Lebanon joins Saudi Arabia’s Middle East Green Initiative

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) confirmed on Friday that “Lebanon has joined the Green Middle East Initiative (L), launched by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.” (Supplied/AFP)
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Updated 30 August 2024
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Lebanon joins Saudi Arabia’s Middle East Green Initiative

  • Caretaker PM Najib Mikati calls move ‘essential for Lebanon’

BEIRUT: Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati confirmed on Friday that “Lebanon has joined the Green Middle East Initiative, launched by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”

Mikati described the step as “essential for Lebanon, especially as southern villages and towns have suffered significant environmental and agricultural damage, necessitating cooperation with all of Lebanon’s friends.”

Mikati told Agriculture Minister Abbas Al-Hajj Hassan, and Environment Minister Nasser Yassin about the country’s inclusion in the initiative, and Hassan said: “Israel is destroying large areas, whether agricultural lands, fruit-bearing trees, or forests.

“Approving Lebanon’s participation in the initiative is a very positive sign for us Lebanese, the government, and especially for the Agriculture and Environment Ministries.

“The timing of today’s announcement comes amid the ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon. We thank the Kingdom for its efforts, as it has always stood by Lebanon in the toughest of times.”

Yassin said that one of the initiative’s goals was “to plant 40 billion trees across the Middle East.”

He added: “A key part of Saudi Arabia’s initiative is to protect the region, the Gulf, and Middle Eastern countries from ongoing climate change; halt land degradation and desertification; and explore ways to adapt more effectively to potential future changes.”

Yassin thanked “Saudi Arabia for agreeing to consider Lebanon’s file and for its inclusion in this very important initiative.”

He said: “This is part of the continuous and long-standing cooperation with Saudi Arabia over the decades. This initiative is timely and will be followed up by the Ministries of Agriculture and Environment and all concerned parties through joint reserves to increase vegetation cover.”

The cost of the damage to southern Lebanese border towns during the first six months of Israeli attacks has exceeded $1.5 billion, according to government figures.

The shelling and airstrikes have damaged the livelihoods of residents in the border area and their agricultural holdings.

Satellite images show the destruction of entire neighborhoods in villages along the Blue Line and the disappearance of forested areas covering mountain slopes and valleys.

Israeli attacks have displaced more than 110,000 people from dozens of villages.

Lebanese authorities have accused Israel of using phosphorus bombs to destroy forests and crops, while the Ministry of Agriculture has been unable to conduct a final assessment of the extent of the damage due to the ongoing Israeli operation.

The Ministry of Agriculture said in July: “The Israeli bombardment with white phosphorus (has) led to 700 small and large fires. More than 2,500 dunams (617 acres) of land have been completely burned, and the area of affected land consisting of forest and agricultural lands has reached 6,000 dunams (1,482 acres), with the targeted trees being olive, pine and oak.

“The damage to forested areas home to oak, Mount Tabor oak and laurel trees amounts to 55 percent, agricultural and citrus trees to 35 percent, and grasslands to 10 percent.”

Lebanese authorities are waiting for a ceasefire to conduct a final survey of the damage, but compensation is uncertain in a country that has been affected by a severe economic crisis for nearly five years.

Israeli raids on border villages continued on Friday, including valleys and forested areas, causing extensive damage.

The Israeli military fired flares over border villages near the Blue Line in the western and central sectors, reaching the outskirts of the city of Tyre. It also dropped incendiary bombs on the outskirts of the towns of Naqoura and Alma Al-Shaab.

The Israelis claimed that its warplanes “targeted several Hezbollah rocket launchers in southern Lebanon.”


Egypt denies court ruling threatens historic monastery

Updated 13 sec ago
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Egypt denies court ruling threatens historic monastery

  • A court in Sinai ruled on that the monastery ‘is entitled to use’ the land, which ‘the state owns as public property’
  • Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens called the court ruling ‘scandalous’
CAIRO: Egypt has denied that a controversial court ruling over Sinai’s Saint Catherine monastery threatens the UNESCO world heritage landmark, after Greek and church authorities warned of the sacred site’s status.
A court in Sinai ruled on Wednesday in a land dispute between the monastery and the South Sinai governorate that the monastery “is entitled to use” the land, which “the state owns as public property.”
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s office defended the ruling Thursday, saying it “consolidates” the site’s “unique and sacred religious status,” after the head of the Greek Orthodox church in Greece denounced it.
Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens called the court ruling “scandalous” and an infringement by Egyptian judicial authorities of religious freedoms.
He said the decision means “the oldest Orthodox Christian monument in the world, the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine in Mount Sinai, now enters a period of severe trial — one that evokes much darker times in history.”
El-Sisi’s office in a statement said it “reiterates its full commitment to preserving the unique and sacred religious status of Saint Catherine’s monastery and preventing its violation.”
The monastery was established in the sixth century at the biblical site of the burning bush in the southern mountains of the Sinai peninsula, and is the world’s oldest continually inhabited Christian monastery.
The Saint Catherine area, which includes the eponymous town and a nature reserve, is undergoing mass development under a controversial government megaproject aimed at bringing in mass tourism.
Observers say the project has harmed the reserve’s ecosystem and threatened both the monastery and the local community.
Archbishop Ieronymos warned that the monastery’s property would now be “seized and confiscated,” despite “recent pledges to the contrary by the Egyptian President to the Greek Prime Minister.”
Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis contacted his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty on Thursday, saying “there was no room for deviation from the agreements between the two parties,” the ministry’s spokesperson said.
In a statement to Egypt’s state news agency, the foreign ministry in Cairo later said rumors of confiscation were “unfounded,” and that the ruling “does not infringe at all” on the monastery’s sites or its religious and spiritual significance.
Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said “Greece will express its official position ... when the official and complete content of the court decision is known and evaluated.”
He confirmed both countries’ commitment to “maintaining the Greek Orthodox religious character of the monastery.”

Israel aid blockage making Gaza ‘hungriest region on earth’, UN office says

Updated 7 sec ago
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Israel aid blockage making Gaza ‘hungriest region on earth’, UN office says

BERLIN: Israel is blocking all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, with almost no ready-to-eat food entering what its spokesperson described as “the hungriest place on earth.”
Spokesperson Jens Laerke said only 600 of 900 aid trucks had been authorized to get to Israel’s border with Gaza, and from there a mixture of bureaucratic and security obstacles made it all but impossible to safely carry aid into the region.
“What we have been able to bring in is flour,” he told a regular news conference on Friday. “That’s not ready to eat, right? It needs to be cooked... 100 percent of the population of Gaza is at risk of famine.”
Tommaso della Longa, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, added that half of its medical facilities in the region were out of action for lack of fuel or medical equipment. (Reporting by Thomas Escritt, editing by Rachel More)


Hamas receives Israeli response to US Gaza proposal and is reviewing it

Updated 11 min 17 sec ago
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Hamas receives Israeli response to US Gaza proposal and is reviewing it

  • Hamas: Israeli response fails to meet any of the Palestinian “just and legitimate demands”

DUBAI: Hamas has received Israel’s response to a US proposal for a Gaza ceasefire deal and is thoroughly reviewing it, even though the response fails to meet any of the Palestinian “just and legitimate demands,” group’s official Basem Naim said on Friday.


Daesh claims first attack on Syrian government forces since Assad’s fall

Updated 34 min 30 sec ago
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Daesh claims first attack on Syrian government forces since Assad’s fall

  • Daesh, which once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, is opposed to the new authority in Damascus led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa
  • Daesh was defeated in Syria in March 2019 when SDF fighters captured the last sliver of land that the extremists controlled

BEIRUT: The Daesh group has claimed responsibility for two attacks in southern Syria, including one on government forces that an opposition war monitor described as the first on the Syrian army to be adopted by the extremists since the fall of Bashar Assad.

In two separate statements issued late Thursday, Daesh said that in the first attack, a bomb was detonated targeting a “vehicle of the apostate regime,” leaving seven soldiers dead or wounded. It said the attack occurred “last Thursday,” or May 22, in the Al-Safa area in the desert of the southern province of Sweida.

Daesh said that the second attack occurred this week in a nearby area during which a bomb targeted members of the US-backed Free Syrian Army, claiming that it killed one fighter and wounded three.

There was no comment from the government on the claim of the attack and a spokesperson for the Free Syrian Army didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the attack on government forces killed one civilian and wounded three soldiers, describing it as the first such attack to be claimed by Daesh against Syrian forces since the fall of the 54-year Assad family’s rule in December.

Daesh, which once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, is opposed to the new authority in Damascus led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who was once the head of Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria and fought battles against Daesh.

Over the past several months, Daesh has claimed responsibility for attacks against the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast.

Daesh was defeated in Syria in March 2019 when SDF fighters captured the last sliver of land that the extremists controlled. Since then, its sleeper cells have carried out deadly attacks, mainly in eastern and northeast Syria.

In January, state media reported that intelligence officials in Syria’s post-Assad government thwarted a plan by Daesh to set off a bomb at a Shiite Muslim shrine south of Damascus.

Al-Sharaa met with US President Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia earlier this month during which the American leader said that Washington would work on lifting crippling economic sanctions imposed on Damascus since the days of Assad.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement after the meeting that Trump urged Al-Sharaa to diplomatically recognize Israel, “tell all foreign terrorists to leave Syria” and help the US stop any resurgence of the Daesh group.


Israel far-right minister says ‘time to go in with full force’ in Gaza

Updated 30 May 2025
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Israel far-right minister says ‘time to go in with full force’ in Gaza

  • Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Friday it was time to use “full force” in Gaza, after Hamas said a new US-backed truce proposal failed to meet its demands

JERUSALEM: Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Friday it was time to use “full force” in Gaza, after Hamas said a new US-backed truce proposal failed to meet its demands.
“Mr Prime Minister, after Hamas rejected the deal proposal again — there are no more excuses,” Ben Gvir said on his Telegram channel. “The confusion, the shuffling and the weakness must end. We have already missed too many opportunities. It is time to go in with full force, without blinking, to destroy, and kill Hamas to the last one.”