Lebanon: Diab Rejects Aoun’s Call For Cabinet Session, Prioritizes Govt Formation

Prime Minister Hassan Diab meets with President Michel Aoun at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon Janaury 21, 2020. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Prime Minister Hassan Diab meets with President Michel Aoun at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon Janaury 21, 2020. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
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Lebanon: Diab Rejects Aoun’s Call For Cabinet Session, Prioritizes Govt Formation

Prime Minister Hassan Diab meets with President Michel Aoun at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon Janaury 21, 2020. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Prime Minister Hassan Diab meets with President Michel Aoun at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon Janaury 21, 2020. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

A silent crisis has emerged between Lebanon's President Michel Aoun and caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab, due to the latter’s refusal to respond to the president’s insistence on the holding of a cabinet session.

Ministerial sources well-informed of the matter told Asharq Al-Awsat that Diab - who moved immediately to his home in Talat al-Khayyat in Beirut following his resignation – attends his office in the Grand Serail only periodically and insists not to convene the Council of Ministers, but presides over ministerial committee meetings to manage the country’s affairs “within very narrow limits.”

The sources added that Diab has been taking lately unprecedented security measures as he moves from his home to the Serail, saying that his refusal to meet Aoun’s demand was based on several considerations, including the “unfounded allegations against him in the port explosion case”.

Moreover, the caretaker prime minister sees that he was forced to resign after Aoun dismissed the government in response to the wishes of his political heir, head of the Free Patriotic Movement, MP Gebran Bassil.

According to the sources, Diab wants the new government to be formed immediately and fears the negative repercussions of hindering its birth, amid rumors that his caretaking role would last until the end of Aoun’s tenure.

Thus, his compliance with Aoun’s desire to hold a cabinet session will push him into a political clash with the Sunni street, which will see his consent as an agreement with the president to obstruct the formation of the new government.

Also, the sources noted that Diab would not provide the political cover for the adoption by the Cabinet of an inflated budget that is intended to divert attention from the high deficit in return for the decrease in imports due to the lack of a reform plan.



Olmert: ‘Humanitarian City’ in Rafah Would Be Concentration Camp for Palestinians

Former Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert looks on during an interview with AFP (Agence France-Presse) in Paris on June 9, 2025. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)
Former Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert looks on during an interview with AFP (Agence France-Presse) in Paris on June 9, 2025. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)
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Olmert: ‘Humanitarian City’ in Rafah Would Be Concentration Camp for Palestinians

Former Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert looks on during an interview with AFP (Agence France-Presse) in Paris on June 9, 2025. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)
Former Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert looks on during an interview with AFP (Agence France-Presse) in Paris on June 9, 2025. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)

Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert said that the “humanitarian city” that Israel’s defense minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, the Guardian reported on Sunday.

Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert told the daily, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.

Israeli Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, has ordered the military to start drawing up operational plans for construction of the “humanitarian city” on the ruins of southern Gaza, to house initially 600,000 people and eventually the entire Palestinian population, stated the Guardian.

“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” Olmert told he daily, when asked about the plans laid out by Katz last week. Once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said.

The “humanitarian city” project is backed by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel’s refusal to withdraw from the area Katz envisages for the camp is a sticking point in the faltering negotiations for a ceasefire deal, Israeli media have reported.