BEIRUT: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun visits France on Friday, his first trip to a European country since his January election and as Paris pushes Beirut for long-demanded political and economic reforms.
He is due to meet President Emmanuel Macron, who on a visit to Beirut days after Aoun’s appointment said France would hold an international aid conference to support Lebanon’s reconstruction after a devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah.
No date for the conference has been announced.
Aoun was elected president after the position had been vacant for more than two years, under international pressure, including from former colonial power France.
His election, along with the formation of a new government in February led by reformist premier Nawaf Salam, ended a prolonged political impasse.
The breakthroughs came after the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, long a powerful player in Lebanese politics, was left heavily weakened in the war.
Lebanon’s new leaders now face the arduous task of reconstructing swathes of the country, and overseeing the disarmament of Hezbollah, beginning in south Lebanon.
They must also carry out reforms demanded by the international community to unlock bailout funds amid a five-year economic collapse widely blamed on official mismanagement and corruption.
“This visit to France is symbolically important” because Paris stood alongside Washington and Riyadh in pushing hardest for Aoun’s election, said Karim Bitar, lecturer in Middle East studies at Sciences-Po university in Paris.
The trip also aims to restore France’s “traditional role” in mobilizing “countries friendly to Lebanon” for their support at donor conferences, he added.
On Wednesday, Aoun told visiting French envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian that he and the new government were “determined to overcome the difficulties that the reform process may face in the economic, banking, finance and judicial areas.”
Bitar said that despite recent optimism, “there are still reasons to fear the new leaders’ task will not be so simple.”
He accused “private interests” intrinsically linked to political, economic and media powers of seeking to “defend the system that has endured” since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.
Such interests also seek to “prevent any economic or social reform, any state-building,” or agreement with the International Monetary Fund, he charged.
Bitar also warned that Hezbollah was “not yet ready to hand over its weapons to the Lebanese state.”
Under the November 27 ceasefire, Hezbollah was to withdraw its forces north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Israeli border.
The Lebanese army was to deploy in the area, and any remaining Hezbollah military infrastructure there was to be dismantled.
The ceasefire, which France helps monitor, is based on United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for the disarmament of all non-state armed groups.
Israel still regularly strikes what it says are Hezbollah targets and occupies five border points it considers strategic.
Lebanese president heading to France on first Europe visit since election
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Lebanese president heading to France on first Europe visit since election
- “This visit to France is symbolically important” because Paris stood alongside Washington and Riyadh in pushing hardest for Aoun’s election, said Karim Bitar
- The trip also aims to restore France’s “traditional role” in mobilizing “countries friendly to Lebanon” for their support at donor conferences, he added
Saudi crown prince, Iranian president discuss regional developments
- Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shared a call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian
- The two leaders reviewed several issues of mutual concern, Saudi Press Agency reports
RIYADH: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shared a call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, the Saudi Press Agency reported early on Friday.
During the call, the leaders discussed recent developments in the region and reviewed several issues of mutual concern.
Israel army announces new ground offensive east of Gaza City
- Israel military: ‘Troops have begun conducting ground activity in the area of Shejaiya in northern Gaza, in order to expand the security zone’
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was dividing Gaza and ‘seizing territory’ to force Hamas to free the remaining Israeli hostages
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army announced it had launched a new ground offensive east of Gaza City on Friday to expand the security zone it has established inside the Palestinian territory.
“Over the past few hours... troops have begun conducting ground activity in the area of Shejaiya in northern Gaza, in order to expand the security zone,” the military said in a statement.
“The troops eliminated numerous terrorists and dismantled Hamas terrorist infrastructure, including a command and control center that served Hamas terrorists to plan and execute terror attacks,” the statement added.
“During and prior to the activity... troops are allowing the evacuation of civilians from the combat zone via organized routes for their safety.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz had said on Wednesday that Israel would bolster its military presence inside the Gaza Strip to “destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.”
The operation would “seize large areas that will be incorporated into Israeli security zones,” he said, without specifying how much territory.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army was dividing Gaza and “seizing territory” to force Hamas to free the remaining Israeli hostages seized in the militant group’s October 2023 attack on Israel which sparked the Gaza war.
Gaza heritage and destruction on display in Paris
- Using satellite image, UN cultural agency UNESCO has already identified damage to 94 heritage sites in Gaza, including 13th-century Pasha’s Palace
- The damage to the known sites as well as treasures potentially hidden in unexplored Palestinian land ‘depends on the bomb tonnage,’ the curator says
PARIS: A new exhibition opening in Paris on Friday showcases archaeological artifacts from Gaza, once a major commercial crossroads between Asia and Africa, whose heritage has been ravaged by Israel’s ongoing onslaught.
Around a hundred artifacts, including a 4,000-year-old bowl, a sixth-century mosaic from a Byzantine church and a Greek-inspired statue of Aphrodite, are on display at the Institut du Monde Arabe.
The rich and mixed collection speaks to Gaza’s past as a cultural melting pot, but the show’s creators also wanted to highlight the contemporary destruction caused by the war, sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.
“The priority is obviously human lives, not heritage,” said Elodie Bouffard, curator of the exhibition, which is titled “Saved Treasures of Gaza: 5,000 Years of History.”
“But we also wanted to show that, for millennia, Gaza was the endpoint of caravan routes, a port that minted its own currency, and a city that thrived at the meeting point of water and sand,” she told AFP.
One section of the exhibition documents the extent of recent destruction.
Using satellite image, the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO has already identified damage to 94 heritage sites in Gaza, including the 13th-century Pasha’s Palace.
Bouffard said the damage to the known sites as well as treasures potentially hidden in unexplored Palestinian land “depends on the bomb tonnage and their impact on the surface and underground.”
“For now, it’s impossible to assess.”
The attacks by Hamas militants on Israel in 2023 left 1,218 dead. In retaliation, Israeli operations have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and devastated the densely populated territory.
The story behind “Gaza’s Treasures” is inseparable from the ongoing wars in the Middle East.
At the end of 2024, the Institut du Monde Arabe was finalizing an exhibition on artifacts from the archaeological site of Byblos in Lebanon, but Israeli bombings on Beirut made the project impossible.
“It came to a sudden halt, but we couldn’t allow ourselves to be discouraged,” said Bouffard.
The idea of an exhibition on Gaza’s heritage emerged.
“We had just four and a half months to put it together. That had never been done before,” she explained.
Given the impossibility of transporting artifacts out of Gaza, the Institut turned to 529 pieces stored in crates in a specialized Geneva art warehouse since 2006. The works belong to the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank.
The Oslo Accords of 1993, signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, helped secure some of Gaza’s treasures.
In 1995, Gaza’s Department of Antiquities was established, which oversaw the first archaeological digs in collaboration with the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF).
Over the years, excavations uncovered the remains of the Monastery of Saint Hilarion, the ancient Greek port of Anthedon, and a Roman necropolis — traces of civilizations spanning from the Bronze Age to Ottoman influences in the late 19th century.
“Between Egypt, Mesopotamian powers, and the Hasmoneans, Gaza has been a constant target of conquest and destruction throughout history,” Bouffard noted.
In the 4th century BC, Greek leader Alexander the Great besieged the city for two months, leaving behind massacres and devastation.
Excavations in Gaza came to a standstill when Hamas took power in 2007 and Israel imposed a blockade.
Land pressure and rampant building in one of the world’s most densely populated areas has also complicated archaeological work.
And after a year and a half of war, resuming excavations seems like an ever-more distant prospect.
The exhibition runs until November 2, 2025.
Israel kills Hamas 'commander' in Lebanon strike
- The Lebanese health ministry reported four dead in that strike, including a woman
Sidon: Israel said it killed a commander of Palestinian militant group Hamas on Friday in a strike in the Lebanese port city of Sidon that also killed his adult son and daughter.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the strike as a “flagrant attack on Lebanese sovereignty” and a breach of the November 27 ceasefire with Israel.
“Overnight, the (army and the domestic security agency Shin Bet) conducted a targeted strike in the Sidon area, eliminating the terrorist Hassan Farhat, commander of Hamas’s western arena in Lebanon,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
It alleged that Farhat had orchestrated multiple attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians during the hostilities that followed the outbreak of war in Gaza in October 2023.
They included rocket fire on the Israeli town of Safed on February 14, 2024 that killed an Israeli soldier, the military added.
The strike on a flat in a residential area of Sidon killed the official and his adult son and daughter, a Palestinian official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
An AFP correspondent saw the fourth-floor flat still on fire after the strike, which caused heavy damage to the apartment block and neighboring buildings and sparked panic in the densely populated neighborhood.
Lebanese state media had reported the 3:45 am (0045 GMT) strike on Sidon, saying at least three people were killed.
“A hostile drone raided a residential apartment... causing two successive explosions that led to a fire and extensive damage,” the state-run National News Agency reported.
Emergency workers rushed to the scene where they recovered “the bodies of three martyrs,” NNA said.
The Lebanese prime minister called for “maximum pressure on Israel to force it to halt these continual attacks which target various districts, many of them residential areas.”
Israel struck south Beirut earlier this week, killing a Hezbollah Palestinian liaison officer in only the the second raid on the capital since a November ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group.
The Lebanese health ministry reported four dead in that strike, including a woman.
Lebanese leaders condemned the attack but Israel said it was in response to recent unclaimed rocket fire that Hezbollah insists it had no hand in.
Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah spiralled into all-out conflict last September, and the group remains a target of Israeli air strikes despite the November 27 ceasefire.
Under the truce, Hezbollah is supposed to redeploy its forces north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.
Israel is supposed to withdraw its forces across the UN-demarcated Blue Line, the de facto border, but has missed two deadlines to do so and continues to hold five positions it deems “strategic.”
Oscar-winning Palestinian director speaks at UN on Israeli settlements
- Rights groups have said that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — a separate Palestinian territory — there has been a spike in attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank
- Occupied by Israel since 1967, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law
UNITED NATIONS, United States: Palestinian director Basel Adra, who won an Oscar this year for co-directing a documentary on Israeli violence in the West Bank, sounded the alarm at the UN on Thursday, saying the situation was worsening despite the film’s success.
Adra was invited to speak by the UN Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People at a screening of his film, “No Other Land.”
The documentary chronicles the forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli troops and settlers in Masafer Yatta — an area Israel declared a restricted military zone in the 1980s.
“I wanted the world to know that we live in this land, that we exist, and to see what we face on daily basis, this brutal occupation,” Adra told the UN.
The film depicts events like bulldozers demolishing houses and a school, as well as the provocations by Israeli settlers on Palestinian residents — including those which escalate to violence.
After a prolonged legal battle, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2022 in favor of the Israeli army, allowing the expulsion of residents from eight villages in the region.
“Even after winning the Oscar, we went back to the same reality,” Adra said, adding that the situation was “only changing from worse to worse.”
“Almost every day, there is settlers attacks on Masafer Yatta and all over communities across the West Bank,” Adra continued.
Last week, Adra’s co-director and fellow Palestinian Hamdan Ballal reported he was attacked by Israeli settlers for winning the Oscar, saying he was detained by Israeli police for “hurling rocks” at which point he suffered a beating and “brutality.”
Rights groups have said that since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — a separate Palestinian territory — there has been a spike in attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Occupied by Israel since 1967, the West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.
“No Other Land,” despite winning a prestigious Oscar, has struggled to find distribution in the United States, screening at only a handful of cinemas.
