A view of the Beirut port on July 31, 2022. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
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Four out of 16 grain silos in the northern block at the Beirut port, damaged in the Aug. 4, 2020 port blast, collapsed yesterday after fires repeatedly ignited over the past three weeks in the fermented grain still contained in the destroyed stores. The remaining structures in the block are being monitored “minute to minute” as experts anticipate their collapse will follow suit. Civil Defense, the Lebanese Army, the Red Cross, General Security and firefighters maintained a security line Sunday, while helicopters flew above the silos, dousing the structure in water and quelling the rising dust. The ministries of health and environment had last Monday issued instructions to be followed in case of the structures’ total or partial collapse, while the army on Friday evacuated the area within 500 meters of the port and the Red Cross late last week distributed face masks to the surrounding area’s inhabitants and advised them to keep their windows closed in the event of a collapse. However, the quantity of the dust in the air of areas surrounding the port following the partial collapse was minimal and few people were spotted wearing masks. The silos have been at the heart of a legal battle as the government had approved their demolition amid calls from relatives of blast victims and civil society groups for their conservation and classification as a national monument — these calls were most recently reiterated in two expedited law proposals, which were controversially refused in a Parliament session Tuesday.
US mediator in the indirect maritime border negotiations between Lebanon and Israel Amos Hochstein met with Energy Minister Walid Fayad yesterday. President Michel Aoun, with whom Hochstein is scheduled to meet today, announced last week the diplomat’s return after he last visited Lebanon in June, following a spike in tensions between Lebanon and Israel, instigated by the latter's deployment of a floating production, storage and offloading unit from the power company Energean in the disputed Karish offshore gas field. Meanwhile, Hezbollah, whose leader Hassan Nasrallah had claimed during an interview readiness to defend Lebanon's offshore territory, released a video yesterday purportedly showing the Israeli-deployed ships in the party's crosshairs. During the same interview Nasrallah claimed readiness to supply Lebanon with donated Iranian fuel pending government approval, to which caretaker Energy Minister “agreed” in a televised interview with Al-Mayadeen Friday after activists raided his ministry on Thursday in protest of electricity shortages and demanded to meet with him.
The Lebanese judiciary on Friday ordered the seizure of the Laodicea, a Syrian-flagged ship docked at the port of Tripoli in North Lebanon and carrying grains that were, according to the Ukrainian Embassy in Beirut, “stolen by Russia from Ukrainian warehouses.” Public Prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat charged State Security with the investigation, until the end of which the ship will remain sealed, after Lebanon “received a number of complaints and warnings from several Western countries,” caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said. The Russian Embassy in Lebanon has denied knowledge of the ship or its contents, while an official at a Turkey-based grains trading company has denied that the cargo is stolen. The official added the shipment was intended to be sold to private buyers, noting that flour could be sold at a higher price in Lebanon than Syria. Lebanon has been facing a bread crisis for several months, a key element of which has been flour shortages exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On Sunday, after vandalism, protests and incidents of discriminatory violence occurred during the week due to bread shortages, a committee tasked with policing subsidized flour and wheat usage announced the crisis was “90 percent over.” Parliament approved Tuesday a loan intended to finance wheat imports from the World Bank, from which a delegation visited between Wednesday and Friday.
Banque du Liban extended Circular 161, originally released on Dec. 16 to allow banks to sell dollars to depositors according to government exchange rate platform Sayrafa, until the end of August. BDL governor Riad Salameh has defended the circular on several occasions, claiming that its influence on the drop in liquidity has been limited as the bank bought US dollars from money exchangers, and instead blaming central bank payments for subsidies and the depreciation of the Euro for the depletion of the country’s foreign currency reserves. The lack of comprehensive fiscal and monetary reforms will likely continue to weigh on the Lebanese economy. The promised reforms attached to April’s International Monetary Fund agreement continue to stall. So far, out of several laws required to unlock the $3 billion assistance package, only the bank secrecy law has been approved by Parliament. Another IMF requirement, the 2022 budget draft law, could potentially be stalled if the Finance Ministry does not deliver information by Tuesday to the Finance and Budget Committee regarding the use of multiple exchange rates in forecasting revenues and expenses. Stalling on meeting the IMF’s requirements risks further paralyzing Lebanon’s political machine: Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said Saturday “I will not call for a session to elect the president of the republic until the reform laws requested by the International Monetary Fund are passed.”
Around 200 demonstrators mobilized Sunday for a rally in solidarity with “women and marginalized groups targeted by systematic violent practices by the authorities, the media and certain sections of society.” On Thursday, human rights watchdog Amnesty International condemned sexist harassment within the Parliament, which it described as having a “hostile environment” against women, perpetrated by “the Speaker of Parliament himself.” The rights group’s statement was issued in response to reports by Forces of Change MP Cynthia Zarazir of being insulted during Tuesday’s Parliament session, finding erotic magazines in her office and not being given a parking space — all of which the Parliament General Secretariat subsequently denied. In December 2020, the Lebanese Parliament passed Law No. 205, which criminalizes sexual harassment and provides protections to both victims and witnesses who testify against perpetrators.
In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from over the weekend: ‘Purpose insufficiently demonstrated,’ ‘reasonable doubt’: Lebanese travelers grounded by rising number of EU, US visa rejections