A displaced Palestinian child sits in front of a makeshift tent as a woman sweeps the inside at a camp beside a street in Rafah on March 14, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Hamas militant group. (Credit: Mohammed Abed/AFP)
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Catch up on yesterday’s LIVE coverage of Day 159 of the Gaza war here.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib rejected attempts to quell Hezbollah and Israel’s border fighting with “half-hearted solutions'' that ignore the Israeli occupation of the Lebanese-claimed Shebaa Farms and Kfar Shouba Hills. Bou Habib, calling for support to enable the Lebanese Army’s deployment to the border, downplayed Israel’s willingness to wage a ground invasion of Lebanon — a day after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah repeated his claim that the party’s attacks deterred any Israeli military expansion.
US Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf warned that “Hezbollah is leading Lebanon into a dangerous situation,” saying her country “look[s] forward to the Lebanese state monopolizing arms.”
Cross-border shelling continued — described as a “drone war of attrition,” by Bou Habib — with no casualties reported yesterday, as Hamas buried its third official assassinated by Israeli drone strikes in Lebanon, Hadi Mustafa, with dozens of mourners in attendance.
Israeli airstrikes destroyed seven houses and severely damaged ten others in Mais al-Jabal (Marjayoun) on Wednesday evening. During a lull in cross-border fighting last November accorded by the truce between Hamas and Israel, Hezbollah sent technical teams to estimate damage to homes in southern Lebanon beginning a campaign to compensate affected residents — a similar measure to its reconstruction and refinancing campaign for homeowners whose properties were damaged in the 2006 war.
A lemon tree vendetta left one person shot dead, a little girl hospitalized by a stray bullet, and cars, houses and fields aflame in Akkar, L’Orient Today’s correspondent reported. Gunmen thought to be part of the Helou family shot and killed Ali Breiss over accusations of chopping down a lemon tree, the deceased’s family said. The Helou family denied the allegations and condemned “thugs taking advantage of this unfortunate event” to commit acts of vandalism and theft. Disputes often turn deadly amid a rampant presence of unlicensed firearms across Lebanon, often sparking or rekindling family rivalries and leading to further escalation and retaliatory violence.
Lebanon, determined to be one of the least prepared countries in the world for climate change, needs urgent investment to face serious environmental concerns and lift itself out of a multifaceted crisis that has left public services in ruins, the World Bank concluded in a report published Wednesday. “The cost of inaction today will be too high for future generations,” the organization’s Middle East director Jean-Christophe Carret. The World Bank estimates that Lebanon could see its economic crisis compounded by the costs of climate change, and suggested an investment of $7.6 billion over the next four years in energy, water, transport, and solid waste. The Lebanon Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR), expects Lebanon, under the status quo, to face challenges in water availability and hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to key sectors, including agriculture and tourism. The report’s recommendation to decarbonize the electricity sector promises financial benefits and emissions reductions of over 40 percent. Last May, the Energy Ministry announced the engagement of eleven consortia to provide 165 megawatts in solar energy to supply public electricity provider Electricité du Liban’s grid — which operated at a loss for decades, providing spotty coverage and forcing people to rely on costly private diesel generators.
Pope Francis recognized a healing miracle attributed to 17th-century Maronite Patriarch Estephan Douaihy. Immediately following the announcement, church bells rang out in Zgharta, the northern Lebanese village where Douaihy was from. The date of his beatification has not yet been set. Born in Ehden, North Lebanon, in 1630, Douaihy was patriarch from 1670 until his death in 1704. He founded numerous schools and convents and is known as one of the Maronite Church’s most prolific historians. He was recognized as venerable by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008.
Relatives of the Aug. 4, 2020 Beirut port blast urged for the probe into the explosion to resume after two years of paralysis during a meeting with recently-appointed, acting top prosecutor Jamal Hajjar. Activist William Noun, whose brother, firefighter Joe Noun, was killed responding to the blast, told L’Orient Today Hajjar “did not want to go into the details" of the case. Hajjar’s predecessor as Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Ghassan Oueidat, halted the probe’s lead investigator Tarek Bitar’s attempt last January to restart the investigation — which included new summons, naming the top prosecutor among others. ISF members on Wednesday attacked protesters, including former Beirut Bar Association chief MP Melhem Khalaf, during a sit-in in front of the Justice Palace in support of three lawyers and activists Wassef Harakeh, Ali Abbas and Pierre Gemayel, who are campaigning for the resumption of the investigation.
The US Embassy in Lebanon announced the donation of 15 technical vehicles, which include equipment intended for patrols and security missions. Last week, the ISF began a recruitment campaign to hire 800 members by the end of the month, exclusively open to those who applied and met the entrance criteria in 2018-19, after the retirement or desertion of nearly 5,500 personnel since the onset of the economic crisis. The US has been a prominent supporter among the foreign actors contributing in cash and kind to maintain security forces operational, announcing last January $72 million in stipends for ISF and Lebanese Army personnel — whose salaries and those of the rest of the public sector have been decimated by the lira’s depreciation.
At least 31,341 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the latest figures from the enclave’s health ministry. US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer called for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza, warning of dwindling support for Israel, a week after US Vice President Kamala Harris called for an immediate cease-fire. Earlier the same day, US Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf said a new truce proposal was awaiting Hamas’ reply. With famine looming over Gaza, where the health ministry says at least 20 children have died from malnutrition and dehydration over the past weeks, Israeli officials continue to tout a ground invasion of Rafah — the last refuge for 1.5 million displaced Palestinians.
In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from yesterday: “In Tripoli’s Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen, ex-rival fighters light up former frontlines with solar energy”
Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz