Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since

Special Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since
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Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, on Oct. 3, 2024. (AP)
Special Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since
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Smoke rises from buildings hit in an overnight Israeli airstrike that targeted Beirut's southern suburbs on October 3, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 07 October 2024
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Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since

Lebanon’s death warrant signed on Oct. 7, and we have been updating the obituary ever since
  • Lebanon being drawn into someone else’s catastrophe
  • Hezbollah’s ‘hubris’ and unilateral actions are to blame

LONDON: How does one write a feature looking through Lebanon’s year without it sounding like an obituary?

Across Lebanon and wherever in the world citizens found themselves on Oct. 7 last year, phones buzzed and lit up with notifications of the seemingly unbelievable news.

Hamas, the insurgent militant group that had been running the Palestinian enclave of Gaza since 2007, had launched a surprise attack on Israel.

At first, near disbelief. Could it possibly be true?

Israel had long boasted about the impregnable nature of its “Iron Wall,” the high-tech, 7-meter-tall fence surrounding Gaza.

Bristling with cameras, watch towers, robotic machine guns, razor wire, radar and underground sensors, it was designed precisely to prevent exactly such an incursion.

Yet with every fresh ping, with every update flashing on smartphones, the unthinkable became increasingly possible, then probable and, finally, certain.

Hamas, relying on a combination of brute force and ingenuity — bulldozers smashed through the fence and drones dropped explosives on watch towers, knocking out the remotely operated machine guns — had broken through the Iron Wall in as many as 30 places.

More than 1,200 Israelis and others were killed, and 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages.

Hearts sank. All Lebanese knew full well that Lebanon was never not going to get involved, whether its citizens wanted to or not.

Past is prologue, and Lebanon’s history is riddled with sudden yanks into conflicts in which it has no business being involved.

From Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in response to Palestinian militants using the country’s south as a launching pad for missiles and attacks, to the 2006 war between Iran-backed group Hezbollah and Israel, Lebanese citizens have always found themselves caught in the crossfire.

Their dead, wounded, ruined homes and countless devastated lives are written off by all sides as collateral damage.

Now, one year on since the start of Hamas’ assault on Israel and the latter’s devastating response in Gaza — which has claimed in excess of 40,000 Palestinian lives, including more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children — once again Lebanon is being sucked into someone else’s catastrophe.

It all seemed depressingly inevitable from the outset, when the day after the Hamas attack its ally Hezbollah began exchanging fire with Israel over Lebanon’s southern border.

Since then, Lebanon has suffered immense damage, especially in its southern villages and towns, which have been repeatedly and indiscriminately pounded by Israeli jets targeting Hezbollah outposts.

Nearly 1 million Lebanese have been displaced internally, 1,974 have been killed including 127 children, and 9,384 wounded, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The situation began to deteriorate alarmingly on Sept. 17, when thousands of Hezbollah pagers, sabotaged by Israeli agents, exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, killing a dozen people, including two children, and wounding thousands more.

The following day similarly sabotaged walkie-talkies detonated. This time 30 people died and hundreds more were injured. Now Israeli troops have invaded the south of Lebanon.

Lebanon has been in a spiral since 2019, when it was rocked by a disastrous and ongoing financial crisis that has seen the lira drastically devalued.

Since then further blows have included the COVID-19 pandemic, which struck Lebanon in early 2020, and the devastating Beirut Port explosion later that year that rocked the capital and destroyed thousands of structures.

To make matters worse, political paralysis has left Lebanon without a president or an effective government for the past two years.

In a statement issued on Oct. 31, 2023, the first anniversary of Lebanon’s presidential vacancy, the US State Department accused the country’s “divided parliamentarians” of “putting their personal ambitions ahead of the interests of their country.”

Issued just over three weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel, the statement added presciently: “Even as rising tensions along Lebanon’s southern border threaten the country’s stability and the economic crisis deepens, the Lebanese people are deprived of leadership when they need it most.”

Around the world, since Oct. 7, Lebanese have been glued to their screens, holding their breath with each missile fired across the border in either direction.

And listening with growing anxiety to the pronouncements of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the fiery speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah’s death in an Israeli air strike on Beirut on Sept. 27 killed at least five other people and injured dozens more.

For the Lebanese in Lebanon and abroad, every day begins with a recap of the destruction and a counting of the dead, injured and missing. Every day ends with evacuation drills across areas of the capital targeted by Israeli bombs and missiles.

Today, as before, they are helpless bystanders, witnesses to the destruction of their country and the loss of the lives of their friends and family members.

As Michael Young of the Malcom H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center wrote late last month, “the opening of a front in the south on Oct. 8, 2023, was the final straw. Hezbollah consulted none of its Lebanese partners in initiating a war in defense of its ally Hamas in Gaza.”

Hezbollah, he added, “displayed remarkable hubris in being completely indifferent to the fact that Lebanon paid a heavy price in the past for the Palestinian cause — especially the Shia community itself.

“After hubris comes nemesis, however, and today Hezbollah is largely alone in facing the violent Israeli campaign against Lebanon.”

Perhaps. But for now, the war has seen Lebanon’s sectarian noose grow ever tighter.

Social media has become a parallel battleground, for the preaching of one side against the other, pitting blame based on religiosity and correlating silence with acquiescence.

The Lebanese have always reluctantly accepted that, in Lebanon, this is just the way things are.

It remains to be seen whether, in the wake of the current disaster engulfing the country, the Lebanese will finally abandon their passive acceptance of a cruel fate dictated by others.
 


Iran urges Trump to change ‘maximum pressure’ policy

Iran urges Trump to change ‘maximum pressure’ policy
Updated 14 sec ago
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Iran urges Trump to change ‘maximum pressure’ policy

Iran urges Trump to change ‘maximum pressure’ policy
TEHRAN: Iran on Saturday urged US President-elect Donald Trump to reconsider the “maximum pressure” policy he pursued against Tehran during his first term.
“Trump must show that he is not following the wrong policies of the past,” Iranian Vice President for Strategic Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters on Saturday.
Zarif, a veteran diplomat who previously served as Iran’s foreign minister, helped seal the 2015 nuclear accord between Tehran and Western powers, including the United States.
The deal however was torpedoed in 2018 after the US unilaterally withdrew from it under Trump, who later reimposed sanctions on Tehran.
In response, Iran rolled back its obligations under the deal and has since enriched uranium up to 60 percent, just 30 percent lower than nuclear-grade.
Tehran has repeatedly denied Western countries’ accusations that it is seeking to develop a nuclear weapon.
Zarif also said on Saturday that Trump’s political approach toward Iran led to the surge in enrichment levels.
“He must have realized that the maximum pressure policy that he initiated caused Iran’s enrichment to reach 60 percent from 3.5 percent,” he said.
“As a man of calculation, he should do the math and see what the advantages and disadvantages of this policy have been and whether he wants to continue or change this harmful policy,” Zarif added.
During his first term, Trump also ordered the killing of revered Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, who led the Revolutionary Guards’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force.
Soleimani was killed in a drone strike while he was in the Iraqi capital Baghdad in January 2020.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei on Thursday said he hoped the president-elect’s return to the White House would allow Washington to “revise the wrong approaches of the past” — however stopping short of mentioning Trump’s name.
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he was “not looking to do damage to Iran.”
“My terms are very easy. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I’d like them to be a very successful country,” he said after he cast his ballot.
Trump’s victory comes as Iran has exchanged direct attacks with its arch-nemesis, Israel, raising fears of further regional spillover of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon.

Israeli rejects ‘biased’ warning of famine in Gaza

Israeli rejects ‘biased’ warning of famine in Gaza
Updated 21 min 52 sec ago
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Israeli rejects ‘biased’ warning of famine in Gaza

Israeli rejects ‘biased’ warning of famine in Gaza
  • “Unfortunately, the researchers continue to rely on partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests,” the military said
  • Israel’s military said it had increased aid efforts including opening an additional crossing on Friday

JERUSALEM: Israel rejected on Saturday a group of global food security experts’ warning of famine in parts of northern Gaza where it is waging war against Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“Unfortunately, the researchers continue to rely on partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests,” the military said in a statement.
The independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said on Friday in a rare alert that there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in parts of north Gaza with immediate action required from the warring parties to ease a catastrophic situation.
Israel’s military said it had increased aid efforts including opening an additional crossing on Friday.
In the last two months, 39,000 trucks carrying more than 840,000 tons of food have entered Gaza, it said, and meetings were taking place daily with the UN which had 700 trucks of aid awaiting pickup and distribution.
With some critics decrying a starvation tactic in north Gaza, Israel’s main ally the US has set a deadline within days for it to improve the humanitarian situation or face potential restrictions on military cooperation.


Electrical generator explosion at Beirut’s Hamra district torches cars, building

Electrical generator explosion at Beirut’s Hamra district torches cars, building
Updated 52 min 28 sec ago
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Electrical generator explosion at Beirut’s Hamra district torches cars, building

Electrical generator explosion at Beirut’s Hamra district torches cars, building
  • Video footage showed some parked cars engulfed in flames as the blaze intensified

CAIRO: A large explosion on Beirut’s Hamra district on Saturday sparked a fire that engulfed several cars at a parking lot and caused smoke to spread massively across the area, local media reported.
Video footage showed some parked cars engulfed in flames as the blaze, which resulted from the electrical generator explosion, intensified.
The fire also spread to a nearby building, the Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) said. 
The incident triggered panic as firefighting teams rushed to the scene, battling the blaze that remained out of control. 
Civil defense teams were working to extinguish the blaze and evacuate adjacent buildings, NNA added.


Famine looming in north Gaza: UN-backed report

Famine looming in north Gaza: UN-backed report
Updated 09 November 2024
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Famine looming in north Gaza: UN-backed report

Famine looming in north Gaza: UN-backed report
  • UN projects the number of people in Gaza facing ‘catastrophic’ food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000
  • Vast areas of the Gaza Strip have been devastated by Israel’s retaliatory assault

ROME: Famine is looming in the northern Gaza Strip amid increased hostilities and a near-halt in food aid, a UN-backed assessment said Saturday.
The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.”
“Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future,” said the alert.
On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing “catastrophic” food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report classified that as IPC Phase 5 — a situation when “starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident.”
Since that report, conditions have worsened in the north of Gaza, with a collapse of food systems, a drop in humanitarian aid and critical water, sanitation and hygiene conditions, the committee said.
“It can therefore be assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing in these areas,” it read.
Vast areas of the Gaza Strip have been devastated by Israel’s retaliatory assault launched after the October 7 attack last year by Hamas.
Israeli forces have intensified their operations in large swathes of the Gaza Strip’s north since early October, where evacuation orders are in place.
Aid shipments allowed to enter the Gaza Strip were now lower than at any time since October 2023, said the report.
Access to food continues to deteriorate, with prices of essentials on the black market soaring. Cooking gas rose by 2,612 percent, diesel by 1,315 percent and wood by 250 percent, it said.
“Concurrent with the extremely high and increasing prices of essential items has been the total collapse of livelihoods to be able to purchase or barter for food and other basic needs,” said the alert.
The body expressed concern over Israel’s cutting ties last month with the UN aid agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), warning of “extremely serious consequences for humanitarian operations” in Gaza.


Gaza rescuers say 14 killed in Israeli strikes

Gaza rescuers say 14 killed in Israeli strikes
Updated 09 November 2024
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Gaza rescuers say 14 killed in Israeli strikes

Gaza rescuers say 14 killed in Israeli strikes

GAZA STRIP: Gaza’s civil defense agency said on Saturday that Israeli air strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians overnight, including women and children.
An air strike hit tents housing displaced Palestinians in the southern area of Khan Yunis, killing at least nine people, including children and women, civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
The Palestinian Red Crescent also confirmed the toll, saying 11 others were wounded in the strike and were taken to Nasser Hospital.
A second air strike killed five people, including children, and injured about 22 when “Israeli warplanes hit Fahad Al-Sabah school,” which had been turned into a shelter for “thousands of displaced people” in the Al-Tuffah district of Gaza City, Bassal said.
The dead and injured were taken to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, he added.

In recent months, the military has struck several schools-turned-shelters where Israel has said Palestinian militants are operating.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said its troops killed “dozens of terrorists” in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, where it has been conducting a sweeping air and ground operation for more than a month to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
Israeli forces also killed several militants in the area of Rafah in the territory’s south, the military added.
The military is currently engaged in a two-front war, with troops fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
“Over the past day, the IAF (air force) struck over 50 terror targets in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip,” the military said in a statement.
“Among the targets struck were military structures, weapons storage facilities and launchers,” it added.
Israel’s war in Gaza broke out after Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7 last year, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people on Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which included those who died and were killed in captivity.
During the attack, militants abducted 251 people, 97 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 43,508 people, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers to be reliable.