BEIRUT: More MPs have joined independent lawmakers staging a sit-in inside Lebanon’s 128-seat parliament to protest at the ongoing vacuum of power.
Protesters held their own sit-in outside parliament in solidarity with MPs angry at the failure to elect a new president.
Reformist MPs Najat Saliba and Melhem Khalaf launched their protest in the plenary hall of parliament last Thursday to put pressure on factions to elect a president, nearly three months on from the post falling vacant.
Reformist MPs Halima Kaakour and Firas Hamdan joined the protesters on Friday night, in addition to George Okais and Razi Al-Hajj from Lebanese Forces.
Khalaf told Arab News: “We are not protesting; we are applying the law.
“We don’t have the right to complain, as the Lebanese people have been living for months without electricity and services.
“Our presence in the plenary hall shows the people that patience results in a functional country.
“We don’t want to convey helplessness to the people.
“Our legal duties compel us, pursuant to article 74 of the constitution, to be present in the parliament without invitation and elect a president without any conditions.”
The MP added that article 75 stipulated that the deputies had turned into an electoral body and “we don’t have the right to perform any other role.”
He added: “Some 26 deputies have arrived in the plenary hall to confirm the eligibility of the step we took.”
Independent deputy Abdel Rahman Al-Bizri said: “There should be a democratic political breakthrough inside parliament. It is the only solution for the crisis.
“The deputies inside the parliament are not staging a protest, but carrying out their duties.
“The parliament has a real chance to carry out its role and elect a president away from any foreign and regional considerations.”
Al-Bizri believes that the action initiated by Khalaf and Saliba may have helped bring matters to a head after 11 failed electoral sessions.
He emphasized that the main purpose of the move was to protect the Lebanese presidential and parliamentary system.
Okais said: “What’s needed is to unify the opposition against Hezbollah and its allies and turn the presidential elections into a purely Lebanese process, if the intentions are good.
“We don’t mind holding a dialogue to discuss a presidential candidate other than Michel Moawad, provided he’s a reformist and sovereign candidate.”
Okais added that he had told the protesting deputies in the hall that what they were doing was “a noble act,” but added he had questioned what was to follow.
He highlighted what he termed a strategic and ideological divergence between the protesting MPs.
He said: “If the opposition does not agree on one name, then the protest will be in vain and similar to climbing up a tree without knowing how to get down.”
Progressive Socialist Party MP Bilal Abdallah said it was necessary to “follow a new dynamic when tackling the presidential election.”
He added: “We don’t boycott nor disrupt the process, but we urge everyone to hold more dialogue that actually generates effective results, rather than futile ones.”
Regarding the results of dialogue between Hezbollah and the Progressive Socialist Party on the presidential elections, Abdallah said: “It revolved around the need to keep elections away from current political alignments and confrontations, and avoid repeating the scenario of the former mandate.
“Dialogue with other political parties continues in order to reach an internal settlement and turn the presidential election into a purely Lebanese process.
“It seems that foreign countries do not care about Lebanon today, and solutions and follow-ups are not their priority. That’s why we took this step and we won’t stop.”
Lebanon has had neither a president nor a fully empowered Cabinet since Michel Aoun’s term ended in October.
More MPs join sit-in inside Lebanon’s parliament amid political crisis
https://arab.news/mnnyy
More MPs join sit-in inside Lebanon’s parliament amid political crisis
- ‘We are not protesting, we are applying the law,’ Reformist MP says
- The MP added that article 75 stipulated that the deputies had turned into an electoral body and “we don’t have the right to perform any other role.”
UNRWA says food distribution in Rafah suspended due to insecurity
DUBAI: The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Tuesday that food distribution in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah were currently suspended due to lack of supplies and insecurity.
Simultaneous Israeli assaults on the southern and northern edges of the Gaza Strip this month have caused a new exodus of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, and sharply restricted the flow of aid, raising the risk of famine.
Cyprus says maritime aid shipments to Gaza ‘on track’
- 1,000 tons of aid were shipped from Cyprus to the besieged Palestinian territory between Friday and Sunday
- The vessels were shuttling between Gaza and the east Mediterranean island
NICOSIA: Four ships from the United States and France are transporting aid from Larnaca port to the Gaza Strip amid the spiralling humanitarian crisis there, the Cyprus presidency said on Tuesday.
Victor Papadopoulos from the presidential press office told state radio 1,000 tons of aid were shipped from Cyprus to the besieged Palestinian territory between Friday and Sunday.
He said the vessels were shuttling between Gaza and the east Mediterranean island, a distance of about 360 kilometers (225 miles).
Large quantities of aid from Britain, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and other countries have accumulated at Larnaca port.
Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides told reporters on Tuesday the maritime aid effort was “on track.”
“We have substantial assistance from third countries that want to contribute to this effort,” he said.
The aid shipped from Cyprus is entering Gaza via a temporary US-built floating pier, where the shipments are offloaded for distribution.
The United Nations has warned of famine as Gaza’s 2.4 million people face shortages of food, safe water, medicines and fuel amid the Israel-Hamas war that has devastated the coastal territory.
Aid deliveries by truck have slowed to a trickle since Israeli forces took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt in early May.
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Two days after the war broke out, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” on the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,647 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Daesh attack in Syria kills three soldiers: war monitor
- The militants “attacked a site where... regime forces were stationed“
- The Syrian army had sent forces to the area, where Daesh attacks are common
BEIRUT: Daesh group militants killed three Syrian soldiers in an attack Tuesday on an army position in the Badia desert, a war monitor said.
The militants “attacked a site where... regime forces were stationed,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that a lieutenant colonel and two soldiers died.
The Syrian army had sent forces to the area, where Daesh attacks are common, ahead of an expected wider sweep, said the Britain-based Observatory which has a network of sources inside the country.
In an attack on May 3, Daesh fighters killed at least 15 Syrian pro-government fighters when they targeted three military positions in the desert, the Observatory had reported.
Daesh overran large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a so-called caliphate and launching a reign of terror.
It was defeated territorially in Syria in 2019, but its remnants still carry out deadly attacks, particularly against pro-government forces and Kurdish-led fighters in Badia desert.
Syria’s war has claimed more than half a million lives and displaced millions more since it erupted in March 2011 with Damascus’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.
At least 9 Egyptian women and children die when vehicle slides off ferry and plunges into Nile River
At least 9 Egyptian women and children die when vehicle slides off ferry and plunges into Nile River
- The accident, which happened in Monshat el-Kanater town in Giza province, also injured nine other passengers
CAIRO: At least nine Egyptian women and children died Tuesday when a small bus carrying about two dozen people slid off a ferry and plunged into the Nile River just outside Cairo, health authorities said.
The accident, which happened in Monshat el-Kanater town in Giza province, injured nine other passengers, the Health Ministry said in a statement. Giza is one of three provinces forming Greater Cairo.
Six of the injured were treated at the site while three others were transferred to hospitals. The ministry didn’t elaborate on their injuries.
A list of the nine dead obtained by The Associated Press showed four were minors.
Giza provincial Gov. Ahmed Rashed said the bus was retrieved from the river and rescue efforts were still underway as of midday Tuesday.
The cause of the accident was not immediately clear.
According to the state-owned Akhbar daily, about two dozen passengers, mostly women, were in the vehicle heading to work when the accident occurred. It said security forces detained the vehicle driver.
Ferry, railway and road accidents are common in Egypt, mainly because of poor maintenance and lack of regulations. In February, a ferry carrying day laborers sank in the Nile in Giza, killing at least 10 of the 15 people on board.
Syrian first lady Asma Assad has leukemia, presidency says
- Statement stated that Asma would undergo a special treatment protocol that would require her to isolate
DUBAI: Syria’s first lady, Asma Assad, has been diagnosed with leukemia, the Syrian presidency said on Tuesday, almost five years after she announced she had fully recovered from breast cancer.
The statement said Asma, 48, would undergo a special treatment protocol that would require her to isolate, and that she would step away from public engagements as a result.
In August 2019, Asma said she had fully recovered from breast cancer that she said had been discovered early.
Since Syria plunged into war in 2011, the British-born former investment banker has taken on the public role of leading charity efforts and meeting families of killed soldiers, but has also become hated by the opposition.
She runs the Syria Trust for Development, a large NGO that acts as an umbrella organization for many of the aid and development operations in Syria.
Last year, she accompanied her husband, President Bashar Assad ,on a visit to the United Arab Emirates, her first known official trip abroad with him since 2011. She met Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, the Emirati president’s mother, during a trip seen as a public signal of her growing role in public affairs.
