BEIRUT: Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Friday urged the United Nations to pass a resolution calling for an “immediate” ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
In a televised address, Mikati emphasized his government’s commitment to deploy the army on the border with Israel as part of a cessation of hostilities, and said Hezbollah agreed on the matter.
Mikati said Lebanon’s foreign ministry would ask the UN Security Council to issue a resolution calling for a “full and immediate ceasefire.”
He said his government was committed to “the full application of Resolution 1701,” which was adopted in 2006 and called for the Lebanese army and peacekeepers to be the only armed forces deployed in the south of the country.
Lebanon is committed to “the deployment of the army in the south and the bolstering of its presence along the border,” he said.
“Hezbollah is in agreement on this issue,” he added.
A government source had previously said that Hezbollah informed Lebanese authorities it had accepted a ceasefire with Israel on September 27, the day an Israeli strike killed its leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Previously, the Iran-backed militant group had said it would only accept a truce if there was also one with its Palestinian ally Hamas in Gaza.
Mikati also condemned attacks on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon as a “crime,” with peacekeepers targeted two days in a row by Israeli forces, according to Lebanese official media and the foreign ministry.
A year of hostilities has killed more than 2,100 people in Lebanon and forced more than one million people to flee, according to Lebanese authorities.
Lebanon PM urges UN resolution on ceasefire with Israel
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Lebanon PM urges UN resolution on ceasefire with Israel

- Lebanon’s foreign ministry would ask the UN Security Council to issue a resolution calling for a ‘full and immediate ceasefire’
IAEA will visit Iran in next two weeks, Iranian foreign ministry says

- A manual regarding the future of Iran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency will be presented, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said
DUBAI: The United Nations nuclear watchdog will make a visit to Iran within the next two weeks, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday, a few days after the watchdog’s director said Tehran is ready to restart technical conversations.
Baghaei added that a manual regarding the future of Iran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency will be presented, based on a recent parliamentary bill restricting such cooperation.
Israel says Gaza got 120 trucks of aid on day one of pause

- Israel said Monday that more than 120 truckloads of food aid were distributed by the UN and aid agencies in the Gaza Strip on the first day of a partial pause in fighting
JERUSALEM: Israel said Monday that more than 120 truckloads of food aid were distributed by the UN and aid agencies in the Gaza Strip on the first day of a partial pause in fighting.
On Sunday, Israel declared a “tactical” pause in military operations in part of Gaza and promised to open secure routes for aid, urging humanitarian groups to step up food distribution.
“Over 120 trucks were collected and distributed yesterday by the UN and international organizations,” COGAT, an Israeli defense ministry agency overseeing civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said in a post on X on Monday.
Tunisia plastic collectors spread as economic, migration woes deepen

- Hamza Jabbari sets bags of plastic bottles onto a scale. He is among Tunisia’s “barbechas,” informal plastic recyclers whose increasing numbers reflect the country’s economy
TUNIS: A towel draped over his head, Hamza Jabbari sets bags of plastic bottles onto a scale. He is among Tunisia’s “barbechas,” informal plastic recyclers whose increasing numbers reflect the country’s economic — and migratory — woes.
The 40-something-year-old said he starts the day off at dawn, hunching over bins and hunting for plastic before the rubbish trucks and other plastic collectors come.
“It’s the most accessible work in Tunisia when there are no job offers,” Jabbari said, weighing a day’s haul in Bhar Lazreg, a working-class neighborhood north of the capital, Tunis.
The work is often gruelling, with a kilogramme of plastic bottles worth only 0.5 to 0.7 Tunisian dinar — less than $0.25.
In Tunis, it’s common to see women weighed down by bags of plastic bottles along the roadside, or men weaving through traffic with towering loads strapped to their motorcycles.
“Everyone does it,” said Jabbari.
Hamza Chaouch, head of the National Chamber of Recyclable Waste Collectors, estimated that there were roughly 25,000 plastic collectors across Tunisia, with 40 percent of them in the capital.
Yet, with the job an informal one, there is no official count of how many plastic collectors operate in Tunisia.
One thing is certain: their number has increased in recent years, said Chaouch, who also runs a plastic collection center south of Tunis.
“It’s because of the cost of living,” he explained.
“At first, it was people with no income, but for the past two years, workers, retirees and cleaning women have also turned to this work as a supplementary job.”
Around 16 percent of Tunisians lived under the poverty line as of 2021, the latest available official figures.
Unemployment currently hovers around 16 percent, with inflation at 5.4 percent.
The ranks of these recyclers have also grown with the arrival of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa — often hoping to reach Europe but caught in limbo with both the EU and Tunis cracking down on Mediterranean crossings.
Tunisia is a key transit country for thousands of sub-Saharan migrants seeking to reach Europe by sea each year, with the Italian island of Lampedusa only 150 kilometers (90 miles) away.
Abdelkoudouss, a 24-year-old from Guinea, said he began collecting plastic to make ends meet but also to save up enough money to return home after failing two crossing attempts to Europe.
For the past two months, he has worked at a car wash, he said, but the low pay forced him to start recycling on the side.
“Life here is not easy,” said Abdelkoudouss, adding he came to the capital after receiving “a lot of threats” amid tension between migrants and locals in Sfax, a coastal city in central Tunisia.
Thousands of migrants had set up camp on the outskirts of Sfax, before authorities began dismantling the makeshift neighborhoods this year.
Tensions flared in early 2023 when President Kais Saied said “hordes of sub-Saharan migrants” were threatening the country’s demographic composition.
Saied’s statement was widely circulated online and unleashed a wave of hostility that many migrants feel still lingers.
“There’s a strong rivalry in this work,” said Jabbari, glancing at a group of sub-Saharan African migrants nearby.
“These people have made life even more difficult for us. I can’t collect enough plastic because of them.”
Chaouch, the collection center manager, was even more blunt: “We don’t accept sub-Saharans at our center. Priority goes to Tunisians.”
In contrast, 79-year-old Abdallah Omri, who heads another center in Bhar Lazreg, said he “welcomes everyone.”
“The people who do this work are just trying to survive, whether they’re Tunisian, sub-Saharan or otherwise,” he said.
“We’re cleaning up the country and feeding families,” he added proudly.
The UN, the Palestinians, Israel and a stalled two-state solution

- United Nations inextricably linked to the fate of Palestinians
- In the absence of full membership, UNGA granted the Palestinians new rights in 2024
UNITED NATIONS: Ever since the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1947, the United Nations has been inextricably linked to the fate of Palestinians, with the organization meeting this week hoping to revive the two-state solution.
Here is a timeline on the issue:
In November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 dividing Palestine — which was then under British mandate — into Jewish and Arab states, with a special international zone for Jerusalem.
Zionist leaders accepted the resolution, but it was opposed by Arab states and the Palestinians.
Israel declared independence in May 1948, triggering the Arab-Israeli war which was won convincingly by Israel the following year.
Around 760,000 Palestinians fled their homes or were expelled — an event known as the “Nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe,” which the United Nations only officially commemorated for the first time in May 2023.

In the aftermath of the Six-Day War of 1967, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied during the conflict, including the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem. But linguistic ambiguities between the English and French versions of the resolutions complicated matters, making the scope of the required withdrawal unclear.
In November 1974, Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), gave his first speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, saying he carried both “an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun.”
Days later, the UN General Assembly recognized the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and independence. It granted UN observer status to the PLO as a representative of the Palestinian people.
One of the strongest peace initiatives did not come from the United Nations.
In 1993, Israel and the PLO — which in 1988 unilaterally declared an independent State of Palestine — wrapped up months of secret negotiations in Norway’s capital Oslo.
The two sides signed a “declaration of principles” on Palestinian autonomy and, in 1994, Arafat returned to the Palestinian territories after a long exile and formed the Palestinian Authority, the governing body for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
UN Security Council decisions on how to treat the Palestinians have always depended on the position of the veto-wielding United States.
Since 1972, Washington has used its veto more than 30 times to protect its close ally Israel. But sometimes, it allows key resolutions to advance.
In March 2002, the Security Council — at Washington’s initiative — adopted Resolution 1397, the first to mention a Palestinian state existing alongside Israel, with secure and recognized borders.
In December 2016, for the first time since 1979, the Council called on Israel to stop building settlements in the Palestinian territories — a measure that went through thanks to a US abstention, just before the end of Barack Obama’s White House term.
And in March 2024, another US abstention — under pressure from the international community — allowed the Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire amid Israel’s offensive on Hamas in Gaza, sparked by the militants’ October 7 attack.
That measure came after the United States blocked three similar drafts.
In 2011, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas initiated the process of requesting membership of the State of Palestine to the UN, which required a positive recommendation from the Security Council, followed by a favorable vote from the General Assembly.
In the face of opposition from the United States, the process was halted even before a vote in the Council.
The following year, the General Assembly granted the Palestinians a lower status as a “non-member observer State.”
In April 2024, the Palestinians renewed their request to become a full-fledged member state, but the United States vetoed it.
If the Palestinian request had cleared the Security Council hurdle, it would have had every chance of being approved by the necessary two-thirds majority in the Assembly.
According to an AFP database, at least 142 of the 193 UN member states unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state.
In the absence of full membership, the Assembly granted the Palestinians new rights in 2024, seating them in alphabetical order of states, and allowing to submit resolution proposals themselves for the first time.
Yemen’s Houthis threaten to target ships linked to firms dealing with Israeli ports

Yemen’s Houthis said on Sunday they would target any ships belonging to companies that do business with Israeli ports, regardless of their nationalities, as part of what they called the fourth phase of their military operations against Israel.
In a televised statement, the Houthis’ military spokesperson warned that ships would be attacked if companies ignored their warnings, regardless of their destination.
“The Yemeni Armed Forces call on all countries, if they want to avoid this escalation, to pressure the enemy to halt its aggression and lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip,” he added.
Since Israel’s war in Gaza began in October 2023, the Iran-aligned Houthis have been attacking ships they deem as bound or linked to Israel in what they say are acts of solidarity with Palestinians.
In May, the US announced a surprise deal with the Houthis where it agreed to stop a bombing campaign against them in return for an end to shipping attacks, though the Houthis said the deal did not include sparing Israel.