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Lebanese Parties Eye Alliances in Preparation for Next Year’s Parliamentary Elections

A woman votes during the 2022 parliamentary elections in Tripoli, Lebanon. (AP)
A woman votes during the 2022 parliamentary elections in Tripoli, Lebanon. (AP)
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Lebanese Parties Eye Alliances in Preparation for Next Year’s Parliamentary Elections

A woman votes during the 2022 parliamentary elections in Tripoli, Lebanon. (AP)
A woman votes during the 2022 parliamentary elections in Tripoli, Lebanon. (AP)

The majority of Lebanon’s political parties have kicked off their preparations for next year's parliamentary elections as debate continues to rage over how many MPs expatriates will be able to vote for. During the 2022 elections, the expats were able to cast their vote for 128 candidates, while their options for the 2026 elections are being limited to six.

Lebanon will be holding the elections in wake of the Hezbollah’s war with Israel in 2024 and the ensuing changes it caused on the Iran-backed party’s alliances and Lebanon’s overall political landscape.

FPM: Alliance with Hezbollah with possible, no to Lebanese Forces

Sources from the Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) told Asharq Al-Awsat that preparations for the elections started in May. FPM leader MP Gebran Bassil has been visiting the majority of provinces and districts to that end.

The party has yet to agree on a final list of parliamentary candidates. As for its alliances, the sources said: “We are open to everyone, except for the Lebanese Forces. There can be no alliance with it.”

“Bassil has been receiving calls from various parties and independent figures to forge alliances, but nothing has been fully agreed to yet,” the sources added.

They did not rule out the FPM striking an alliance with former ally Hezbollah. “It is a Lebanese party and we will approach the issue based on our interests. It is not forbidden to ally with it,” they stressed.

The FPM broke off its alliance with Hezbollah in wake of its war with Israel.

Kataeb: Priority to Lebanese Forces, PSP alliances

The Christian Kataeb party has yet to fully commit to alliances, but it has taken the decision to field seven candidates. It currently boasts four members of parliament: Kataeb party leader Sami Gemayel, Nadim Gemayel, Elias Hankash and Salim al-Sayegh.

Potential candidates include Gaby Semaan in Baabda, Nabil Hakim in Batroun and Theodora Bejjani in Aley. The search is still on for possible candidates in Zahle, the western Bekaa, Jezzine and al-Koura.

Kataeb sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the party “has seriously kicked off preparations for the elections.” Internal committees will be formed and the party is studying the situation on the ground and weighing potential alliances.

“The party is open to all parties, while the priority lies in alliances with the Lebanese Forces and Progressive Socialist Party (PSP),” the sources revealed.

On the possibility of allying with the FPM, the sources said the Kataeb does not have sour relations with it, but discussions over an alliance have not been made yet.

Lebanese Force: Boycott of Hezbollah, Amal, FPM

Lebanese Forces sources said its preparations for the elections started months ago and that it was constantly working for the polls “as if they will be held tomorrow.”

At the same time, they said the Christian LF was still weighing various alliances.

One thing is certain, the sources said “there can be no allying with anyone who does not share our national views, such as a Hezbollah, the Amal movement, FPM and figures close to the ‘resistance axis’.”

Elections sometimes demand that alliances be spread across various lists to allow for a greater chance of victory, they told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“Achieving a parliamentary majority is the ultimate goal. The majority should share a vision of building a state, fighting corruption and ending the illegal possession of weapons,” they stressed.

Hezbollah and Amal maintain alliance

Sources from the “Shiite duo” of Hezbollah and Amal, headed by parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, said they will maintain their alliance in the 2026 elections.

“We are prepared as though the elections will be held tomorrow,” they told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Preparations had kicked off in May since the end of the municipal election. Relevant committees are working together to hold the elections, which the sources described as “fundamental”.

The alliance between Hezbollah and Amal may be a foregone conclusion, while alliances with other parties have yet to take shape, they added.

In wake of Hezbollah’s war with Israel, a number of parties have ended their alliances with the Shiite duo. The sources remarked, however: “It is too soon to claim this, especially when it comes to the FPM and Marada Movement.”

With its options limited, a Hezbollah delegation met with the Tashnag party on Wednesday.

PSP: Understanding with LF still stands

The Druze PSP has kicked off its preparations for the elections, but its alliances have yet to take shape, sources from the party told Asharq Al-Awsat.

They stressed that it was not boycotting any party, while it will continue its alliance with the LF. It remains to be seen what will happen with the Mustaqbal movement, which boasts a sizeable presence in the Chouf and Iqlim al-Kharroub areas.

Mustaqbal continues to suspend activity

The Sunni Mustaqbal Movement has yet to announce whether it will run in the elections. The movement had suspended activities after its leader former Prime Minister Saad Hariri decided to quit political life.

The movement did not take part in the 2022 polls.

Lebanon continues to wait and see what it will do this year given the sizeable Sunni population in the country, especially in Beirut.

‘Change’ MPs in disarray 

Meanwhile, the “Change” MPs continue to live in a state of disarray as relations between them have fallen apart. They are still preparing for the elections, with many declaring their intention to run again.

The majority of the MPs won their seats through the expatriate vote and they are still banking on an amendment to the electoral law that will allow expats to vote for 128 candidates, instead of six, which will hamper their chances of winning.

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Features

Beirut’s Commodore Hotel, a Haven for Journalists During Lebanon’s Civil War, Shuts Down

People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)
People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)
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Beirut’s Commodore Hotel, a Haven for Journalists During Lebanon’s Civil War, Shuts Down

People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)
People stand outside the closed Commodore hotel, in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP)

During Lebanon’s civil war, the Commodore Hotel in western Beirut's Hamra district became iconic among the foreign press corps.

For many, it served as an unofficial newsroom where they could file dispatches even when communications systems were down elsewhere. Armed guards at the door provided some sense of protection as sniper fights and shelling were turning the cosmopolitan city to rubble.

The hotel even had its own much-loved mascot: a cheeky parrot.

The Commodore endured for decades after the 15-year civil war ended in 1990 — until this week, when it closed for good.

The main gate of the nine-story hotel with more than 200 rooms was shuttered Monday. Officials at the Commodore refused to speak to the media about the decision to close.

Although the country’s economy is beginning to recover from a protracted financial crisis that began in 2019, tensions in the region and the aftermath of the Israel-Hezbollah war that was halted by a tenuous ceasefire in November 2024 are keeping many tourists away. Lengthy daily electricity cuts force businesses to rely on expensive private generators.

The Commodore is not the first of the crisis-battered country’s once-bustling hotels to shut down in recent years.

But for journalists who lived, worked and filed their dispatches there, its demise hits particularly hard.

“The Commodore was a hub of information — various guerrilla leaders, diplomats, spies and of course scores of journalists circled the cafes and lounges,” said Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent who covered the civil war. “On one occasion (late Palestinian leader) Yasser Arafat himself dropped in to sip coffee with” with the hotel manager's father, he recalled.

A line to the outside world

At the height of the civil war, when telecommunications were dysfunctional and much of Beirut was cut off from the outside world, it was at the Commodore where journalists found land lines and Telex machines that always worked to send reports to their media organizations around the globe.

Across the front office desk in the wide lobby of the Commodore, there were two teleprinters that carried reports of The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies.

“The Commodore had a certain seedy charm. The rooms were basic, the mattresses lumpy and the meal fare wasn’t spectacular,” said Robert H. Reid, the AP’s former Middle East regional editor, who was among the AP journalists who covered the war. The hotel was across the street from the international agency’s Middle East head office at the time.

“The friendly staff and the camaraderie among the journalist-guests made the Commodore seem more like a social club where you could unwind after a day in one of the world’s most dangerous cities,” Reid said.

Llewellyn remembers that the hotel manager at the time, Yusuf Nazzal, told him in the late 1970s “that it was I who had given him the idea” to open such a hotel in a war zone.

Llewellyn said that during a long chat with Nazzal on a near-empty Middle East Airlines Jumbo flight from London to Beirut in the fall of 1975, he told him that there should be a hotel that would make sure journalists had good communications, “a street-wise and well-connected staff running the desks, the phones, the teletypes.”

During Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and a nearly three-month siege of West Beirut by Israeli troops, journalists used the roof of the hotel to film fighter jets striking the city.

The parrot

One of the best-known characters at the Commodore was Coco the parrot, who was always in a cage near the bar. Patrons were often startled by what they thought was the whiz of an incoming shell, only to discover that it was Coco who made the sound.

AP’s chief Middle East correspondent Terry Anderson was a regular at the hotel before he was kidnapped in Beirut in 1985 and held for seven years, becoming one of the longest-held American hostages in history.

Videos of Anderson released by his kidnappers later showed him wearing a white T-shirt with the words “Hotel Commodore Lebanon.”

With the kidnapping of Anderson and other Western journalists, many foreign media workers left the predominantly-Muslim western part of Beirut, and after that the hotel lost its status as a safe haven for foreign journalists.

Ahmad Shbaro, who worked at different departments of the hotel until 1988, said the main reason behind the Commodore’s success was the presence of armed guards that made journalists feel secure in the middle of Beirut’s chaos as well as functioning telecommunications.

He added that the hotel also offered financial facilities for journalists who ran out of money. They would borrow money from Nazzal and their companies could pay him back by depositing money in his bank account in London.

Shbaro remembers a terrifying day in the late 1970s when the area of the hotel was heavily shelled and two rooms at the Commodore were hit.

“The hotel was full and all of us, staffers and journalists, spent the night at Le Casbah,” a famous nightclub in the basement of the building, he said.

In quieter times, journalists used to spend the night partying by the pool.

“It was a lifeline for the international media in West Beirut, where journalists filed, ate, slept, and hid from air raids, shelling, and other violence,” said former AP correspondent Scheherezade Faramarzi.

“It gained both fame and notoriety,” she said, speaking from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

The hotel was built in 1943 and kept functioning until 1987 when it was heavily damaged in fighting between Shiite and Druze militiamen at the time. The old Commodore building was later demolished and a new structure was build with an annex and officially opened again for the public in 1996.

But Coco the parrot was no longer at the bar. The bird went missing during the 1987 fighting. Shbaro said it is believed he was taken by one of the gunmen who stormed the hotel.

Features

Key Details of Greenland’s Rich but Largely Untapped Mineral Resources

Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)
Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)
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Key Details of Greenland’s Rich but Largely Untapped Mineral Resources

Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)
Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP)

The Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers will meet US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday after President Donald Trump recently
stepped up threats to take over Greenland.

The autonomous territory of Denmark could be useful for the ​United States because of its strategic location and rich mineral resources. A 2023 survey showed that 25 of 34 minerals deemed "critical raw materials" by the European Commission were found in Greenland.

The extraction of oil and natural gas is banned in Greenland for environmental reasons, while development of its mining sector has been snarled in red tape and opposition from indigenous people.

Below are details of Greenland's main mineral deposits, based on data from its Mineral Resources Authority:

RARE EARTHS
Three of Greenland's biggest deposits are located in the southern province of Gardar.

Companies ‌seeking to ‌develop rare-earth mines are Critical Metals Corp, which bought the ‌Tanbreez ⁠deposit, ​Energy Transition Minerals, ‌whose Kuannersuit project is stalled amid legal disputes, and Neo Performance Materials.

Rare-earth elements are key to permanent magnets used in electric vehicles (EV) and wind turbines.

GRAPHITE
Occurrences of graphite and graphite schist are reported from many localities on the island.
GreenRoc has applied for an exploitation license to develop the Amitsoq graphite project.
Natural graphite is mostly used in EV batteries and steelmaking.

COPPER
According to the Mineral Resources Authority, most copper deposits have drawn only limited exploration campaigns.

Especially interesting are the underexplored areas ⁠in the northeast and center-east of Greenland, it said.

London-listed 80 Mile is seeking to develop the Disko-Nuussuaq deposit, which has ‌copper, nickel, platinum and cobalt.

NICKEL
Traces of nickel accumulations are numerous, ‍according to the Mineral Resources Authority.

Major miner ‍Anglo American was granted an exploration license in western Greenland in 2019 and has ‍been looking for nickel deposits, among others.

ZINC
Zinc is mostly found in the north in a geologic formation that stretches more than 2,500 km (1,550 miles).

Companies have sought to develop the Citronen Fjord zinc and lead project, which had been billed as one of the world's largest undeveloped zinc resources.

GOLD
The most prospective ​areas for gold potential are situated around the Sermiligaarsuk fjord in the country's south.

Amaroq Minerals launched a gold mine last year in Mt Nalunaq in ⁠the Kujalleq Municipality.

DIAMONDS
While most small diamonds and the largest stones are found in the island's west, their presence in other regions may also be significant.

IRON ORE
Deposits are located at Isua in southern West Greenland, at Itilliarsuk in central West Greenland, and in North West Greenland along the Lauge Koch Kyst.

TITANIUM-VANADIUM
Known deposits of titanium and vanadium are in the southwest, the east and south.

Titanium is used for commercial, medical and industrial purposes, while vanadium is mainly used to produce specialty steel alloys. The most important industrial vanadium compound, vanadium pentoxide, is used as a catalyst for the production of sulfuric acid.

TUNGSTEN
Used for several industrial applications, tungsten is mostly found in the central-east and northeast of the country, with assessed deposits in the south and west.

URANIUM
In 2021, ‌the then-ruling left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party banned uranium mining, effectively halting development of the Kuannersuit rare-earths project, which has uranium as a byproduct.

Features

The West Bank Football Field Slated for Demolition by Israel

Israeli army bulldozers pass buildings during a military operation in Nur Shams refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, 12 January 2026. (EPA)
Israeli army bulldozers pass buildings during a military operation in Nur Shams refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, 12 January 2026. (EPA)
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The West Bank Football Field Slated for Demolition by Israel

Israeli army bulldozers pass buildings during a military operation in Nur Shams refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, 12 January 2026. (EPA)
Israeli army bulldozers pass buildings during a military operation in Nur Shams refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, 12 January 2026. (EPA)

Israeli authorities have ordered the demolition of a football field in a crowded refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, eliminating one of the few ​spaces where Palestinian children are able to run and play.

"If the field gets demolished, this will destroy our dreams and our future. We cannot play any other place but this field, the camp does not have spaces," said Rital Sarhan, 13, who plays on a girls' soccer team in the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem.

The Israeli military ‌issued a demolition ‌order for the field on ‌December ⁠31, ​saying ‌it was built illegally in an area that abuts the concrete barrier wall that Israel built in the West Bank.

"Along the security fence, a seizure order and a construction prohibition order are in effect; therefore, the construction in the area was carried out unlawfully," the Israeli military said in a statement.

Mohammad Abu ⁠Srour, an administrator at Aida Youth Center, which manages the field, said the ‌military gave them seven days to demolish ‍the field.

The Israeli military ‍often orders Palestinians to carry out demolitions themselves. If they ‍do not act, the military steps in to destroy the structure in question and then sends the Palestinians a bill for the costs.

According to Abu Srour, Israel's military told residents when delivering ​the demolition order that the football field represented a threat to the separation wall and to Israelis.

"I ⁠do not know how this is possible," he said.

Israeli demolitions have drawn widespread international criticism and coincide with heightened fears among Palestinians of an organized effort by Israel to formally annex the West Bank, the area seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel accelerated demolitions in Palestinian refugee camps in early 2025, leading to the displacement of 32,000 residents of camps in the central and northern West Bank.

Human Rights Watch has called the demolitions a war crime. ‌Israel has said they are intended to disrupt militant activity.