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Lebanon: Shiite Duo Insists on Finance Ministry After New US Sanctions

Then-Lebanon’s Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil walks to attend the cabinet meeting in Baabda, Lebanon May 27, 2019. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Then-Lebanon’s Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil walks to attend the cabinet meeting in Baabda, Lebanon May 27, 2019. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
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Lebanon: Shiite Duo Insists on Finance Ministry After New US Sanctions

Then-Lebanon’s Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil walks to attend the cabinet meeting in Baabda, Lebanon May 27, 2019. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Then-Lebanon’s Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil walks to attend the cabinet meeting in Baabda, Lebanon May 27, 2019. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

A meeting on Tuesday between President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Mustafa Adib failed to reach an agreement over the general framework of the new government, sources with knowledge of the matter told Asharq Al-Awsat.

The sources explained that Aoun insisted on a government of 24 or 20 ministers, while Adib refused to go back on his decision to form a cabinet of 14 ministers, stressing that there was no justification for the presence of an enlarged government as several ministries could be abolished and others could be merged together.

The sources revealed that the meeting - which preceded the decision issued by the US Treasury to impose sanctions on the two former ministers, MP Ali Hassan Khalil and Youssef Fenianos - ended with an agreement on the principle of rotating the portfolios between the different sects.

But the rotation agreement will clash with the insistence of the Shiite duo, Amal Party and Hezbollah - to maintain the Ministry of Finance because it allows the Shiites to have the third signature on the financial decrees and decisions, along with the signatures of the President of the Republic, the prime minister, and the relevant ministers.

The sources emphasized that the divergence of views between Aoun and Adib would hinder the birth of the new government, which was expected to be formed before Sunday, that is, two days before the deadline set by French President Emmanuel Macron.

According to the sources, the Shiite duo had shown some flexibility, but with the US sanctions imposed on Khalil and Fenianos, Amal and Hezbollah might be forced to harden their position.

On Tuesday, the US slapped sanctions on the two former ministers over their ties with Hezbollah.

Although these sanctions are still being studied by the Shiite duo, specifically by Speaker Nabih Berri, because they affected Khalil, his political aide, the sources said that meetings were held away from the spotlight to create the appropriate conditions for the birth of the government to avoid a political problem with Macron, who had threatened to impose European sanctions on those who hinder the implementation of the French initiative.

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An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
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An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)

An Israeli airstrike that killed three journalists and wounded others in Lebanon last month was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime, an international human rights group said Monday.
The Oct. 25 airstrike killed three journalists as they slept at a guesthouse in southeast Lebanon in one of the deadliest attacks on the media since the Israel-Hezbollah war began 13 months ago.
Eleven other journalists have been killed and eight wounded since then, Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said.
More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry. More than 1 million people have been displaced since Israeli ground troops invaded while Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel - and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes.
Human Rights Watch determined that Israeli forces carried out the Oct. 25 attack using an air-dropped bomb equipped with a US produced Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, guidance kit.
The group said the US government should suspend weapons transfers to Israel because of the military´s repeated "unlawful attacks on civilians, for which US officials may be complicit in war crimes."
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the report.
The Biden administration said in May that Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but that wartime conditions prevented US officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.
The journalists killed in the airstrike in the southeastern town of Hasbaya were camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida of the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who worked for Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV.
Human Rights Watch said a munition struck the single-story building and detonated upon hitting the floor.
"Israel’s use of US arms to unlawfully attack and kill journalists away from any military target is a terrible mark on the United States as well as Israel," said Richard Weir, the senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Weir added that "the Israeli military’s previous deadly attacks on journalists without any consequences give little hope for accountability in this or future violations against the media."
Human Rights Watch said that it found remnants at the site and reviewed photographs of pieces collected by the resort owner and determined that they were consistent with a JDAM guidance kit assembled and sold by the US company Boeing.

The JDAM is affixed to air-dropped bombs and allows them to be guided to a target by using satellite coordinates, making the weapon accurate to within several meters, the group said.
In November 2023, two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV were killed in a drone strike at their reporting spot. A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and seriously wounded other journalists from France´s international news agency Agence France-Presse and Qatar´s Al-Jazeera TV on a hilltop not far from the Israeli border.