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Lebanon’s Hariri Expected to Meet Aoun on Cabinet Formation

President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri meet at Baabda Palace. Dalati and Nohra file photo
President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri meet at Baabda Palace. Dalati and Nohra file photo
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Lebanon’s Hariri Expected to Meet Aoun on Cabinet Formation

President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri meet at Baabda Palace. Dalati and Nohra file photo
President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri meet at Baabda Palace. Dalati and Nohra file photo

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri is expected to end his silence and meet with President Michel Aoun despite his proposal for a greater role for the caretaker cabinet in dealing with Lebanon’s economic situation.

Hariri is expected to visit Aoun at Baabda Palace early next week as part of his efforts to form a new government and to end the deadlock which was further complicated by the president’s proposal.

Aoun’s call was made during an extraordinary meeting of the Higher Defense Council that he chaired at Baabda Palace on Thursday.

“The current situation in the country is an extraordinary situation that requires an extraordinary follow-up and taking decisions to deal with this delicate situation,” he said.

The cabinet “is serving in a caretaker capacity. But the current circumstances require some expansion of the caretaker work in order to meet the needs of the country and citizens until a new government is formed,” he added.

But Asharq Al-Awsat learned that former prime ministers Fouad Saniora and Tammam Salam met with Hariri on Friday night to discuss Aoun’s proposal. Ex-PM Najib Miqati did not attend the meeting for being abroad.

Although the talks were held in secret away from the media spotlight, the conferees agreed that it was important for Hariri to resume his task in forming a government of experts based on an initiative launched by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Well-informed political sources said Hariri has no interest in the stalemate after he took upon himself to implement the French initiative to prevent Lebanon’s financial and economic collapse.

The sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that Hariri has come up with a lineup of 18 ministers that he is set to propose to Aoun.

The PM-designate has also decided to avoid a dispute with the president over his proposal to expand the role of the caretaker cabinet, although Hariri has agreed with Saniora and Salam that such a move would violate the constitution.

Hariri has avoided to make a public response in order not to stir sectarian tensions, the sources added.

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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.