Lebanon's New President Says to Ensure State Has Exclusive Right to Carry Arms

This handout photo released by the Lebanese parliament shows Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun delivering a speech after his election in Beirut, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by LEBANESE PARLIAMENT / AFP)
This handout photo released by the Lebanese parliament shows Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun delivering a speech after his election in Beirut, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by LEBANESE PARLIAMENT / AFP)
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Lebanon's New President Says to Ensure State Has Exclusive Right to Carry Arms

This handout photo released by the Lebanese parliament shows Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun delivering a speech after his election in Beirut, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by LEBANESE PARLIAMENT / AFP)
This handout photo released by the Lebanese parliament shows Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun delivering a speech after his election in Beirut, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by LEBANESE PARLIAMENT / AFP)

Lebanon's newly elected President Joseph Aoun told lawmakers on Thursday that he will work to ensure the state has the exclusive right to carry arms, in his first speech at parliament after he was elected.

His comments were seen partly as a reference to Hezbollah's arsenal, which he had not commented on publicly as the former army commander.

In a first round of voting Thursday, Aoun received 71 out of 128 votes but fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to win outright. Of the rest, 37 lawmakers cast blank ballots and 14 voted for “sovereignty and the constitution.”
In the second round, he received 99 votes.

In his speech in parliament, Aoun also pledged to carry out reforms to the judicial system and fight corruption.

He promised to control the country’s borders and “ensure the activation of the security services and to discuss a strategic defense policy that will enable the Lebanese state to remove the Israeli occupation from all Lebanese territories” in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military has not yet withdrawn from dozens of villages.

He also vowed to reconstruct “what the Israeli army destroyed in the south, east and (Beirut’s southern) suburbs.”

Thursday’s vote came weeks after a tenuous ceasefire agreement halted a 14-month conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and at a time when Lebanon’s leaders are seeking international assistance for reconstruction.

Aoun said he would call for parliamentary consultations as soon as possible on naming a new prime minister.



Türkiye's Erdogan Again Rejects US Proposal to Relocate Palestinians from Gaza

Palestinians walk past destroyed houses amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, 08 February 2025. (EPA)
Palestinians walk past destroyed houses amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, 08 February 2025. (EPA)
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Türkiye's Erdogan Again Rejects US Proposal to Relocate Palestinians from Gaza

Palestinians walk past destroyed houses amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, 08 February 2025. (EPA)
Palestinians walk past destroyed houses amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, 08 February 2025. (EPA)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan again rejected a US proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza and said Israel should pay for the damage it caused there and for reconstruction to begin.

“We do not consider the proposal to exile the Palestinians from the lands they have lived in for thousands of years as something to be taken seriously,” Erdogan said during a visit to Malaysia on Monday.

“No one has the power to force the Palestinian people to experience a second Nakba,” he added, referring to the mass displacement of Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948.

Erdogan, who is on a four-day tour of Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan, highlighted the severe destruction in Gaza.

He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government should look for funds to “compensate” for what he said was damage amounting to $100 billion “instead of looking for a place for the people of Gaza.”