Plan to Resolve Lebanese Govt. Crisis Is 'Dead on Arrival'; Mikati Won't Resign

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Monday at the Grand Serail. (Dalati & Nohra)
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Monday at the Grand Serail. (Dalati & Nohra)
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Plan to Resolve Lebanese Govt. Crisis Is 'Dead on Arrival'; Mikati Won't Resign

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Monday at the Grand Serail. (Dalati & Nohra)
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Monday at the Grand Serail. (Dalati & Nohra)

Media leaks that a settlement is being concocted to resolve the government crisis has created a stir in Lebanon.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati met with parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday. The normally calm premier left the meeting angrily without speaking to reporters, signaling that no end is in sight to the government crisis.

The cabinet hasn't convened in almost two months after the Amal movement - headed by Berri - and Hezbollah objected to the investigations carried out by Judge Tarek Bitar in the August 2020 Beirut Port explosion.

The Amal and Hezbollah ministers have since been boycotting government meetings and are demanding that course of the investigations be "rectified".

No sooner had leaks of the alleged "settlement" emerged on Monday, that political parties distanced themselves from it. So quick were they abandon the plan that it was not clear who came up with it in the first place.

Berri, meanwhile, told Asharq Al-Awsat that no dispute had erupted between him and Mikati.

My relationship with him is "good", he stressed.

He also dismissed the settlement, details of which had circulated on social media on Monday. The plan had called for the resignation of four judges as a condition for any solution to resolving the government crisis.

Berri dismissed the reports, saying: "This old idea was dropped a long time ago."

He revealed that he did not have information about any settlement.

Later, Mikati's office issued a statement saying that he had expressed to Berri his rejection of any meddling in the work of the judiciary.

He also expressed his adamant rejection of the exploitation of government to interfere in judicial affairs.

His stance has been conveyed to Berri and President Michel Aoun.

Moreover, his office denied reports that Mikati was intending to resign.

The premier will forge ahead with his duties and efforts to resolve the government crisis, it added.

"Any position he takes later will be tied to his national and personal convictions," it said.

The PM had expressed on Monday his support for trying presidents and ministers before the Supreme Council, not the judiciary.

On the port probe, he said that "the government position is clear. Just as we do not meddle in the judiciary, it should respect constitutional frameworks as well" - a reference to his support for presidents and ministers to be tried before the Supreme Council.

"Just as officer are tried before the Military Court, then so should a minister be tried before a special tribunal," he explained.

The port investigations have stalled with ministers and former ministers refusing Bitar's summons. The officials have accused the judge of political bias.

Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah said that the "situation of the judiciary is the worst it has been since the founding of Lebanon."

He accused some judges of seeking to destroy the judiciary.

Amal's Development and Liberation bloc MP Hani Qobeissi said: "So many judges are not seeking justice in our country .. they are instead seeking politics and gains through arbitrary decisions."

He added that they are ignoring forensic evidence in the port blast.



UN Agency Says Israel Shuts 4 Schools in East Jerusalem

A boy stands outside the gate of the Kalandia vocational training center (KTC), run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was raided by Israeli forces earlier at the Qalandiya camp for Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)
A boy stands outside the gate of the Kalandia vocational training center (KTC), run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was raided by Israeli forces earlier at the Qalandiya camp for Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)
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UN Agency Says Israel Shuts 4 Schools in East Jerusalem

A boy stands outside the gate of the Kalandia vocational training center (KTC), run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was raided by Israeli forces earlier at the Qalandiya camp for Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)
A boy stands outside the gate of the Kalandia vocational training center (KTC), run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was raided by Israeli forces earlier at the Qalandiya camp for Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says Israeli forces raided four of its schools in east Jerusalem, ordering their closure.

Israel has severed all ties with the agency, known as UNRWA, and bars it from operating in its territory. It says the agency allowed itself to be infiltrated by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, allegations denied by UN officials.

UNRWA said police entered a training center by force on Tuesday, firing tear gas and sound grenades and ordering its evacuation. It said 350 students and 30 staff were present during the raid on the Qalandiya Training Center.

It said police and city officials ordered the closure of three other schools in east Jerusalem, two of which proceeded with the school day.

Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne said police did not enter the UN buildings and that Jerusalem municipal authorities carried out the closures. He said police were deployed to protect the city workers, using “riot dispersal” means in one case where a crowd threw stones at them outside a UN facility.

Roland Friedrich, UNRWA director for the occupied West Bank, including east Jerusalem, said the raids were an “unacceptable violation of United Nations privileges and immunities,” and a “denial of the right to education for children and trainees.”