Want to get the Morning Brief by email? Click here to sign up.

The lira plunged to a new low yesterday, dropping below LL27,000 lira to the US dollar on the parallel market. The decline in the local currency's value follows Thursday’s decision by the central bank to increase the “lollar,” or “Lebanese dollar,” withdrawal rate from LL3,900 to LL8,000. Despite a monthly withdrawal limit of $3,000 per account, analysts expect the move to increase the supply of lira in the market, potentially driving further depreciation. Meanwhile, attempts to pass a capital control bill, which is seen as a prerequisite for reaching a much-needed agreement with International Monetary Fund, appear to have come to a standstill, with prominent legislators criticizing the most recent iteration of the bill after a leaked draft of the proposal received backlash, perceived as being too bank-friendly. Meanwhile, gas prices rose again this morning, with the cost of 20 liters of 95-octane fuel rising by LL10,800 to LL318,800, and 20 liters of diesel rising by LL17,800 to LL338,900. “The rise in the exchange rate of the dollar, which touched 27,000 pounds, is the main reason for the rise in fuel prices,” said George Brax, spokesperson for the gas station owners’ syndicate.

In the first known case of an international court ruling against a Lebanese bank over its enforcement of informal capital controls, a French court ordered Lebanon’s Saradar Bank to pay $2.8 million to a client residing in France, Reuters reported. The Nov. 19 ruling reportedly ordered the bank to pay the plaintiff, a Syrian citizen, all the funds she had deposited in two accounts in 2014, five years before the beginning of the financial collapse in Lebanon. Attorneys for the plaintiff called the ruling an “encouraging step” for other depositors with similar cases, while the bank told Reuters it would appeal the judgment, “which results from a misapplication of the Lebanese law.”

The Palestinian group Hamas will hold a funeral in Saida this morning for three of its members who were killed on Sunday in an attack on a funeral procession for another of its members who died in Friday night's explosion in the Burj al-Shemali refugee camp. Hamas accused gunmen from the rival Fatah movement of carrying out the attack, a claim which officials from Fatah have denied. The attack and ensuing clashes followed Friday's explosion in the camp, which was initially reported as having taken place in a Hamas weapons storage facility, although the group later denied this and said that the explosion was the result of faulty electrical wiring setting off oxygen canisters. On Sunday, Hamas had said four of its members were killed in the attack on the funeral procession, but later revised the count down to three. The Lebanese Army announced Sunday evening that Palestinian security forces in nearby al-Bass camp had handed over to the army’s custody a suspected perpetrator of the shootings.

With the most recent rift between Lebanon and several Gulf states still unresolved, a new diplomatic controversy erupted, this time with Bahrain, over the holding of a press conference last week in Beirut by the Bahraini Shiite opposition group al-Wifaq. The group, which has good relations with Hezbollah, held an event in the southern Beirut suburbs on Thursday to release its annual report on human rights violations in the kingdom, wherein it alleged that the Bahraini authorities had made more than 20,000 arbitrary arrests since 2011. Following an indignant reaction from the kingdom, Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi both pledged to investigate the incident. Meanwhile, despite an announcement earlier this month by French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman that they had “agreed to establish a Saudi-French mechanism for humanitarian assistance” to Lebanon, no details have been forthcoming on what form that assistance would take; in the meantime, bin Salman has embarked on a tour of the region in which he and various other Gulf leaders issued a series of statements criticizing Hezbollah.