesset. This finding converges with another disclosure from a Dahaf poll from mid-November 2023, with half of the Jewish respondents feeling that relations between the two peoples had changed for the worse since the Iron Swords War began. As reported by the A Chord social-academic organization on March 24, 2024, only about half the Jews polled believe that Arab citizens oppose violence against Jews; and 64 percent of the Jews fear for their own safety, and with greater urgency after the massacre of October 7, 2023. The absence of trust cuts to the core of the Jewish-Arab impasse.
Raymond Aron, in his 1962 book Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, could not have been more accurate: “Israelis and Palestinian Muslims [who are Israeli citizens] cannot form a single collectivity and cannot occupy the same territory: one or the other is doomed to suffer injustice.” Unless otherwise proven, the ideological deadlock is built-in and carved in stone.
Escalation and Expanding the Conflict
Beginning in 1967 an additional Arab population complicated and exacerbated the problem.
The inclusion within Israel of the Palestinians in Judea-Samaria [West Bank] and the Gaza Strip magnified the conflictual predicament between the two peoples. The Six Day War, which Israel won, burdened her with a large Palestinian community. Before the 1993 Oslo Accord and thereafter, Palestinian terrorism intensified throughout Israel: bus and restaurant bombings, car and truck rams, fire projectiles and gun shootings, stabbings and kidnappings—the gamut of ways to kill Israelis.
While demanding a Palestinian state, to implement the devious two-state solution, Palestinians aspired to the complete eradication of Israel. Faisal al-Husseini and Abu Iyad, among other nefarious PLO figures, advocated a single state solution with refugee return to forge a Palestinian majority. Indeed, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published a report in July 2021 that found support for a two-state solution drop among Arabs with the rise of support for one state that could “reclaim all of Palestine.” The Arab Center Washington DC published an article by Samer Elchahabi “Shifting the Paradigm” in December 2023, proposing a single democratic state for Jews and Palestinians that would rent asunder the state of Israel.
Hamas, as the leading Palestinian rival to the Fatah-PLO movement, wrapped its war against Israel and the Jewish people in the Islamic idiom. The objective of Hamas as codified in Article Seven of its covenant is to kill the Jews, and fight to liberate Palestine as an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Muslim generations until Judgment Day. Article 13 put on record that “there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”
The Koran calls upon Allah “to exalt Islam above all religions” (61:9) and “to help [the Muslims] overcome the nonbelievers” (2:286). It is this mission of Islam—inflamed by hatred of the Jews—that whipped up the Palestinians to invade and attack Israel, murder and rape, dismember and mutilate, burn babies in ovens and stab to death pregnant women on October 7, 2023. This Palestinian Nazi-like barbarism is the blackest stain on Islam in modern times.
The Failure of Co-Existence
Many are the examples of tension and violence in bi-national and poly-ethnic states, as plagued Yugoslavia, South Africa, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, and Rwanda. In past decades, forced expulsion was the fate of Turks in Bulgaria, Palestinians in Kuwait, Yemenis in Saudi Arabia, and Bosnians in Serbia.
Instances of societal escalation on religious or ethnic grounds terminate at times with demographic flight, expulsion, transfer, and population exchange. After the First World War, a consensual population exchange of two million people occurred from 1922-24 between Turkey and Greece; after the Second World War, and with the Allied Powers’ agreement, eight million Germans fled, migrated, or were expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia. In war between India and Pakistan in 1947, 15 million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, fled across newly demarcated borders. In the same year over 400,000 Finns were driven from Russia and resettled in Finland. The Soviet Union forcibly transferred six million people in the years 1930-52. While hundreds of thousands of Arabs left Israel in 1948, a similar number of Jews fled Arab countries. In the 1980s, many thousands of Whites fled the insecurity of life in Zimbabwe and Zambia. Azerbaijan expelled one hundred thousand Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in the war of 2023 in the southern Caucasus. Since 2022 and Russia’s war against the Ukraine, six million Ukrainians left their country for Hungary and Poland and other destinations; another eight million were displaced within. Unrest and warfare in Afghanistan led to refugee flight of more than five million people to Iran and Pakistan. Fear and hope sometimes alternate or intertwine to trigger a flood of human displacement.
Economic motives have played a role in encouraging migration. More than three million Indians sought work in the United Arab Emirates. Mass Muslim migration from Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia swamped Europe. A reckoning with illegal immigration to America is a central pillar in President Trump’s program in the years ahead.
Promoting Emigration
Yitzhak Rabin, IDF Chief-of-Staff and later Israel’s Prime Minister, proposed in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv on February 16, 1973 a solution for Gazan refugees on the East Bank of the Jordan: “We [Israel] can bring about a population movement [of Arabs] on a basis other than through the use of force. I want to create conditions such that…there will be a natural population migration to the East Bank.” Speaking on BBC TV on May 1 the same year, Moshe Dayan was blunt: “Israel should remain for eternity and until the end of time in the West Bank … If Palestinians didn’t like this they could go and establish themselves in an Arab country.” Writing in Breakthrough, Dayan, like Rabin, believed Jordan to be the optimal and proximate destination for Palestinian refugees. Jordan was already the home to a Palestinian-majority population.
On June 26, 2023, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research published the Arab Barometer Poll, finding that more than one-third of the Gazans and 20 per-cent of the West Bankers were considering emigrating to Turkey, Germany, Canada, and the United states, in search of economic and educational opportunities.
In February 2024, Israeli researchers Noga Arbel and Yoav Sorek outlined a plan for “Voluntary Emigration” to facilitate Gazan refugees, facing the harsh reality of the massive damage and destruction of houses and infrastructure in the war, to seek resettlement elsewhere. Transfer by consent sounds like turning a punishment into a reward.
The subject of transfer can also turn in the opposite direction. Yasser Arafat had predicted that the time would come when the Israelis will flee Palestine. He shared his hope in July 1985 with journalist Abdul Bari Atwan that he, Atwan, will live to see the day when “the Israelis would flee like rats from a sinking ship” (MEMRI, Aug. 19, 2021). Under the vice of Palestinian warfare, a frightened and demoralized Israeli society would collapse. Refugee return will usher in the demographic subversion of Jewish Israel.
Findings published in January 2025 from a global survey commissioned by the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) illustrate the profound Arab hatred of Jews blazoned across Palestinian political skies. Among all peoples and places regarding anti-Semitic attitudes, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip Palestinians ranked first in the world with a figure of 97%. In Sweden it was 5% and in Canada 8%. No country wants neighbors holding such abhorrent feelings just next door across the border. A popular refrain in Palestinian society was the rhythmic Arabic mantra Filastin biladna wa al-Yahud kilabna (Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs). The myth of a Palestinian peace partner fades away.
Toward a Solution
Admittedly, there are daily Jewish–Arab relations and interactions on various levels in Israeli society. Co-existence takes place in work environments and in mixed towns. This humanizes an otherwise conflictual situation; yet this piece of reality is nothing more than of local, anecdotal, personal and non-political significance.
Israeli government policies could create conditions to spur Arab citizens to pack up and leave:
In the economic field—enforcing strict tax collection.
In the security field—collecting illegal weapons.
In the cultural field—canceling affirmative action in higher education.
In the linguistic field—limit public, official, and transportation signs to the Hebrew and English languages.
In the political field—forbidding candidacy in elections to supporters of terrorism and deniers of a Jewish state.
In the social field—imposing mandatory civilian national service.
These non-violent measures are reasonable and equitable in a democratic state, accounting especially for Israel’s particular character and circumstances.
Israeli measures to promote migration eastward are doubly important regarding the Arab population in Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. Palestinians have conducted a savage terrorist war against Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers. Parading their weapons marching through Jenin in northern Samaria, with high profile exposure and chanting jihad-like slogans, is a 2025 Palestinian nightmarish reality.
The Arabs in Israel are vulnerable and walking on thin ice. They who actively operate to push the Jews out may ultimately find themselves in the dialectic twist as victims of their own demonic designs. The Arabs have forced Israel’s hand, in 1948, somewhat in 1967, partially in 2024 within Gaza. Have they learned any lesson from the past?
Until President Trump dropped his political bomb proposing to relocate Gazan Arabs out of the country, transfer was a taboo subject. Incessantly maligned was anyone who dared mention transfer, though in the past the politically mainstream Herzl, Katznelson, Sharett, Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, and Rabin, advocated in varying configurations and formulations this very idea. The idea is sound regardless of who gives voice to it.
Table of Contents
**Mordechai Nisan is a retired lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also taught at Bar-Ilan University, the Open University, and the pre-army Lachish academy at Beit Guvrin. Among his books: Minorities in the Middle East, Toward a New Israel, The Crack-up of the Israeli Left, The Conscience of Lebanon, and Identity and Civilization.

Is Trump following Project 2025?
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al-Awsat/March 02, 2025
There must be some connection between the “Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership – The Conservative Promise,” prepared by the Heritage Foundation, and Donald Trump’s domestic and foreign policies.
I reviewed it – it’s about a thousand pages long. When asked about it during his presidential campaign, Trump acknowledged knowing about it but claimed it wasn’t his. Yet, there are many similarities, and it appears to be a conservative “manifesto” created by the Heritage Foundation. This might explain how Trump has shocked the world with the speed of his actions, decisions, appointments, and the massive changes he is implementing.
Since taking office, he has been moving mountains. With deliberate intent, he aims to change the world – dismantling the old system and building an alternative. His policy shifts away from the transatlantic alliance with Europe, embraces emerging political forces to help them take power in allied countries like Germany and Britain, and seeks to share global influence and interests with rivals like Russia. He has also overturned long-standing US foreign policy principles, such as promoting democracy and freedoms, while rolling back social and environmental protection laws domestically. This suggests that his transformation agenda is systematic, institutional, and extensive – potentially lasting beyond his presidency.
The changes reflect a widespread feeling among Americans that they need a strong leader – someone who can resolve the ballooning deficit and national debt, halt the influx of millions of undocumented immigrants, and confront competitors like China. These factors propelled Trump, who had never worked in politics before his presidency, never belonged to a party, and stunned everyone by winning twice. He brought the presidency to the Republican Party, not the other way around.
The president of Venezuela once said Trump aspires to be the world’s emperor, though empires have ceased to exist since the fall of the British Empire. Trump has his eyes on the Panama Canal, wants Greenland from Denmark, insists on calling Canada the 51st state, and, according to his critics, secretly plans to sell Taiwan and Ukraine. He pressures other countries to open their markets to US goods and imposes high tariffs on imports. Under Trump’s leadership, the United States appears stronger and more assertive.
Of course, there are other major powers in the world, but the United States is the superpower – and Trump insists that everyone recognize it as such.
Is this Trump’s philosophy? Trump, along with many in the US, believes the country needs a strong leader – not just a co-governor alongside the 585 members of Congress, state governors, and lobbying groups that serve foreign and corporate interests.
What about our region? “Project 2025” contains a chapter urging the president not to abandon America’s influence in the Middle East, warning that US absence would benefit its adversaries. It proposes a multi-dimensional strategy.
The conservative playbook also recommends preventing Iran from acquiring a military nuclear program and supporting Israel in confronting it. It advises reversing the damage the Biden administration caused in long-term US-Saudi relations, cutting funding to the Palestinian Authority, preventing Türkiye from getting closer to Russia and China, and establishing a “security pact” including Israel, Egypt, the Gulf states, and possibly India as part of a new quadrilateral arrangement.
It also emphasizes the importance of US-French security cooperation in North Africa to curb rising terrorist threats and limit Russian expansion there. Additionally, it highlights the need for an American presence in Africa to counter China’s growing dominance in the continent’s critical mineral supply chains for emerging technologies.Within its recommendations, Project 2025 urges Trump to prioritize Africa and implement significant changes, including abandoning traditional aid policies in favor of engaging the US private sector. It describes aid as a source of corruption that does not serve America’s strategic interests, advocating instead for a focus on free market growth. Trump is also advised to confront what he calls China’s harmful activities in Africa and to recognize “Somaliland” as an independent state to strengthen America’s position in the region. This is just a glimpse of conservative ambitions to ensure Trump’s tenure doesn’t pass without profound changes in policies, leadership, and foundational ideas – both domestically and globally. The desire for internal transformation is even greater and more challenging. Trump has the popularity and strong personality, and he has brought executives into his administration who share his enthusiasm, such as Elon Musk. However, governing in America is complex – even for someone like Trump – due to the checks and balances among the three branches of government, which could slow him down.

A turning point for Gaza and the Palestinian issue
Dr. Khaled Manzlawiy/Arab News/March 02, 2025
The imminent emergency Arab League Summit in Cairo, Egypt, comes at a defining moment in the Middle East. The region is still enveloped in the devastating consequences of a 15-month war in Gaza and a conflict that has spanned decades between Israel and Palestine. Tuesday’s emergency summit of Arab leaders is far more than just a diplomatic event; it is an opportunity for reckoning against arguably one of the worst humanitarian and political disasters of our age. The agenda will include the reconstruction of Gaza, the rejection of efforts to displace Palestinians, the reaffirmation of the entire Arab world’s commitment to the Palestinian cause and preparations for a sustainable future in political terms. The stakes for this summit could not be higher. Gaza lies in ruins, with Israeli air attacks and ground assaults taking almost 50,000 lives and injuring more than 110,000, with women and children suffering the most. Whole neighborhoods have vanished, pushing the humanitarian crisis into catastrophic territory. More than 1 million people are displaced and the health infrastructure has collapsed. The blockade has also intensified, with access to medicines, food and water cut off. The UN estimated last month that 69 percent of the structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including at least 245,000 homes.
Gaza is now categorized as “uninhabitable” by the UN and is on the brink of total collapse.
Several urgent matters will be discussed during the summit and will require immediate action, as follows:
The alleviation of the humanitarian crisis will be the top priority. Though not specifically stated for this summit, Arab countries must ally to feed, clothe, care for and house the suffering population in Gaza. The summit must, therefore, also call for the lifting of the blockade by Israel so that they can issue free aid and build homes, schools, hospitals and infrastructure. This will need to be placed within the confines of a comprehensive reconstruction plan with strong financial backing from Arab nations and the international community to give hope and stability back to Gaza.
The summit will also reject the forced displacement of Gazans. One of the most alarming trends of the past few years is the number of proposals to forcibly evict Palestinians from Gaza, either to other countries or into so-called safe zones. Aside from being ethically reprehensible, such suggestions violate international law. And Saudi Arabia has put itself on record: it will not normalize relations with Israel until a Palestinian state is established. The Arab League must categorically reject displacement plans and reaffirm the right of Palestinians to remain in their homeland.
The Arab League must categorically reject displacement plans and reaffirm the right of Palestinians to remain in their homeland.
The Arab leaders will also develop a comprehensive scheme to reconstruct Gaza, without including any displacement schemes, on the road to stabilizing the whole region. These connections will include Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem, since their integration is vital for the establishment of a functional Palestinian state. The summit will seek the empowerment of the Palestinian people. Employing a unified policy within a singular Palestinian polity is essential to promote the longevity of any peace settlement. This meeting could serve as the catalyst for Palestinian unity and enhance leadership and institutional development. A strong Palestinian leadership supported by strong institutions will be crucial to the smooth advancement of Palestinian causes and statehood, while advancing solutions to the humanitarian and political challenges that the Palestinian people face. The summit will also tackle internal divisions to present a cohesive and effective front in supporting Palestinian rights and self-determination. The summit will concentrate, first and foremost, on Gaza, but it must also not fail to recognize the more comprehensive goal of a just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The two-state solution, which most faithfully conforms to the envisioned model of peace as one in which an independent Palestinian state exists alongside Israel, is still the only possible road to peace. The summit must reaffirm this vision and condemn any acts that undermine it, including the expansion of Israeli settlements.
There has been no more powerful symbol of Arab support for Palestine than Arab countries standing shoulder to shoulder with Palestine in the past decade and a half. The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and other diplomatic endeavors for Palestinian statehood have consistently championed the rights of the Palestinian people. This emergency summit is yet another platform to reiterate to the world that this commitment endures. The Arab world has been united in pursuit of justice, dignity and peace for Palestine. Arab leaders emphasize this point with the determination that issues facing the Palestinians should take priority over factional politics. This summit should call upon all Palestinian factions to elevate unity and cooperation over internal divisions as they work toward a shared goal: the establishment of a free and independent Palestinian state. This is not a mere diplomatic meeting, though. It is an opportunity to send a strong message of hope and unity to the Palestinian people. By committing themselves to the reconstruction of Gaza, rejecting displacement schemes and maintaining the two-state solution, Arab leaders will be confirming their dedication to the Palestinian cause. The road ahead is undoubtedly challenging, but this summit represents a potential turning point. As former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat once said: “Peace is our strategic choice.” This summit can ensure that this choice becomes a reality, not just an empty slogan. By rebuilding Gaza, rejecting displacement and charting a path toward peace, Arab leaders can honor the sacrifices of the Palestinian people and build a future of hope rather than despair.The world is watching. Let this emergency summit be remembered as a turning point in the struggle for justice and peace in Palestine.
**Dr. Khaled Manzlawiy is assistant secretary-general for international political affairs at the Arab League. X: @khaledManzlawiy

Starmer switches UK’s focus from soft to hard power
Mohamed Chebaro/Arab News/March 02, 2025
Diverting funds from aid and soft power to pay for hard military power is alarming for a country like the UK, recently divorced from the EU project. The proponents of Brexit wrongly believed that EU membership was wasting the country’s riches by diverting them from its own welfare state to Brussels’ bureaucracy and regulations, hampering its ability to provide more for its citizens. Today, however, the winds blowing from the east, the need to protect Europe’s flank and the uncertainty of the transatlantic alliance create a moment of history that might upend Keir Starmer’s premiership into one that advocates for the rebirth of hard power.
Since his election last summer, the UK has been pondering how and when Starmer would find his mojo and morph from a chief prosecutor, or Labour Party convenor and operator, to a leader with a capital “L.” Some would have liked that to be achieved by the prime minister taking charge of rebuilding the state machinery after 14 years of chaotic Conservative government and its policy of austerity. Or by making Britain’s welfare system more reliable, investing in the police and courts or even finding a magic formula for growth, albeit without rejoining the EU’s customs union or reversing Brexit. But no, it seems that, rightly or wrongly, advocating for hard power and finding the means to get the UK and Europe to the table to negotiate peace with Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump is what might make or break Starmer’s premiership.
Harvard professor Joseph Nye contrasted soft power with hard power in his book “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.” According to Nye, hard power refers to the use of force or coercion to achieve one’s goals, typically through military intervention or economic pressure. It is the art of compelling others to act in a way that aligns with one’s own interests, using tangible means like military force or economic sanctions.
I am not one to claim that the UK is turning to hubris here, but Starmer and the country feel they are being pushed into an existential crisis. It is an ally that seems to be exerting maximum pressure, which can only be mediated by opting for hard power pledges, even if this means a U-turn and a return to the old principle of spending more on guns and less on welfare and development, which has been increasingly shunned since the end of the Cold War.
Starmer has shifted in an unusual way and seems to have acted impulsively in an effort to buy favor and influence with the resident of the White House. Recognizing that the flow of money must go in another direction, the prime minister last week vowed to raise the UK’s defense spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product from 2027, up from the current 2.3 percent, with 3 percent as the eventual target. Initially, this funding increase comes at the expense of the overseas aid budget and, symbolically speaking, reorients the British posture from a soft power base to hard power.
The PM could become a victim of abandoning the UK’s soft power and losing his country’s footing across the world.
It seems that, after his meeting with Trump, Starmer has joined the fray, not only showing a readiness to put weapons procurement ahead of development to gain a seat at the table, but he surprised everyone by also playing the royal card in the hope of boosting his credentials and keeping the US onside.
In his speech announcing the increase in defense spending, Starmer explained that, as the world has changed and as threat levels have increased, so too has the need for more up-to-date military capabilities and larger armed forces.
Such an assessment, which has become a widely held prediction since Russia invaded Ukraine and put the rules-based world order at stake, might represent the moment that Starmer abandoned parts of his election manifesto. But this could be justifiable in the interests of national defense and the strategic positioning of the UK, as well as through growth as a result of reigniting its military manufacturing industry.
Starmer will soon find out if diverting money from aid to the military will yield any benefits, but he will also learn how such a move is likely to define his legacy as prime minister. For Starmer, this could be his “Falklands moment,” named for the 1982 war that earned Margaret Thatcher her “Iron Lady” title, as she fought for the UK’s reputation and standing in the world and liberated the Falkland Islands by force. Or it could be his Iraq War moment, when Tony Blair felt compelled to stand by US President George W. Bush when he decided to attack Iraq and change its regime. That resulted in Blair’s popularity declining at home and abroad, as the evidence on which the invasion was waged proved erroneous to say the least.
The question is simply whether Starmer and the UK will be able to transition to a wartime economy and change the direction of travel not only of the Labour Party, but also of state and society. As the global geopolitical situation looks to have been transformed in the six weeks since Trump’s inauguration, Starmer looks content to bow to the American president for now, But he could become a victim of abandoning the UK’s soft power and losing his country’s footing across the world, as many variables might challenge Britain and also EU countries in their bid to rearm and meet Trump’s goal of spending 5 percent of GDP on defense.
**Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.