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Lebanese FM to Asharq Al-Awsat: Israel Mustn't Expand the War 

Lebanese caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib speaks to Asharq Al-Awsat from Washington. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Lebanese caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib speaks to Asharq Al-Awsat from Washington. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Lebanese FM to Asharq Al-Awsat: Israel Mustn't Expand the War 

Lebanese caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib speaks to Asharq Al-Awsat from Washington. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Lebanese caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib speaks to Asharq Al-Awsat from Washington. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Lebanese caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib stressed that Israel must not expand the war it is waging with the Palestinian Hamas movement in Gaza and its surrounding areas.

In an interview to Asharq Al-Awsat from Washington, he described the “explosion” in Gaza as “dangerous”, blaming the situation on Israel’s “arrogance” and “constant violations” against the Palestinian people.

Israel rejects the two-state solution that was adopted during the 2002 Arab summit in Beirut, he went on to say. Its current government has shown disdain towards the Palestinians and has violated Christian and Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem.

“So, the result that we see unfolding now was unavoidable,” he remarked, noting still that “no one expected this to happen from Gaza. Observers were worried about an explosion, and it happened.”

Bou Habib spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat before Hezbollah announced on Sunday that it had struck Israeli positions in the occupied Shebaa Farms.

He revealed that the Lebanese government had received a pledge from the Iran-backed party that it would not involve itself in the war in Gaza, unless Israel “harassed” Lebanon.

“Israel is now defending itself and it must not expand the war. If it does, only God knows what will happen,” said the FM.

Furthermore, Bou Habib added that Lebanon may be going through an unprecedented crisis and its state institutions are weak, “but security is under control, the army is present, and it has a foreign and internal policy.”

“The government is carrying on with its duties. Of course, we have problems, but the stances of the government represent the whole of Lebanon,” he stressed.

‘Bold’ Arab position

Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others, have called for an immediate ceasefire and return to peace negotiations that would grant the Palestinians their right.

Bou Habib said that Lebanon supports this demand, and it will benefit from any peace that is established in the region.

“We support this bold Arab position,” he declared. “We call on the United Nations to take a bold decision related to the resumption of the peace process and implementation of the two-state solution.”

Asked if the unrest in Gaza will impact the demarcation of the Lebanese-Israeli maritime borders, the minister replied that efforts will be delayed, but reaching a ceasefire is priority at the moment.

“We don’t believe that the Blue Line in the south is Lebanon’s actual border. We are therefore insisting on the border stipulated in the truce. We will continue to voice our demands to establish peace in the South,” he continued.

“In the end, Israel will have the final say. The Americans claim that they can’t force Israel to do anything without first receiving a response from it. Everything is now on hold until the fighting stops in Gaza,” he noted.

Addressing claims that the Lebanese state has been usurped by Hezbollah and so decisions related to the border are taken by the party, Bou Habib replied: “The agreement over the border was reached by this government and when we had an elected president.”

Asked when Lebanon will elect a president after nearly a year of vacancy in the country’s top post, he said: “It will happen sooner or later.”

More Syrian refugees

The situation in Lebanon is not only fragile because of its border dispute with Israel, but because of the war in Syria. It has witnessed a renewed flow of refugees from Syria in the tens and hundreds of thousands.

Bou Habib blamed the new wave on the “very bad” economic crisis on Syria that was caused by western sanctions. Every unemployed person wants to immigrate, he noted.

“The Lebanese know this more than anyone. We have millions of Lebanese who left their country because of the economy, more so than political or security reasons,” Bou Habib stated.

“We understand why the Syrians have turned to Lebanon, but we can no longer support them. We have taken in two million Syrians, or nearly half of the Lebanese population. We also have half a million Palestinians,” he added.

“Lebanon can no longer tolerate the situation,” the FM declared.

“The international community must understand this. As long as the UN continues to pay the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to support the refugees in Lebanon, they will remain here and not go back to their homeland. The UN agency and western countries view the Syrians as political refugees, when they are actually not,” he added.

“I am not saying that the UNHCR is a danger to Lebanon, but its policies are only leading to more Syrians coming to Lebanon. It is not fully cooperating with the Lebanese state or Syrian authorities to determine who is an economic refugee and who is a political one,” he revealed.

“If it does, then it won’t have that much work to do,” he continued, describing the agency as an “empire”.

“They need to understand the situation in Lebanon,” he demanded, saying the government and interior and foreign ministers always warn the UN that the current situation with the refugees must not persist, but western countries are still insisting on their position.

Turning to Hezbollah and Lebanon’s relations with Arab countries, Bou Habib said the ties were “good”. Contact are always ongoing with Arab countries, he added.

“Some Arab countries have a problem with Hezbollah’s presence in Lebanon. We view the party as a regional issue, not one that can be resolved by the Lebanese government,” he remarked. “I hope there is further understanding over this point.”

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Arab World

As Flooding Becomes a Yearly Disaster in South Sudan, Thousands Survive on the Edge of a Canal

Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
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As Flooding Becomes a Yearly Disaster in South Sudan, Thousands Survive on the Edge of a Canal

Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)
Children ride in a small canoe around the area where they live in Jonglei state, South Sudan. (Photo: AP)

Long-horned cattle wade through flooded lands and climb a slope along a canal that has become a refuge for displaced families in South Sudan. Smoke from burning dung rises near homes of mud and grass where thousands of people now live after floods swept away their village.
“Too much suffering,” said Bichiok Hoth Chuiny, a woman in her 70s. She supported herself with a stick as she walked in the newly established community of Pajiek in Jonglei state north of the capital, Juba, The Associated Press said.
For the first time in decades, the flooding had forced her to flee. Her efforts to protect her home by building dykes failed. Her former village of Gorwai is now a swamp.
“I had to be dragged in a canoe up to here,” Chuiny said. An AP journalist was the first to visit the community.
Such flooding is becoming a yearly disaster in South Sudan, which the World Bank has described as “the world’s most vulnerable country to climate change and also the one most lacking in coping capacity."
More than 379,000 people have been displaced by flooding this year, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
Seasonal flooding has long been part of the lifestyle of pastoral communities around the Sudd, the largest wetlands in Africa, in the Nile River floodplain. But since the 1960s the swamp has kept growing, submerging villages, ruining farmland and killing livestock.
“The Dinka, Nuer and Murle communities of Jonglei are losing the ability to keep cattle and do farming in that region the way they used to,” said Daniel Akech Thiong, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
South Sudan is poorly equipped to adjust. Independent since 2011, the country plunged into civil war in 2013. Despite a peace deal in 2018, the government has failed to address numerous crises. Some 2.4 million people remain internally displaced by conflict and flooding.
The latest overflowing of the Nile has been blamed on factors including the opening of dams upstream in Uganda after Lake Victoria rose to its highest levels in five years.
The century-old Jonglei Canal, which was never completed, has become a refuge for many.
“We don’t know up to where this flooding would have pushed us if the canal was not there,” said Peter Kuach Gatchang, the paramount chief of Pajiek. He was already raising a small garden of pumpkins and eggplants in his new home.
The 340-kilometer (211-mile) Jonglei Canal was first imagined in the early 1900s by Anglo-Egyptian colonial authorities to increase the Nile’s outflow towards Egypt in the north. But its development was interrupted by the long fight of southern Sudanese against the Sudanese regime in Khartoum that eventually led to the creation of a separate country.
Gatchang said the new community in Pajiek is neglected: "We have no school and no clinic here, and if you stay for a few days, you will see us carrying our patients on stretchers up to Ayod town.”
Ayod, the county headquarters, is reached by a six-hour walk through the waist-high water.
Pajiek also has no mobile network and no government presence. The area is under the control of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, founded by President Salva Kiir’s rival turned Vice President Riek Machar.
Villagers rely on aid. On a recent day, hundreds of women lined up in a nearby field to receive some from the World Food Program.
Nyabuot Reat Kuor walked home with a 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag of sorghum balanced on her head.
“This flooding has destroyed our farm, killed our livestock and displaced us for good," the mother of eight said. “Our old village of Gorwai has become a river.”
When food assistance runs out, she said, they will survive on wild leaves and water lilies from the swamp. Already in recent years, food aid rations have been cut in half as international funding for such crises drops.
More than 69,000 people who have migrated to the Jonglei Canal in Ayod county are registered for food assistance, according to WFP.
“There are no passable roads at this time of the year, and the canal is too low to support boats carrying a lot of food,” said John Kimemia, a WFP airdrop coordinator.
In the neighboring Paguong village that is surrounded by flooded lands, the health center has few supplies. Medics haven’t been paid since June due to an economic crisis that has seen civil servants nationwide go unpaid for more than a year.
South Sudan’s economic woes have deepened with the disruption of oil exports after a major pipeline was damaged in Sudan during that country's ongoing civil war.
“The last time we got drugs was in September. We mobilized the women to carry them on foot from Ayod town,” said Juong Dok Tut, a clinical officer.
Patients, mostly women and children, sat on the ground as they waited to see the doctor. Panic rippled through the group when a thin green snake passed among them. It wasn't poisonous, but many others in the area are. People who venture into the water to fish or collect water lilies are at risk.
Four life-threatening snake bites cases occurred in October, Tut said. “We managed these cases with the antivenom treatments we had, but now they’re over, so we don’t know what to do if it happens again.”