After more than ten months of Israeli siege and more than 40,000 Palestinians killed, new cease-fire talks have opened in Doha, Qatar, last Thursday – with the hosting country, the United States and Egypt engaging in the difficult role of mediators. Hamas did not send a delegation, while Netanyahu set new conditions. Yet, only a truce agreement could stop the war from spreading.
After a two-day round of negotiations aimed at establishing a deal, marked by a new US compromise proposal, President Joe Biden mentioned on Friday that an agreement was near. However, Hamas – through the voice of its senior official Sami Abou Zohri – responded by calling this an “illusion” and condemning the “imposition of American diktats.” The group rejected any revised proposal, accusing Israel of adding new conditions – including the retention of Israeli troops at the Gaza-Egypt border, a lasting line bisecting Gaza where Israel would search Palestinians to root out militants, and the veto power over Palestinian prisoners who could be exchanged for the remaining 110 hostages – and demanded the implementation of the plan announced by Biden at the end of May.
The mediators have spent months trying to hammer out a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release scores of the 251 hostages captured on October 7 in exchange for a lasting cease-fire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Both sides have agreed in principle to the plan, which President Biden announced on May 31: since then, however, Hamas has proposed amendments, while Israel has suggested clarifications, leading each side to accuse the other of making new demands it cannot accept.
The most intractable dispute has been over the transition from the first phase of the cease-fire – when women, children and other vulnerable hostages would be released, and remains of hostages who have been killed would be returned to their families – and the second, when captive Israeli soldiers would be freed and a permanent cease-fire would take hold. The third phase, then, would call for the start of a major reconstruction of Gaza, already facing decades of rebuilding from devastation caused by the war. Unfortunately, that’s still too far to be discussed.
In the meantime, the Israelis may shift to a new phase in the war within the enclave, focusing on lowering the intensity of their military operations by concentrating on targeted actions such as assassinations or hostage rescue missions. While the former, however – executed during the past ten months outside the boundaries of the Palestinian territory – were carried out with a precision guaranteed by the technological sophistication of the Israeli espionage system, the latter caused hundreds and hundreds of civilian deaths, confirming the double standard used by Israel in defining the acceptable boundary of ‘collateral damage’ when it comes to Palestinian victims. And above all this proved to be true in Gaza – where the violence of Israel’s counter-offensive has fed itself on the post-October 7 rhetoric of security and vengeance, which has transformed all the inhabitants of the Strip, in the eyes of the Zionist state and its allies, into potential terrorists.
The key question now is whether Lebanon’s Hezbollah will choose to cease fire or reduce tension to avoid a broader war. In fact, a halt of the onslaught in Gaza would likely calm tensions across all over the region. Diplomats hope it would persuade Iran and its ally to hold off on retaliating for the killing of the Shia group’s top commander Fouad Shukur, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, on July 30, and of Hamas’ top political leader Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, on the following morning.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has flown to Israel as part of Washington’s latest effort to secure the long-awaited cease-fire agreement in the region – marking his ninth visit to the Middle East since October 7. Negotiations are set to resume this week in Cairo – however, no further stops for Blinken have been announced during this trip: and while international diplomacy attempts at buying some time, Gaza has been transformed into a large cemetery, packed with bodies, with survivors digging graves on top of others, making room for yet another dead.
In Lebanon
Avoidable: US Envoy Amos Hochstein said on Wednesday, during his latest visit to Beirut, he believed all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah could be avoided – but that Israel and Hamas needed to move towards a peace agreement for Gaza without further delay. Ahead of the renewed cease-fire negotiations in Gaza, in fact, the American Envoy urged seizing this opportunity to pursue diplomatic solutions.
Hochstein, a senior adviser to US President Joe Biden, landed in Beirut on Wednesday, August 14, to deter an escalation between the two parties engaged in deadly confrontations since October 8 – after an Israeli strike killed senior Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr in Beirut’s southern suburbs at the end of last month. “We continue to believe that a diplomatic resolution is achievable because we continue to believe that no one truly wants a full-scale war between Lebanon and Israel,” Hochstein said after talks with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.
Contrary to earlier reports suggesting that the American envoy would arrive in Tel Aviv on Tuesday before visiting Beirut, it turned out that he came directly to Lebanon from London, without meeting Israeli officials beforehand.
The US Envoy said he talked with Berri about the framework agreement on the table for a Gaza cease-fire, adding that a deal would also help enable a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon that would prevent an outbreak of a wider war. “Berri and I agreed there is no more time to waste and there’s no more valid excuses from any party for any further delay,” he told a news conference.
In an interview with Al-Jadeed TV shortly after he met with Hochstein, Berri affirmed that “Resolution 1701, and nothing else, is the key to the solution in the next phase.”
Hochstein also met with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati – who announced that talks with Arab and Western leaders had intensified due to the seriousness of the situation in Lebanon and the region – as well as with Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib. It seems, however, that Hochstein did not introduce any new initiatives but instead reaffirmed the urgent need to de-escalate tension in southern Lebanon to avert a full-scale war between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel – a scenario the US is determined to avoid.
Recruiting: Concurrent with Hochstein’s visit, the Lebanese Cabinet approved the recruitment of 1,500 new soldiers as part of a broader plan to bolster the forces deployed in southern Lebanon with an additional 6,000 troops in a four-phase deployment – with the necessary procedures to be carried out in accordance with regulations, in coordination between the Ministries of National Defense and Finance.
The electricity dossier: Last Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting was supposed to be a meeting mainly focused on the national emergency plan prepared by the government. However, the electricity dossier, introduced via an appendix to the agenda added the day before, became one of the key topics of the Cabinet meeting convened by caretaker Prime Minister Mikati.
During the traditional press briefing after the meeting at the Grand Serail, caretaker Minister of Information Ziad Makary announced that an agreement was reached to “purchase part of the necessary fuel” to prevent Electricité du Liban (EDL) from shutting down all its power plants.
Caretaker Minister of Energy and Water Walid Fayyad – affiliated with the Free Patriotic Movement, whose ministers boycott government meetings in the absence of a head of state – indicated that three measures he had introduced to the agenda had been approved. These include: allowing EDL to use funds in Lebanese pounds, collected from bills paid by administrations, public institutions, and other offices, to begin settling the bill for 430,000 tonnes of Iraqi fuel – one-third of what Iraq committed to deliver during the last annual renewal of the agreement; requesting the Ministry of Finance, administrations, institutions, and other offices, as well as EDL, to establish a simplified mechanism to implement the first measure “in the shortest possible time;” and finally authorizing the Ministry of Energy and Water to purchase a cargo of 30,000 tonnes of fuel on the spot cargo market to “minimize EDL’s blackout period.”
Walid Fayyad emphasized that delays in fuel deliveries, which could cause this new blackout episode for EDL, are related to delays by the BDL in executing payments promised to the Iraqis.
National blackout: On Saturday, in fact, Lebanon’s power utility company announced a nationwide power outage, including at Beirut’s airport and port. EDL confirmed in a statement that the last group of production units at the Zahrani Power Plant, which supplies the country with electricity, went offline after running out of fuel – leading to a complete halt of electricity supply across all Lebanese territories.
The Zahrani Plant, in southern Lebanon, is one of the most important power generation stations in the country and currently the only operational one, supplying most of Lebanon’s electricity needs. The statement said the shutdown of all production units at this plant “came after exhausting all possible precautionary measures to prolong energy production.”
The power outage affected key facilities, including the Rafiq Hariri International Airport, the Port of Beirut, prisons, wastewater treatment facilities, and drinking water pumping stations.
Electricity production in Lebanon currently relies on the Zahrani and Deir Ammar power plants, while the Jiyeh and Zouk plants are undergoing maintenance. Zahrani and Deir Ammar receive monthly diesel shipments supplied to EDL by the Ministry of Energy under the exchange agreement between Iraq and Lebanon signed on July 23, 2021. This agreement, which came into effect in September 2021, stipulates that Iraq provides fuel to Lebanese power plants under profitable terms, with a monthly allocation set at 100,000 tons. However, due to its high sulphur content, Iraqi fuel cannot be used directly in Lebanese power plants. Consequently, Lebanon buys a compatible type of fuel from other suppliers, who then receive the Iraqi fuel in exchange.
Despite every possible precaution taken by EDL to extend energy production for as long as possible, the power plants remained inactive until the concerned authorities resolved the issue of diesel supply to EDL, whether through the Iraqi exchange agreement or other sources. The company said it “will restart the production units at the Zahrani Plant that were forcibly taken offline, in line with the storage that will be available to it after securing fuel, to gradually restore electricity supply to its previous levels,” without disclosing the time needed for this.
On Sunday, pumping of diesel from the Zahrani oil facilities to the power plant finally resumed, the director of the Zahrani oil facilities, Ziad al-Zein announced in a statement. On the same day, caretaker Public Works Minister, Ali Hamieh, said in a post on X that Lebanon’s only airport is “powered and running using its own generators.”
Meanwhile, during a telephone interview between Najib Mikati and his Algerian counterpart, Prime Minister Nadir Larbaoui, the latter announced that, on the initiative of President Abdelmajid Tebboune, Algeria will immediately provide fuel to restore electricity in Lebanon, helping the country to overcome yet another of its crises.
Hezbollah’s tunnel network: On Friday, August 16, Hezbollah released a video showcasing the most explicit view of its tunnel network yet, confirming previous claims of the Iran-backed party’s extensive network of tunnels in south Lebanon.
The four-minute video, published by Hezbollah’s war media channel, provided a look at a warren of interconnected underground passages dubbed ‘Imad 4,’ a reference to former Hezbollah commander Imad Moughnieh the party’s former military leader, who was assassinated in Syria in 2008 and was succeeded by Fouad Shukur, who was killed by an Israeli strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on July 30.
The footage reveals tunnel walls draped with Hezbollah flags, and equipped with computers and various communication devices. The tunnels are lit with light bulbs, and the camera follows Hezbollah members on motorcycles as they tour the tunnel.
“The resistance today in Lebanon possesses weapons, equipment, capabilities, members, cadres, ability and expertise, stronger than ever before since its launch in the region,” Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah says in the video. “These targets are in our possession, and their coordinates are in our hands. These missiles are placed, deployed and focused on targets in perfect secrecy,” Hezbollah’s Secretary-General continues, with subtitles in both Hebrew and English. The video ends with Nasrallah declaring that “resistance rockets can reach the entirety of Palestinian territory, from Kiryat Shmona in the north to Eilat in the south.”
Claims about Hezbollah tunnel network have circulated for years, with social media posts outside Lebanon questioning the group’s underground capabilities. While military experts have long speculated about these tunnels, concrete evidence has been scarce – until now. The video, set to dramatic music, likely serves as a means of deterrence now that Israel is threatening a military escalation, with a potentially expected ground invasion of the country.
The deadliest: Ten people – all of Syrian nationality, including a woman and her two children – were killed by an Israeli strike on a residential building in Nabatieh on Friday night, medical sources confirmed, adding that five more people were injured. The strike is the deadliest attack since the start of the conflict between Hezbollah and the Israeli army on October 8.
The airstrike, which hit after 1 am, targeted a building in an industrial zone between Kfour and Toul, totally destroying the structure inhabited by Syrian families. The blast also caused damage to neighboring houses.
In a post on X, the Israeli army’s Arabic-speaking spokesman, Avichay Adraee, said that the Israeli air force had targeted “a Hezbollah weapons warehouse in the Nabatieh region” during the night. It is the second massacre of civilians in Nabatieh since the start of the conflict, after in February an Israeli strike in a residential building killed seven Lebanese civilians.
New targets: On Sunday morning, during a ceremony commemorating a Hezbollah fighter killed in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah stated that Israel’s expansion of the conflict and its targeting of civilians in southern Lebanon – after the massacre in Nabatieh – would be met with attacks on new Israeli settlements.
Following the deadly strike in Kfour-Toul, which resulted in ten deaths among Syrian nationals, Hezbollah launched a counterattack on the Israeli village of Ayelet Hashahar, which had never been targeted before.
“When the resistance demonstrates some of its capabilities, as seen in the ‘Al-Hodhod’ and ‘Imad 4’ scenes, it serves a purpose. These capabilities are part of our deterrence, constant preparation, and confrontation capabilities,” he added, respectively referring to a drone that, according to Hezbollah, has filmed various targets within Israeli territory, and to an underground facility that Hezbollah released images of on Friday.
Hundreds arrested: 204 people – the vast majority Syrian, as well as some Lebanese and Palestinian nationals – have been arrested for attempting to leave Lebanon illegally by sea, the Lebanese army said in a statement posted on X.
54 Syrians were arrested after a patrol raided the house of M.A. in the town of Bebnin, Akkar, northern Lebanon, according to the statement – while a patrol by Lebanon’s Intelligence Directorate within the Lebanese Army arrested 150 Syrians off Arida beach in northern Lebanon, on the Syrian border. The naval forces, along with an army unit, also arrested five Lebanese, 26 Syrians and Palestinians who were on board two boats off the coast of the Qoleiat area, before setting off.
The army did not disclose when the arrests were made, nor where the migrants were headed.
18 years later: On Wednesday, August 14, Hezbollah and the Amal Movement issued separate statements commemorating 18 years since the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war. The war sparked by Hezbollah’s July 12, 2006 incursion into Israel, killing three soldiers and kidnapping two others, ended three days after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1701 on August 11.
The 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers – and it resulted in the 2008 prisoner exchange that saw the release of five Lebanese militants and 199 bodies held by Israel, in exchange for the remains of two killed Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah.
The UN Resolution, instead, stipulated Hezbollah’s withdrawal north of the Litani River and increased the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon’s (UNIFIL) maximum manpower from 2,000 to 15,000 troops – while expanding their mission to the maintenance of the Lebanese Army’s monopoly on the use of force in their zone of operation.
In The Region
Ticking-time bomb: The Health Ministry in Gaza announced on Saturday that it detected the first polio case in the besieged enclave, hours after United Nations officials called for a pause in the fighting to enable a vaccination campaign for children against the virus. The virus infected a ten-month-old child from Deir al-Balah, in the southern governorate, where he did not receive any dose of immunization. It is the first case of polio recorded in the Strip in 25 years.
In a statement released on the previous day, the Health Ministry blamed the difficult conditions in the Strip – including the spread of sewage water in the streets, shortages of medical supplies and lack of personal hygiene products due to the Israeli blockade – for the emergence of the virus in the territory.
Also, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had previously called for humanitarian pauses in the war in Gaza to conduct a polio vaccine campaign. “It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over,” he told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York. “Let’s be clear: the ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian cease-fire,” Guterres added. “But in any case, a polio pause is a must.”
Poliomyelitis, which is spread mainly through the faecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. Gaza’s Ministry of Health had spotted the virus in the sewage water in mid-December, due to the occupation’s destruction of infrastructure and vaccine blockage.
Children under the age of five are most at risk from the viral disease, and especially infants under two, since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by ten months of conflict. It is noted that the pre-war vaccination rate was close to 100%, and the sector has been polio-free for 25 years.
Now, a successful campaign would require the facilitation of transport for vaccines and refrigeration equipment at every step, the entry of polio experts into Gaza, as well as reliable internet and phone services.
According to the UN agency for children (UNICEF), the vaccination will be administered in two rounds and is expected to be launched at the end of August and September this year across the Gaza Strip. But the conditions of survival in Gaza, with everybody clustering in refugee camps without vaccines, makes the exponential spread of the virus a “ticking-time bomb” – as it is impossible to isolate the infected ones, making sure that they use a bathroom that nobody else uses, and that they’re not in close proximity to other people.
The Minister of Health in Gaza furtherly stressed that the spread of this virus will not stop at Gaza’s borders, and the international institutions and relevant sides must take the necessary steps to end its spread inside and outside the enclave. “We stress that the vaccination campaign will not be sufficient without comprehensive solutions to the issues of sewage and the accumulation of garbage between the tents of displaced people, and providing drinkable water and ending the aggression,” it added.
Gruesome: On Friday, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture Alice Jill Edwards condemned what she called a “particularly gruesome” case of the alleged sexual abuse of a Palestinian prisoner by Israeli soldiers and said the perpetrators of such crimes must be held accountable. “There are no circumstances in which sexual torture or sexualized inhuman and degrading treatment can be justified,” she said in a statement.
Israeli media reports said the soldiers have been accused of sexually abusing a member of an élite Hamas unit at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev desert, in southern Israel. Last Tuesday, the Israeli military said prosecutors have requested the accused soldiers to be placed under house arrest.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem said in a report Israel has conducted a systematic policy of prisoner abuse and torture since the Gaza war erupted, subjecting Palestinian detainees to acts ranging from arbitrary violence to sexual abuse – and they described Israel prisons’ system as a network of torture camps. Hamas reiterated its call for international judicial bodies to investigate all cases of gross violations against Palestinian prisoners.
Since October 7, Israel has denied access to prison for independent monitors like the International Red Cross.
Colonizing the West Bank: The Israeli forces demolished four Palestinian homes, a tent and two other facilities in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron in the southern West Bank, on Wednesday, August 14. Local sources reported that occupation forces stormed the Um Al-Khair Bedouin community in Masafer Yatta, and that thirty Palestinians were displaced as a result of the occupation’s actions – which also destroyed water networks, tanks and solar energy units.
Israel has recently escalated demolition operations in Masafer Yatta significantly, as part of efforts to displace residents from those areas to make way for the expansion of illegal settlements. “Masafer Yatta is a strategic region for settlers, as it allows them to carve up Palestinian territory from the south and connect with settlers in the Jordan Valley,” Jamal Juma’, director of Stop the Wall, a Palestinian organization that documents the construction of Israel’s illegal Separation Wall and settlements, has previously explained.
This comes despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s advisory opinion of July 19, 2024, stating that Israel’s long-term occupation of the Palestinian territory is unlawful, amounting 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.
In the same days, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that Israel’s appropriation of hundreds of acres of land in the Bethlehem area for the illegal Nahal Heletz settlement “comes in light of the international failure to implement the relevant UN resolutions.” In a statement carried by the official Wafa news agency, the Ministry stressed that the international community’s failure “encourages Israel to continue West Bank land confiscation and the deepening of its colonial project”.
The Ministry also said that the increased demolitions that have accompanied the acts of land appropriation “constitute a blatant disregard of international resolutions, international law and the advisory opinion issued by the ICJ”.
Total impunity: In these regards, European Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell announced that he plans to propose sanctions against Israeli officials in response to the “nearly total impunity” for attacks by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, according to AFP. “The Israeli government must immediately stop these unacceptable actions,” Borrell said on X. “I confirm my intention to present an EU sanctions proposal against those who enable these violent settlers’ actions, including some members of the Israeli government,” he added.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, an attack on Thursday evening in Jit, a village in northern Palestinian territory, resulted in one death – Mahmoud Abdel Qader Sadda, 23 – from settler gunfire, and one serious injury after a shot in the chest. Settlers reportedly fired bullets and teargas at residents of the Palestinian town before setting fires to homes and cars.
According to the Israeli army, dozens of Israeli civilians entered Jit around 8 pm, setting fire to buildings and vehicles, and throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. Soldiers and border police “evacuated the Israeli civilians from the town” and handed one of them over to the police, a military spokesperson told AFP. The White House has called these acts of violence “unacceptable,” and they have also been condemned by several Israeli officials, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog who talked about a pogrom.
Of Yiddish and Russian origin, the word ‘pogrom’ refers to an organized massacre of a particular ethnic or religious group, according to various dictionaries. Herzog’s use of the term on Jewish settlers is significant as the Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe were the target of pogroms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Contrary to Herzog, who claimed that “this is an extreme minority that harms the law-abiding settler population and the settlement as a whole and the name and position of Israel in the world during a particularly sensitive and difficult period,” the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, instead, condemned the attack as an act of “organized state terrorism.” “We demand the imposition of deterrent sanctions on the racist colonial system, the dismantling of the terrorist settler militias, and the prosecution of their members,” it said in a statement.
On Friday, the Israeli forces released the only settler who was arrested following the attacks in Jit, confirming the environment of impunity in which the occupation acts.
Resuming normalization: Israel’s liaison office in Morocco’s Rabat has resumed operations after a ten-month hiatus in an effort to revitalize relations between the two countries. A source at the Israeli liaison office confirmed to the Moroccan news website Hespress that the office – officially closed since April – has reopened after operations were suspended due to the outbreak of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.
Israel has reportedly prohibited its diplomatic officials from having contact with the Moroccan media, fearing social unrest and widespread opposition to the office’s reopening. But it recently regained some visibility on social networks, posting messages congratulating Morocco on various national events, such as Throne Day and its Olympic Games successes in Paris.
The move comes after last month’s appointment of Hassan Kaabia, Israel’s deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman for Arab media, as deputy head of the liaison office in Rabat. The office is led by David Govrin, who in 2022 was recalled for several months following allegations of sexual misconduct and corruption.
Kaabia’s appointment sparked protests on Thursday, August 15, in front of the parliament building in Rabat, led by the Moroccan Front for Supporting Palestine and Opposing Normalization, local media reported. Protestors demanded Morocco sever its relations with Israel and called for the expulsion of Israeli representatives from the kingdom.
Israel and Morocco formally established diplomatic ties in December 2020 by signing a Morocco-US-Israel tripartite agreement. The US-brokered deal included recognizing Rabat’s claim of sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony mostly controlled by Morocco but claimed by the Polisario Front, a Sahrawi independence movement supported by Algeria.
Following the accord, Morocco secured deals to purchase Israel’s highly coveted Barak 8 missile defense system, Elbit Hermes drones and its spy satellite system to use in its ongoing war with the Polisario Front in Western Sahara. In 2023, trade between Morocco and Israel doubled, reaching 116.7 million dollars compared to 56.2 million in 2022. This increase marked the fastest growth among the Arab countries that also established ties with Israel in 2020: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan.
In July, Moroccan media reported that the kingdom was purchasing two Ofek-13 spy satellites from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in a deal worth 1 billion dollars. IAI is known for manufacturing some of the most advanced drones and missile defense systems used by the Israeli army in Gaza. Once delivered, the satellites are expected to bolster the African nation’s intelligence-gathering capabilities amid increasing geopolitical tensions – replacing Morocco’s existing Airbus and Thales space-based surveillance system.
Earthquake strikes Syria again: An earthquake shook central Syria late Monday, August 12, local authorities said, causing no major damages but rattling the nerves of residents who remembered last year’s devastating temblor that struck northern Syria and Turkey.
Syria’s National Center for Earthquakes said a 5.5 magnitude quake struck 28 kilometers east of the city of Hama at 11:56 pm local time. There were no immediate reports of deaths and local authorities in Hama’s surrounding government-held areas reported no damages. In the country’s opposition-held northwest, the local civil defense agency known as the White Helmets also said there were no damages.
On February 6, 2023, a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Syria and Turkey, killing more than 59,000 people and worsening the devastation in already war-torn Syria.
Hama Health Director Maher Younes told the Sham FM radio station that this time only 25 people suffered “minor and moderate injuries” as they panicked and attempted to escape the temblor. In northern Lebanon and Beirut, where the earthquake was also felt, residents descended to the streets fearing a stronger quake that would collapse buildings.
One year of protests in As-Suwayda: Activists in the southern Syrian province of As-Suwayda marked on Friday, August 16, the first anniversary of an uprising against the Assad regime which took the country by surprise and has carried on for several months. The protests in As-Suwayda which started last August were reminiscent of the peaceful protests which took place across the country in 2011, calling for democracy and an end to the Assad regime’s dictatorship.
They started as a reaction to the poor economic situation in the province and Syria as a whole, with people lamenting living conditions and the lack of basic necessities and services. But they soon became a major movement with political demands, including the removal of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and a peaceful transfer of power. As-Suwayda is a Druze-majority Syrian province in a Sunni-majority country and the protests called into question the regime’s alleged status as a protector of Syria’s religious minorities, which it has always tried to use to gain legitimacy.
In fact, the wide appeal of the protests and the fact that unlike before, they were happening in nearly all the villages and towns in the province, further stymied violent regime action against them. However, the protests have not achieved political or economic concessions on the ground after one year, despite protesters still hoping that their movement will gather momentum – remaining a thorn in the side of the regime, as they focus more on national rather than local slogans, preventing sectarian tensions from spreading.
Cholera outbreak: The humanitarian crisis caused by the civil war in Sudan has exacerbated infections, including cholera, which has killed more than 300 people, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, announcing on Friday that 11,327 cholera cases and 316 deaths had been reported, while dengue fever and meningitis infections were also on the rise.
“We are declaring a cholera epidemic because of the weather conditions and because drinking water has been contaminated,” Sudan’s Health Minister Haitham Ibrahim announced. For weeks the country has seen torrential rainfall, with Kassala state badly hit. The authorities there have appealed for “immediate” and “urgent” international aid.
According to the WHO, the recent outbreaks of cholera have also been more deadly with fatality rates being the highest recorded in more than a decade. Cholera is caused by a bacteria spread in contaminated food and water, and access to clean water and sanitation are important to stop its spread. The disease can kill within hours without treatment although it can also cause mild or no symptoms. Children under five are at particular risk.
The fighting in Sudan has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands – with some estimates of up to 150,000, according to US envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello – and it forced one in five people in the country to flee their homes. Due to the mass displacement, more than 25 million people across the country, or more than half Sudan’s population, face acute hunger and outbreaks of disease. Famine has also been declared in a Darfur displacement camp, and humanitarian aid is hard to come by.
The northeast African country has been engulfed in a war since April 2023 between the Sudanese army under the country’s de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as ‘Hemeti.’
Suicide bomb: A suicide bomber killed 16 Yemeni soldiers and wounded 18 other troops in a military post in the southern province of Abyan on Friday morning, authorities said. The attacker “drove a booby-trapped car into a site for the security forces,” in the Mudiyah district, Mohamed al-Naqib, a spokesperson for the Southern Transitional Council, said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility, but militants linked to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have stepped up attacks on military facilities in Yemen.
Al-Qaeda Yemen’s branch has used a nine-year conflict between the Iran-aligned Houthi group and a Saudi-backed coalition to bolster its influence in a country that shares a border with Saudi Arabia and sits near major shipping lanes, surviving years of attempted crackdowns by the US military, the coalition and the Houthis, taking advantage of Yemen’s conflict and the large stretches of empty territory.
The Southern Transitional Council – which is allied with the Saudi coalition and controls large parts of the south which it wants to secede – has stepped up offensives against Al-Qaeda elements in Abyan over the past year.
What We’re Reading
Favouritism behind OTT services: Lebanon’s Audit Court has given a stranded veto over the use of over-the-top (OTT) services as added-value services streamed via the internet, Maan Barazy wrote for NOW. The recent decision by Lebanon’s Court of Audit to reject the Ministry of Communications’ agreement with Stream Media for operating the OTT system reeks of political bias and favouritism, highlighting the Court’s deep entanglement with Lebanon’s entrenched political and economic interests.
Searching for safety: Amid rising war tensions and warnings from embassies, tourists have been leaving Lebanon in significant numbers, Rodayna Raydan reported for NOW. The persistent instability presents a major obstacle to Lebanon’s attempts to rejuvenate its tourism sector and sustain its status as a prominent destination in the Middle East.
The urgency of compromise: NOW’s political psychologist Ramzi Abou Ismail analyzed what are the obstacles preventing Lebanon from building a sustainable future, from the political élite’s unwillingness to compromise, to a broad awareness gap, from the lack of agreement on a common national project, to Hezbollah’s divisive rhetoric.
Profiting from displacement: As Lebanon enters its eleventh month of hostilities across its southern borders’ areas, with internally displaced people dramatically increasing, the expected wave of solidarity is replaced by a harshly widespread logic of profit. Rents across Beirut and Mount Lebanon have skyrocketed from an average of 300 dollars to as high as 1,400 per month, a 367% increase, with real estate agents also demanding months of rent in advance – Valeria Rando reported for NOW.
The Technocracy Façade: Commenting on the political legacy of Georges Corm – the renowned Lebanese academic who recently passed away – on the technocrat debate in modern politics, Khalil Gebara drew a picture of Lebanon’s technocracy during the exceptional time of potential war. The current government, in fact, may soon be the longest-serving one since the end of the civil war in 1990, potentially marking its third anniversary next September, despite having spent half of its mandate under caretaker status.
Lebanon +
“A child hears about death and destruction, of course that instils fear.” Released in 2022, created and produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forum ZFD, Maabar’s first episode ‘Cops & Robbers’ tackled the topic of Lebanon’s Civil War experienced by children: how did they understand that war, how did they comprehend the gravity of the situation? From the deafening sounds of bombs and bullets to the sight of someone pulling a gun on their father at a checkpoint – at an age where children are supposed to learn and play, the podcasts’ interviewees were children raised in a reality of violence and destruction. Listening to it today, on the edge of a broader conflict, raises questions about the price of starting a war paid by the most innocent, unaware ones.
