Grafitti in Beirut. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today/File photo)
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Amal Movement-affiliated MP Qassem Hashem was lightly injured on Saturday, a party spokesperson told L’Orient Today, after the Israeli army fired teargas and stun grenades towards him and Lebanese journalists near the occupied Shebaa farms in South Lebanon. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) claimed that Israeli forces fired tear gas in response to “a dozen individuals” breaching the UN-demarcated Blue Line. Israel previously used tear gas in retaliation to alleged border breaches and last Wednesday injured three Hezbollah members approaching the border security fence with a “non-lethal weapon.” Alleged border breaches by Israeli construction works for the past months led to repeated standoffs along the border. The Lebanese Foreign Ministry last week said it would file a complaint to the UN over Israel’s annexation of the northern part of the village of Ghajar, which straddles the Blue Line between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Days after the annexation, unidentified parties in South Lebanon and Israel briefly exchanged artillery fire.
The lira-to-dollar parallel market exchange rate recovered to LL93,000 from a surge to nearly LL99,000 on Saturday after months of relative stability. The parallel market exchange rate gradually dropped to around LL91,000 since March after Banque du Liban (BDL) intervened in response to an all-time low of LL143,000 to the dollar. Authorities and experts theorized that the lira’s depreciation is strongly linked to political instability in Lebanon. The latest drop occurred amid fears of a vacancy at the helm of the central bank as current BDL Governor Riad Salameh is set to end his 30-year term this month. His decades in office are blemished with ongoing local and international corruption investigations.
Firefighters on Saturday extinguished a wildfire in Akkar that broke out a day earlier, charring 15 hectares of forest, volunteer firefighters from the local Akkar Trail team told L'Orient Today. The blaze had spread through rugged terrain in the Kherbeh field in Wadi Jhannam to the surrounding hills, near the villages of Qamamayn, Meshmesh and Harrar. Exceptionally high temperatures in Lebanon this weekend are the latest in climate conditions aggravating the risk of fires as the country struggles to mobilize the resources necessary to prevent and extinguish them.
Mount Lebanon Judge Nicolas Mansour ordered forced labor sentences for several suspects implicated in the death of a Civil Defense member killed during a 2018 clash between supporters of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) and the Lebanese Democratic Party (LDP). On May 8, 2018, during the parliamentary elections, clashes erupted between PSP and LDP supporters in Choueifat, south of Beirut. The clashes involved gunfire and explosives, including a “premeditated crime through the RPG grenade attack targeting a PSP center” that killed Ala' Abou Faraj.
As an outbreak of cat coronavirus in Cyprus reportedly spreads to Lebanon, Animal pathophysiologist Alain Abi Rizk advised cat owners to keep their pets at home and municipal workers to report any increase in mortality among stray cats. Abi Rizk said that “several cases” had been reported in Lebanon of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), also known as feline coronavirus, which mainly manifests in diarrhea. Since January, 300,000 cats have died in Cyprus as a result of feline coronavirus. The disease cannot be transmitted to humans, Abi Rizk said, though tourists traveling to Cyprus and back to Lebanon can contribute to its spread to their feline friends.
Caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib withdrew from leading a committee on the repatriation of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The Foreign Ministry said Bou Habib’s withdrawal is due to his upcoming travel plans, explicitly unlinking the decision from “foreign developments and decisions.” Last Wednesday, the European Parliament passed a Lebanon-related resolution that included an article stating that suitable conditions for refugee returns had not yet been met. Several political figures criticized the resolution, the latest of whom was Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem, who on Saturday claimed that the EU “is controlling [Lebanon’s] internal decisions.” Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch reported that Lebanon had arrested more 2,000 Syrians and deported 1,800 since April amid increasingly aggressive policing of displaced Syrian communities in Lebanon and a rise in anti-Syrian refugee rhetoric from political and religious leaders.
In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from over the weekend: “So you’ve been bitten by a snake: What should you do?”
Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz