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Six Women Represent Lebanese Females in 2018 Parliament

For May 6 elections, 86 female candidates will be competing for 128 seats [Mohamed Azakir/Reuters]
For May 6 elections, 86 female candidates will be competing for 128 seats [Mohamed Azakir/Reuters]
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Six Women Represent Lebanese Females in 2018 Parliament

For May 6 elections, 86 female candidates will be competing for 128 seats [Mohamed Azakir/Reuters]
For May 6 elections, 86 female candidates will be competing for 128 seats [Mohamed Azakir/Reuters]

Six women of 86 women, who had registered to run for the 128-seat Parliament, won Sunday during Lebanon’s polls held across the country.

Five of them are members of political parties, which greatly facilitated their victory.

Only one women, former television news presenter Paula Yacoubian, who run on a list supported by civil society groups, was capable to win in the Beirut first electoral district against authority-backed lists.

The Mustaqbal Movement was capable to bring 3 women to the new parliament, including Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s aunt, Bahiya, Tripoli deputy Dima al-Jamali and Beirut Deputy Roula al-Tabesh.

The Lebanese Forces party, which supported the candidature of four women, contributed in securing the win of wife of LF leader Samir Geagea, Strida, who was already an MP in the chamber of 2009-2018.

For its part, the Amal Movement supported the candidature of Inaya Ezzeddine, who won the polls last Sunday and is considered the only woman to represent the Shi’ite duo, Amal and Hezbollah, in the new parliament.

The highest number of women candidates had run on civil society-supported lists but only one, Yacoubian, had made it to Parliament. Only three women ran on the Free Patriotic Movement lists.
None of them won, although the party gained more than 20 seats.

Out of 976 candidates who originally registered to run for the elections, 111 were female candidates.

In the 2009 elections, just 12 women had competed for Lebanon’s 128-seat Parliament and only four had won the elections.

“Despite the enthusiasm of women candidates during last week’s polls, unfortunately, we are still taking our first steps on the right path,” former president of the League of Lebanese Women's Rights (LLWR) Linda Matar told Asharq Al-Awsat.

She said all parties are reluctant in the issue of women’s participation in the political life.

Similar to Matar, professor at the Lebanese University in Beirut Mona Fayad did not look optimistic about women’s representation in the political life.

Fayad held Hezbollah directly responsible for not supporting a women quota in the new electoral law under which were held last Sunday’s elections in Lebanon.

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Former Israeli Spies Describe Attack Using Exploding Electronic Devices against Lebanon’s Hezbollah

An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
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Former Israeli Spies Describe Attack Using Exploding Electronic Devices against Lebanon’s Hezbollah

An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)

Two recently retired senior Israeli intelligence agents shared new details about a deadly clandestine operation years in the making that targeted Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Syria using exploding pagers and walkie talkies three months ago.
Hezbollah began striking Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war, The Associated Press said.
The agents spoke with CBS “60 Minutes” in a segment aired Sunday night. They wore masks and spoke with altered voices to hide their identities.
One agent said the operation started 10 years ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah didn't realize it was buying from Israel, its enemy. The walkie-talkies were not detonated until September, a day after booby-trapped pagers were set off.
“We created a pretend world,” said the officer, who went by the name “Michael.”
Phase two of the plan, using the booby-trapped pagers, kicked in in 2022 after Israel's Mossad intelligence agency learned Hezbollah had been buying pagers from a Taiwan-based company, the second officer said.
The pagers had to be made slightly larger to accommodate the explosives hidden inside. They were tested on dummies multiple times to find the right amount of explosive that would hurt only the Hezbollah fighter and not anyone else in close proximity.
Mossad also tested numerous ring tones to find one that sounded urgent enough to make someone pull the pager out of their pocket.
The second agent, who went by the name “Gabriel,” said it took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the heftier pager, in part by using false ads on YouTube promoting the devices as dustproof, waterproof, providing a long battery life and more.
He described the use of shell companies, including one based in Hungary, to dupe the Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo, into unknowingly partnering with the Mossad.
Hezbollah also was unaware it was working with Israel.
Gabriel compared the ruse to a 1998 psychological film about a man who has no clue that he is living in a false world and his family and friends are actors paid to keep up the illusion.
“When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” Gabriel said. “We make like ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scene. In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher including businessman, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.”
By September, Hezbollah militants had 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
Israel triggered the attack on Sept. 17, when pagers all over Lebanon started beeping. The devices would explode even if the person failed to push the buttons to read an incoming encrypted message.
The next day, Mossad activated the walkie-talkies, some of which exploded at funerals for some of the approximately 30 people who were killed in the pager attacks.
Gabriel said the goal was more about sending a message than actually killing Hezbollah fighters.
“If he just died, so he’s dead. But if he’s wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts,” he said. “And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of ‘don’t mess with us.’ They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.”
In the days after the attack, Israel's air force hit targets across Lebanon, killing thousands. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.
By November, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a byproduct of the deadly attack by Hamas group in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, ended with a ceasefire. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas militants, health officials have said.
The agent using the name “Michael” said that the day after the pager explosions, people in Lebanon were afraid to turn on their air conditioners out of fear that they would explode, too.
“There is real fear,” he said.
Asked if that was intentional, he said, “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use the pagers again because we already did that. We’ve already moved on to the next thing. And they’ll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is.”