Lebanon: Aoun Pushes for Govt Crisis With Hezbollah Support for Vetoing Third

Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri holds a document as he speaks during the 16th anniversary of the assassination of his father, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in Beirut, Lebanon, February 14, 2021. (REUTERS)
Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri holds a document as he speaks during the 16th anniversary of the assassination of his father, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in Beirut, Lebanon, February 14, 2021. (REUTERS)
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Lebanon: Aoun Pushes for Govt Crisis With Hezbollah Support for Vetoing Third

Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri holds a document as he speaks during the 16th anniversary of the assassination of his father, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in Beirut, Lebanon, February 14, 2021. (REUTERS)
Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri holds a document as he speaks during the 16th anniversary of the assassination of his father, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in Beirut, Lebanon, February 14, 2021. (REUTERS)

Lebanon’s political stalemate is awaiting a reaction by French President Emmanuel Macron over President Michel Aoun’s insistence to lock the doors to the birth of the new government.

Despite Macron’s efforts and his direct involvement in the government crisis, a meeting on Friday between Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri in Baabda brought back negotiations to form a new government to ground zero.

Sources with knowledge of the matter told Asharq Al-Awsat that the French president contacted Aoun ahead of the meeting. They also stressed that Macron would not remain idle in the face of the Lebanese president’s intransigence in his refusal to push the government’s formation process forward.

In a speech on Sunday, Hariri lashed out at Aoun, accusing him of obstructing all attempts to form a government and brandishing a list he said he received from the president that included names of persons the latter personally selected to join the government.

The Lebanese presidency responded to Hariri’s speech by accusing him of imposing new norms outside the rules of the cabinet formation process, but without denying the names contained in the list.

A statement by the presidency said that Hariri’s speech included “many fallacies and incorrect statements.”

According to the sources, Hariri coordinated with Macron in every point and obstacle that is still delaying the formation of the government, especially as the French president has become aware of all the details.

They added that Macron would not remain silent and would express, in the coming days, the appropriate position towards the party that is obstructing the birth of the government.

The sources emphasized that they had enough indications that Hezbollah was backing Aoun’s insistence on having the blocking third in the government. Hariri had reiterated his rejection to granting the vetoing third to any side – a position that was also expressed by Amal Movement and the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP).

Therefore, Aoun finds himself politically isolated and forced to hand over his papers to Hezbollah. He is currently trying, according to the sources, to lead the country to a government crisis, as the only way to restore the political role of his son-in-law, former Minister and MP Gebran Bassil.



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.