Former Presidents, MPs Cost Lebanon $20 Million Annuallyhttps://english.aawsat.com/home/article/1666121/former-presidents-mps-cost-lebanon-20-million-annually
Former Presidents, MPs Cost Lebanon $20 Million Annually
The new Lebanese government poses for a photo after it earned a vote of confidence by parliament. (AP)
Lebanese deputies and ministers were divided on Thursday over Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil’s proposal to cut their salaries by 50 percent as part of his plan to lower the budget deficit.
Some ministers and lawmakers welcomed the move, while others said the issue needed to be studied further.
On Wednesday, Khalil submitted his budget proposal to Prime Minister Saad Hariri and later revealed tweeted his plan to lower the salaries of the president, prime minister, speaker, ministers, MPs and former lawmakers.
MP Bilal Abdullah, of the Progressive Socialist Party parliamentary bloc, was the first politician to object the minister’s proposal.
“I will not accept a decision to reduce my salary as a deputy. The state must first reduce the wages of some public employees and their compensations that sometimes exceed the salaries of ministers and MPs,” he said.
Abdullah’s position contradicted with that of his party leader, Walid Jumblatt, who said earlier this week that the World Bank is making some demands related to lowering expenditure and that some measures should begin by reducing the salaries of former ministers and MPs.
Jumblatt revealed that as a former MP, he earns a monthly salary of around $6,000, which he said “is not fair.”
Abdullah told Asharq Al-Awsat on Thursday that objecting to Khalil’s proposal was his own personal opinion and had nothing to do with the PSP’s stance.
Mohammed Shamseddine, a researcher at Information International told Asharq Al-Awsat that the problem does not lie in the salaries of political figures, but the compensations of former lawmakers and presidents.
“A sum of $20 million is allocated every year to pay the compensations of 210 former presidents and former deputies and the families of 104 deceased presidents or lawmakers,” he said.
According to the researcher, there are more than 120 jobs in public institutions where employees are paid more than the salaries of deputies, such as the Central Bank Governor, who is paid a salary of more than $26,600 for 16 months every year, in addition to employees at the Casino du Liban and some ambassadors.
In Lebanon, the president is paid a monthly salary of $8,300, the prime minister and speaker are each paid $7,883 while a deputy earns a maximum of $7,400.
Several deputies have presented draft laws to parliament suggesting lowering the wages of deputies and ministers.
FILE PHOTO: Displaced Palestinians shelter in a tent camp on a windy day in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, April 2, 2026. REUTERS/Haseeb Alwazeer/File Photo
Israeli Attacks Kill at Least Four Palestinians in Gaza
FILE PHOTO: Displaced Palestinians shelter in a tent camp on a windy day in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, April 2, 2026. REUTERS/Haseeb Alwazeer/File Photo
Israeli military attacks killed at least four Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, health officials in the enclave said.
Medics said an airstrike carried out by Israel's forces killed one person near the central village of Al-Mughraqa, while Israeli gunfire and tank shelling killed two others near Gaza City.
In another incident, Israeli forces shot and killed a 40-year-old woman in Khan Younis, in the south of the territory, health officials said. The Israeli military said it was unaware of any attack by its troops in that area at the time of the reported incident on Sunday.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the other reported strikes.
Separately, it said it had struck and killed several Hamas militants in Gaza since Friday.
Violence in Gaza has persisted despite an October 2025 ceasefire, with Israel conducting almost daily attacks on Palestinians.
At least 800 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire deal took effect, according to local medics, while Israel says militants have killed four of its soldiers over the same period.
Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for ceasefire violations.
More than 72,500 Palestinians have been killed since the Gaza war started in October 2023, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities.
Hamas' October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
A 5-Step Approach to 'Dismantling Iraqi Militias'https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5266554-5-step-approach-dismantling-iraqi-militias
PM Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, head of the Popular Mobilization Forces Faleh Al-Fayyad, and PMF's chief of staff Abu Fadak (government media)
Despite continuous American demands for the Iraqi authorities to curb and dismantle factions, observers noted that the meetings of the leaders of the Coordination Framework have not been tackling this issue.
This could threaten the loss of American support for the new government, while experts propose a 5-step approach to resolve the matter.
The American insistence on dismantling armed factions has become recently highly clear through a series of punitive measures, beginning with a $10 million reward for information leading to the leader of Kataib Hezbollah, Abu Hussein Al-Hamidawi, then placing seven factions on sanctions and terrorism lists, and finally a similar reward for information about Abu Alaa Al-Wala'i, leader of Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada.
Contrary to the discourse that escalated about three months ago regarding the necessity of disarming factions and restructuring the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the Coordination Framework forces remain silent, despite the factions' actual involvement in the war with Iran and their missile attacks inside Iraqi territory and abroad on some Arab Gulf states.
War undermined efforts
A leading source from the Coordination Framework states that the war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran "undermined what could be called efforts to integrate the factions."
The source confirms to Asharq Al-Awsat that "the Coordination Framework had indeed begun preliminary discussions on mechanisms for addressing the issue, but the war ... provided the appropriate pretext for the factions to refuse to disarm, considering that the war represents an existential threat to them."
The source points out that "the leaders of the Coordination Framework recognize the seriousness and magnitude of the risks posed by American demands, but they are forced to ignore them due to pressure from the factions and the Iranian actor," indicating that "some forces and figures that possess armed factions have a genuine desire to integrate their elements into the army and restructure the PMF, but they appear incapable of taking any action due to the regional developments and the stalled efforts to form a government."
Dismantling the Funding System
Writer and political researcher Dr. Basil Hussein believes that dismantling the factions is linked to what he calls the "funding system."
He told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Coordination Framework forces are “a fragile coalition where disparate interests intersect.”
He points out that "armed factions are not merely an executive arm in the hands of political parties; rather, they are often the backbone upon which these parties are built economically, politically, and socially."
He further states that "any serious attempt to dismantle the factions will inevitably mean dismantling the entire funding system, which amounts to political suicide for anyone who undertakes it. Therefore, such efforts will always remain incomplete and selective, avoiding any harm to the core structure upon which the militias' influence rests."
In addition to these reasons, Hussein believes that "dismantling the factions is not a purely Iraqi decision; rather, it relates to the Iranian vision that has long viewed these factions as a cornerstone of Tehran's forward defense strategy.”
He adds that "when American pressure on the factions intensifies and their room for maneuver narrows, they will reluctantly bend rather than willingly, resorting to a superficial solution that masks their facade without touching their essence. They may change their name while retaining their structure, and formally dissolve into state institutions while maintaining their networks, weapons, and loyalties outside any actual oversight."
Mourners attend the funeral of fighters with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces who were killed in an airstrike, in Baghdad, Iraq, April 8, 2026. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
5 Steps to a Solution
For his part, Firas Elias, Professor of Political Science at the University of Mosul and a specialist in Iranian studies, proposes an approach that includes five steps that would help dismantle the factions.
He believes that the future of armed factions in Iraq will directly depend on the future of the war between Tehran and Washington, as they "will be directly affected by the outcome of this war."
Elias tells Asharq Al-Awsat that "discussing practical ways to deal with armed factions requires developing a new approach for the post-war phase. The practical method is not (immediate dismantling), but rather a gradual re-engineering of power through the state."
Elias anticipates that if the Framework forces succeed in forming a government, and under American pressure, they may move along five paths: "First: separating the PMF as an official body from the factions as political-military arms, establishing that the PMF, which receives salaries from the state, is exclusively subject to the Commander-in-Chief, while any formation that retains independent decision-making or external affiliation is treated as an entity outside the state."
The second move involves "controlling money before weapons. The most effective approach is to audit salaries, contracts, crossings, companies, economic offices, and transfers. When informal resources are cut off, the factions become less capable of maneuvering."
In the third path, Elias expects "restructuring leadership by changing sensitive positions within the PMF Commission, transferring some brigades to distant sectors away from the borders, integrating selected units into the army or Federal Police, and retiring undisciplined leaders or assigning them to symbolic positions."
The Iraqi expert adds a fourth path related to "dismantling from within, not through confrontation. The government may differentiate between three types: factions amenable to integration, factions requiring political containment, and completely resistant factions. The approach to dealing with them would be piecemeal: incentives for the disciplined, isolation for the resistant, and legal pressure on those involved."
He concludes with the fifth path, which concerns "transforming American pressure into internal political leverage. The Framework might tell the factions: either adhere to state discipline, or face sanctions, financial isolation, and security measures that affect everyone. Here, American pressure becomes a tool in the hands of the government, not merely an external threat."
Despite these five paths, Elias believes that "the 'Framework will not dismantle the factions in one stroke, because they are part of its political structure. However, it may work to gradually strip them of their military and financial independence, while retaining the PMF designation in a disciplined, institutional manner."
Four Killed in Israeli Strikes on Southern Lebanonhttps://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5266384-four-killed-israeli-strikes-southern-lebanon
Israeli tanks drive in Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border, in northern Israel, April 25, 2026. (Reuters)
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Four Killed in Israeli Strikes on Southern Lebanon
Israeli tanks drive in Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border, in northern Israel, April 25, 2026. (Reuters)
Four people were killed on Saturday in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, Lebanon's state news agency reported, while the Israeli military said Hezbollah had fired rockets at Israel, the latest challenges to a tenuous, recently extended ceasefire.
The ceasefire agreed between Israel and Lebanon has led to a significant reduction in hostilities, but Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have continued to clash in southern Lebanon, where Israel has kept soldiers in the self-declared buffer zone.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had struck loaded rocket launchers belonging to Hezbollah in three locations in southern Lebanon overnight and targeted several Hezbollah fighters in separate strikes.
It was unclear whether the deaths reported by the state news agency were linked to those Israeli strikes.
The Israeli military restated its warning for Lebanese residents not to approach the Litani River area in southern Lebanon while it battles Hezbollah.
It said it had intercepted a "suspicious aerial target" within the area its forces are presently occupying, and that two rockets were fired by Hezbollah into northern Israel, one of which was intercepted. There were no reports of casualties.
A Hezbollah lawmaker said on Friday that a US-mediated ceasefire in the war with Israel was meaningless, a day after it was extended for three weeks. The truce had been due to expire on Sunday.
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