LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
June 11/2019
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/eliasnews19/english.june11.19.htm

News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006
Click Here to enter the LCCC Arabic/English news bulletins Achieves since 2006

Bible Quotations For today
I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them
John 10/07-10: “Again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on June 10-11/2019
Israeli officials: Mossad tipped UK off in 2015 Hezbollah bomb plot
U.K. Seized Tons of Explosive Materials Linked to Hezbollah in 2015, Report Says
UK exposed Hezbollah explosives in London in 2015, with Mossad intel
Iran to hand over US resident accused of spying to Lebanon
Iran to hand over Lebanese prisoner to Hezbollah soon: Fars news agency
Ibrahim Meets Zakka ahead of 'Tuesday' Repatriation
Maronite Patriarch Calls for 'Responsible' Political Atmosphere
Future bloc after extraordinary meeting in Tripoli: No for political exploitation of Tripoli events
Future TV Denies Hariri Mulling Resignation as PM Expected in Baabda
Bassil Defends 'Racism' Remarks after Criticism Storm
Bassil inaugurates “Active Diplomacy” workshop for honorary consuls: You must make Lebanon your top priority
3 Lebanese Arrive in Beirut after UAE Frees Them
Jreissati Meets Mufti, Says Aoun Respects Hariri's Jurisdiction
Ain Dara locals demonstrate in Dahr el Baydar
Gegaea after 'Strong Republic' bloc meeting calls for association dues' payment
Jamaa Islamiya Official Assassinated in Shebaa
U.N. Warns against 'Collective Punishment' as Deir al-Ahmar Camp Evacuated
Op-ed: What Lebanon Needs Is a Plan for Economic and Social Growth
Lebanese FM faces flak over ‘racist’ comments against foreign workers
Hezbollah Isn’t Iran’s Favorite Proxy Anymore
Anchal Vohra/Foreign Policy/June 10 June/2019
Day of Reckoning Approaches for Lebanon's Economy

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 10-11/2019
Iran has accelerated enrichment of uranium, ‘worried’ IAEA chief says
Vladimir Putin to visit Saudi Arabia in October
Top Iran Diplomat Warns U.S. It Cannot 'Expect to Stay Safe'
What Countries are Doing to Repatriate IS Families
New Zealand Plans to Withdraw All Iraq Troops by Next June
12 French Orphans of IS Families Arrive in Paris from Syria
U.S. Senators Hope to Force Vote on Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia
Algeria Detains Car Tycoon in Graft Case
Nearly 100 Killed, 19 Missing in Central Mali Village Massacre
Trump says Xi meeting at G20 'scheduled'
Attack in Burkina Faso's volatile north leaves 19 dead
Swedish police shoot man threatening people at train station

Litles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 10-11/2019
Israeli officials: Mossad tipped UK off in 2015 Hezbollah bomb plot/Ynetnews/June 10/2019
U.K. Seized Tons of Explosive Materials Linked to Hezbollah in 2015, Report Says/Haaretz/June 10/2019
UK exposed Hezbollah explosives in London in 2015, with Mossad intel/Jerusalem Post/June 10/2019
Op-ed: What Lebanon Needs Is a Plan for Economic and Social Growth/Samy Gemayel/The National/June 10/2019
Lebanese FM faces flak over ‘racist’ comments against foreign workers/Najla Houssari/Arab News/June 11/2019
Hezbollah Isn’t Iran’s Favorite Proxy Anymore/Anchal Vohra/Foreign Policy/June 10 June/2019
Day of Reckoning Approaches for Lebanon's Economy/James King/The Banker/June 10/2019
Iran has accelerated enrichment of uranium, ‘worried’ IAEA chief says/AFP/Arab News/June 11/2019
Analysis/The Syrian Nightingale Is Dead, and Soon Other Fighting Poets May Be Silenced/Zvi Bar'el/Haaretz/June 10/2019
How Palestinian Leaders Butcher the Truth/Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/June 10/2019
Trump's North Korea Policy Should Be Encouraged, Not Undermined/Peter Huessy/Gatestone Institute/June 10/2019
Iran’s delusions of grandeur a survival strategy/Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami/Arab News/June 10/2019
Elections can spare Sudan from divisions/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Arab News/June 10/2019
G20 and the importance of multilateral consultations/Cornelia Meyer/Arab News/June 10/2019
Kushner’s conditions should be applied to Israel/Ramzy Baroud/Arab News/June 10/2019
Netanyahu's Government Fail Should Postpone Trump's Middle East Peace Plan/Ghaith Al-Omari/NBC News/June 10/2019

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on June 10-11/2019
Israeli officials: Mossad tipped UK off in 2015 Hezbollah bomb plot
Ynetnews/June 10/2019
تقرير من يدعوت احرنوت: الموساد الإسرائيلي كان حذر سنة 2015 السلطات في لندن من مؤامرة لحزب الله هدفها تفجيرات إراهابية في بريطانيا
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/75681/%d8%aa%d9%82%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b1-%d9%85%d9%86-3-%d8%b5%d8%ad%d9%81-%d8%a5%d8%b3%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%a6%d9%8a%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d8%b0%d9%83%d8%b1-%d8%a3%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%ae%d8%a7%d8%a8/
Confirmation comes on heels of Sunday Telegraph report that Iranian-backed terror group was laying groundwork for future terror attacks, including storing large quantities of chemicals used in explosives
Israeli officials confirmed Monday that the Mossad intelligence agency provided information that led British law enforcement to thwart a 2015 plot by the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah to attack targets in the UK.
The tip-off apparently led British police to the north London locations where thousands of disposable ice packs containing ammonium nitrate, used in bomb-making, were reportedly being kept as part of preparations for future attacks.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, the UK did not press charges against the sole suspect in the investigation, but released him on bail and later decided not to prosecute.
The report says that Britain's MI5 domestic intelligence agency and London's Metropolitan Police, acting on information provided by a foreign government, found a stockpile of ammonium nitrate commonly used in bomb making concealed in thousands of disposable ice packs in a location in north London. Israel on Monday apparently confirmed that it was the foreign government.
The Telegraph said that there were no signs that Britain would have been a target of the future attacks.
A man in his 40s was arrested on suspicion of plotting terrorist acts on behalf of Hezbollah, but was released without charge.
The Telegraph speculated that the incident was not made public because Downing Street did not wish to disrupt the newly signed Iranian nuclear deal. Iran is a major sponsor of Hezbollah activities.
The paper reported that the London plot was part of a larger plan by Hezbollah to attack targets around the world. Similar plots were foiled in Thailand, Cyprus and New York.
The paper higthlights the similarities between the London investigation and the Cyprus case, which also uncovered in 2015 and involved a confessed Hezbollah agent being found with 8.2 tons of ammonia nitrate stored in disposable ice packs.
Sources told the Telegraph that the British plot was in very early stages and no targets had been selected. The report said British intelligence had hoped to establish what Hezbollah was planning and did not disrupt the plot immediately.
Hezbollah is considered a terror organization by Israel, the U.S. and the Arab League. Britain blacklisted Hezbollah’s military wing in 2008 and earlier this year banned the entire organization under the Terrorism Act of 2000.

U.K. Seized Tons of Explosive Materials Linked to Hezbollah in 2015, Report Says
تقرير من الهآرتس: بريطاني صادرت سنة 2015 أطناناً من المواد المتفجرة التي كانت بحوزة أحد التابعين لحزب الله
Haaretz/June 10/2019
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/75681/%d8%aa%d9%82%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b1-%d9%85%d9%86-3-%d8%b5%d8%ad%d9%81-%d8%a5%d8%b3%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%a6%d9%8a%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d8%b0%d9%83%d8%b1-%d8%a3%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%ae%d8%a7%d8%a8/
A report in the Daily Telegraph reveals three metric tons of ammonium nitrate were seized outside London after Westminster was tipped by a 'foreign government
British intelligence seized tons of explosive materials linked to the Lebanese-based Hezbollah shi'ite organization outside London in 2015, the Daily Telegraph reported on Sunday.
The report reveals that MI5 and the Metropolitan police raided four properties in northwest London, uncovering three metric tons of ammonium nitrate and arresting a man on suspicion of plotting terrorism.
The Telegraph notes that the amount of ammonium nitrate found, a common ingredient in homemade bombs, was more than the amount used in the Oklahoma City bombings which left 168 dead.
According to the report, a foreign government had warned Britain of the group's activity. “MI5 worked independently and closely with international partners to disrupt the threat of malign intent from Iran and its proxies in the U.K.,” an intelligence source told the paper.
Then-Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May were reportedly briefed personally on the event. The information was however kept secret.
A "well-placed source" told the Telegraph that the suspect arrested at the scene was released without charge due to the fact that the plot had "been disrupted by a covert intelligence operation rather than seeking a prosecution."
The report further speculates the incident was kept secret by the U.K. in order to keep the Iran nuclear deal afloat due to the fact that Tehran is a major supporter of the Lebanese Shi'ite group.
In February, Britain looked to classify Hezbollah's political wing as a terror group. Although its military wing was outlawed respectively in 2001 and 2008, the U.K. said it was looking to add the group in its entirety to a list of banned terror organizations. The U.S., Israel and the Arab league also consider the group a terror organization.

UK exposed Hezbollah explosives in London in 2015, with Mossad intel
Jerusalem Post/June 10/2019
تقرير من الجيروزالم بوست: بريطانيا صادرت متفجرات لحزب الله سنة 2015جراء معلومات من المخابرات الإسرائيلية
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/75681/%d8%aa%d9%82%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b1-%d9%85%d9%86-3-%d8%b5%d8%ad%d9%81-%d8%a5%d8%b3%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%a6%d9%8a%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d8%b0%d9%83%d8%b1-%d8%a3%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%ae%d8%a7%d8%a8/
Hezbollah is an Islamist and militant group based in Lebanon.
Radicals linked to Iranian-backed Hezbollah were caught stashing tons of explosive materials in northwest London in a secret British bomb factory, M15 and Metropolitan Police officers discovered in 2015, only months after the UK signed on to the Iran nuclear deal.
Israeli media reports claim that Israeli officials confirmed the Mossad provided the intelligence for the operation.
According to a breaking report by The Daily Telegraph, thousands of disposable ice packs were found in the factory that contained ammonium nitrate, an ingredient for homemade bombs.
The report said that the raid was hidden from the public for years, including from MPs who were debating the Hezbollah ban earlier this year. It also questioned whether senior figures in the British government did so as to not impact the Iran nuclear deal.
The raid, a joint operation by MI5 operatives and the Met Police, included four properties overall, while a man in his 40s was arrested on suspicion of terrorist-related activity.
“The Security Service and police work tirelessly to keep the public safe from a host of national security threats,” said Ben Wallace, UK minister for security and economic crime. “Necessarily, their efforts and success will often go unseen.”
The discovery was considered so serious that then-prime minister David Cameron and then-home secretary Theresa May were personally notified.
According to the investigation by The Telegraph, the factory in London was not an isolated cell but is being seen as part of a wider international plot by Hezbollah to lay the basis for future attacks, including the discovery of cells in New York, Thailand, and Cyprus, where a 26-year-old was caught with 65,000 ice packs in a basement and later admitted to being a member of Hezbollah.
Hezbollah was only banned as an organization in the UK in February, more than three years after the discovery of the factory. The United States, Israel, Canada, the Arab League and the European Union consider Hezbollah a terrorist group.
*Alex Winston contributed to this report.

Iran to hand over US resident accused of spying to Lebanon
Associated Press/10 June 2019 /A top Lebanese security official is in Tehran to secure Zakka’s release, which has been anticipated in recent days.
TEHRAN, Iran: Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese and U.S. permanent resident held for years in Tehran, “will be released in the coming hours” and handed over to Hezbollah, Iranian media reported Monday. A report Monday on the Iranian state TV’s website said Zakka was to be released “only because of the respect and dignity” Iran has for the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. An earlier report by the semi-official Fars news agency said Zakka will be handed over to Hezbollah. Major General Abbas Ibrahim, the head of Lebanon's General Security agency, is in Tehran to secure Zakka’s release, which has been anticipated in recent days. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard detained Zakka in 2015 after he attended a conference in Tehran on the invitation of one of the country’s vice presidents. He was convicted of spying and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Iran to hand over Lebanese prisoner to Hezbollah soon: Fars news agency
Mon 10 Jun 2019/NNA - Iran will hand over Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen and holder of U.S. residency who was detained in 2015, to Lebanon's Hezbollah, the semi-official Fars news agency said on Monday, citing an unnamed source. “The move would take place in the next few hours. This is done solely because of the respect for and dignity of Hassan Nasrallah (Iran-backed Hezbollah's leader)," the source told Fars. Lebanon's internal security chief Abbas Ibrahim was in Tehran to negotiate Zakka's release, a senior security official said. Zakka will be freed late on Monday or on Tuesday, the official said. Zakka, an information technology expert who has permanent residency in the United States, was sentenced in Iran to 10 years in prison in 2016 and fined $4. million for "collaborating against the state". He had been invited to Iran by a government official in 2015 but disappeared after attending a conference in Tehran. State media announced later that year that he had ties to U.S. military and intelligence services and had been detained by the Revolutionary Guards.—

Ibrahim Meets Zakka ahead of 'Tuesday' Repatriation
Associated Press/Naharnet/June 10/2019/General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim on Monday met with Lebanese detainee Nizar Zakka in Tehran and the latter will be freed and repatriated to Lebanon on Tuesday, General Security said. The security agency also posted pictures of the Ibrahim-Zakka meeting on its Twitter account. Ibrahim also met with a number of Iranian officials and has put President Michel Aoun in the picture of all the meetings he has held in Iran, Lebanese TV networks reported. Earlier in the day, Iranian state television reported that Zakka "will be released in the coming hours."
The report on state TV's website mirrored a report earlier carried by the semi-official Fars news agency about Zakka, a Lebanese advocate for internet freedom. It said Zakka was to be released "only because of the respect and dignity" Iran has for the leader of Hizbullah Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and that negotiations were not held with "any person or government."Lebanon's Foreign Ministry had on Tuesday announced that Tehran had asked Lebanese authorities to send a delegation to Tehran for Zakka's repatriation. “After the lengthy efforts that were lately intensified, the Iranian ambassador to Beirut called the Foreign Minister (Jebran Bassil) and officially informed him that the relevant Iranian authorities have positively responded to Lebanese President General Michel Aoun’s plea to his Iranian counterpart Sheikh Hassan Rouhani and to the Foreign Minister’s letter to his Iranian counterpart regarding the pardon of Lebanese national Nizar Zakka for the occasion of Eid al-Fitr,” the Foreign Ministry said. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pardoned 691 prisoners on the occasion of the end of Ramadan, but Zakka was not among them, authorities said Sunday. Zakka has been detained in Iran since 2015 over spying allegations. He was sentenced in 2016 to 10 years in prison and a $4.2 million fine. Zakka, who lived in Washington and held resident status in the U.S., was the leader of the Arab ICT Organization, or IJMA3, an industry consortium from 13 countries that advocates for information technology in the region. Zakka disappeared Sept. 18, 2015, during his fifth trip to Iran. He had been invited to attend a conference at which President Hassan Rouhani spoke of providing more economic opportunities for women and sustainable development. On Nov. 3 that year, Iranian state television aired a report saying he was in custody and calling him a spy with "deep links" with U.S. intelligence services. It also showed what it described as a damning photo of Zakka and three other men in army-style uniforms, two with flags and two with rifles on their shoulders. But that turned out to be from a homecoming event at Zakka's prep school, the Riverside Military Academy in Georgia, according to the school's president.

Maronite Patriarch Calls for 'Responsible' Political Atmosphere
Kataeb.org/June 10/2019/Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rahi on Monday called on officials to create a responsible political atmosphere away from bickering and wrangling, urging them to reactivate subsidized housing loans which have been suspended since 2018. “It is important to praise the efforts and achievements made by the government, but citizens still do expect a lot and we look forward to enhancing confidence in Lebanon by creating a responsible political atmosphere,” al-Rahi said during the Synod of Maronite bishops.

Future bloc after extraordinary meeting in Tripoli: No for political exploitation of Tripoli events
Mon 10 Jun 2019/NNA - The Future Bloc held an extraordinary meeting at the residence of MP Samir Jisr in the northern city of Tripoli, under the chairmanship of MP Bahia Hariri, to discuss the latest local developments and the overall situation. The extraordinary meeting was attended by Interior and Municipalities Minister, Rayya Al Hassan, and the Secretary General of Future Movement Ahmad Hariri. At the end of the meeting, the bloc voiced utter support for the security forces and the army in the fight against terrorism, deploring political exploitation of the recent Tripoli events. In a statement issued in the wake of the meeting and read out by MP Jisr, the bloc underlined that "the Authority must fight terrorism by tackling its root causes in the areas of deprivation to protect the homeland." The bloc also discussed the issue of the general amnesty claimed by relatives of Islamist detainees. "The general amnesty is one of the components of the ministerial statement upon which the government has gained confidence." This amnesty concerns those who have endured unjust verdicts and those who have taken up arms to defend themselves, not the terrorists or those who have killed members of the security forces, "the statement read. On the other hand, Future MPs also condemned "all the campaigns targeting Prime Minister Saad Hariri," voicing support for his adopted approach in the footsteps of the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Future TV Denies Hariri Mulling Resignation as PM Expected in Baabda
Naharnet/June 10/2019/Future TV, which is affiliated with Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s al-Mustaqbal Movement, has dismissed a suggestion by the journalist Nadim Qteish that the premier is mulling resignation. In an interview on MTV, Qteish had hinted that Hariri might submit his resignation in connection with the latest tensions with the Free Patriotic Movement.But in its Sunday evening news bulletin, the TV network called on those “close to” Hariri to avoid “voicing their wishes and to let him (Hariri) take his own decision, which certainly will not be in the vein of those wishes.” Hariri’s clique in Beirut meanwhile told al-Akhbar newspaper in remarks published Monday that the premier “will carry on with the presidential settlement.”“He will disregard all the wishes of those seeking to embarrass him and push him to resign or to escalate his stance against (President Michel) Aoun,” the sources said.
A phone call between Hariri and Aoun on Eid al-Fitr had “carried positive indications regarding the need for pacification between al-Mustaqbal and the FPM,” al-Akhbar said. “Hariri, who is expected to resume his activities today, is expected to visit the Baabda Palace Monday afternoon or at the latest Tuesday, in order to discuss the latest developments with Aoun. He is also expected to visit Speaker Nabih Berri,” the daily added. It also revealed that “Hizbullah, albeit indirectly, has reassured Hariri on its adherence to the presidential settlement and the need to preserve stability in the country.”

Bassil Defends 'Racism' Remarks after Criticism Storm
Naharnet/June 10/2019/Free Patriotic Movement chief and Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil on Monday defended recent remarks he has voiced about foreign workers. “Our remarks are being distorted everyday and it is our duty to achieve Lebanon’s remarks and to correct any distortion,” Bassil said. “It is the duty of every nation to give the employment priority to its citizens and this is what all countries are doing, unlike Lebanon,” he added. “The Lebanese are working abroad according to the needs of the countries and they respect the laws of these countries. We call for implementing the law against anyone who violates the laws of these countries, topped by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where we have a community whose interests we should preserve, but it is the community’s duty and our duty to respect the state in which they work in,” Bassil went on to say. He had on Saturday announced that “it is normal for us to defend Lebanese labor in the face of any other labor, be it Syrian, Palestinian, French, Saudi, Iranian or American.”“The Lebanese citizen comes before anyone else,” he added, noting that some are accusing him of racism because “their Lebanese belonging is not strong enough.”On Monday, he underscored that “when you defend the right of your people you are patriotic and not racist.”“All countries, including Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, give advantage to their people over others though laws, and this is not racism,” he underlined.
“A lot of those who excel in sabotaging ties and those who have bad intentions are distorting the words or the meaning,” Bassil lamented.

Bassil inaugurates “Active Diplomacy” workshop for honorary consuls: You must make Lebanon your top priority
Mon 10 Jun 2019/ran Bassil, on Monday inaugurated a workshop for Honorary Consuls in Lebanon, entitled "Active Diplomacy", at the National Institute of Administration in Baabda, in presence of ambassadors, heads of missions, diplomats, Chairman of the institute, George Labaki, Director General of the institute, Jamal Al-Monjed, economic attachés, honorary consuls, and other dignitaries. "This is a new activity that we have kicked off at the Foreign Ministry, which is to gather honorary consuls in a full-day workshop because they are part of the Lebanese diplomatic corps,” Bassil said, deeming Honorary Consuls an integral part of the diplomatic family. "Today, there are honorary consuls and new diplomats who will join us this month, in addition to the last batch that joined us last month, along with economic attachés, current directors, ambassadors, diplomats, and central administration — all with the aim to have one work program and one work concept,” Bassil explained. “The Honorary Consul in Lebanon is like any other. He has no salary and no official post in the administration, but he has duties towards the people and the state,” the Minister said. “As honorary consuls, you have to establish privileged relations with the adopted state, of course, within the framework of respect and full implementation of its laws, as is the case with ambassadors and diplomats, and comply with all the demands of these countries and deal with their diplomatic staff,” Bassil noted. “It can be said that the honorary consul's work does not end, there is nationality, economy, consular services, elections and all that the ambassador can do. He has to serve Lebanon and make it his top priority,” He maintained. “As for the economy, I am happy to announce 20 economic attachés with us today, who will assume their roles starting tomorrow. I have talked to them a lot and experience will teach them more. In this framework, I would like to point out that it is possible for an honorary consul, who is an economic attaché, to encourage investment in Lebanon and to work with the Lebanese abroad and provide them with employment opportunities. They can also market products, companies, and goods,” the Minister said.

3 Lebanese Arrive in Beirut after UAE Frees Them
Naharnet/June 10/2019/Three Lebanese citizens arrived late Sunday at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport after being released from UAE prisons, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. NNA identified the trio as Mohsen Qansou, Ali Fawwaz and Jihad Fawwazeddine. They had been arrested last year along with several Lebanese nationals on charges of forming a “terrorist cell.”On May 15, an Emirati court sentenced one of them to life imprisonment and two compatriots to 10 years in prison on charges of planning attacks for the Lebanese group Hizbullah, Amnesty International said. Amnesty said five other Lebanese defendants, all of them Shiite Muslims, were acquitted of the charge of planning to carry out attacks for the Iran-backed Shiite militant group. "The absence of basic requirements of a fair trial, such as having access to a lawyer, strips today's verdict of any reliability or credibility," said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty's Middle East research head. "The eight men were held in solitary confinement for over a year -- this in itself can amount to torture. They were denied access to lawyers during the pre-trial interrogation," she said in a statement. The accused were residents of the United Arab Emirates for more than 15 years, seven of them as employees of Dubai-based airline Emirates. They were arrested between December 2017 and February 2018 and put on trial under terrorism charges.The UAE, a close ally of Iran's regional rival and Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia, classifies Hizbullah as a "terrorist organization".

Jreissati Meets Mufti, Says Aoun Respects Hariri's Jurisdiction
Naharnet/June 10/2019/State Minister for Presidency Affairs Salim Jreissati on Monday met with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan, after which he announced that President Michel Aoun is keen on Prime Minister Saad Hariri's constitutional powers. “President Aoun is keen on jurisdiction, especially that of the premiership,” Jreissati said after the meeting, noting that “the strong in their (confessional) communities are now at the head of the authorities.” “We agreed with the mufti on interpreting 'the rule of the strong' as being based on the Document of National Accord and correct and credible popular representation,” he added. Noting that he relayed Aoun's salutation to the mufti, Jreissati said Daryan expressed respect for the President. “We agreed on the need not to attribute statements to anyone other than those who voice them and not to build up escalatory stances based on such statements,” the minister added. “We were surprised and baffled by the extent reached by the latest political statements,” Jreissati went on to say.

Ain Dara locals demonstrate in Dahr el Baydar
Mon 10 Jun 2019/NNA - The locals of Ain Dara on Monday staged a sit-in in Dahr el-Baydar, NNA correspondent reported. Shots were fired at the protestors by the guards of a quarry and Fattouch factory, prompting the army to instantly intervene to restore calm.

Gegaea after 'Strong Republic' bloc meeting calls for association dues' payment
Mon 10 Jun 2019/NNA - "Lebanese Forces" Party leader, Samir Geagea, on Monday chaired the periodic meeting of the "Strong Republic" bloc in Meerab, in the presence of Deputy Prime Minister, Ghassan Hasbani, and Social Affairs Minister, Richard Kouyoumjian. Speaking at a press conference in the wake of the meeting, Geagea called for associations’ dues’ payment for the year 2018 before approving the 2019 national budget. Geagea brought to attention that the Minister of Social Affairs, Richard Kouyoumjian, has been asking for the payment of associations' dues for some time, indicating that he has suspended the contracts of 20 institutions affiliated to the social affairs Ministry. On the recent crisis with friendly countries caused by a certain side, Geagea urged politicians to weigh the pros and cons of their utterances, taking into account the presence of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese working in the Gulf countries for their daily livelihood. Geagea regretted that despite all problems, some officials do only think about the next appointments. He stressed that the sole solution to this issue is through the adoption of a clear mechanism for appointments. Geagea also called for paying compensations to apple farmers.

Jamaa Islamiya Official Assassinated in Shebaa
Naharnet/June 10/2019/Unknown assailants shot dead Jamaa Islamiya official Sheikh Mohammed Jarrar at midnight in the southern border town of Shebaa, the National News Agency said. NNA said Jarrar, the group’s public relations official who is in charge of the Shebaa department, was gunned down while standing at the door of Shebaa’s al-Rahma Medical Dispensary which he ran. He was hit by four gunshots to the abdomen as the attackers fled to an unknown destination, the agency added. “The Lebanese Army has encircled the location and has intensified its foot and mechanized patrols in search of the perpetrators,” NNA said.Jamaa Islamiya meanwhile issued a statement saying Jarrar was murdered by “the hand of treachery, collaboration and treason as he was performing his duty.”“He was offering social, health, medical and relief services to every aggrieved and needy and to every widow and child from his region’s residents or from the (Syrian) refugee brothers,” the statement said. Jamaa Islamiya is the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a regional Islamist organization. It wasn't immediately clear if the killing was politically-motivated. Such assassinations have been rare in recent years in Lebanon. The Jamaa Islamiya isn't represented in parliament.

U.N. Warns against 'Collective Punishment' as Deir al-Ahmar Camp Evacuated
Associated Press/Naharnet/June 10/2019/Dozens of Syrian refugees dismantled their tents, filled trucks with belongings and left a camp they lived in for years in eastern Lebanon on Sunday after local authorities ordered them to evacuate in the aftermath of a brawl with local firefighters. Lebanese officials say the decision to evacuate is to prevent revenge attacks and further tension after residents of the town threatened to storm the camp. A curfew on the Syrian refugees living in Deir al-Ahmar, estimated at 6,000, was put in place for two days and police patrolled the area. "This is to ensure their safety and to stop the bloodshed," said Jean Fakhry, a Lebanese municipality official in Deir al-Ahmar told The Associated Press. The evacuation of more than 90 tents reflects the growing tension in Lebanon over hosting more than 1 million Syrian refugees since 2011. A country of nearly 5 million, Lebanon's infrastructure and economy has been overwhelmed by the arrival of those fleeing the war next door. Mostly impoverished and dispossessed, many settled in the country's east, living in squalid camps and struggling to work and survive in the area known for its harsh winters and sizzling summers. As Lebanon deals with an economic crunch, many Lebanese politicians and groups turned to Syrians, calling for them to go home saying the violence there is winding down. In the scorching sun of the early afternoon, Syrian men, women and children pulled down cloth and carpets covering the wooden structures that served as their temporary homes. They piled mattresses, pots and pans into trucks headed to a new location miles away. Local officials say 600 lived in the camps but U.N. estimates said it was closer to 400 people. It is at least the second time the refugees, most of them from Idlib province, had to pack their lives into boxes to find new, safer areas. Samar Awad, a 27-year old Syrian, said the camp's residents are being sent to a new site with no electricity or water. She said it may be equally dangerous as their reputation as troublemakers will precede them. "We have been living here for seven years," said Awad. "It has become like home, and more."
Awad hails from Saraqeb, a town in Idlib, the last area controlled by the opposition to Syria's President Bashar Assad. Seasonal farmers from Syria, like Awad, used come to Lebanon even before the war. But after the violence, many of them stayed, overwhelming the local communities. Last week, a fire broke out on the hill overlooking the camp sparking panic. When firefighters arrived, residents pelted their vehicle with stones over what they said was the rescuers' late arrival. A brawl ensued and a firefighter was injured and tents were damaged. The army arrived on the scene and arrested more than 30 Syrians. The camp residents fled and later, unknown assailants set three of the tents ablaze. The tensions led to the evacuation order and the lockdown on refugees in the area. "There was local anger and revolt," Fakhry, the Lebanese official said. "We decided they should not come back to avoid another problem and bloodshed." The U.N. refugee agency was on the scene Sunday as the Syrians prepared to leave. In a statement, the agency said all perpetrators should be prosecuted as an investigation is underway. "A collective punishment of Syrian refugees in Lebanon will further escalate the situation," the UNHCR said. "All refugees in Lebanon should not be punished over one incident and outside the justice system."

Op-ed: What Lebanon Needs Is a Plan for Economic and Social Growth
Samy Gemayel/The National/June 10/2019
It is often said that accountability is a key tenet of good governance. This is something we clearly lack in Lebanon. Too often, government institutions fail to meet the needs of citizens or to properly allocate resources in a transparent way that benefits them.
This is a country with so much potential and yet so little effort is made to reap the benefits that could be enjoyed, once proper structural reforms are undertaken.Lebanon has been bearing the severe consequences of the war in Syria in 2011, with 1.5 million Syrian refugees living within its borders. Coupled with a lack of a comprehensive economic vision, endemic corruption and political instability, challenges that the country has long faced are being exacerbated by the regional situation.
That has manifested itself in sluggish economic growth averaging 1 per cent, chronic twin deficits in both budget and foreign trade, and an alarming fiscal deficit – the difference between budget revenue and expenditure – equating to more than 11 per cent of GDP. As a result, the debt-to-GDP ratio exceeded 160 per cent, one of the highest in the world. This drastic economic situation calls for proper action from government to allow the economy to grow and prosper. That action has been lacking. A well-planned budget is crucial for any government to ensure economic stability, growth and the creation of jobs. Lebanon had the opportunity, during the 19 sessions that were held by the government to discuss the budget, to enact a plan that was capable of ensuring an effective tax policy and a productive economic vision.
Unfortunately, this was not the case. In addition to missing all constitutional deadlines, the Council of Ministers last month approved a draft budget that lacked any sort of vision or will to put forward much-needed real reform.
Instead of structural reform in the public sector, it sought to transfer costs to the private sector through new taxes that were either poorly assessed or had not been assessed not at all.
The approved budget was clearly designed to meet one of the conditions of the $11 billion funds promised at last year’s Cedre conference in Paris – namely, reducing the fiscal deficit by 1 per cent of GDP annually over five years.
This was evident in the optimistic revenue figure projections amid a period of stagflation, despite the fact the government has always failed to meet budgeted figures in previous years. The most alarming aspect was the wage bill, constituting more than 37 per cent of total expenditure, compared to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average of 15 per cent, with no major effort made to reduce public sector costs, clearly pointing to a lack of will to tackle corruption, clientelism and economic mismanagement.
The main consequence if this draft budget is adopted will be a recessionary effect on consumption, one of the main pillars of GDP. The proposed revenue measures will not only affect citizens’ purchasing power but also feed into higher inflation and hence impact overall economic growth.
The budget merely focused on targeting fiscal deficit, with no view to economic growth or social progression. The government has failed to tackle tax evasion or enforce laws. This weak rule of law and poor governance poses a major threat to social and economic development, hindering structural reforms and policies requiring action.
The country is now in great need of an overarching comprehensive economic vision that can be translated into a medium-term framework. This vision should not only include targets and aspirations but focus on how our economy can be saved, coupled with political will and drive.
The economy needs direction. It needs a coherent and credible vision to spur economic revitalisation and to advance a set of robust policies.
Time is of the essence and action should be taken immediately to cushion the threat our economy is facing. The ultimate priority needs to be given to implementing principles of accountability, good governance and equal opportunity.
We dream of a welfare state that plays a crucial role in protecting the economic and social wellbeing of citizens, promoting a competitive, strong, resilient Lebanon, and of a government that enables people to lead fruitful lives.
These dreams can still be achieved. Parliament can still incorporate reforms and adjustments to the budget before its final ratification this month.
The budget, if done properly, will be the first right step on a long way towards a better Lebanon. Despite its compact size, Lebanon’s people, produce and success stories have marked its spot on the global map. I have full faith in my country but it cannot prosper on its own.

Lebanese FM faces flak over ‘racist’ comments against foreign workers
Najla Houssari/Arab News/June 11/2019
BEIRUT: Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil has responded to criticisms of a message that he posted on Twitter at the weekend about workers in his country. It sparked an angry response on social media, with many people describing his comment as racist and calling for his resignation.
On Saturday, he tweeted: “It is normal to defend Lebanese workers against any other foreign worker, whether Syrian, Palestinian, French, Saudi, Iranian or American. The Lebanese come first. Unfortunately, some people do not understand that the Lebanese interests come first, nor do they understand the meaning of the bond of blood.”
It came on the same day that Bassil’s Free Patriotic Movement released a promotional video for a campaign encouraging businesses to hire Lebanese workers rather than foreigners. It shows campaigners visiting shops and telling Syrian workers to “go back to their country.”
On Monday, during a conference on “Active Diplomacy” in Beirut, Bassil addressed the controversy, saying his words had been “twisted.”“My words have been misinterpreted and taken out of context,” he said. “When this happens, a correction is a must. I actually talked about Lebanese workers. Each state should give priority to its people for job opportunities and protect itself from illegal workers, and this what all of the states are doing. “Lebanese people abroad are working according to the states’ needs and not against them, respecting the laws there. We call on any state to take necessary measures against any Lebanese expatriate who violates its laws, especially in Saudi Arabia, where we have a Lebanese community whose interests we should preserve. “Our duty is to respect the state where we work and its laws. Countries, including Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, prioritize their own people in their laws. This is not racism. Defending the right of our people is not racist but patriotic. This is all I meant.”
His tweet sparked debate online, and while many were critical of Bassil’s comments, some supported him. “Someone should remind him of Saudi Arabia’s efforts in reaching the Taif Agreement, back when the Lebanese were fighting, and he was hiding with his father-in-law 20 meters below the ground,” wrote Lebanese activist Nouf Al-Doussari, who called on Bassil to resign. Naif bin Arwil wrote: “You have a Lebanese labor force that you stole, a Syrian labor force begging you that you cut off, a Palestinian work force that turned to you and that you humiliated while you kissed the French hands, humiliated, and finally an Iranian force trying to destroy you that you obeyed. However, the Saudi generous hand was extended to you and you bit it. Shame on you. And I am only talking here about Lebanon’s traitors.”Lebanese MP Paula Yaacoubian called on Bassil to “apologize to the Lebanese as it is impossible for one to be responsible and say anything just to increase their cheap popularity.”
Lebanese State Minister for Presidential Affairs Salim Jreissati visited Dar Al-Fatwa on Monday, following Bassil’s tweet and speeches by others criticizing the political Sunnah last week, which provoked the anger of both Grand Mufti of Lebanon Sheikh Abdul Latif Deryan and the Future Movement.
After the meeting, Jreissati expressed surprise at “the extent reached by the latest political speeches.”
He added: “Lebanese President Michel Aoun considers that political speech is determined by the laws in force, including the Charter of National Reconciliation and Constitution, i.e. the Taif Agreement and the constitution, and so we insisted on the need not to attribute statements to anyone other than those who voice them, and not to build up escalatory stances based on such statements.”He stressed that “President Aoun considers that Prime Minister Saad Hariri is the most powerful...in terms of representation and he speaks in the name of the Lebanese government, according to our constitution, after drafting the policies, including foreign policy, and taking decisions in unanimity and majority of votes in the Cabinet. This is the Taif Agreement and the constitution that we make sure to respect.”The Lebanese-Saudi Business Council called on Lebanese officials “to avoid dragging Lebanon into intense regional conflicts and pushing it to take positions that contravene its principles and the natural and historical partnerships with its Arab neighbors, especially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”The council said it relied on “the Saudi authorities to understand the sensitive situation in Lebanon and to deal with Lebanon based on the historical ties between the two brotherly countries.”

Hezbollah Isn’t Iran’s Favorite Proxy Anymore
Anchal Vohra/Foreign Policy/June 10 June/2019
Last week, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah threatened a regional war were Iran to be attacked by the United States amid rising tensions between the two countries. It was an expected statement of support by Hezbollah, Tehran’s closest regional proxy. But just as important, if less noticed, was what Nasrallah added immediately afterward—namely, that nobody should fear tensions escalating that far. It was simultaneously a warning to Washington and an attempt to assuage the concerns of the group’s local supporters.
Hezbollah has historically been Iran’s most effective allied militia; it has long been expected to participate in all of Iran’s wars. But domestic pressures in Lebanon have complicated such participation, and Iran is shifting its foreign policy accordingly. There are a growing number of signs that Tehran now believes the Houthi insurgents of Yemen should be their preferred regional proxy in the growing confrontation with the United States and its allies.
In mid-May, nine days after the United States sent an aircraft carrier group and Air Force bombers to the Persian Gulf, citing an imminent threat from Iran, it was neither Hezbollah nor Shiite militias in Iraq that struck back, but the Houthis, who later admitted to attacking a Saudi pipeline with drone-borne weapons. They also claimed responsibility for attacking a Saudi arms depot in Najran, a city near the border with Yemen. The incidents came well before the end of a 60-day deadline from Tehran to Europe to come up with an alternative mechanism to ensure Iran can sell its oil despite U.S. sanctions, and seemed calibrated to serve as a warning about Tehran’s seriousness: loud enough to be noticed by Tehran’s adversaries, but not large enough to demand an immediate and demonstrative response.
Iran’s shift of attention from Hezbollah to the Houthis shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Tehran has always carefully considered which of its allied militias to activate in the specific circumstances of a given conflict. In the present confrontation with the West, Iran’s focus seems to be on signaling its seriousness, and raising the stakes of the conflict in ways that would give its adversaries pause. The goal is to ensure any military action is painful for Iran’s enemies but remains clearly short of war.
The Houthis, already at war with Saudi Arabia over the kingdom’s support of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, a man the Houthis deem a Saudi puppet, serve this function well by offering Iran the greatest degree of deniability. The Houthis have been launching attacks in Saudi Arabia for a while; the current uptick in the attacks has come in the middle of a U.N.-supported peace deal between the warring sides, but perfectly supported Iran’s interests by demonstrating Saudi Arabia’s vulnerability. The timing of the attacks strongly suggest they were conducted at Iran’s behest.
Seyed Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian-American academic and political analyst based in Tehran, said he would not be surprised if the Houthis had come to Iran’s aid. “It is possible that the Houthis did not like the pressure of sanctions on Iran,” he said. “Iran is not asking them to do anything, but I think as the Saudis and the Emiratis hurt Iran’s economy, Iran would use all its means to hurt them back.”
Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Iran’s deployment of the Houthis was a clever choice because any retaliation would fall inside Yemen and not Iran. The aim, he said, was to target the Saudis, because attacking American interests would prompt too severe a response. “It is very clear that Saudi interests would be threatened by Iran,” he said. “The question is, for how long and to what extent and until when would the U.S. tolerate it.”
Iran understands the specific risks involved in using each of its proxies. Involving Hezbollah in the present conflict with the United States would inevitably involve Israel, and almost certainly cause a wider regional war—a possibility that both Iran and Hezbollah want to avoid.
A wide range of Lebanese political analysts—including several close to Hezbollah and several critical of it—told Foreign Policy that, while Hezbollah offered ideologically committed and war-hardened fighters, Iran was wise to keep it at bay. In the slowly evolving conflict with the United States, the group was of little use to Iran. Sami Nader, a political analyst, said that Hezbollah did not have sufficient domestic backing to fight directly for Iran and jeopardize Lebanon’s fragile peace, with further debilitating impact on its economy. “Our economy is in a perilous state,” he said. “If Hezbollah aggravated the situation by intervening in the U.S.-Iran conflict, it would not be accepted by the Lebanese people.” Ghassan Jawad, an analyst known to be close to Hezbollah, said that there was an unspoken understanding between the United States, Iran, and Hezbollah that Lebanon should remain a functional state in an otherwise conflict-riven region. “Neither the U.S. nor Iran nor Hezbollah want chaos in Lebanon,” he said. “Iran and Hezbollah have planned that for now other proxies be used.”
The main reason Hezbollah is forced to take a back seat is the absence of provocation from Israel. Hezbollah has flourished as a political actor in Lebanon not just because it has always been seen as an effective resistance to Israeli aggression, but also because the group has repeatedly said that its raison d’être is defensive. To that end, Hezbollah has been treading cautiously in its dealings with Israel ever since their most recent war in 2006.
From Iran’s perspective, Hezbollah is largely redundant in the slowly simmering conflict with Washington. It already has the Houthis in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq at its disposal. Hezbollah would only actively come into play if there were a fully fledged war between the United States and Iran, or if the Syrian government were to decide to respond to Israel over its occupation of Golan Heights and the regular bombing of Iranian assets on its territory. Hezbollah is deeply entrenched in southern Syria with fighters and weaponry.
Kamel Wazne, a Lebanese political analyst, said Hezbollah had not yet made any decision to escalate the situation in Syria either. “There is open war in Syria,” he said. “On one side are Iran and Hezbollah and on the other the Israelis. Syria has always promised retaliation, but that day has not come yet. “It is possible that the Syrian government decides that it does not want Iran to be seen as weak and retaliates. Then, of course, Hezbollah would play a role.”
Iran’s next step depends on how much further the United States pushes. Iran is growing more desperate as its channels for selling oil are drying up in the face of U.S. sanctions. If the United States escalates its economic pressure by, for example, intercepting Iran’s tankers or imposing sanctions on companies buying its oil, Tehran is likely to expand its retaliation by proxy to include its allied Iraqi militias, which are well placed to hit American assets.
Marandi says that Iran can be expected to respond in equal measure to the threats that confront it. “JCPOA violation for JCPOA violation, war for war, and economic pain for the U.S. and its allies in return for renewed economic sanctions against Iran,” he said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal negotiated in 2015.
This suggests an avoidance of the major escalatory threat U.S. hawks were keen to play up when the USS Abraham Lincoln was sent to the Gulf three weeks ago. But it also signals what regime insiders, both those on the hard-line and moderate wings, have long insisted: Iran will pursue gradual steps to withdraw from the nuclear deal and to adopt a more hostile posture in the region as the standoff with the Trump administration continues.

Day of Reckoning Approaches for Lebanon's Economy
James King/The Banker/June 10/2019
The future of Lebanon’s economy could be hanging in the balance. Years of apparent mismanagement by a series of politicians who have failed to pursue reforms are taking their toll. Today, sizeable fiscal and current account deficits loom large at a time when deposit inflows from the diaspora, which fund these deficits, are beginning to stall.
Levels of public debt, unemployment and poverty are elevated, while critical national infrastructure is in desperate need of investment. And although Lebanon has been promised billions in foreign support, much of it depends on the introduction of painful and politically unpopular reforms.
“We have definitely witnessed a slight deterioration in Lebanon’s risk profile as measured by the macro-economic distortions and debt profile of the country,” says Freddie Baz, vice-chairman of the board and group strategy director of Bank Audi, Lebanon’s largest bank by total assets.
The collective pressure being generated by these problems is only increasing. Foreign investors are growing nervous at a time when the government is looking to tap the international debt markets, in part to finance the country’s maturing foreign currency debt for 2019.
Most analysts expect Lebanon to issue $2.5bn in Eurobonds in 2019, but the timing of any transaction is unclear. This is because the global investment community, alongside the Lebanese people, is still awaiting the government’s draft 2019 budget, which is expected to detail a strict programme of fiscal consolidation. Only then will the billions promised to the country by global creditors be released. But securing agreement on this programme is proving elusive.
The fiscal challenge
All of this is happening just months after hopes were raised following the formation of a national unity government in January, in the wake of nine months of political wrangling. Since then, optimism has faded as the country’s political machine has brought progress on the delivery of a budget to an apparent halt. Herein lies a fundamental problem that Lebanon is facing: the authorities are tasked with pursuing fiscal consolidation at a time when the economy is almost stagnant. According to the World Bank, Lebanon’s gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by just 0.6% in 2017 and 0.2% in 2018.
“We expect the new Lebanese government to implement some fiscal consolidation measures in order to unlock the $11bn five-year investment package committed by international donors during the Paris IV conference in April 2018,” says Elisa Parisi-Capone, vice-president and senior analyst at ratings agency Moody’s. “However, in the context of very weak growth, fiscal consolidation will remain very challenging for the government.
Moreover, as long as deposit growth remains weak, potentially because of lingering uncertainty about the capacity of the government to shore up macro-economic stability, Lebanon’s fiscal and external positions will remain among the weakest across the sovereigns that we rate.”
To secure the external support it needs, Lebanon is facing a host of daunting political challenges. In May, retired soldiers picketed the central bank over fears the budget may curtail their pensions and benefits. Meanwhile, central bank staff themselves were briefly on strike over proposed cuts to their wage bill, which in turn forced a suspension of trading on the Beirut Stock Exchange due to a lack of clearing and settlement capability. Staff at other state institutions have also gone on strike in 2019.
Backlash risk
Concerns of this kind reflect the bloated state of Lebanon’s public sector wage bill, which eats up about half of the country’s total expenditure. The remainder is largely allocated to servicing its debt, which stands at 150% of GDP, and data from 2018 points to the fact that these costs have gone up, rather than down, in recent times. “Figures issued by the ministry of finance show that the compensation of public sector personnel totalled $5.9bn in the first 11 months of 2018, constituting an increase of 22.1% from the $4.8bn in the same period of 2017,” says Nassib Ghobril, chief economist at Byblos Bank, Lebanon’s third largest lender by total assets.
“The double-digit rise is due to the across-the-board increase in the wages and salaries of public sector employees and retirees that was enacted by the Lebanese parliament in July 2017.”
As a result, if the Lebanese government is to meet its fiscal reform targets, the chances of a political backlash are high. Prime minister Saad Hariri warned in April that the economy faced a ‘disaster’ unless these reforms were enacted and claimed that the budget would be the most austere in the country’s history. But the gap between the prime minister’s rhetoric and political reality appears, at this stage, to be large. Indeed, when global consultancy McKinsey authored a 1274-page report on the Lebanese economy (commissioned by the government) in January 2019, it noted that the country was stuck in a ‘vicious economic cycle’.
This highlighted a host of impediments that are holding back the economy, including high levels of corruption, stalled reforms and legislative improvements to the business environment, as well as Lebanon’s dependence on diaspora inflows, among other challenges.
Overcoming these problems will not be easy. To begin with, some segments of the country’s political elite are widely seen to benefit from the status quo. “Urgent economic reforms are needed, but how can we expect the ruling class that is responsible for this dire state of affairs to enact them?” asks Jad Chaaban, associate professor of economics at the American University of Beirut, writing for Diwan, an online service from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Program and the Carnegie Middle East Center. “The ruling cartel – a coalition of sectarian, business and military leaders – has survived by sustaining a rentier economy, distributing income and services to its networks of supporters.”
Power surge
There is little doubt that Lebanon’s economy is facing a severe set of challenges, but some scope for optimism remains. In the short term, the country’s maturing foreign currency debt is likely to be serviced through a financial engineering arrangement involving the Banque du Liban and Lebanon’s commercial banks. Meanwhile, in April 2019 Lebanon’s energy minister announced the second licensing round for offshore oil and gas exploration in five blocks. In the same month, the new cabinet approved a groundbreaking plan to reform the country’s ailing electricity sector, a move that, if executed properly, could result in 24-hour electricity across Lebanon and contribute to a significant reduction in government subsidies to the sector. In addition, a number of high-profile judicial and security officials are facing disciplinary or court procedures for various infractions that have undermined the public good. These examples suggest a more positive direction of travel for Lebanon in niche but significant domains of the country’s economic and political development.
“Though Lebanon’s risk profile has worsened, we are seeing an improvement in political governance and the collective awareness of policy decisions to implement reforms and fight corruption. For these reasons I am cautiously optimistic about the country’s prospects,” says Mr Baz.
Lebanon’s economic potential is abundant. The country’s political class could be forced to make painful long-term decisions to unlock this potential in the coming years. This will require moving beyond the short-term ‘clientelism’ that has characterised some segments of Lebanese political life.
This system has only worked because Lebanon’s banks, and its central bank, have essentially anchored the country as its political leaders have bickered, while seeming to squander opportunity after opportunity for reform. But as the eyes of the global market watch events in Beirut, against a backdrop of a deteriorating macro-economic profile, time could be running out for Lebanon’s politicians. The next 12 months will decisive for the country’s long-term future.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 10-11/2019
Iran has accelerated enrichment of uranium, ‘worried’ IAEA chief says
AFP/Arab News/June 11/2019
VIENNA: Iran has followed through on a threat to accelerate its production of enriched uranium, the head of the UN atomic watchdog said on Monday, departing from his usual guarded language to say he was worried about increasing tension. Recent weeks have seen US-Iranian confrontation sharply increase, a year after Washington abandoned an agreement between Iran and world powers to curb Tehran's nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international financial sanctions. Washington tightened sanctions from the start of May, ordering all countries and companies to halt all imports of Iranian oil or be banished from the global financial system. It has also begun discussing military confrontation, dispatching extra troops to the region to counter what it describes as Iranian threats. Iran has responded with a threat to increase its enrichment of uranium, saying it was up to Europeans who still support the nuclear deal to save it by finding ways to ensure Tehran receives the economic benefits it was promised. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, whose agency is responsible for monitoring Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal, said Iran was now producing more enriched uranium than before, but it was not clear when it might reach stockpile limits set in the pact. "Yes, (the) production rate is increasing," he told a news conference when asked if enriched uranium production had accelerated since the agency's last quarterly report, which found Iran compliant with the nuclear deal as of May 20. He declined to say how much it had increased by. Iran said last month it was still abiding by the deal but would quadruple its production of enriched uranium - a move that could take it out of compliance if stockpiles rise too far. It demanded European countries do more to shield it from sanctions. On Monday, Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas became the most senior Western official to visit Iran since the new war of words erupted last month between Washington and Tehran. "The situation in the region here is highly explosive and extremely serious," Maas told a news conference alongside Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. "A dangerous escalation of existing tensions can also lead to a military escalation."
Zarif blamed the US for the escalation.
"Reducing tension is only possible through stopping the economic war by America," he said. "Those who wage such wars cannot expect to remain safe."Zarif said talks with Maas were "frank and serious". But he added: "Tehran will cooperate with EU signatories of the deal to save it."
Reduce tensions through dialogue
IAEA chief Amano said he was "worried about increasing tensions over the Iranian nuclear issue". He hoped "that ways can be found to reduce the current tensions through dialogue. It is essential that Iran fully implements its nuclear-related commitments" under the deal. Washington's European allies opposed its decision last year to abandon the nuclear deal. They have promised to help Iran find other ways to trade, though with no success so far. All major European companies that had announced plans to invest in Iran have since called them off for fear of US punishment. Iran says the Europeans have not done enough to provide it with alternative ways to trade. Maas acknowledged limits to how much help the European countries can provide. "We want to fulfil our obligations," Maas said during his joint news conference with Zarif. "We cannot work miracles, but we will try to avert a failure" of the nuclear deal.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said: "So far, we have not seen practical and tangible steps from the Europeans to guarantee Iran's interests."France, Britain and Germany have set up a special-purpose vehicle called Instex, designed to allow payments to Iran that would legally bypass sanctions. It has yet to be launched. "This is an instrument of a new kind, so it's not straightforward to operationalise it," Maas told reporters. "But all the formal requirements are in place now, and so I'm assuming we'll be ready to use it in the foreseeable future." Washington has denounced the European plans. Diplomats say the system is unlikely to have much impact on commercial trade with Iran but could be used for humanitarian transactions that are permitted under U.S. sanctions. Washington says the nuclear deal should be expanded to cover other issues including Iran's missile programme and its role in wars in the region. European countries say they share those concerns, although they argue that it would be harder to address them without the nuclear deal in place. Iran strongly opposes any effort to expand negotiations to cover other issues. Mousavi said as much: "The EU is not in a position to question Iran's issues beyond the nuclear deal."

Vladimir Putin to visit Saudi Arabia in October
Reuters/June 10/2019/MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Saudi Arabia in October, the Kingdom's Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said Monday.
Al-Falih, who was in Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart, said Saudi companies were considering taking part in a methanol plant project in Russia's east, the Interfax news agency reported.
The energy minister's visit comes amid increased economic cooperation between the two countries and discussion among OPEC members about oil supplies. Al-Falih said Russia was the only remaining oil exporter still undecided on the need to extend the global output deal between OPEC and its allies until the end of the year, TASS news agency reported on Monday. OPEC have curbed supplies since January to prop up prices. Al-Falih said both Russia and Saudi Arabia, as well as the OPEC+ group, were working to take "preventive" measures to avoid sharp oil price declines. In an interview with TASS, Al-Falih said there was disagreement in Russia about whether to prolong the output curbs at a policy meeting in Vienna in the coming weeks. "So, I think the remaining country to jump onboard now is Russia. I will wait for the Russian dynamics to work themselves out," Al-Falih was quoted as saying. "There is a debate obviously within the country about the exact volume that Russia should be producing in the second half," he said. Al-Falih said he and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak may have final opportunity to discuss the deal this month at a G20 meeting in Japan before OPEC and its allies meet in Vienna.
Novak said there is still a risk that oil producers pump out too much crude and prices fall sharply, suggesting Moscow might support the extension of output cuts. Separately, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said oil prices could fall as low as $30 per barrel if OPEC and its allies did not extend the curbs. "As far as such a scenario is concerned, this is not ruled out. A lot depends, of course, on the market situation in the second half of the year, in the third quarter, on the supply and demand balance," Novak told a media briefing, sitting alongside Al-Falih.
He also cited trade wars and sanctions as influencing factors. "Indeed, there are big risks of over-production. But on the whole ... we need to analyse deeper and look at how the events will develop in June in order to take a balanced decision at the joint OPEC+ meeting in July."
Putin said last week Russia and OPEC disagreed over the fair price for oil, but that they would take a joint decision at the policy meeting.

Top Iran Diplomat Warns U.S. It Cannot 'Expect to Stay Safe'
Associated Press/Naharnet/June 10/2019/Iran's foreign minister warned the U.S. on Monday that it "cannot expect to stay safe" after launching what he described as an economic war against Tehran, taking a hard-line stance amid a visit by Germany's top diplomat seeking to defuse tensions. A stern-faced Mohammad Javad Zarif offered a series of threats over the ongoing tensions gripping the Persian Gulf. The crisis takes root in President Donald Trump's decision over a year ago to withdraw America from Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
"Mr. Trump himself has announced that the U.S. has launched an economic war against Iran," Zarif said. "The only solution for reducing tensions in this region is stopping that economic war."For his part, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas insisted his country and other European nations want to find a way to salvage the nuclear deal, which saw Iran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. However, Europe has yet to be able to offer Iran a way to get around the newly imposed U.S. sanctions. Meanwhile, a July 7 deadline looms for Europe to find a way to save the unraveling deal. Otherwise, Iran has warned it will resume enriching uranium closer to weapons-grade levels.

What Countries are Doing to Repatriate IS Families
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/June 10/2019/Since the fall of the Islamic State's "caliphate" in March, the international community has been torn over what to do with the families of foreign jihadists captured or killed in Syria and Iraq. Some 12,000 foreigners from as many as 40 countries -- 4,000 women and 8,000 children - are currently stranded, mainly in Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria. The Kurdish authorities are pressing for them to be returned to their countries of origin. Here are several examples of how countries around the world are dealing with the issue:
Russia, Kosovo, first
Nearly 4,500 Russian citizens went abroad to fight alongside the IS and it was the first to organise returns over a year ago. By February around 200 women and children had returned, originating mainly from Russia's Islamic republics in the Caucasus. Moscow estimates that nearly 1,400 children are still stranded.Kosovo, which is 90 percent Muslim, announced in April it is repatriating 110 nationals from Syria, almost all of them wives and children of jihadists.
France and Belgium: 'case by case'
After months of hesitation amid hostile public opinion, 12 orphaned children of French jihadists were flown home from Syria on Monday. France repatriated five orphans from Syria in mid-March, as well as a three-year-old girl whose mother was sentenced to life imprisonment in Iraq. Paris has said it is studying the files of all its citizens held in northeastern Syria on a case-by-case basis. Like France, Belgium has been one of the biggest sources of foreign fighters for IS. The authorities recorded more than 400 travelling from 2012 while 160 children and adolescents have been born with at least one Belgian parent involved.
Belgium says it will help the repatriation of children younger than 10, as long as the link with a Belgian parent is proven. "For the others it is case by case," the government says.
Germany: children repatriated
A dozen children of jihadist fighters have been repatriated from Iraq to Germany since March. The German authorities, while cautious, say that the children are "victims" and that they should be repatriated if they have family to take them in. Children who have been radicalised will be placed in a special institution but will not be locked up.
Denmark: stripped of nationality
The Danish government in late March drew up draft legislation under which children born abroad to jihadists will not have Danish nationality. United StatesThe United States has urged Western countries to take their nationals back and has started repatriating some of its own.
Two American women and six children from families of suspected IS members were repatriated in early June. In July 2018 Washington brought home three IS fighters for prosecution and also repatriated one woman with her four children. Tunisia: no repatriationSome 5,000 Tunisians have joined the IS in Syria and Libya, according to the UN in 2015 -- one of the biggest contingents. No children have been brought home from Syria or Iraq, according to Human Rights Watch in February. Tunisia's government worries that repatriating children will only accelerate the return of their jihadist parents, according to a local rights group, the Rescue Association of Tunisians Trapped Abroad. Turkey In late May, Iraq repatriated to neighbouring Turkey 188 children of Turks accused of belonging to IS, a capital offence in Iraq. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan Tajikistan, from where more than 1,000 travelled to fight for IS, said in May that 84 children had been brought back from Iraq, where their parents had been either jailed or killed in battle. On May 30, Uzbekistan said it had repatriated 156 nationals, mostly women and children.

New Zealand Plans to Withdraw All Iraq Troops by Next June
Associated Press/Naharnet/June 10/2019/New Zealand announced Monday that it will withdraw all of its troops from Iraq by next June. New Zealand has a small contingent of 95 so-called noncombat personnel deployed at the Taji Military Complex northwest of Baghdad, where they are tasked with training Iraqi security forces. The training mission is a joint operation with Australia, which has about 300 troops stationed at Taji. New Zealand's Defense Minister Ron Mark said Australia also planned to downsize its presence in Iraq, although he didn't offer any details. Australia had not made any formal announcements about its plans by Monday afternoon. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said it would reduce the number of troops to 75 by July and then to 45 by January before they were all withdrawn. "When it comes to Iraq, it's time to go," Ardern said. She said the troops had made a big contribution at Taji, where more than 40,000 Iraqi security forces had been trained since New Zealand's deployment began in 2015. "I think they have done an incredible job, but their job is coming to an end," she said. "And now it's time to bring them home and look at the contribution our defense force can make elsewhere."Mark said that New Zealand would downsize alongside Australia and that both countries were working on "exiting and having an exit plan." But when pressed, he declined to offer more details. Ardern said it was not up to New Zealand to announce Australia's long-term plans in Iraq, but she added that Australia had been kept informed of New Zealand's decision and was supportive. The 2015 decision on New Zealand's Iraq deployment was made by the conservative government at the time, and was opposed by Ardern's then-opposition Labour Party. The Labour Party formed a coalition government after the 2017 general election. Ardern said her government did not withdraw the troops sooner because it was honoring commitments made to both Iraq and Australia. Ardern also announced New Zealand would reduce the number of defense force personnel posted in Afghanistan from 13 to 11 by March, and that three of those positions would be focused on enhancing the involvement of women in peace and security initiatives.

12 French Orphans of IS Families Arrive in Paris from Syria
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/June 10/2019/Twelve orphans born to French jihadist families were flown home Monday from camps in Syria, along with two Dutch orphans who will be handed over to the Netherlands, the French foreign ministry said. The children -- the second such group to be flown to France from Syria since March -- were all "isolated and particularly vulnerable", the ministry said, adding some were sick or malnourished.

U.S. Senators Hope to Force Vote on Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/June 10/2019/Opposition to President Donald Trump's Saudi Arabia policy and use of executive power is building in Congress, where senators have introduced more legislation aimed at blocking the sale of weapons to the kingdom. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat, and Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, a Republican, said in a statement Sunday they hope to force a vote on U.S. security assistance to Saudi Arabia, including arms sales, after a review of the kingdom's human rights record. Anger has been mounting in Congress for months over the Trump administration's close ties to the Saudis, fueled by high civilian casualties in the Saudi-led war in Yemen — a military campaign the U.S. is assisting — and the killing of U.S.-based columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. Tensions were further inflamed when Trump used an emergency declaration in May to sell the kingdom weapons that Congress had previously placed on hold.The bill the senators are introducing Monday draws on a provision in the Foreign Assistance Act that allows for congressional review. The act allows Congress to vote to request information about a country's human rights practices. After receiving the information, Congress can then vote on ending or restricting security assistance. "Congress needs to change how we do business with the Kingdom. The process we are setting in motion will allow Congress to weigh in on the totality of our security relationship with Saudi Arabia, not just one arms sale, and restore Congress's role in foreign policy making," Murphy said in a statement. This move follows the introduction of 22 bipartisan resolutions on Wednesday that aim to block the $8.1 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that bypassed congressional review last month. "Our arms sales to Saudi Arabia demand Congressional oversight. This bipartisan resolution simply asks the Secretary of State to report on some basic questions before moving forward with them," said Young, who like Murphy has long been an opponent of U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the sales were necessary to counter "the malign influence of the government of Iran throughout the Middle East region." Citing unspecified intelligence, U.S. officials have said the threat from Iran has increased in recent weeks. Some of the weapons could be delivered to Saudi Arabia later this year, while other arms will not ship for another year or more. The sale includes precision guided munitions, other bombs and ammunition and aircraft maintenance support. It is unclear if Murphy and Young's resolution would pass the Republican-controlled Senate before moving on to the House.

Algeria Detains Car Tycoon in Graft Case
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/June 10/2019/Algerian authorities on Monday detained an automobile tycoon linked to ousted president Abdelaziz Bouteflika on charges of corruption, one of his lawyers told AFP. Mahieddine Tahkout "was detained along with his son and two of his brothers on charges of corruption and money laundering", lawyer Khaled Bourayou said. The decision to detain them came a day after they were questioned by an investigative judge, the official APS news agency said. Private media said Tahkout, who holds several foreign car dealerships, was accused of "undue privileges" under the rule of Bouteflika, who was forced to step down in April after weeks of protests. Tahkout and the family members run the Tahkout Manufacturing Company (TMC) which assembles vehicles in Algeria for South Korean carmaker Hyundai. Several prominent politicians and businessmen linked to Bouteflika have been detained or questioned in connection with corruption since the ailing president was forced to step down on April 3.

Nearly 100 Killed, 19 Missing in Central Mali Village Massacre
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/June 10/2019/Nearly 100 people were killed in a gruesome overnight attack on a village in central Mali, in the latest violence to strike the fragile region, officials said Monday. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the massacre, targeting a village inhabited by the Dogon community, bore the hallmarks of tit-for-tat ethnic attacks that have claimed hundreds of lives. It came less than three weeks after nearly 160 members of the Fulani ethnic group were slaughtered by a group identified as Dogon. "Right now we have 95 dead civilians. The bodies are burned, we are continuing to look for others," an official in Koundou district, where the village of Sobane-Kou is located, told AFP. The government, giving a provisional toll, said 95 people had been killed, 19 were missing, numerous farm animals had been slaughtered and homes had been torched. "Armed men, suspected to be terrorists, launched a murderous attack on this peaceful village," it said in a statement. A Malian security source at the site of the massacre said "a Dogon village has been virtually wiped out."The local official said the attackers came and "started shooting, pillaging and burning." The village had about 300 inhabitants, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. An association of Dogon traditional hunters, called Dan Nan Ambassagou, deplored the "barbaric and vile" attack which it described as tantamount to genocide. A brutal cycle of violence in central Mali, an ethnic mosaic, began after a predominantly Fulani jihadist group led by preacher Amadou Koufa emerged in 2015. It started targeting the Bambara and Dogon ethnic groups, which in turn started to form "self-defence groups" of their own. The Fulani are primarily cattle breeders and traders, while the Bambara and Dogon are traditionally sedentary farmers. On May 16, the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA) announced it had recorded "at least 488 deaths" in attacks on Fulanis in the central regions of Mopti and Segou since January 2018. In the bloodiest raid, about 160 Fulani villagers were slaughtered on March 23 at Ogossagou, near the border with Burkina Faso, by suspected Dogon hunters. According to MINUSMA, armed Fulanis had "caused 63 deaths" among civilians in the Mopti region, also since January 2018. "It's a shock, a tragedy," MINUSMA chief Mahamat Saleh Annadif said of the latest bloodletting, noting that it came at a time "when we are discussing the renewal of the (MINUSMA) mandate." There are currently about 14,700 troops and police deployed in Mali, which ranks as the most dangerous UN mission, with 125 peacekeepers killed in attacks since deployment in 2013.
Donor countries to MINUSMA are to to meet at the U.N. on Wednesday. A decision on renewing the force's mandate is expected by June 27.
U.N. warning
Speaking at the U.N. headquarters in New York, Annadif voiced regret that the Malian authorities had not been present enough in the area to prevent such violence. Just a week earlier, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres had warned of a "high risk" of atrocities and called on the government to strengthen its response to extremist groups. "If these concerns are not addressed, there is a high risk of further escalation that could lead to the commission of atrocity crimes," he wrote in a report to the UN Security Council. In Monday's statement, the Malian government expressed its condolences and said "every measure will be taken to arrest and punish those responsible for this bloodshed." "Reinforcements are currently deployed in the sector and carrying out a wide-ranging search," it said in a statement. MINUSMA was established after radical Islamist and Tuareg militias seized the north of the country in 2012. The insurgents were pushed back by French troops in 2013. A peace agreement signed in 2015 by the Bamako government and armed groups aimed at restoring stability.  But the accord failed to stop jihadist violence, which then shifted to central Mali, inflaming ancient inter-ethnic hostility. Koufa in March 2017 joined the newly-formed Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the leading jihadist alliance in the Sahel region, with links to al-Qaida. Its leader is Iyad Ag Ghaly.

Trump says Xi meeting at G20 'scheduled'
Mon 10 Jun 2019/NNA - US President Donald Trump on Monday said he still expects to talk with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the upcoming G20 summit, warning he will impose new tariffs if there is no meeting. "Yes it would," Trump told CNBC television when asked if a failure by Xi to come to the summit later this month in Japan would lead to the huge new tariffs kicking in. But Trump said the meeting was "scheduled" and "I think he will go." "I would be surprised if he didn't go," Trump added. "I think he's going, I havent heard that he's not. We're expected to meet." A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, meanwhile, says he had "no information at present" on Trump-Xi talks.--AFP

Attack in Burkina Faso's volatile north leaves 19 dead
Mon 10 Jun 2019/NNA - At least nineteen people were killed late Sunday in an attack on a village in the troubled north of Burkina Faso, a security source said on Monday. "Several dozen armed men carried out an attack on the district of Arbinda, shooting several people dead," said a local official, speaking on condition of anonymity. A security source said, "19 bodies have been found." The attack took place "on Sunday between 3 pm and 5 pm," or between 1500 and 1700 GMT, the official said. An emergency meeting was underway to discuss the situation, the official said.--AFP

Swedish police shoot man threatening people at train station
Mon 10 Jun 2019/NNA - Swedish police officers shot and wounded a man who was banging a bag on the ground and claiming to have a bomb at a train station Monday, authorities and a witness said. Police were alerted just after 10 a.m. that a man was behaving in a menacing way at the central station in the southern city of Malmo. One witness, Fernando Valarino, said he was at the station waiting for a train when he saw a tall, bald white man in a dark purple raincoat banging a duffel bag on the ground. Valarino said the man appeared to be about 30 and "I thought initially that it was a crazy person." At first he couldn't make out what the man was saying but then heard him yell "I've got a bomb." Valarino said he saw station employees remove people from the area before police arrived. "He tried to run, and shots were fired. I definitely heard three shots, but maybe there were four," Valarino, a 25-year-old resident of Malmo, told The Associated Press by phone. Police were quoted by the TT news agency as saying that officers had no choice but to shoot him because of his behavior. He was taken to a hospital with injuries, and nobody else was reportedly hurt. His condition wasn't immediately known. Evelina Olsson, a police spokeswoman, said a bomb squad was deployed to the station.--AP

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 10-11/2019
Analysis/The Syrian Nightingale Is Dead, and Soon Other Fighting Poets May Be Silenced
زفي برئيل من الهآرتس يتناول جريمة قتل منشد الثورة السورية عبد الباسط سروت ويتوقع قتل المزيد من الشعراء في سوريا
Zvi Bar'el/Haaretz/June 10/2019
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/75677/%d8%b2%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%a6%d9%8a%d9%84-%d9%85%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%87%d8%a2%d8%b1%d8%aa%d8%b3-%d9%8a%d8%aa%d9%86%d8%a7%d9%88%d9%84-%d8%ac%d8%b1%d9%8a%d9%85%d8%a9-%d9%82%d8%aa%d9%84-%d9%85/
The Arab world is mourning the death of famed soccer player Abdelbaset Sarout, who became an icon of the anti-Assad movement.
Toddlers munching on a treat from a plastic bag, a gloomy-looking baby stretching its hand toward a small plate of food, two kids leaning on the side of a tent, a young woman wearing a hijab looking at her demolished house in despair, a homeless woman slicing vegetables for her children, immediately followed by pictures of the people responsible for all this – Bashar Assad, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gadhafi, Omar al-Bashir, as well as palms on which the words “victory to the revolution” have been drawn.
This is the last video filmed by 27-year-old Abdelbaset Sarout one week before he was killed last Saturday in battle against Assad’s forces. Sarout, who was a promising goalkeeper in a youth soccer team in Homs, became a soldier in the ranks of the rebels at the age of 19. Within a short period, he became known for his pleasant voice and for revolutionary songs he composed for the cause. He was called “the revolution’s nightingale”, “the voice of the insurrection” and “the revolution’s goalie” by his admirers.
During the eight years of fighting he set up his own militia, which he commanded. On three occasions, Syrian security forces tried to assassinate him after placing a $35,000 reward for his head. He was accused of collaborating with ISIS, and he was even arrested by the Jabhat al-Nusra militia, which is affiliated with Al-Qaida. Throughout the entire period he continued composing songs, even appearing alongside Syrian actress Fadwa Souleimane, who was also killed. In doing so, he symbolized the unity of the insurrection, since he was Sunni and she was Shi’ite, and together they opposed the Assad regime.
In 2013, a documentary called “The Return to Homs” was made about Sarout. It won an award at the Sundance Festival, becoming the first documentary to show the atrocities of the Syrian war, using Sarout’s personal story. When news broke out of his death at a Turkish hospital following injuries he sustained from battle, social media was inundated with condolences from across the Arab world. “He was the son of all Syrian mothers” wrote Suhaib Ayoub on the Raseef22 website. “My mother mourned for him as if he were her own son…my 70-year-old mother, who may never see Homs again, today lost the voice of the revolution, as all sons of Syria did.”
The poets and songwriters of the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria, who rose out of the violent demonstrations and clashes, some dying and some managing to escape persecution from their regimes, created a cultural legacy which holds among the notes and simple lyrics the war albums of these revolutions. Many of them made their mark in the towns and cities they were born in, where they grew up and where they fought. A few managed to move beyond local stages, succeeding in their countries, some of them even internationally.
Sarout was one of those. He was a handsome young man, with long unkempt hair, dressed like any other young man of his age in the West. But he exchanged this for battle fatigues and a vest holding grenades and ammunition clips, looking like a Hollywood hero in a war movie. Except this movie has more than 600,000 or 700,000 fatalities, and the war isn’t over yet.
Tens of thousands of fighters, the same age as Sarout, are part of dozens of militias that are gathered in Idlib province, waiting for the big battle which has only just begun. The Assad regime intends to destroy the remnants of the forces opposing him. Each of these militias has its own heroes and songs composed for it. These are songs of freedom and yearning for victory, talking of a struggle that will not cease until the regime falls. One of these songs could become the anthem of a new Syria one day.
“Do we really need national songs?” wondered publicist Mustafa Fadel in a pointed article published on the Raseef22 website. He published his article on June 6, the commemoration day of the 1967 Six-Day War, called the “Naksa” in Arab countries. With bitter scorn he notes a famous song by Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez, who sang about a day that ends, followed by evening darkness. The words were written by poet Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi right after the resignation of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser following the terrible results of that war.
“But after Nasser retracted his resignation two days later, Hafez sang a new song called ‘The Rifle Spoke,’ even though the rifle hadn’t yet spoken”, wrote Fadel. We only know how to sing dirges, he complained. More seriously, he said, our national songs have been exploited by our leaders for recruiting people to pointless purposes, such as “national” songs calling on the public to come and vote for the incumbent president.
“There is no politically unstable country that can change its situation through songs and anthems. If you want change, you need songs that face reality, that call for change and defend it…a society that thrived on songs of praise for socialism [fostered by Nasser – Z.B.], such as those of Abdel Halim al-Hafez, became the capitalist society of Sadat. Such a society cannot discuss its problems,” Fadel added.
In Egypt there are no more revolutionary songs or paeans to freedom. They are prohibited from being played in public by the Abdel Fattah al-Sissi regime. In Syria, such songs still fuel the morale of some rebels. Fighting poets still play some role but it seems soon, they too will be silenced. Their revolutionary songs will disappear or, like in Egypt, they will serve the regime which will take possession and turn them into its own songs.

How Palestinian Leaders Butcher the Truth
Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/June 10/2019
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14357/palestinian-leaders-butcher-
Yusef Wajih, the terrorist, came to Jerusalem armed with a knife to kill Jews. That was his only goal. He could have taken advantage of Israel's easing of restrictions during Ramadan -- a move that saw hundreds of thousands of Muslims to enter Jerusalem every Friday to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is also not concerned that two innocent Jews were stabbed by the terrorist. What the Palestinian Authority is disturbed about is the killing of the terrorist.
If the International Criminal Court ever looks into this incident, it should begin its inquiry by investigating the vicious incitement of Palestinian leaders, who use Jewish visits to a holy site in Jerusalem to butcher the truth, just as it whips up Palestinians such as Yusef Wajih to wake up in the morning and butcher the first Jew he meets. The blood of Wajih is on the hands of Palestinian leaders, and not the police officers who stopped a terrorist from stabbing yet more Jews.
The wave of terrorist attacks against Israeli police officers and civilians began shortly after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in 2015 that the Palestinians will not allow Jews "with their filthy feet to defile our Al-Aqsa Mosque," and "We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah..." (Image source: Palestinian Media Watch video screenshot)
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is up in arms because Israeli policemen killed a Palestinian who stabbed two Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem. The terrorist, 19-year-old Yusef Wajih, from the West Bank village of Abwain, near Ramallah, stabbed one of the men in the neck and head near the Old City's Damascus Gate, leaving him in serious condition.
The second victim was a 16-year-old who was stabbed by the terrorist in the back a few hundred meters away from the scene of the first attack. The teenager sustained light to moderate injuries. Police officers shot and killed the terrorist, thus preventing him from harming more Jews.
Such stabbing attacks are not uncommon on the streets of Jerusalem. In the past few years, Palestinian terrorists have carried out several stabbing and shooting attacks against Israeli police officers and civilians, particularly ultra-Orthodox Jews who were on their way to or from prayer at the Western Wall.
The wave of terrorist attacks began shortly after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in 2015 that the Palestinians will not allow Jews "with their filthy feet to defile our Al-Aqsa Mosque." Abbas was referring to the Israeli authorities' decision to resume Jewish visits to the Temple Mount. The visits were temporarily suspended for security reasons after the eruption of the Second Intifada in September 2000.
Abbas, who was speaking during a meeting with Arab residents of Jerusalem in his Ramallah office, added:
"We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every Martyr (Shahid) will reach paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah. The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is ours, and they have no right to defile them with their filthy feet. We will not allow them, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem."
Since Abbas's statement, the Palestinian media has been waging a campaign of incitement against Jewish visits to the Temple Mount. Abbas's official news agency, Wafa, regularly describes the peaceful visits by Jews as violent incidents by "settlers" and "extremists." Almost every week, Wafa publishes a report under the headline: "Jewish settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque."
Such reports are intended to send a message to the Palestinians that the Jews are launching some kind of a violent "incursion" into one of Islam's holiest shrines.
The truth is that the Jews touring the Temple Mount have never entered any of the mosques at the site or were involved in any form of violent attack against Muslim worshippers.
Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, however, are careful not to be confused by the facts. The terrorist who stabbed the two Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem was undoubtedly influenced by the ongoing incitement by Palestinian leaders regarding the Jewish visits to the Temple Mount. It is this type of incitement that prompts Palestinians to grab a knife and set out to stab the first Jew they meet.
Yet, instead of condemning the terrorist for attacking Jews on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan -- hours before hundreds of thousands of Muslim worshippers converged on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound for prayer -- the Palestinian Authority chose to denounce Israel for killing him.
Despite the terrorist attack, Israeli authorities did not prevent hundreds of thousands of Muslim worshippers from the West Bank from entering Jerusalem for the Friday prayer. Israel could have used the terrorist attack as an excuse to impose restrictions on the entry of Muslim worshippers to Jerusalem, but instead chose not to do so.
Yusef Wajih, the terrorist, came to Jerusalem armed with a knife to kill Jews. That was his only goal. He could have taken advantage of Israel's easing of restrictions during Ramadan -- a move that saw hundreds of thousands of Muslims to enter Jerusalem every Friday to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Palestinian Authority is not worried that the terrorist's action could have affected the Muslim worshippers who wanted to pray at the holy site on the last Friday of Ramadan. The PA is also not concerned that two innocent Jews were stabbed by the terrorist. What the Palestinian Authority is disturbed about is the killing of the terrorist.
"The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemns the crime of extra-judicial killing carried out by the occupation forces in Jerusalem," Abbas's ministry said in a statement shortly after Israeli policemen shot dead the terrorist. The ministry called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch an investigation "into this crime and hold to account the perpetrators of such crimes."
According to the logic of the Palestinian Authority, the police officers who killed the terrorist are the real criminals. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, the police officers should be held accountable for preventing the terrorist from continuing his stabbing spree. The officers should even be brought to trial before the International Criminal Court for foiling the terrorist's plan. As is its habit in their many previous condemnations of stopping terrorists in their tracks, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry made no mention of the two Jews who were stabbed by the terrorist.
By calling the shooting of the terrorist an "extra-judicial killing," the Palestinian Authority is seeking to create the impression that Israeli policemen drag innocent Palestinians to the street and publicly execute them for no reason. This is the type of blood libel that also propels Palestinians to carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis.
It is, therefore, precisely the Palestinian Authority leadership who continue to lie and incite their people against Israel and Jews, that ought to be put on trial by the International Criminal Court.
If the ICC ever looks into this incident, it should begin its inquiry by investigating the vicious incitement of Palestinian leaders, who use Jewish visits to a holy site in Jerusalem to butcher the truth, just as it whips up Palestinians such as Yusef Wajih to wake up in the morning and butcher the first Jew he meets. The blood of Wajih is on the hands of Palestinian leaders, and not the police officers who stopped a terrorist from stabbing yet more Jews.
*Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based on the Middle East.
© 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Trump's North Korea Policy Should Be Encouraged, Not Undermined
Peter Huessy/Gatestone Institute/June 10/2019
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14356/trump-north-korea-policy
China is rarely called to task in Washington by US leaders for its role in proliferating nuclear-weapons programs in some of the world's most notorious rogue states. Pressure is rarely placed on Beijing even by US arms-control groups.
The Chinese government made a deliberate choice in 1982 -- in violation of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 -- to disperse nuclear-weapons technology to its allies in the Third World. Through the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network in Pakistan, China was able to help produce nuclear weapons in Pakistan and North Korea, and start nuclear programs of varying significance in Iran, Libya and Iraq, and later in Syria. Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in Singapore, on June 12, 2018. (Image source: Dan Scavino Jr./Wikimedia Commons)
At a recent event on Capitol Hill -- hosted by the Washington-based Mitchell Institute -- the former China Country Director at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Joe Bosco, defended U.S. President Donald Trump's North Korea policy against critics who were accusing the White House either of leaning too far in the direction of diplomacy with Pyongyang, or too bent on imposing maximum economic and military pressure on it.
The criticism, according to Bosco, stems from two false narratives -- emanating from Pyongyang and Beijing -- which have been governing the debate.
The first is that North Korea is justified in having nuclear weapons, due to America's long-standing "hostile policy" towards the regime in Pyongyang. The second is that China has had virtually no role in the establishment of North Korea's nuclear program -- and that Beijing seeks "denuclearization" and "stability" on the Korean peninsula.
To grasp the absurdity of North Korea's claim that its nuclear program is "defensive" in nature and created to counter American "hostility" -- one need only ask why Pyongyang was party to the 1994 "Agreed Framework Between the United States of America and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea" and the 2003 Six-Party Talks.
China's denial of having had anything to do with North Korea's nuclear weapons program is equally ridiculous.
In their 2009 book, The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation, co-authors Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman illustrate that the Chinese government made a deliberate choice in 1982 -- in violation of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 -- to disperse nuclear-weapons technology to its allies in the Third World. Through the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network in Pakistan, China was able to help produce nuclear weapons in Pakistan and North Korea, and start nuclear programs of varying significance in Iran, Libya and Iraq, and later in Syria.
Nevertheless, China is rarely called to task in by US leaders for its role in proliferating nuclear-weapons programs in some of the world's most notorious rogue states. Pressure is rarely placed on Beijing even by US arms-control groups. They, one would assume, would be most upset with China's proliferation policies and seek to get China to admit that its gambit in deploying nuclear weapons in North Korea was designed to fuel tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Ignoring China's role is only one way in which Trump's critics undermine his administration's attempts at forging a successful policy to keep North Korea's nuclear program in check.
Another, more important, way in which Trump's detractors harm his ability to re-establish deterrence against Pyongyang is by denouncing any move by the White House or State Department. On the one hand, senior members of Congress routinely accuse the administration of provoking a confrontation and risking war through economic sanctions, missile-defense deployments and tough rhetoric.
When, however, the administration scheduled a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, and suspended certain joint military exercises to be held with South Korea, Trump was criticized by a former member of the National Security Council for achieving "virtually nothing."
Yet the North Korean government did suspend tests of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles -- and for the first time in nearly 25 years, a North Korean leader put a nuclear deal on the table.
This act, although far short of denuclearization, did eliminate the endless speculation of what the North Korean government would or would not do with its nuclear weapons, if left undeterred.
What this means is that the Trump administration is doing more than its predecessors to meet the challenges and threats posed by North Korea, and therefore should be encouraged to continue the policy of employing a mixture of tough measures and diplomacy.
*Dr. Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, as well as Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He was also for 20 years, the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation.
© 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Iran’s delusions of grandeur a survival strategy
Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami/Arab News/June 10/2019
Although Ganjavi’s poetry was written in Farsi, many believe that he was of Azeri rather than Persian origin. Whatever his ethnicity, he lived in an atmosphere dominated by Persian culture. In his work, Ganjavi likens the world to a body, with Iran as its heart. In other words, he saw Iran as the center and axis of the world, as the heart is the essential organ that sustains all other parts of the body. He wrote in one of the verses of his poems: “The entire world is like a body in which Iran is the heart; there is no shame to draw this comparison; since Iran is the heart of the earth; surely, the heart is the best part of the body.”
In other works of Iranian literature, writers divided the world into seven galaxies, with six of these forming a circle surrounding the seventh central galaxy, around which they eternally orbit and which is equidistant from all of them. This pivotal galaxy is, of course, Iran.
Readers may ask why we are recalling these centuries-old literary epics in an article related to contemporary politics. Those who have followed events in Iran since the 1979 revolution know that the Iranian regime always seeks recognition and wants to be the center of attention, as well as the primary focus of the world’s admiration. If we bypass the first years of the revolution, which were taken up with the Iran-Iraq War, along with the regime’s constant belittling of Iraq and the region, we find that the slogans first used by former President Mohammad Khatami concerning civilizational discourse have resounded across the world. Since 2002, the world has followed the issue of the regime’s nuclear program, which has been underway for 13 years to date.
Now we find that Iran is in the limelight on the global stage due to its nuclear and missile programs as well as its targeting of oil tankers in the Gulf and two Saudi Aramco oil pumping stations, which were attacked by the Tehran-backed Houthi militia. This is in addition to the Iranian regime’s hostile behavior and constant threats to its neighboring countries, which are leading this volatile region toward possible military options to repel Tehran’s expansionist schemes. The regime’s leaders have always spoken about their vital sphere in a manner reminiscent of Nazi Germany, bragging that Iran’s influence and strategic depth extend from the Indian subcontinent to the Mediterranean. Thus, it seems that Iran seeks to justify its meddling in this sprawling geographical area.
The main questions here are: Why does Iran’s regime insist on causing such chaos? And what is its problem with becoming a normal state living in harmony with its surroundings and coexisting peacefully with its neighbors? There are two main theories offering possible explanations that answer these questions.
The first theory argues that the regime in Tehran uses a diversionary strategy to distract the attention of the Iranian people away from demanding their cultural, political, religious and ethnic rights. It does this by invoking the bogeyman of a lurking enemy that seeks to target the country. Invoking this eternal enemy allows the regime to insist that it must be permanently on a war footing to confront external threats.
This strategy is linked to another, which is represented by exporting problems to other nations, known as the “flight-forward strategy.” The regime has relied on this since the victory of the 1979 revolution. Through its constant use of this strategy, the regime began to stir up tensions with the outside world, whether through meddling in the internal affairs of other nations or through attracting the attention of the world by aggressive policies that threaten global peace and security, hence ensuring that the international community rushes to resolve the issues in order to avert the danger.
The second theory, meanwhile, argues that the Iranian regime seeks to gain and strengthen its legitimacy as well as to minimize the impact of the grave accusations leveled against it worldwide through making negotiations with global powers a focus in and of itself.
The Iranian regime always seeks recognition and wants to be the center of attention.
Allowing this to happen means that the thorny issue of the regime’s legitimacy goes unquestioned. This theory also involves sending a message to Iranians at home, with the regime seeking to undermine any domestic actions that could threaten or undermine its survival.
In summary and regardless of which one of these two theories is more relevant to reality, it is clear that the Iranian regime works according to a strategy based on remaining in the limelight. It believes that Iran is the focal point and at the heart of this world. Thus, the regime seeks to achieve this objective, at least at the media level. This happens through creating chaos to distract attention and attempting to cause controversy within the international community, simply for Iran to dominate newspaper headlines, political talk shows and news bulletins.
Through the use of such subversive policies, the Iranian regime fulfills the aim of remaining far from any genuine threats, whether at home or abroad, despite the many problems plaguing it at all levels.
In light of the pressures being put on Tehran at present, the question that arises is whether the world can succeed in dismantling this complicated strategy, breaking it down, and forcing the regime to deal with what it has evaded over the past four decades.
*Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami is Head of the International Institute for Iranian Studies (Rasanah). Twitter: @mohalsulami

Elections can spare Sudan from divisions
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Arab News/June 10/2019
Two dates this year changed the political scene in Sudan. The first was Jan. 1, when four Sudanese blocs agreed to form a civic movement called the Alliance for Freedom and Change (AFC). The second date was April 11, when military leaders took a risk and ousted the tyrant President Omar Al-Bashir after three decades of rule.
These two dates made the two sides partners, without which perhaps it would not have been possible to achieve this historic change in a peaceful manner. Until April 11, the goal was obvious and unanimous: Ousting Al-Bashir. But since then, the situation has been characterized by division and complexity.
Of course, transitions are arduous. This is neither surprising nor strange in the case of revolutions. That is why everyone hopes that Sudan’s “ship of change” reaches the port safely. This requires wisdom and insight, concerns the people of Sudan first and foremost, and affects regional stability.
One party dominated the state and society, and uprooting it will not prove to be a smooth process for a few years. Indeed, the agreement between the two sides was merely to effect change, but thereafter there has been no clear, agreed-upon roadmap.
Following the recent confrontation with protesters, the Transitional Military Council (TMC) said it will hold elections within nine months so “the people of Sudan can decide who should rule,” instead of its previous proposition to hold elections after two or three years. But the civilian powers in the street continue to refuse the idea of elections in the current stage, preferring to form a transitional government in which they occupy the majority of seats.
Who is behind the steering wheel in Sudan today? There are two powers: The TMC, whose hierarchy and leadership have become known, and the AFC, which is hard to identify, at least for those who observe from afar. The AFC is a large bloc that includes most of the civilian political powers in Sudan, and seems cohesive for now.
An interim government may not be the ideal solution because it means collective leadership, which rarely succeeds in transitional stages, especially when the partners are diverse. There is no doubt that both sides, military and civilian, have concerns.
It comprises four political groups with collective leaderships. We do not yet know how decisions are made within this diverse camp of longstanding and new national powers, which represents a wide spectrum, from the far left to the far right.
The first group is the Sudanese Professionals Association, which represents the likes of professors, physicians, lawyers and engineers. The second is the National Consensus Forces (NCF), which comprises 17 opposition parties that refused to cooperate with Al-Bashir’s regime.
The third is Nidaa Al-Sudan (Sudan’s Call), the product of a meeting held in Addis Ababa in 2014 that included partisan forces such as the National Umma Party, the Communist Party, the NCF, the Sudan Liberation Movement, the Justice and Equality Movement, the Ba’ath Party, the Nasserites and others. The fourth group is the Unionist Alliance, which comprises eight unionist parties.
The AFC is therefore a large bloc made up of partisan, allied and competing parties. It could win elections by a large majority if they were held early next year. Elections will spare Sudan the divisions that have begun to appear and are expected to increase with time. Besides, it is difficult to bet on a military-civilian understanding, or a consensus within the AFC.
An interim government may not be the ideal solution because it means collective leadership, which rarely succeeds in transitional stages, especially when the partners are diverse. There is no doubt that both sides, military and civilian, have concerns.
Each is worried about the other because the Sudanese and regional experiences are not encouraging. The AFC fears that the TMC will take full control and behave like Al-Bashir, while the TMC fears that if it follows the AFC, the latter will lead Sudan to chaos.
In an ideal scenario, the solution may be a civilian government while the army vows to protect the state and its institutions, and implement the constitution. But this scenario may have to be decided through elections, as it will not be achieved by a consensus that is difficult to guarantee and will lead to trouble if it fails.
*Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a veteran columnist. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya news channel, and former editor in chief of Asharq Al-Awsat. Twitter: @aalrashed

G20 and the importance of multilateral consultations
Cornelia Meyer/Arab News/June 10/2019
Last weekend the finance ministers and central bank governors of the G20 nations gathered. The only member from the Arab world was Saudi Arabia, which is one of just three Muslim-majority countries alongside Indonesia and Turkey. The presidency alternates every year, and next year it will be the Kingdom’s turn to assume the mantle.
The backdrop to the meeting was increased fears over the impact of trade wars on the global economy. Earlier in the week, the World Bank had drastically revised its growth projections downward to 2.6 percent for 2019. This is a far cry from January 2018 when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast the global economy to grow 3.9 percent this year.
All the participants agreed that trade wars constituted a major threat to global growth. The communiqué quoted that major risks emanated from “global trade and geopolitical tensions,” and leaders vowed to “address these risks and stand ready to address the issues.”
To a certain degree the US was the odd man out at the meeting: The trade wars began when President Donald Trump started issuing tariffs on Canadian and European steel and aluminum, and hundreds of billions worth of Chinese goods. The worries came to a head when Trump linked immigration issues to trade, threatening a levy on Mexican imports.
The president is highly skeptical of the multilateral approach of the G20. He prefers bilateral trade negotiations.
While the communiqué did not mention US-China trade disputes, it was clear that leaders were most concerned with how the rift between the world’s two largest economies would evolve. These tensions do not just affect China and the US. Global trade and supply chains are interconnected and particularly affect export-oriented economies in Europe, ASEAN and Japan, which depend on open trading lanes. Gulf Cooperation Council countries are affected too, as less trade means lower demand for oil and the infrastructure offerings of major trading hubs like the UAE.
When US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin emerged from a meeting with China’s Central Bank Governor Yi Gang, he reiterated that Trump stood ready to levy 25 percent import tariffs on the hitherto untaxed $300 billion of Chinese imports, if there was no breakthrough until the Trump — Xi Jinping meeting at the end of June.
There was some relief that Trump suspended threats to impose tariffs on Mexican imports over the weekend. This could mean that the US-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement might finally be ratified. The USMCA is particularly important to the North American automotive industry with its highly integrated supply chains. It also matters to agriculture, steel and other products.
While global equity markets rallied on the news, the relationship between the US and Mexico is a side show compared to what happens with China. IMF chief Christine Lagarde said trade tensions could shave $499 billion off global GDP.
The central bank governors of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) participants reiterated they would grow balance sheets and lower interest rates, should their economies require stimulus.
The Australians moved first when they lowered rates last week. Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said he still had room for expansionary measures and interest rates would remain low. The European Central Bank’s Mario Draghi made clear interest rates would remain low, and the Italian central bank contemplated several measures.
Depending on analysts, markets have priced in between one and three rate cuts in the US for this year alone. The outlook is far from rosy when traditionally cautious central bankers openly contemplate larger balance sheets and lower interest rates for longer.
The US increasingly favors bilateral approaches, but the world is larger than just the US and China.
The finance chiefs could point to a concrete result when it came to the taxation of tech giants like Google Amazon and Facebook. The OECD had suggested minimum taxation on a global level for some time, as had the EU. The G20 ministers vowed to work on common rules to close loopholes and find a solution by 2020. This may result in a minimum tax as well as taxes being levied where profits are earned.
The wording was vague and Mnuchin voiced concerns about unfair treatment of individual companies. Despite the fanfare, we shall have to see whether the 20 countries will be able to agree on a framework, especially should the US be at odds with the decision.
Apart from the “digital tax” there were no firm outcomes from the meeting. However, these G20 gatherings may now be more important than ever. The US increasingly favors bilateral approaches, but the world is larger than just the US and China. Trade is, of course, global by nature. Therefore, it is important for the leaders of the world’s largest economies to meet, share their concerns and jointly deliberate how they want to address common problems — on a multilateral, bilateral or national level.
Taking stock of the status quo and consulting on ways forward is invaluable — especially as the multilateral frameworks risk coming unstuck.
*Cornelia Meyer is a business consultant, macro-economist and energy expert. Twitter: @MeyerResources

Kushner’s conditions should be applied to Israel
Ramzy Baroud/Arab News/June 10/2019
In a TV interview on June 2, on the HBO news docuseries “Axios,” Jared Kushner opened up regarding many issues, with his so-called “Deal of the Century” being a prime focus. The major revelation made by Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, was not surprising: He believes that Palestinians are not capable of governing themselves.
This was not surprising because Kushner thinks he is capable of arranging the future of the Palestinian people without the inclusion of the Palestinian leadership. He has been pushing his deal relentlessly, while including in his various meets and conferences countries such as Poland, Brazil and Croatia; but not Palestine.
Indeed, this is what transpired at the Warsaw conference on “peace and security” in the Middle East. The same thing is expected in Bahrainon June 25.
Much has been said about the subtle racism in Kushner’s words, which reek with the stench of old colonial discourses where the natives were seen as lesser beings, incapable of rational thinking, and who needed the civilized “whites” of the Western Hemisphere to help them cope with their backwardness and inherent incompetence.
According to leaked informationconcerning Kushner’s “Deal of the Century” published in the Israel Hayom newspaper, if Palestinian groups refuse to accept the US-Israeli diktats, “the US will cancel all financial support to the Palestinians and ensure that no country transfers funds to them.”
In his HBO interview, Kushner offered the Palestinians a lifeline. They could be considered capable of governing themselves should they manage to achieve the following: “A fair judicial system... freedom of the press, freedom of expression, tolerance for all religions.” The fact that Palestine is an occupied country, subject in every possible way to Israel’s military law, and that Israel has never been held accountable for its 52-year occupation seems to be of no relevance whatsoever as far as Kushner is concerned.
On the contrary, the subtext in all of what Kushner said in the interview was that Israel is the antithesis to the unquestionable Palestinian failure. Unlike Palestine, Israel needs to do little to demonstrate its ability to be a worthy peace partner.
The subtext in all of what Kushner said was that Israel is the antithesis to the unquestionable Palestinian failure.
While the words “US bias toward Israel” is as old as the state of Israel itself, what is hardly discussed is the specifics of that bias: The decidedly condescending, patronizing and often racist view that the US political classes have of Palestinians — and all Arabs and Muslims for that matter — and their utter infatuation with Israel, which is often cited as a model for democracy, judicial transparency and successful “anti-terror” tactics.
According to Kushner, a “fair judicial system” is an essential condition when determining a country’s ability to govern itself. But is Israel’s judicial system “fair” and “democratic?”
Israel does not have a single judicial system, but two. This dualityhas defined Israeli courts from the very inception of Israel in 1948. This de facto apartheid system openly differentiates between Jews and Arabs. “Criminal law is applied separately and unequally in the West Bank, based on nationality alone (Israeli versus Palestinian), inventively weaving its way around the contours of international law in order to preserve and develop its ‘(illegal Jewish) settlement enterprise’,” Israeli scholar Emily Omer-Man explainedin her essay “Separate and Unequal.”
In practice, Palestinians and Israelis who commit the same crime will be judged according to two different systems, with two different procedures. “The settler will be processed according to the Israeli Penal Code, (while) the Palestinian will be processed according to military order,” Omer-Man wrote.
This unfairness is part of a massively unjust judicial apparatus that has defined the Israeli legal system from its outset. Take the measure of administrative detentionas an example. Palestinians can be held without trial and without any stated legal justification. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been subjected to this undemocratic “law” and hundreds of them are currently held in Israeli jails.
It is ironic that Kushner raised the issue of freedom of the press, in particular, as Israel is being derided for its dismal record in that regard. Israel has reportedly committed 811 violationsagainst Palestinian journalists since the start of the “Great March of Return” in Gaza last March. Two journalists — Yaser Murtaja and Ahmad Abu Hussein — have been killedand 115 woundedby Israeli snipers.
Like the imbalanced Israeli judicial system, targeting the press is also part of a protracted pattern. According to a press release issued by the Palestinian Journalists Union last May, Israel has killed102 Palestinian journalists since 1972.
The fact that Palestinian intellectuals, poets and activists have been imprisoned for posts on Facebook and other social media outlets speaks volumes about the limits of the freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Israel.
It is also worth mentioning that, in June 2018, the Israeli Knesset votedfor a bill that prohibits the filming of Israeli soldiers as a way to mask their crimes and shelter them from any future accountability.
As for freedom of religion, despite its many shortcomings, the Palestinian Authority hardly discriminates against religious minorities. The same cannot be said about Israel, as the nation-state law of July 2018 cemented the superiority of Jewsin its legal system. According to this Basic Law, Israel is “the national home of the Jewish people,” and “the right to exercise national self-determination is unique to the Jewish people.”
Palestinians do not need to be lectured on how to meet Israeli and American expectations, nor should they ever aspire to imitate the undemocratic Israeli model. Instead, what they urgently need is international solidarity to help them win the fight against Israeli occupation, racism and apartheid.
*Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is “The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story” (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter. Twitter: @RamzyBaroud

Netanyahu's Government Fail Should Postpone Trump's Middle East Peace Plan
Ghaith Al-Omari/NBC News/June 10/2019
Even by the standards of Israel’s famously tumultuous politics, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprecedented failure to form a government Wednesday, triggering a second round elections, is a seismic event. And it is not only Israeli voters who find themselves buffeted by the aftershocks.
While Israeli politics has been thrown into disarray and campaign posturing is scheduled to trounce policymaking until the new vote on Sept. 17, the Trump administration will likely find itself equally stymied in any significant attempt to move forward with its Middle East peace effort.
That is undoubtedly frustrating to the administration’s peace team, headed by presidential advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, which has been working on the plan for more than two years. But, to paraphrase political leaders at least as far back as Machiavelli, this is exactly the kind of crisis that should not be wasted.
Anxiety and concern have long been the watchwords for many in the Arab world and Europe as the administration has moved closer to an anticipated unveiling of the plan this summer. The collapse of the Israeli coalition talks may well prove to be a blessing in disguise if it pushes back the deal’s release and buys the administration time to overcome the serious flaws that threaten to produce a stillborn plan.
The Palestinian leadership has long made it clear that it will reject the plan even before seeing it because of prior U.S. decisions it objects to, most notably moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem after unilaterally recognizing the contested city as Israel’s capital last year. And though the administration initially received positive signals about the peace effort from some Arab countries eager not to displease Trump, their enthusiasm began waning as the launch date approached.
Part of the change in their attitude has to do with the substance of the plan itself — as in, they don’t know what it is. Fearing leaks, which have sunk other peacemaking efforts as popular opposition mounted to prematurely publicized concessions, the administration has done a remarkable job ensuring full secrecy regarding the details of the plan. While reasonable and even commendable, this approach has made it impossible to form a coalition of Arab and European allies, who are understandably unwilling to commit to supporting a mystery.
The Arab states are particularly sensitive to the status of Jerusalem — the U.S. Embassy relocation didn’t exactly reassure them that the plan’s details, when revealed, would be to their liking — and are adamant, after Trump’s repeated refusal to endorse the two-state solution, that any plan should create a Palestinian state. In particular Jordan, a key U.S. ally in implementing any peace deal, has expressed great concern that the deal may compromise Jordan’s special role in Jerusalem and that the Jordanian public may react angrily to the plan.
Beyond what the proposal might theoretically say, there’s also the issue of what we know to be happening in the region. The big picture is that some of the most powerful local actors — particularly the Gulf kingdoms — see containing Iran as the immediate regional priority. These countries don’t want the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to once again hijack all regional diplomacy. The irritation was on full display this week as Saudi Arabia held three summits aimed at Iran but found itself having to dedicate time and resources to the Palestinian issue.
The smaller — but potentially more disruptive — picture is that the situation on the ground itself is becoming increasingly unstable. Progress is being made toward an Egyptian-brokered truce in Gaza between Hamas and Israel after numerous rounds of fighting and a mounting death toll. Yet there are likely to be more flare-ups (if not a major explosion) this summer. In the meantime, the humanitarian situation there remains on the precipice of collapse, demanding an immediate international response.
In the West Bank a measure of security stability persists thanks to robust Palestinian-Israeli security cooperation. But the economy is deteriorating and the Palestinian Authority is foundering, both because — after 25 years of negotiations — it has so far failed to produce a Palestinian state through diplomacy, and because of the widespread frustration with the Palestinian Authority’s corruption and poor governance. Underneath the veneer of stability, unrest is bubbling in the West Bank.
Then there’s Israel’s contribution to the ferment. Some highly destabilizing ideas are moving from the margins to the mainstream, raising doubts about Israel’s ability to conclude any deal. In recent months, Netanyahu himself floated the idea of annexing parts of the West Bank, a move that could create unrest on the ground, damage its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, and rupture ties he’s been cultivating with some Arab states. And the new elections mean that, even if Netanyahu retains his hold on power, he could be too weakened or pulled too much further to the right to take bold steps.
Given all this, the delay in releasing the peace plan provides an opportunity for the U.S. For one thing, it avoids making itself an element of instability by landing its plan in the middle of an already volatile landscape. And for another, the extra time can be used to improve its diplomatic position as well as the situation on the ground.
Trump’s peace team needs to forgo some of its secrecy and, with the help of the State Department, share parts of the plan to build support among allies. This does not need to be widespread or comprehensive, but key actors need to know how issues of direct concern to them are addressed.
The U.S. outreach also has to be directed at bringing some degree of stability to the West Bank and Gaza. Luckily, extensive ideas have been proposed — many of which originate from Israel’s own security establishment — that can be win-wins for Palestinians and Israelis, such as measures to improve the economic situation and freedom of movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and bring the Palestinian Authority back to Gaza as a precursor to investment in the Strip beyond basic humanitarian relief.
Bolstering the Palestinians economically and politically while courting international allies will enhance the chances of success when the time is right. After all, even the best-crafted peace plan will face difficult — even insurmountable — hurdles if it is not built on solid foundations. The political developments in Israel could, at least as far as the peace process is concerned, end up being a very productive crisis indeed.