ICJ says Israel’s presence in Palestinian territory is unlawful, amounting to de facto annexation, Israeli strike in south Lebanon targeted Hezbollah’s ammunition depot, Nasrallah and Gemayel agree that the party negotiating with Israel on behalf of Lebanon is only the state, Nasrallah promises Hezbollah will expand its range of targets if Tel Aviv continues its indiscriminate attacks on civilians, Israel’s Knesset votes to reject Palestinian statehood, Houthi drone strikes Tel Aviv killing one, Israel struck Yemen’s Hodeidah in response to Houthi attacks, Results of Syria’s parliamentary elections show that President Bashar Assad’s Baath party has won a majority of seats, as expected, As-Suwayda movement opens nominations for political committee as police headquarters fires at demonstrators, ‘Horrible’ Israeli airstrike on the southern Lebanese town of Umm al-Tout killed five Syrian civilians, including three children, Syrian businessman Mohammad Baraa Katirji killed in Israeli airstrike along the Syrian-Lebanese border, Netanyahu opposes the establishment of a hospital for children from Gaza on Israeli territory, Highly infectious poliovirus found in the Strip’s sewage samples, Ultra-Orthodox Israeli chief Rabbi calls on Haredi students to reject military service, Hamas commander Muhammed Jabara killed in Israeli airstrike in the Beqaa Valley, Two dead in bus crash as the Lebanese Army was chasing Syrians crossing the border illegally, Samir Geagea suggests Ministry of Education to deny education to Syrian students without residency permit, ignoring Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Health Minister Abiad inspects Batroun Hospital after dialysis room ceiling collapses, During World Day for International Justice, UMAM Documentation and Research, the Lokman Slim Foundation, and Dar Al Jadeed gathered to talk about the justice system in Lebanon, AFP photographer Christina Assi and video journalist Dylan Collins carried the Olympic flame during the Olympic Torch Relay in Vincennes ahead of the Paris 2024 Games, ISIS claimed responsibility for rare attack on Shiite mosque in Oman, Deadly floods engulf Afghanistan as extreme weather devastates the vulnerable country, Iran and Sudan exchange ambassadors after eight-year rupture
When, in 1997, Palestinian writer and poet Mourid Barghouti wrote ‘I Saw Ramallah,’ the ominous date of June 5, 1967 – the outbreak of the Six-Day War, which led to Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, along with Egypt’s Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights – recurred like a nagging mantra.
The protagonist’s autobiographical journey, a centripetal journey – from his hometown to Cairo, for study reasons – has as its founding act June 5, 1967: the news – initially welcomed with enthusiasm, but soon dampened by the bitter awareness of yet another catastrophe, al-Naksa, the great defeat – that the Arab troops led by Gamal Abdel Nasser had been mobilized into defensive lines along the border with Israel. Trying to return to Palestine after completing his studies, like many others who were abroad, Barghouti saw his right of return denied.
Thirty years later, in the atmosphere of apparent thaw of the Oslo Agreements, after continuous struggle – and the directional reversal of the journey, now from diaspora to home -, he was allowed to enter Ramallah, his own hometown, where he was born and had grown up.
“So, these are the ‘occupied territories’! This place is no longer an expression used in a news broadcast, you can clearly see the earth, the stones, the hills and the rocks. This place has its colors, a temperature and shrubs that grow spontaneously. I finally enter Palestine, but what are all these Israeli flags?” – the text reads.
And if Palestine appeared unrecognizable then – bearing the mark of the then thirty-year illegal occupation of the territories, an occupation defined as temporary, just like Barghouti’s status as an exile and perennial foreigner, up to that moment – one wonders what it would seem to him now, with more than 150 illegal settlements, 128 outposts, and 700,000 colonial settlers. The numbers of settlements and outposts, in fact, have risen sharply since the early 1990s, when there were approximately 250,000 settlers in the West Bank, already considered illegal under international law. In the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem alone, the number of Israeli settlers has risen from 800 in 1993 to about 3,000 in 2023.
The promised end of permanent temporariness
Last Friday marked a new watershed in the history of international justice. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest UN body for hearing disputes between states, declared Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful and stated it amounted to de facto annexation. The court called for Israel to rapidly quit the occupied territories and ruled Palestinians were due reparations for the harm of 57 years of an occupation that systematically discriminates against them. In its many parts, the judgement represented a devastating defeat for Israel in the World Court.
The judges pointed to a wide list of policies – including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinians – all of which it said violated international law, claiming Israel has no right to sovereignty of the territories, is violating international laws against acquiring territory by force, and is impeding Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
According to a summary of the more than 80-page opinion read out by Lebanese Nawaf Salam, president of the ICJ in The Hague, moreover, other nations are obliged not to “render aid or assistance in maintaining” Israel’s presence in the territory. Albeit non-binding, the ruling will provide ample ammunition for government lawyers already actively examining future sanctions against those linked to Israeli settlement.
While numerous UN reports and resolutions in the general assembly have made the same point, the ICJ ruling, by virtue of being made in reference to treaty and individual laws, represents a judgement that will be hard to ignore. The ruling also stood as a rebuke to Israel’s argument that the ICJ had no standing to consider the issue on the grounds that UN resolutions, as well as bilateral Israeli-Palestinian agreements, had established that the correct framework for resolving the conflict should be political, not legal.
Effectively rejecting that argument, the court asserted that international law applies regardless of the decades of failed political efforts to reach a lasting peace agreement, not least as Israel has continued with its settlement-building.
The timing, too, was significant. If the ruling felt inevitable, it was because of Israel’s own rightward drift under its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who now heads a coalition that includes far-right pro-settler parties and ministers and has embraced exactly the policies for which Israel has been condemned. With Israel isolated over its conduct of the Gaza war, and under investigation at the ICJ and the international criminal court for alleged war crimes, the stark assessment of the long-term illegality of Israel’s occupation will only reinforce that isolation.
Meanwhile, in Gaza
Yet, it seems the court’s ruling was not enough to halt Israel’s ongoing onslaught on the Gaza Strip: neither after the last massacre on Al-Mawasi, an area which was declared as a safe humanitarian zone, leaving 90 people dead and more than 300 injured earlier on July 13. After that, Israeli forces have launched 63 attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp – in the middle of the Strip, north-east of Deir al-Balah – in the past week alone, killing at least 91 Palestinians and wounding 251 others, according to the Gaza Media Office.
Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is set to travel to the United States, said Israel will dispatch negotiators to restart stalled captive exchange talks on Thursday – though, without specifying the delegation’s destination.
Nearly 39,000 people have been killed and 90,000 wounded in Gaza during the past nine months, although the accumulative effects of Israel’s war on Gaza could mean the true death toll could reach more than 186,000 people, according to a study published in the journal Lancet, pointing out that the death toll is higher because the official one does not take into account thousands of dead buried under rubble and indirect deaths due to destruction of health facilities, food distribution systems and other public infrastructure.
And if the verdict of the world court took almost sixty years to be issued, who knows when the crimes of this war will be prosecuted. What is undoubted, however, is that October 7 – just like June 5 for Mourid Barghouti – already represents a watershed date in the history of the Middle East. Waiting for other, more severe justice.
In Lebanon
The whole nation: Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah stated on Wednesday, July 17, that if Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon cease, then the negotiations would have occurred between Israel and the Lebanese government, not Hezbollah. “If the Israeli aggression stops, delegations will come to negotiate the future of southern Lebanon. The party negotiating on behalf of Lebanon is the Lebanese state. We have informed everyone who has contacted us that the entity responsible for negotiating and providing responses is the Lebanese state,” the leader stated in a speech during the commemoration of Ashura, a major Shiite religious event. He emphasized in this regard that rumors circulating about a “ready agreement on the situation at the southern border are not true.”
The statement came after, on Monday, Lebanese Kataeb Party leader Samy Gemayel underscored the urgency of halting hostilities along Lebanon’s southern border to enable the nation to address internal challenges and reclaim its former status as a prosperous country, before it became entrenched in perpetual conflict. Speaking at a meeting with Kataeb members from Zahle, Gemayel asserted that once the current war concludes, there must be an open dialogue among all Lebanese to comprehensively tackle issues, ensuring the preservation of rights without compromising on freedom, dignity, and national sovereignty. “We oppose negotiations limited to Hezbollah and Israel, which prioritize satisfying both parties to halt fighting while neglecting the interests of the Lebanese people. Lebanon’s interests must take precedence at the negotiation table. As an opposition force, we are prepared to engage in discussions on behalf of the Lebanese people,” he emphasized.
Gemayel said that UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which aims to prevent dragging Lebanon into war, is insufficient, arguing that Resolution 1559 aimed at disarming militias, is pivotal and should have been implemented to obviate the need for subsequent resolutions. “Those willing to make concessions to Hezbollah and Israel should do so at their own expense, not at the expense of the Lebanese,” he added.
The front remains active: Despite agreeing on the need to include the entire nation – and not the party alone – in future negotiation talks with Israel, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General expressed different views concerning its militias’ disarmament. In Wednesday’s talk, he threatened to target new cities in Israeli territory if Israel continues to kill civilians in Lebanon.
“If the enemy targets civilians again as it has done in recent days, this will push us to strike localities that we have not targeted so far,” Nasrallah said, adding that “our front will remain active as long as the aggression against the Gaza Strip continues,” and that “after ten months of fighting, Israel seems incapable of achieving its objectives and is covering its failure by committing massacres and killing civilians.”
“We will rebuild our homes and villages along the front line as they are symbols of our steadfastness and resistance,” he finally promised.
Five Syrian civilians, including three children, were killed on Tuesday in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, according to local reporters. Hezbollah announced that it had fired dozens of Katyusha rockets at several localities in northern Israel in retaliation. UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, described on X as “horrible” the “killing of three more children by an airstrike while they were playing in front of their house” in southern Lebanon.
Hamas commander killed: The Israeli army confirmed that it killed Hamas commander Muhammed Jabara in a drone strike in Ghazze, Beqaa district. According to the IDF, the man was responsible for carrying out attacks, including rocket fire, against Israel, and worked alongside the Lebanese group al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya, which also claimed him as a member.
Moreover, tensions across the southern borders do not seem to de-escalate. The latest Israeli strikes late on Saturday targeted a depot storing ammunition belonging to Hezbollah in the southern town of Adloun, three security sources told Reuters, setting off a string of loud explosions heard by witnesses in different southern areas. At least four civilians in Adloun were wounded in the strikes, a medical source and a security source told Reuters. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Deadly borders: A bus carrying Syrian migrants attempting to illegally enter Lebanon through a border crossing in Akkar, northern Lebanon, overturned and crashed early Tuesday, killing two people and injuring several others as it was being pursued by the Lebanese army. In a statement released on Wednesday afternoon, the Lebanese army reported that, during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, while a patrol “attempted to arrest 16 Syrians aboard a vehicle after they had illegally entered Lebanese territory at Cheikh-Lar, in Akkar, the driver tried to flee, causing the vehicle to overturn.”
Six Lebanese Red Cross ambulances arrived at the scene to provide care and transport the injured to hospitals. The bus driver, from Machta Hamoud, in the Akkar district, was killed when the vehicle overturned. A Syrian national onboard was also killed, and another was critically injured and is in critical condition. The latter was hospitalized in Halba. Eight other people were injured and are receiving medical treatment.
Just two days earlier, on Sunday July 14, the Army Command arrested 68 individuals – two Lebanese citizens and 66 Syrian nationals – for leading three illegal buses used for smuggling Syrians, and illegally entering the Lebanese territory – and conducted a raid on Syrian refugee camps in Arsal, Beqaa, “within the framework of the security measures being carried out by the military institution in various regions.”
Lebanese politicians across the spectrum regularly call for the immediate repatriation of Syrian refugees, whom they partly blame for the country’s economic crisis. They believe that conditions in Syria now allow for such a return, while the UN and other human rights groups warn that this is not the case.
Education denied: Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese Forces, stated Lebanese schools should “not accept any foreign student, Syrian or otherwise, who does not have a valid residency issued by the Lebanese General Security.” On July 8, he tweeted that this residency is “the only legal one in the eyes of the state,” and called on the Lebanese Minister of Education, Abbas Halabi, to return the situation “to its legal status” by the academic year 2024-2025.
Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates every child’s right to education. That right should never be threatened for political, nationalist or racist reasons. In addition, denying education to the majority of Syrians would have catastrophic consequences. A UN report in 2022 estimated that only 17 percent of Syrian refugees held legal residency: since then, the Lebanese state has stopped issuing new residencies to Syrians.
Moreover, the Ministry of Education already segregates public school pupils by nationality, teaching Lebanese students in the ‘morning shift’ and Syrian ones in the ‘evening shift.’ Syrians are also excluded from private schools through arbitrary rejections and dollarized tuition fees.
Out of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon, 50 percent are under 18, while 71 percent of those aged 15-17 are out of education, and over 30 percent have never been to school. In a 2022 report, Human Rights Watch estimated that 29 percent of Syrian children are out of school because of arbitrary rejections by Lebanese schools.
However, Syrian independent platform Al-Jumhuriya reported, in recent years Lebanese public schools have benefited from international funding to support Syrian refugees. The EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis (Madad) has donated regularly to the public education system since 2014, including a payment of 57.5 million euros to “strengthen the public education system in Lebanon.” In December 2023, the EU donated an additional 40 million euros to the education sector, and the EU’s pledge of 1 billion dollars in May 2024 was granted on the understanding it would partly be used to strengthen basic services to Syrian refugees, such as education.
Justice for Lebanon: UMAM Documentation and Research, the Lokman Slim Foundation, and Dar Al Jadeed, in collaboration with Heinrich Boell Stiftung’s Middle East Office, organized a roundtable discussion on the justice system in Lebanon. The event took place on Wednesday, July 17, the World Day for International Justice, at Station Beirut.
Experts from Lebanon engaged in a discussion on the latest Lokman Slim Foundation report ‘The Lebanese Judiciary as Misused and Misguided’ by lawyer Farouk El Moghraby, addressing five distinct legal dynamics present in the current Lebanese context that have a profound impact on social and civil society dynamics.
This report examined the state of the judiciary in Lebanon, especially during the period after 2019, which was marked by significant events in the country, including – the document reads – “cases of financial corruption, financial institutions going bankrupt and depositors’ funds vanishing, crimes of torture against protesters during the October 17 uprising, the assassination of political activist Lokman Slim, restrictions on freedom of speech, and summonses against journalists.” However, the Beirut port explosion stands out as one of the most serious blows to the country in this period. The judiciary in Lebanon is undoubtedly facing one of its worst periods since then.
Analyzing the failures of the justice system in Lebanon and the challenges it faces, the report deals with the crisis of the ordinary courts without addressing the problems that lie with the administrative courts. It also discusses opportunities for reform, while also addressing the crisis facing judges, court assistants and lawyers, recognizing that these three professions are the pillars of legal work in the courthouses, and envisioning the potential for building an independent and capable judiciary.
Moderated by El Moghraby, speakers included Hana Jaber, Executive Director of the Lokman Slim Foundation, who discussed the findings of the report; Suzanne Jabbour, Chair of the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, tackling the implementation of the anti-torture law by the Lebanese courts; Aya Majzoub, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, demanding the Lebanese judiciary’s role in the Beirut Port Blast case; lawyer Diala Chehade, talking about the case of the victims of the August 8, 2020 demonstration; lawyer Moussa Khoury, about the judicial process in the Lokman Slim assassination; and Lama Fakih, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch, who finally tackled the topic of the infringement of liberties in Lebanon.
In honor of Issam: On Sunday, July 21, AFP photographer Christina Assi and video journalist Dylan Collins carried the Olympic flame during the Olympic Torch Relay in Vincennes, ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, in honor of journalists killed on duty. Assi and Collins were among the six journalists who survived the targeted attack in south Lebanon on October 13, 2023, which resulted in the murder of Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah.
“I wish Issam was here to see this. And I wish what happened today was not because we were struck by two rockets. I wish I could have honored journalists this way while walking in my best health. I don’t think what happened today would bring us justice or can compensate for all the pain I went through in the past nine months. It is merely symbolic and I didn’t do it for me, I did it for all the journalists in the region,” Assi said.
Collapsing: Caretaker Health Minister Firas Abiad visited Batroun Governmental Hospital on Wednesday following a partial collapse of the dialysis room ceiling in the previous day. The incident had led to the temporary shutdown of part of the dialysis department, but according to the hospital’s general director, Ayoub Mukhbat, normal operations have quickly resumed.
Mukhbat attributed the collapse to “severe humidity” and noted that the entire hospital building will be inspected to prevent similar incidents in the future, Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour reported. During his visit, Abiad toured the various hospital departments and was briefed on the patients’ conditions.
Amid the country’s ongoing economic and political crises, Lebanon’s public healthcare system has been strained by lack of proper funding. “Government hospitals that provide permanent and quality services to patients from all categories, especially the most vulnerable in society, need permanent investment to support and rehabilitate their facilities,” Minister Abiad said, stressing the importance of maintaining these hospitals as the “first line of defense” for patients.
In The Region
Striking Tel Aviv: One person was killed before dawn on Friday by an explosion in central Tel Aviv, in an airstrike that was claimed by Yemeni Houthis. Israeli media identified the dead man as 50-year-old Yevgeny Ferder, who had moved to Israel from Belarus at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Commenting on the incident, the Israeli military said the attack was carried out by a “very large drone” that was not intercepted due to “human error.” The drone had been detected by the Israeli military, but “the interception and defense systems were not activated,” the military official was quoted as saying by AFP.
The Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a video released on Friday evening that the aircraft had hit an apartment building in central Tel Aviv, not far away from the US Embassy. He said the drone was a Samad-3, an Iranian manufactured craft that had been modified to extend its range. Iran has not commented on the attack, nor on the Israeli allegation. According to Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree, the aircraft was a new type of drone named ‘Jaffa’ that was capable of flying undetected through Israel’s extensive air defense systems.
Friday’s strike is unique, as it is the first time the Iran-backed group is known to have hit Tel Aviv, though it has waged a continued campaign in the Red Sea against targets claimed to be linked to Israel.
Israel against Yemen: On Saturday, July 20, the Israeli military conducted strikes against Yemen’s Red Sea port city of Hodeidah in response to Friday’s attacks on Tel Aviv by the Houthi group. The Ministry of Health, which operates in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, confirmed three people were killed and 87 wounded, many with severe burns as a result of the Israeli strikes.
While the Israeli military said it hit merely “military targets,” Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV showed the Israeli attack targeted oil storage facilities and a power plant in Hodeidah, igniting a fire.
The Israeli air strikes are the first known direct attack by Israel against the Houthis since the start of the onslaught on Gaza, coming amid growing fears of escalating violence across the Middle East.
The Houthi Supreme Political Council promised to respond to Saturday’s attack. “This aggression will not pass without an effective response against the enemy,” it said in a statement, promising the group would not hesitate in attacking “vital targets” in Israel.
Prospect of two states, rejected: On Thursday, July 18, Israel’s Parliament passed a resolution that overwhelmingly rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state, Israeli media reported. The resolution passed in the Knesset with 68 votes in favor and just nine against it, claiming that the creation of a Palestinian state would “pose an existential danger to Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region.”
Mustafa Barghouti, the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, slammed the passing of the resolution. “No Zionist party from both the government and the opposition voted against the resolution,” he wrote on X, adding that “this resolution represents a rejection of peace with Palestinians and an official declaration of the death of Oslo agreement.”
Meanwhile, Israel’s policy toward the occupied West Bank is dooming any prospect of a two-state solution with the Palestinians, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned. “Through administrative and legal steps, Israel is changing the geography of the West Bank,” Guterres said in a statement read by his chief of staff, Courtenay Rattray, during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday.
Highly infectious: Gaza’s Health Ministry said tests carried out with UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, “showed the presence of poliovirus” in the besieged territory, as confirmed by the Israeli Ministry, in whose laboratory the virus was tested as polio type 2. It added the World Health Organization had made similar findings. The highly infectious virus found in sewage samples from Gaza puts thousands of people living in crowded displaced persons’ camps at risk of deformities and paralysis.
“The presence of poliovirus in wastewater that collects and flows between displacement camp tents and in inhabited areas because of the destruction of infrastructure marks a new health disaster,” the Gaza Ministry said, highlighting “severe overcrowding” and “scarce water” that is becoming contaminated with sewage and the accumulation of rubbish. The Ministry denounced Israel’s refusal to let hygiene supplies into Gaza “creates a suitable environment for the spread of different diseases.”
Authorities in the central Gaza town of Deir el-Balah said last week that wastewater treatment stations had been shut down because of a lack of fuel. They warned that roads “will be flooded by wastewater” and that 700,000 civilians, most of them displaced, would be put at risk of catching sewage-borne diseases.
UN agencies have been campaigning for four decades to eradicate polio, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, but there has been a resurgence in recent years in Afghanistan and Pakistan and some isolated cases in Nigeria. The war has plunged the Palestinian territory into a humanitarian disaster with more than half of its 2.4 million people displaced and in dire need. The NGO Oxfam has castigated “Israel’s use of water as a weapon of war” and the Dutch peace-promoting NGO PAX has pointed out the health threat in a territory “drowned” under waste and rubble.
No place to go: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes the establishment of a hospital for children from Gaza on Israeli territory, his office said on Thursday. The comments come a day after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a field hospital would be set up as “a short-term solution” after the closure of the Rafah border crossing prevented the ability of sick children to receive healthcare abroad, passing through neighboring Egypt.
The crossing has been closed since Israeli forces captured it in early May. Egypt has refused to reopen the crossing, while the Gazan side remains under Israeli control.
It was not immediately clear which body would be running the hospital, and whether it would be Israeli or otherwise. The move, however, aimed “to address the humanitarian needs until a permanent mechanism is established to evacuate and treat ill children,” Gallant ensured. But Netanyahu said the project hadn’t received his approval and, therefore, it “will not be established.”
Against military service: Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, on Wednesday urged Jewish ultra-Orthodox students, known as Haredi Yeshiva students, to reject the Israeli army’s notifications asking them to enlist in military service. The call came after the Israeli army announced that it would notify Haredi Yeshiva students to enlist on Sunday, July 21.
Israel’s public broadcaster, KAN, said it obtained a recording from Rabbi Yosef stressing that anyone studying the Torah, the Jewish holy book, is exempted from military duty. “Anyone who receives a notification to enlist must tear it and not go,” the Rabbi stressed. The previous day, on Tuesday evening, clashes erupted between Israeli police and ultra-Orthodox Jews, who blocked a highway in central Israel to protest their mandatory military draft in Bnei Brak, a coastal area near Tel Aviv predominantly populated by the religious community.
The Israeli army has been facing a military personnel shortage for months amid its ongoing onslaught on the Gaza Strip, as well as incursions into the West Bank and cross-border clashes with Hezbollah along the Lebanese borders. Last month, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered Haredi Jews to enlist in the army and prohibited the government from providing financial aid to religious institutions whose students refuse military service.
Haredi Jews account for approximately 13 percent of Israel’s approximately 9.9 million population and do not serve in the military, instead dedicating their lives to Torah study. Israeli law mandates military service for all Israelis over the age of 18, with the exception of the ultra-Orthodox – which has been a contention issue for decades.
Extending Assad’s rule: Syrians voted for members of a new parliament in elections, held last Monday, that could pave the way for a constitutional amendment to extend the term of President Bashar al-Assad. The results, announced Thursday, showed that Assad’s Baath Party has won a majority of seats, as expected.
All 185 candidates from the Baath Party and its allies won seats with an increase from the 177 seats won by the coalition in 2020. Turnout was 38% of the 19.3 million eligible voters, election officials said.
The vote is the fourth in Syria since mass anti-government protests in 2011 and a brutal crackdown by security forces spiraled into an ongoing civil war. It comes as an economic crisis grips the country, fueling demonstrations in the southern province of As-Suwayda.
Syria’s 2024 elections excluded opposition-held northwest Syria and the country’s northeast under Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the US. The number of eligible voters hasn’t been announced either, and unlike presidential elections, the millions of diaspora Syrians – whose numbers have ballooned since the civil war – are not qualified to vote for the legislators. Assad’s critics say the polling in government-held areas in Syria is neither free nor fair.
This year, 1,516 government-approved candidates ran for the 250-seat People’s Assembly. Some 8,151 polling stations were set up in 15 voting districts in government-held areas.
In Suwayda: In the Druze-majority southern province of As-Suwayda, where anti-government protests have occurred regularly for nearly a year due to the economic crisis, many called for a boycott of the polls. Videos posted online by Suwayda24, a local activist media collective, and others showed protesters grabbing ballot boxes off a truck in an attempt to stop them from reaching the polling stations.
The General Authority for the Peaceful Movement in Suwayda, moreover, announced its intention to form a political committee and open nominations for those who “consider themselves competent and capable,” according to a statement issued by the authority on the eve of the elections.
Last Monday, groups from the peaceful movement in As-Suwayda Governorate announced the formation of a general body for the movement in a statement read at Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri’s residence in the town of Qanawat. The formation of the body and the opening of candidacy for membership in the political committee marks an advanced step in the As-Suwayda movement against the Syrian regime, following nearly a year of peaceful demonstrations in the governorate.
The killing of Katirji: Syrian businessman Mohammad Baraa Katirji was killed last Monday, July 15, in an Israeli airstrike that targeted his car on the Saboura road near the Syrian-Lebanese border, as he was returning from Lebanon. Mohammed was the brother of Hossam Katirji, a member of the People’s Assembly: both wealthy businessmen, they amassed their fortunes during the war thanks to their close ties with the Assad regime and its allies, Lebanese media outlet Megaphone reported.
Chairman of the Katerji Holding Group – dealing with several companies in oil, agriculture, tourism and consultancy – after 2015 Mohammad Baraa succeeded Syrian-Russian businessman George Haswani as the regime’s ‘oil czar.’ Haswani’s company, Hesco, was accused of being involved in delivering the ammonium nitrate shipment to the Beirut port, causing the August 4 blast.
In 2018, Katirji was listed among the US’ sanctioned personalities for financing armed groups fighting with the Syrian regime, smuggling weapons across the country, and for being involved in the oil and wheat trade for Assad in coordination with both the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces and the Islamic State.
In Oman: ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack on a Shiite mosque in Oman that killed at least nine people, including three attackers, in a rare incident in the Sunni-majority Gulf country on Monday evening, according to Reuters. Officials from Pakistan, India and Oman said that among the dead were four Pakistanis, an Indian citizen and a policeman. Omani police said that around thirty people of different nationalities were injured, including security personnel. The attackers were all Omani nationals, police said on Thursday.
A video clip circulated on social media showed people fleeing the mosque, and gunshots could be heard in the clip. The attack took place at the Imam Ali mosque in the capital Muscat’s Wadi al-Kabir district, according to video obtained by Reuters, during Ashura, the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram, which holds particular significance for Shiite Muslims.
The oil-producing nation is one of the most stable in the Middle East and is becoming an emerging regional tourism destination as the government promotes the sector to diversify its economy away from hydrocarbons.
In Afghanistan: The death toll from rainstorms and flooding in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province has risen to 40 and the number of injured has reached 347, the country’s Ministry of Public Health reported Tuesday. Health workers were dispatched to the affected areas for treating the injured, said Sharafat Zaman Amarkhil, spokesman for the Ministry, adding that the casualties of the mishap are expected to rise.
Acting officials have stated that the death toll was likely to rise as rescue and assessment teams combed through affected areas in the province, where some 150 people were also receiving treatment for injuries suffered during the rainstorms and flooding.
Images shared on social media showed uprooted trees, toppled electricity poles, collapsed roofs and perilously exposed electrical wires dangling over some homes still standing.
The sudden natural disaster took place Monday afternoon and caused heavy fatalities and financial damages in Jalalabad the provincial capital, Sukh Rod District and their neighboring areas in the province bordering Pakistan. Similarly, five people were killed as flash floods swept away most parts of eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province on Monday morning.
Increasingly common and increasingly severe weather events across Asia have been attributed to climate change, and environmental activists appealed for more help for the impoverished population of Afghanistan to help deal with the effects.
Exchanging ambassadors: Sudan’s leader, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, on Sunday has received an Iranian ambassador and sent his own to Tehran, cementing a rapprochement after an eight-year rupture. Al-Burhan received Hassan Shah Hosseini, the new Iranian ambassador, in Port Sudan – which has become Sudan’s de facto seat of government since Khartoum became wracked by fighting – and sent Abdelaziz Hassan Saleh as the African country’s ambassador to Tehran.
Sudan and Iran agreed last October to resume diplomatic relations, as the army-aligned government scrambled for allies during its war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The African country broke off relations with Iran in 2016 in a show of solidarity with Saudi Arabia, after the kingdom’s embassy in Tehran was attacked following the Saudi execution of a prominent Shia cleric. Several Saudi allies in the region also cut ties with Iran at the time. In March 2023, however, Riyadh and Tehran announced the restoration of their relations following an agreement brokered by China. Iran has since moved to cement or restore relations with neighboring Arab countries.
What We’re Reading
A glimpse of hope: On the burner is a project law seeking to replace deposits trapped in the banking system with a Deposit Recovery Fund, NOW’s Maan Barazy reported, raising concerns on the long-term sustainability of the solution. This, Barazy wrote, “is not about a return to better fortune; it’s about compensating the depositor with their own money by investing the available liquidity on their behalf, then asking them to wait 30 years for the accumulation of interest to take effect. This solution is purely cosmetic, while the recovery fund, if designed intelligently, is not cosmetic, even if the promise of full repayment is very long-term.”
Families in jeopardy: Rodayna Raydan wrote for NOW about the issue of dollarization of school fees in Lebanon. As the country’s public schools remain unreliable due to ongoing strikes and lack of support, private ones are increasing their tuition fees by thousands of dollars, pushing parents into a corner with no viable options left for their children’s education.
Joumblatt’s shifting alliances: While protecting the Druze amidst Lebanon’s volatile political landscape, Walid Joumblatt’s shifting political alliances might undermine the long-term autonomy and influence of the community – Ramzi Abou Ismail analysed.
Nuovo Cinema Paradiso: Valeria Rando interviewed archivist Antoine Kabbabe about Lebanon’s roaring years through the biographies of its 225 abandoned cinemas. Kabbabe’s first book, La dernière séance, published in 2022, bears witness to the heritage of Lebanon’s cinema life before the civil war, a reality that today only exists in the memory of his generation.
Lebanon +
In the latest episode of his podcast, The New Arab Voice, Hugo Goodridge looked at the recent massacre in Al-Mawasi, the Ashura celebrations around the region, another highly problematic headline about Gaza from the BBC, the recent resolution on a two-state solution in the Israeli Knesset, last week’s EU and US sanctions on illegal settlers, and the recent Trans-Mediterranean Migration Forum in Libya. The host was joined by journalists Nick McAlpin and Louay Faour.
