Lebanese Leaders' Response to Reform Calls 'Disappointing', Says UN Official

A man, clad in a mask due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stands amid debris on a balcony in the partially destroyed neighborhood of Mar Mikhael, Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 14, 2020. (AFP)
A man, clad in a mask due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stands amid debris on a balcony in the partially destroyed neighborhood of Mar Mikhael, Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 14, 2020. (AFP)
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Lebanese Leaders' Response to Reform Calls 'Disappointing', Says UN Official

A man, clad in a mask due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stands amid debris on a balcony in the partially destroyed neighborhood of Mar Mikhael, Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 14, 2020. (AFP)
A man, clad in a mask due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stands amid debris on a balcony in the partially destroyed neighborhood of Mar Mikhael, Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 14, 2020. (AFP)

Warnings by Western officials over the need for reforms in Lebanon had often been met with disappointing responses by the country’s political leaders, a senior United Nations official said on Monday following this month’s Beirut port explosion.

US and French officials visiting the city after the Aug. 4 blast that killed 178 people said they had made clear they would not extend a financial lifeline to the country if its leaders did not tackle corruption and mismanagement.

The officials were representing the International Support Group (ISG) for Lebanon which includes the United Nations, the United States, France and Britain.

“With grave concerns ISG Ambassadors today discussed the deepening overall crisis in Lebanon,” tweeted Jan Kubis, UN special coordinator for Lebanon.

He said tough warnings had been delivered to the authorities and political leaders and their responses had often been rather disappointing.

“Expectations of the international community are well known - without urgent reforms that require broad political support Lebanon cannot count on any bailout,” he tweeted.

The call echoes others from Western powers, including French President Emmanuel Macron and US Undersecretary for Political Affairs David Hale, who both visited Beirut. Hale said Lebanon needed “economic and fiscal reforms, an end to dysfunctional governance and to empty promises”.

The detonation of highly-explosive material stored unsafely for years at the port injured 6,000, left 300,000 homeless and destroyed whole neighborhoods.

The now-caretaker cabinet on Monday extended a state of emergency in the capital until Sept. 18.

The government resigned amid renewed protests against ruling politicians blamed for a financial crisis that developed even before the blast, that ravaged the currency, saw banks freeze depositors out of their savings and sent unemployment soaring.

Analysts estimate that after the explosion that wrecked the port, a main trade artery, Lebanon’s external financing needs swelled to more than $30 billion from $24 billion.

The outgoing government, which took office in January with the backing of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and its allies, had not made progress in talks with the International Monetary Fund launched after Lebanon defaulted on foreign currency debt.

Forming a new government is likely to be complicated due to factional rifts in the country’s sectarian power-sharing system.



Israeli Likud Party Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex West Bank

Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
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Israeli Likud Party Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex West Bank

Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)

Cabinet ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party called on Wednesday for Israel to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the Knesset recesses at the end of the month.

They issued a petition ahead of Netanyahu's meeting next week with US President Donald Trump, where discussions are expected to center on a potential 60-day Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

The petition was signed by 15 cabinet ministers and Amir Ohana, speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

There was no immediate response from the prime minister's office. Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, long a confidant of Netanyahu, did not sign the petition. He has been in Washington since Monday for talks on Iran and Gaza.

"We ministers and members of Knesset call for applying Israeli sovereignty and law immediately on Judea and Samaria," they wrote, using the biblical names for the West Bank captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Their petition cited Israel's recent achievements against both Iran and Iran's allies and the opportunity afforded by the strategic partnership with the US and support of Trump.

It said the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel demonstrated that the concept of Jewish settlement blocs alongside the establishment of a Palestinian state poses an existential threat to Israel.

"The task must be completed, the existential threat removed from within, and another massacre in the heart of the country must be prevented," the petition stated.

Most countries regard Jewish settlements in the West Bank, many of which cut off Palestinian communities from one another, as a violation of international law.

With each advance of Israeli settlements and roads, the West Bank becomes more fractured, further undermining prospects for a contiguous land on which Palestinians could build a sovereign state long envisaged in Middle East peacemaking.

Israel's pro-settler politicians have been emboldened by the return to the White House of Trump, who has proposed Palestinians leave Gaza, a suggestion widely condemned across the Middle East and beyond.