Caretaker cabinet postpones meeting after army retirees block roads to the Grand Serail, Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury dies at the age of 76, Violence on the rise in the occupied West Bank leading to the territory’s ‘Gazification’, Israeli massacre in al-Mawasi humanitarian zone kills 40, Around 560,000 children vaccinated in first round of polio campaign in the Strip, Massive protests in Israel urge Netanyahu’s government to reach a cease-fire and free the remaining hostages, In south Lebanon’s Biyada Israeli strikes kill two adolescents, Unauthorised leaflets dropped above Wazzani called for the evacuation of areas in southern Lebanon, US-UK call for political resolution to Israel-Lebanon border conflict, Hochstein in Israel after Netanyahu’s escalatory rhetoric on southern Lebanon, Turkish intelligence chief and Hamas leaders discuss Gaza negotiations’ stall, Palestine joins UNGA’s 79th session as an observer state for the first time, Bourj Hammoud landfill’s fire covers Beirut in smoke, Syria announces 50 percent reduction in transit fees for trucks travelling between Lebanon and Iraq, Lebanese Army frees eight Palestinians kidnapped by smugglers in the Beqaa Valley, FPM and LF strongly condemn the Education Ministry decision to issue diplomas to Syrian students who passed official exams in Lebanon, Jordan’s Islamic Action Front made the biggest gains of any opposition party in parliamentary elections, UN Security Council extends arms embargo on Sudan’s war-torn Darfur, Two years after the death of Mahsa Amini, Iran’s Noor Plan intensifies crackdown on women
The roads of Beirut are blocked. And it is not for the commemorations that succeeded in the past days – 42 years after the assassination of Kataeb’s leader Bashir Gemayel, on September 14, and today, September 16, from the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, one of the darkest pages – if not the darkest – of the Lebanese Civil War.
Anger, more than remembrance and grief, pushes people to the street. Hunger – even more. This time was the turn of the Lebanese Army retirees, brought together by the need of improved compensations. By the need of bringing food to their families’ tables. They are seeking an adjustment to their pension that takes into account the rapid depreciation in its value because of the economic crisis that has devastated the country since 2019 – when a typical pension would have been well over 1,000 dollars a month. And now, it is less than 100.
Having obstructed the roads leading to the Grand Serail, the Cabinet meeting scheduled for Tuesday, September 10, to discuss the 2025 budget and adjustments to the minimum wage, failed to reach quorum. Protesters, including retired military officers, were demanding an increase in public sector salaries and veteran pensions, which were not included in the government’s agenda. “There will be no meeting today, as long as the demands of the military for a dignified life, like all other sectors, are not heard,” retired General Georges Nader said during the protests.
Earlier in February, discussions of revised public sector compensation had resulted in boosted salaries for public employees: excluded from the revision, the Army retirees have kept on protesting across the country to demand a place, a small spot, in the government’s agenda. And receiving, in exchange, nothing but tear gas.
After Tuesday’s protests, which succeeded in postponing the planned meeting, the caretaker government managed to approve the scheduling of a Cabinet session dedicated to the education sector, an increase to Health Ministry payments to hospitals, and the formation of a Ministerial Committee on bread subsidies. The Army retirees furtherly blocked roads in protests after news of the meeting broke. Between them and the centre of power – a row of burning tires and soldiers on duty, ready to defend the status quo, the law of order. Two generations compared, the same side of the coin of underpaid work, the one – elderly, bent by fatigue – who seem to ask the others – young and strong – what is the point of serving a country that in the end will forget you, ungrateful.
In Lebanon
Rest in peace, Elias Khoury: Novelist Elias Khoury, one of Lebanon’s most renowned writers, witness of the country’s recent history, and supporter of the Palestinian cause – and all struggles against oppression in the Middle East -, has died at the age of 76. Khoury spent more than half a century writing novels and journalism – from his masterpiece ‘Gate of the Sun,’ ‘Yalo,’ ‘Little Mountain,’ ‘White Masks,’ to Al-Safir, Al-Mulhaq – the literary supplement of Al-Nahar -, and the Journal of Palestine Studies -, without losing faith in the role of an intellectual and his ability to make change.
A leading voice of Arab literature, had been ill for months and admitted and discharged from hospital several times over the past year until his death early Sunday, Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily – that he worked for – announced.
Kidnapped: On the same day, Tuesday, September 10, young Palestinians blocked Beirut’s airport road at the entrance of the Burj al-Barajneh camp with burning tires, according to the state-run National News Agency (NNA), protesting against the kidnapping of eight of their relatives in the Beqaa Valley for ransom money, and demanding the intervention of the State and the security forces.
On Wednesday, September 11, the Lebanese Army announced it freed the eight Palestinians who had been held captive, luring them with the promise of facilitating their migration. In a statement released in the afternoon, the military institution said it had arrested a Lebanese member of the gang and was working to arrest the rest of the group. “On the night of September 9-10, 2024, a criminal gang lured eight Palestinians residing in the Burj al-Barajneh camp to the Beqaa region under the pretext of facilitating their illegal emigration to Europe, before kidnapping them and demanding a ransom for their release,” the statement said. The Intelligence Directorate carried out a surveillance operation and raids, finding the kidnapped persons in the Hermel region, on the Lebanese-Syrian border.
According to media outlets and security sources, the Palestinians were allegedly lured by a group of people offering to help them travel to Italy. The kidnappers allegedly demanded a ransom, and tortured some of their victims, abducted in the southern suburbs, where all contact was lost, while they were supposed to go to Tripoli.
In the south: On Wednesday, September 11, an Israeli explosive targeting a motorcycle in Biyada, south governorate, killed two brothers, aged 12 and 17. The targeted strike followed an earlier attack on a motorcycle that killed a Hezbollah member and injured another person in Mais al-Jabal.
The party announced the death of another of its members earlier in the day, after a night of particularly heavy Israeli bombardments on southern Lebanon – which continued all week long.
The targeted strikes, in fact, came amid a volley of Israeli cross-border strikes continuing an intensifying deployment of artillery shelling, aerial bombardments and drone attacks. Notably, Israel fired successive explosive drones towards Maroun al-Ras, provoked injuries and forest fires in sprees of white phosphorus shelling and damaged or destroyed several additional houses across the region.
Hezbollah continued to announce its own strikes against Israeli military targets, relying on its usual arsenal of rockets and explosive drones, setting off warning sirens in northern Israel and reportedly injuring an Israeli man in the Dan border village, according to Israeli press Haaretz.
Fearing escalation: Israel’s Channel 13, citing an unnamed senior official, reported that Prime Minister Netanyahu is planning to launch a major attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon soon. Israel is “on the verge of a broad and strong operation on the northern front”, it quoted the official as saying. “No date has yet been set but it is expected in the near future,” it continued, as Israel’s cabinet is expected to meet this week to discuss the situation. The Kan public broadcaster reported that Netanyahu believes a full-scale war in Lebanon won’t diminish Israel’s military pressure on Hamas in Gaza. However, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant disagrees and has said forces will need to be redeployed from the war-battered Palestinian territory.
Meanwhile, a joint statement from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy underlined their “support for Israel’s security” adding that it was important to avoid regional escalation “which would undermine the prospect for peace and progress towards a two-state solution,” while expressing a “shared commitment to securing a political agreement for a lasting security solution along the Blue Line that will allow Israeli and Lebanese civilians on both sides to return to their homes with safety and security.”
The statement comes after Hezbollah said Israeli settlers who fled their homes near the border with Lebanon would not be able to return to the north “except by stopping the war on Gaza,” while Netanyahu presented a proposal to make the return of northern Israel’s residents an official war objective.
Hochstein in Israel: US Envoy Amos Hochstein is due in Israel today, Monday, September 16, to endeavour de-escalation after crossfire with Hezbollah resurged in intensity – days after Netanyahu pledged to do all that is possible to return tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the border region since October 8.
Unusual incident: On Sunday, local sources reported leaflets dropped by the Israeli army and found by some residents of south Lebanon’s village of Wazzani, in Hasbaya district, reading: “To all residents and displaced people in tents and shelters, Hezbollah is firing from your area. You must immediately leave your homes and head north to Khiam village until 4 pm. Do not return to the area before the end of the war,” continues the text, written in Arabic. “Anyone who remains in the area after the designated time will be considered a terrorist and eliminated. The Israeli Defense Force will do everything in its power to clear the area of its residents.”
After confusion and conflicting information in the Israeli media about the authenticity of the falling leaflets, the operation turned out to be “an individual decision” not endorsed by military command, but organised by the 679th Eastern Brigade in the IDF, without receiving the approval from the army leadership nor the political élites. The Israeli army said to be investigating the “unusual” incident.
The residents of Wazzani refused to leave the village, the National News Agency reported in the afternoon. However, still according to the agency, most of the Syrian refugees living in the village left, while instead residents remained.
Waste burning: A fire broke out Thursday afternoon at the Burj Hammoud waste landfill, located at the northern entrance of Beirut. According to a statement from the Civil Defense, the fire began at 6 pm, creating a large plume of smoke visible from a considerable distance. Still burning at around 8 pm, and ablaze until 11, it was crucial to extinguish it due to the toxic nature of the smoke. Eventually, it was contained overnight – yet it kept on burning white smoke during the following day.
Firefighting operations have been conducted with the support of the Beirut Fire Brigade and in cooperation with the company responsible for the landfill, as well as the supervision of caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi. The Minister stated that he contacted the governor of Mount Lebanon, Mohammad Mekkawi, requesting measures to keep citizens away from the burning landfill. The statement added that it is “crucial to issue clear instructions to avoid inhaling toxic smoke.”
Landfills like the one in Burj Hammoud are filled with massive amounts of untreated waste, including organic and plastic materials. This waste turns into a smoldering mass that is difficult to extinguish and releases toxic pollutants such as methane, fine particles, dioxins and furans, which pose a serious threat to public health by increasing the risk of respiratory and cancer-related diseases.
This is one of the most difficult types of fires to extinguish, Lebanese Civil Defense Director Raymond Khattar told local channel LBCI on Friday morning. He noted that 20 Civil Defense vehicles and three Beirut fire trucks were deployed to tackle the blaze, along with cranes from the company managing the landfill. Trucks carrying dirt and sand were also used to smother the fire. Khattar criticized the management of the landfill, describing it as “one mountain of trash” that has since expanded and now includes hazardous waste. Despite having been contained, the cause of the fire remains unclear.
The environmental protection NGO Greenpeace, through Farah al-Hattab, a lawyer and campaign manager for Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa, issued a statement following the disaster: “This catastrophic incident is a stark reminder of the urgent need to address the waste crisis plaguing Lebanon, which can no longer rely on temporary solutions. The country must implement effective, urgent, and sustainable short- and long-term solutions, focusing on reduction, reuse, recycling, and the safe disposal of waste. If the situation persists, Lebanon will face recurring health and environmental crises,” she said.
Scapegoats: Lebanon’s caretaker Education Ministry issued a statement Saturday emphasizing that the decision to distribute diplomas to Syrian students who passed official exams, as decided by the Cabinet, “in no way facilitates their residency in Lebanon if not authorized by the authorities, as General Security ensures that appropriate measures are taken.” The statement highlights that the “educational path of displaced Syrians is completely independent of that of Lebanese students,” and that this measure has no effect on the latter.
However, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) strongly criticized the Cabinet’s decision, threatening legal action to prevent its implementation. The FPM’s statement condemns what it describes as a “decision to allow Syrian students to enroll in technical institutes even if they do not have legal residency permits,” which it argues opposes Lebanese law, adding that “this would encourage Syrian families residing illegally in Lebanon to stay, as long as they are guaranteed quality education.”
Urging caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and caretaker Education Minister Abbas Halabi to promptly reverse this decision, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea echoed this sentiment, calling the decision “illegal” and arguing that it “would not only encourage Syrians in an irregular situation to remain in Lebanon, but also prompt those in Syria to send their children to enroll in technical institutes in Lebanon, to the detriment of Lebanese students.”
In The Region
The ‘Gazification’ of the West Bank: European Union Chief of Diplomacy Commission Josep Borell has warned against Israeli aim to “to transform the West Bank into a new Gaza.” According to Borrell, Israel is “escalating violence, delegitimizing the Palestinian Authority and encouraging provocations to provoke a strong reaction” in the occupied West Bank, following an Israeli military raid of the northern occupied Palestinian territory that left at least 36 people dead, devastating buildings and infrastructure.
Distinguished from Israel’s near-daily incursions with its heavy use of force, the recent settlers’ attacks in the Palestinian territory have left, since October 7, 2023, almost 700 dead – while the occupation forces have continued mass raids across the territory, including by detaining emergency service workers, as it happened in Tulkarm – that witnessed a systematic destruction of infrastructure to push the population to leave -; by preventing ambulances from reaching the site; and by using reconnaissance planes and military helicopters to strike the outskirts of Tubas.
Moreover, Israeli forces have arrested at least 10 Palestinians on Friday, including several former prisoners, as reported by the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club, stating that “the arrests were distributed across the governorates of Nablus, Ramallah, Tulkarem and Hebron.” On Saturday, then, 23 other Palestinians were arrested while trying to return to their workplaces in Israel at a checkpoint near Ramallah. More than 10,700 people have been arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since the war on Gaza began.
The challenges of vaccination: Meanwhile, in Gaza, the first phase of a UN-led polio vaccination drive has officially ended. About 560,000 children received their first dose over 12 days, the WHO announced on Friday.
The vaccination campaign had initially aimed to reach at least 640,000 children in Gaza, with vaccines administered at hundreds of sites across the territory. Designed to take place in two rounds, each divided into three phases, intended to target the central, northern, and southern regions – the campaign’s first round was completed Thursday, having spanned from September 1 to 12.
“Despite relentless attacks on schools and sites sheltering uprooted children, exhausting displacement orders forcing families to relocate time and again, and widespread hunger levels that have at points pushed parts of Gaza to the brink of famine, families made the effort to turn out in high numbers to the vaccination sites,” UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Adele Khodr said in a statement. “They know there is no time to waste to protect their children.” But in order for the vaccine to actually work, a second dose will need to be administered four weeks after the first round to those hundreds of thousands of children: a difficult task given the children’s lack of documentation, the harsh living conditions, and the limited time available during the brief ‘polio pauses’ in fighting – not to mention the mass displacement of individuals, which will make very hard to track children moving with their families across different governance zones.
Targeting aid groups: Of the 378 aid workers killed worldwide since October 7, more than 75 percent have been killed in Gaza or the West Bank, according to the Aid Worker Security Database. The number of humanitarians killed in Palestinian territory in the last three months of 2023 was more than the deadliest full year ever recorded for aid workers. A US think tank has compiled 14 incidents in which Israel’s military has attacked humanitarian workers, despite the groups notifying Israeli authorities of their location and movements and clearly marking their vehicles or facilities.
The list, compiled by the Security Policy Reform Institute, includes: Israel’s attack on a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) convoy that killed two staff members on November 18; Israel’s attacks on a church that killed two women on December 16; Israel’s attack that killed a five-year-old girl in an MSF shelter in Khan Younis on January 8; an Israeli air attack that killed an Anera employee in Deir el-Balah on March 9; an Israeli drone attack on a World Central Kitchen convoy that killed seven aid workers on April 1; Israel’s air attack on an Anera aid convoy that killed four Palestinians on August 29.
Massacre in al-Mawasi: Last Tuesday, a single Israeli airstrike killed up to 40 people and injured at least 60 others, according to Gaza Health Ministry and Civil Defense estimates, after a camp housing displaced people in al-Mawasi humanitarian zone near Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Hamas denied Israeli claims that its fighters were present in the area.
The designated humanitarian zone had come under Israeli fire on July 13 when bombardments killed at least 92 people. Israel claimed the strike targeted and killed Hamas commander Mohammad Deif, which Hamas denied, claiming most victims were civilians, leaving the military leader’s fate ambiguous – and the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court to determine the future of proceedings against him.
Protests in Israel: Hundreds of thousands are again on the streets of Tel Aviv and elsewhere throughout Israel, just a week after the largest demonstration in the country’s history, when the bodies of six captives were recovered from Gaza: half a million people in Tel Aviv and 250,000 others in other cities, calling for a deal to bring back the remaining Israeli captives.
The protesters gathered outside army headquarters and other government buildings, chanting slogans against Prime Minister Netanyahu and urging him to reach a deal with Hamas to ensure the return of about 100 captives still held in the war-battered Strip.
Negotiations paralysed: However, Netanyahu doesn’t seem intended to reach a cease-fire until all of his objectives are achieved, while the United Arab Emirates – a key actor in the normalization of diplomatic ties with Israel – said it will not support the Zionist state in its ‘day-after’ plan in Gaza, unless a Palestinian state is established.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s media outlet Hurriyet reported that the country’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) chief, Ibrahim Kalin, held talks with Hamas leaders in Ankara to discuss a cease-fire. The report said that the discussions focused on the ongoing negotiations, including sticking points such as the release of captives, as well as ways to facilitate the entrance of humanitarian aid.
After meetings with Qatari and Egyptian mediators in Doha on Wednesday, Hamas reiterated its readiness to adopt US President Joe Biden’s long-gestating deal, originally proposed in May.
Months of behind-the-scenes negotiations mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to secure a halt to the fighting between Hamas and Israel, with the exception of a one-week truce beginning in late November, when 105 hostages were released to Israel in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners under the deal struck by mediators.
At the General Assembly: Palestine’s Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour met with new UN General Assembly (UNGA) President and Cameroonian politician Philemon Yang, on Friday, September 14, at UN headquarters in New York. The Wafa news agency said Mansour raised the UNGA’s upcoming meeting of the Tenth Emergency Special Session, which on September 17 will tackle Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.
At the meeting, UN members are expected to vote on a draft resolution – based on the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation – calling for Israel’s complete withdrawal from the West Bank within six months.
The 79th session of the UNGA opened on Tuesday, September 10, with Palestine enjoying upgraded rights as an observer state for the first time.
Syria, normalized transportation: The Syrian Ministry of Transport has announced a 50 percent reduction in transit fees – usually amounting to several thousand dollars – for trucks transporting goods between Lebanon and Iraq, according to a statement from the Syrian government. The information was also confirmed by Lebanese Public Works and Transport Minister Ali Hamieh, as reported by various media outlets.
“The decision was made after several meetings of technical committees within the Syrian and Lebanese Transport Ministries, as well as economic and technical meetings with Syrian entities and departments of the Ministry of Economy, Agriculture, and the General Directorate of Customs,” Sami Sleimane, Director of road transport at the Syrian Ministry of Transport, announced in the statement. He specified that the impact of this measure will be assessed three months after its implementation, at which point the fees may be maintained, reduced, or increased accordingly.
In addition to lowering fees for Lebanese trucks, the Syrian government also introduced a reduced cost for Syrian trucks crossing into Iraq after previously exempting them entirely – expecting not only to benefit multiple sectors in Lebanon , but also to bolster Syria’s treasury, with the actual impact to be evaluated after the trial period.
Since 2015, Syria has imposed steep transit fees on Lebanese trucks crossing its territory, a move aimed at generating foreign currency for its economy. This policy has significantly impacted Lebanese farmers, traders, and truck owners, leading to financial losses. To give an idea, the distance between the border crossings of Masnaa, between Lebanon and Syria, and the Al-Bukamal one, on the Iraqi border, is approximately 800 kilometers, with fees reaching up to 5,000 dollars per truck, depending on the cargo load, with an additional 1,000 dollars being charged by Iraqi authorities. As a result, many Lebanese traders opted to transport goods by sea from the port of Tripoli to the Turkish port of Mersin, where the trucks continue by land to Iraq, significantly reducing the costs.
Inside Jordan: Jordanians voted on Tuesday in the first general election conducted under a new electoral law designed to allow political parties to play a bigger role in the 138-seat parliament that has long been dominated by tribal and pro-government factions.
Two years ago, King Abdullah II began to implement electoral reforms aimed at encouraging the role of political parties as a step toward greater democratization, also increasing the number of seats for women and lowering the age at which candidates can run from 30 to 25.
The Islamic Action Front (IAF) has made significant gains in Jordan’s parliamentary elections this year, as results showed the largest opposition party winning one-fifth of the seats. As the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, the IAF had already won up to a fifth of the seats under the 2022 electoral law, which for the first time allocated 41 seats for parties out of 138.
The gains reflect the current popular mood in the country, especially regarding Israel’s war in Gaza. The proximity to Hamas, their ideological allies, has likely increased the Front’s popularity in Jordan – a country half of whose population is of Palestinian origin.
Just two days before polling day, moreover, tensions with Israel further escalated when a Jordanian gunman, Maher al-Jazi, killed three Israeli guards at the country’s border crossing with the occupied West Bank, in the first such attack since the 1990s.
Despite being meant to moderate the tribal hold on power and bolster political parties, however, the revamped law will not change the status quo in the Jordanian parliament, that will likely remain in the hands of tribal, centrist and pro-government members. The elections were in fact marked by widespread voter apathy with initial official figures showing that turnout amongst the 5.1 million eligible voters across 18 electoral districts was 32 percent, slightly higher than 29 percent achieved in the last election in 2020.
Darfur, arms embargo renewed: On Wednesday, September 11, the 15 members of the UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend for another year, until 12 September 2025, the arms embargo imposed in 2004 on the western Sudanese region of Darfur. The embargo was decided at the time following the massacres committed by the pro-government Arab Janjaweed militias against the non-Arab populations of Darfur.
Over the years, the Janjaweed have been unified into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan ‘Hemedti’ Dagalo, one of the two actors in the war that broke out on April 15, 2023, when the RSF began to clash with the Regular Army (SAF), commanded by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan.
The RSF have conquered a large part of Darfur, and for this reason the Sudanese ambassador to the UN insisted that the Security Council sanction the Dagalo militia, with targeted measures.
Stop the conflict: International humanitarian organizations, instead, pointed out that the arms embargo should be extended to the entire territory of Sudan, hitting all the fighting parties to try to stop a conflict that has already caused at least 20,000 deaths, almost 10 million displaced persons and refugees, while 25.6 million people are on the brink of acute hunger and over 755,000 dangerously close to famine.
As a recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) highlights, the conflict is fueled by a constant flow of weapons from various suppliers: among these, according to the accusations presented by the Sudanese ambassador to the UN, there would be the United Arab Emirates, which would arm the RSF with supplies passing through the border with Chad. According to the representative of Khartoum, the recent reopening of the Adré border crossing by Chad – expected to allow the passage of humanitarian aid – allowed weapons to reach the paramilitary force. The Sudanese ambassador also said that according to reports from a European gold market, the United Arab Emirates is profiting from Sudanese gold mined in Darfur.
The representative of the Emirates to the UN responded to the accusations of his Sudanese counterpart, stating that it is “a cynical attempt to divert attention from the failures of the Sudanese Armed Forces” and accused the Khartoum military of showing “zero political courage,” to use hunger as a weapon of war, and to refuse to listen to calls to end the conflict and to sit at the negotiating table. “To end this conflict, the SAF must take the fundamental step of participating in peace talks and finding the political courage to negotiate with their enemy,” he said, referring to the peace talks in Geneva, at which the Sudanese military has so far refused to participate.
Two years later: Today, September 16, marks two years since the death of Mahsa Jina Amini and the start of the ‘Woman Life Freedom’ revolt in Iran, which saw thousands of people take to the streets to demand respect for human rights and gender equality. This year too, the Iranian Moral Police prohibited any gathering on her tomb in the Aychi cemetery in Saqqez, in the Iranian Kurdistan, north-east of the country – while intelligence agents have threatened the Amini family with arrest, warning them not to visit Mahsa’s grave or leave their home on her death’s second anniversary, according to information obtained by Iran International.
Iranian authorities have continued to crack down on those who defy veil laws and are increasing their use of the death penalty to silence dissent. In this regard, a UN note stated that “since April 2024 the authorities have increased repressive policies through the Nur Plan which legitimizes violations of human rights against women and girls who do not respect the obligation to wear the hijab.” Security forces “increased physical violence,” while the authorities “increased surveillance” on compliance with the dress code “in both the public and private spheres,” including with the use of drones.
As verified and denounced by Amnesty International in the latest report on the death penalty, in 2023 there was the highest number of executions of the previous eight years: over 853. Death sentences in Iran are carried out at the end of grossly unfair trials, which are based on ‘confessions’ – the organization reported – extracted through mistreatment and torture including sexual violence and on whose complaints there are no independent and impartial investigations.
What We’re Reading
Budget 2025, by hook or crook: The government is searching for additional tax revenues “by hook or by crook” in its budget 2025 proposal, NOW’s economist Maan Barazy reported. After multiplying fees 46 times in the 2024 budget, the Ministry of Finance decided to add 50 articles involving tax adjustments to increase revenues in the face of an expansion in spending that exceeds a third of what the 2024 budget was.
Netanyahu is staying in power: The political parabola of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is threatened by a national strike among Israel’s squares demanding the return of hostages and end of war in Gaza, journalist Mohammad El Sahili wrote for NOW: will it be enough to undermine the foundations of his decades-long career?
Crumbling buildings: Several of Lebanon’s heritage buildings, many of which reflect the country’s rich cultural and historical diversity, are in urgent need of renovation and maintenance but face neglect due to a lack of government support and economic difficulties, Rodayna Raydan reported.
The quiet before the storm: Lebanon finds itself once again teetering on the edge of escalation, caught between diplomacy and the realities of its fragmented political landscape, political psychologist Ramzi Abou Ismail wrote for NOW.
Children of Akkar: Valeria Rando’s reportage for NOW delved into the mountains of Akkar, where girls and boys of different faiths, both Syrian and Lebanese, gathered for R&R’s ninth summer camp. Beyond discrimination, their scope is to build the basis of a reconciled future for the generation of tomorrow.
Lebanon +
In one of the latest episodes of Al Jazeera’s The Inside Story Podcast, host James Bays interviewed Dan Perry, Ilan Baruch, and Yossi Mekelberg, to discuss the implications of the largest anti-government protest held in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing to accept the Gaza cease-fire deal, which includes the release of captives. What could force his hand or force him out of office?
