Lebanon: Citizens Criticize State of 'General Mobilization' Against Corona But Abide By It

 A Banner telling citizens that they are banned for accessing the waterfront as part of the measure to curb the spread of the corona virus.
A Banner telling citizens that they are banned for accessing the waterfront as part of the measure to curb the spread of the corona virus.
TT

Lebanon: Citizens Criticize State of 'General Mobilization' Against Corona But Abide By It

 A Banner telling citizens that they are banned for accessing the waterfront as part of the measure to curb the spread of the corona virus.
A Banner telling citizens that they are banned for accessing the waterfront as part of the measure to curb the spread of the corona virus.

The Lebanese capital Beirut has turned into a large voluntary prison for its residents in an attempt to limit the spread of the Coronavirus after the government announced a state of "General Mobilization".

Patrols in Ashrafieh, Barbour, and Hamra confirm that people are abiding with the instructions to stay at home amid a total lock-down of most stores except for those selling groceries, which are not seeing many customers as the majority have resorted to having their groceries delivered to their homes.

The different precautionary measures adopted are being followed to different degrees in different regions. At the entrance to the Sabra and Shatila camps, traffic usual and people are still gathering on the street.

In Barbour, all stores are closed except for vegetable markets where people are taking no precautions. Their only concern is their day-to-day materials. One of them says: "If we work we eat if we don't we starve. There is no escaping from what God has written for us, with or without Corona".

According to surveys, only 15% of people are not abiding by the government's instructions, whether in Beirut or otherwise. Hisham, from the town of Ghazieh in South Lebanon, tells Asharq Al-Awsat that "90% of stores are closed. The municipality is raising awareness using 'friendly checkpoints' where participants maintain social distance wearing masks and carrying sanitizers and giving out pamphlets with precautionary measures to those who are without any protection".

Qantara, an activist in the popular movement tells us, "General Mobilization is not effective in ministries and public institutions. They need special procedures. The government is unable to meet the daily demands of people despite imposing a quarantine on them. It does not have what is needed to support their persistence. They ask us to help them but they don't help us back".

Ibrahim, who used to own a restaurant in Hamra Street, agrees, saying, "A state that respects itself provides compensation after announcing general mobilization".

Hiam al-Shami, a resident of Hamra Street, sees the General Mobilization as less of a precaution than those adopted in other countries.

She says that she "wanted to travel to Athens to meet my husband, but was told not to leave the house for 15 days if I were to travel. So I preferred to stay in Beirut where I could leave the house while taking the necessary precautions".

She adds: "Going around Hamra is sad, everything is closed. Even the American University of Beirut, which did not close its doors during every war in the region, is closed".

She admits that she has "foregone every luxury she was used to and is no longer shy to refuse to meet relatives and friends".



'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
TT

'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

 Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

After surviving more than a year of war in Gaza, Aisha Khaled is now afraid of dying of hunger if vital aid is cut off next year by a new Israeli law banning the UN Palestinian relief agency from operating in its territory.

The law, which has been widely criticised internationally, is due to come into effect in late January and could deny Khaled and thousands of others their main source of aid at a time when everything around them is being destroyed.

"For me and for a million refugees, if the aid stops, we will end. We will die from hunger not from war," the 31-year-old volunteer teacher told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

"If the school closes, where do we go? All the aspects of our lives are dependent on the agency: flour, food, water ...(medical) treatment, hospitals," Khaled said from an UNRWA school in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

"We depend on them after God," she said.

UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza, running the enclave's schools, healthcare clinics and other social services, as well as distributing aid.

Now, UNRWA-run buildings, including schools, are home to thousands forced to flee their homes after Israeli airstrikes reduced towns across the strip to wastelands of rubble.

UNRWA shelters have been frequently bombed during the year-long war, and at least 220 UNRWA staff have been killed, Reuters reported.

If the Israeli law as passed last month does come into effect, the consequences would be "catastrophic," said Inas Hamdan, UNRWA's Gaza communications officer.

"There are two million people in Gaza who rely on UNRWA for survival, including food assistance and primary healthcare," she said.

The law banning UNRWA applies to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in 1967 during the Six-Day War.

Israeli lawmakers who drafted the ban cited what they described as the involvement of a handful of UNRWA's thousands of staffers in the attack on southern Israel last year that triggered the war and said some staff were members of Hamas and other armed groups.

FRAGILE LIFELINE

The war in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas attack. Israel's military campaign has levelled much of Gaza and killed around 43,500 Palestinians, Gaza health officials say. Up to 10,000 people are believed to be dead and uncounted under the rubble, according to Gaza's Civil Emergency Service.

Most of the strip's 2.3 million people have been forced to leave their homes because of the fighting and destruction.

The ban ends Israel's decades-long agreement with UNRWA that covered the protection, movement and diplomatic immunity of the agency in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

For many Palestinians, UNRWA aid is their only lifeline, and it is a fragile one.

Last week, a committee of global food security experts warned there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in northern Gaza, where Israel renewed an offensive last month.

Israel rejected the famine warning, saying it was based on "partial, biased data".

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, said last week that it was continuing to "facilitate the implementation of humanitarian efforts" in Gaza.

But UN data shows the amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year and the United Nations has accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to the north.

"The daily average of humanitarian trucks the Israeli authorities allowed into Gaza last month is 30 trucks a day," Hamdan said, adding that the figure represents 6% of the supplies that were allowed into Gaza before this war began.

"More aid must be sent to Gaza, and UNRWA work should be facilitated to manage this aid entering Gaza," she said.

'BACKBONE' OF AID SYSTEM

Many other aid organizations rely on UNRWA to help them deliver aid and UN officials say the agency is the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza.

"From our perspective, and I am sure from many of the other humanitarian actors, it's an impossible task (to replace UNRWA)," said Oxfam GB's humanitarian lead Magnus Corfixen in a phone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"The priority is to ensure that they will remain ... because they are essential for us," he said.

UNRWA supports other agencies with logistics, helping them source the fuel they need to move staff and power desalination plants, he said.

"Without them, we will struggle with access to warehouses, having access to fuel, having access to trucks, being able to move around, being able to coordinate," Corfixen said, describing UNRWA as "essential".

UNRWA schools also offer rare respite for traumatised children who have lost everything.

Twelve-year-old Lamar Younis Abu Zraid fled her home in Maghazi in central Gaza at the beginning of the war last year.

The UNRWA school she used to attend as a student has become a shelter, and she herself has been living in another school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat for a year.

Despite the upheaval, in the UNRWA shelter she can enjoy some of the things she liked doing before war broke out.

She can see friends, attend classes, do arts and crafts and join singing sessions. Other activities are painfully new but necessary, like mental health support sessions to cope with what is happening.

She too is aware of the fragility of the lifeline she has been given. Now she has to share one copybook with a friend because supplies have run out.

"Before they used to give us books and pens, now they are not available," she said.