Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in his office in Ain al-Tineh, March 5, 2024. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri called for the establishing of an international fact-finding committee into "violations against workers" committed by Israel in Lebanon, in a statement published Thursday on the occasion of Labor Day.
“This May 1st must be an open national call to the state in all its authorities, as well as to the international community and its human rights and judicial organizations, to act to compel Israel to immediately stop its aggression, before anything else, and to expedite the formation of an international fact-finding commission into the crimes that the Israeli occupation forces continue to commit and systematically document, in audio and video, against workers and their workplaces, especially farmers in the southern border areas and south of the Litani River," Berri wrote.
Berri emphasized that "all solidarity and sympathy go to Lebanon’s workers, employers, professionals, farmers, agricultural laborers, paramedics, medical and nursing staff, and journalists in the Bekaa and the southern suburbs, especially those steadfast in the south and those who have been unjustly displaced from their homes as a result of Israeli aggression, which has turned, and continues to turn, their livelihoods, fields, homes, and factories into scorched earth using internationally prohibited weapons and munitions, in an unprecedented manner in human history.”
Despite a fragile cease-fire coming into effect between Hezbollah and Israel on April 17, Israel continues targeting southern Lebanon and destroying entire villages in the border area, while Hezbollah attacks Israeli forces and machinery in southern Lebanon.
