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BEIRUT: The Swiss embassy in Lebanon has postponed an informal dinner that was scheduled to take place at the ambassador’s residence at the invitation of the Switzerland-based Center for Humanitarian Dialogue.
The event aimed to brainstorm with “Lebanese as well as regional and international actors” but was postponed following controversy and disapproval among political parties opposing Hezbollah and its allies.
It was seen as an attempt prior to the end of President Michel Aoun’s term to dismantle the Taif Agreement and establish a tripartite governance, allowing the Shiite sect to be an influencing partner in governance.
Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Walid Bukhari reiterated “the national pact principles contained in the Taif Agreement, which constitutes a main foundation that protected Lebanon and ensured its stability.”
Independent MP Abdel Rahman Bizri said that “any modification to and reconsideration of the Taif Agreement are rejected and dubious, and a proof that some people want to complicate things instead of facilitating the awaited political solutions.”
Bizri said that “the Taif Agreement is a national pact that was concluded as a result of the great sacrifices and hardships faced by the Lebanese.”
He added that the problem “we face today is the result of the practices of the ruling class and top officials who have managed the country for decades.”
A number of Lebanese MPs representing parliamentary blocs were invited to dinner on Tuesday at the residence of the Swiss Ambassador to Lebanon Marion Weichelt.
The event was planned as a platform to discuss a number of issues before later talks in Geneva on Lebanon.
It had been reported that the event would bring together representatives of Hezbollah, the Amal Movement, the Free Patriotic Movement, the Lebanese Forces, the Progressive Socialist Party and the Forces of Change.
However, the Lebanese Forces asked its representative not to attend the dinner. Independent MPs and the Forces of Change refused to be represented.
MP Waddah Sadek told Arab News: “This project has been in preparation for three months. If we take a closer look at the people working on it, we see that some of them are close to Hezbollah, noting that Hezbollah has been planning a campaign against the Taif Agreement a while ago.
“If we connect the dots we realize that this dinner, and the invitation to the Geneva conference, are not unprompted and a European cover has been provided for this meeting.
“If the point of the meeting was to hold discussions and not repeal the Taif Agreement, why should it be held at the embassy and later abroad?
“Moreover, the Forces of Change MPs did not know about this meeting. We only heard about it from the media and the invited MP did not tell us anything.”
Sadek said that the constitution “is my main reference and I am against any international or local conference amid the de facto weapon. No one represents me in any meeting and at any embassy and I refuse to discuss this matter.”
MP Melhem Riachi, of the Lebanese Forces, said he will not be attending the meeting without clarification of its background.
Bukhari visited Aoun and Lebanese Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday. He reiterated the Kingdom’s support for Lebanon’s unity and people, based on national principles in the Taif Agreement. He also stressed the importance of carrying out the constitutional elections on time.
He wrote on Twitter: “The Taif agreement is a binding contract to strengthen the foundations of a pluralistic Lebanon. The alternative is not another pact but the disintegration of coexistence, the disappearance of the united nation and its replacement by entities that do not resemble the Lebanese message.”
The Swiss Embassy said that Switzerland had been actively engaged in Lebanon for many years.
It added: “Over the last couple of months, Switzerland, in collaboration with the Swiss-based organization Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, was in contact with the full spectrum of political Lebanese as well as regional and international actors to prepare for consultative discussions, not for a dialogue conference.
“It is Switzerland’s tradition to offer good offices when asked to do so. The planned discussions are the result of previous consultations with the full spectrum of political Lebanese as well as regional and international actors, and in full respect of the Taif Agreement and the Lebanese constitution.”
GAZA CITY: Cattle carts arriving at the vegetable market in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza and vendors and shoppers flocking to them have been a regular feature for years in the strip besieged by Israel.
But this might become a thing of the past as Israel has been preventing donkeys from entering the Gaza Strip since December last year, according to donkey dealers in Gaza.
Hani Al-Nadi, 40, a donkey dealer, said that Israel prevented him and other traders from importing the animals into Gaza.
“In December, I was informed by the Israeli authorities at the Erez Crossing that I am not allowed to obtain an import permit for donkeys,” Al-Nadi told Arab News.
He said an Israeli nongovernmental organization claimed that donkeys are tortured in Gaza and that after they are imported from Israel, they are slaughtered and their skins are sold to China via Egypt.
Ofer Stritch, from Starting Over, a nonprofit Israeli animal sanctuary, said: “We learned from multiple sources in Gaza that many donkeys arriving in the strip via Israel are sent to Egypt where they are slaughtered and their skins sold to China.
“We realized that there is a sudden increase in the number of donkeys that are transported from Israel to Egypt via Gaza.”
Al-Nadi rejected the allegations and said: “We cannot export anything through Egypt, and donkeys are not slaughtered in Gaza. I do not know the reason for this claim.”
According to Al-Nadi, Israel is the only source for importing donkeys, which are used for cheap transportation in light of the high fuel prices, into the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians use donkeys to pull carts through which farm produce is transported to markets or sold by street vendors.
Mahmoud Al-Ra’i, 33, said: “For 15 years I have been using a donkey cart to sell vegetables in Gaza streets. This is the second donkey that I have bought since the beginning of my work in this field.”
Al-Ra’i wanted to replace his donkey a month ago, but he dropped the idea when he learned about the high prices of donkeys as a result of the Israeli ban on the import of the animals.
The average price of a donkey in the Gaza Strip was about $200, but it has risen to about $800 now.
Gaza’s businesses use traditional means of transportation including trucks and tuk-tuks, but the high fuel price of $2 per liter has prompted some drivers to use donkeys and horses.
Rami Al-Shandaghli, 47, said: “Fuel prices are high in Gaza, and the profit rate is low due to the bad economic situation. Donkeys are the best way, and the cost of feeding and caring for them is very low.
“The cost of a donkey’s food per day does not exceed 5 shekels ($1.5), and wounds can be healed by a swim in the sea, and the average lifespan of a donkey is 20 years,” Al-Shandaghli said.
Israel controls most of the Gaza Strip’s imports as they enter through its Kerem Shalom crossing.
Egypt allows some goods to enter the Gaza Strip through the Salah El-Din crossing.
According to Al-Nadi, the Gaza Strip used to import between 500-600 donkeys annually, but since the beginning of the year, no new donkey has entered Gaza.
“Currently, I do not have a job in the field of donkeys. Until the issue is resolved, I will be helping my father raise cows. Israel has suspended my entry permit as well,” he said.
KHARTOUM: At least 200 people were killed in two days of ethnic clashes in Sudan’s southern Blue Nile state, official media said on Saturday, up from an earlier toll of 150.
Clashes in Blue Nile, which borders Ethiopia and South Sudan, broke out last week after reported disputes over land between members of the Hausa people and rival groups, with residents reporting hundreds fleeing intense gunfire and homes and shops set ablaze.
Fighting peaked on Wednesday and Thursday to some of the worst in recent months, prompting the provincial governor to declare a state of emergency on Friday.
“Two hundred people were killed” in three villages in the Wad Al-Mahi area, some 500 km south of the capital Khartoum, said local assembly chief Abdel Aziz Al-Amin.
“Some of the bodies have not been buried yet,” he told state television, calling on “humanitarian groups to help” local authorities bury the dead.
Governor Ahmed Al-Omda Badi had ordered a “state of emergency … in the whole Blue Nile state for 30 days,” according to a Friday provincial decree.
Abbas Moussa, the head of the Wad Al-Mahi hospital, told AFP on Thursday that “women, children and elderly” people were among the dead.
Several hundred people had demonstrated in the Blue Nile capital, Damazin, earlier that day, shouting: “No to violence.” Some demanded Governor Badi be sacked, accusing him of not protecting them.
From July to early October, at least 149 people were killed and 65,000 displaced in Blue Nile, according to the United Nations.
The Hausa have mobilized across Sudan, claiming they are discriminated against by tribal law which forbids them to own land in Blue Nile because they were the last group to arrive there.
The issue of access to land is highly sensitive in impoverished Sudan, where agriculture and livestock account for 43 percent of employment and 30 percent of GDP, according to UN and World Bank statistics.
Sudan has been grappling with deepening political unrest and a spiraling economic crisis since last year’s military coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan.
A surge in ethnic violence in recent months has highlighted the security breakdown in Sudan since the coup.
A total of 546 people were killed and at least 211,000 forced to flee their homes in inter-communal conflicts across the country from January to September, according to the UN.
BERLIN: Tens of thousands of people marched in Berlin on Saturday in a show of support for protesters in Iran where unrest ignited by Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody entered a sixth week despite a deadly state crackdown.
The protests have posed one of the boldest challenges to Iran’s clerical leadership since the 1979 revolution, even if they do not appear close to toppling a government that has deployed its powerful security apparatus to quell the unrest.
Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, died in the custody of morality police after being detained for “improper attire.”
Protests erupted at her funeral on Sept. 17 in the Kurdish town of Saqez before spreading across Iran. Rights groups say more than 200 people have been killed in the crackdown.
Women have played a prominent part, waving and burning veils. The deaths of several teenaged girls reportedly killed during protests have fueled more anger.
In Berlin, police estimated 80,000 people joined the march, with protesters waving Iranian flags and holding banners saying “Women, Life, Freedom.”
Organizers said Iranians had traveled from the United States, Canada and all over the EU.
“From Zahedan to Tehran, I sacrifice my life for Iran,” human rights activist Fariba Balouch said after giving a speech at the Berlin gathering, referring to Iranian cities swept up in the protests.
The crowd responded with “Death to Khamenei,” referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Anti-government activists said the Berlin march was the largest ever demonstration against the Tehran regime by Iranians abroad.
“I feel very good, because we are here to (say) ‘We are with you, with all Iranian people’. I am Mahsa Amini’s voice,” said a protester who gave her name as Maru.
Videos posted on social media — which Reuters could not independently verify — showed protests continuing in Iran at several cities including Tehran, northeastern Mashhad, northwestern Mahabad and a number of universities across the country.
One video showed protesters lighting fires in the streets of Tehran’s Lalehzar district. Another showed cars in Mashhad honking their horns and demonstrators chanting “death to the dictator.”
Khamenei has warned nobody should dare think they can uproot the Islamic Republic, accusing its adversaries of fomenting the unrest. State TV has reported the deaths of at least 26 members of the security forces.
Some of the deadliest unrest has been in areas home to ethnic minorities with long-standing grievances against the state.
These include the Sistan-Baluchestan province in the southeast and its provincial capital Zahedan.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Saturday accused a leading Sunni cleric of agitating against the Islamic Republic and warned it may cost him dearly after he held officials including Khamenei responsible for dozens killed in Zahedan last month.
Amnesty International has said security forces killed at least 66 people in a crackdown after Friday prayers in Zahedan, on Sept. 30.
Molavi Abdolhamid, Zahedan’s leading Sunni cleric, said during his Friday sermon that officials including Khamenei, head of the state, were “responsible before God” for the Sept. 30 killings.
He described the killing as a massacre, saying bullets had been fired at heads and chests.
A short statement on Sepah News, the Revolutionary Guards’ official news site, said: “Mr. Abdolhamid, encouraging and agitating youths against the Islamic Republic of Iran may cost you dearly! This is the last warning!”
State media said at the time of the Sept. 30 violence that “unidentified armed individuals” opened fire on a police station, prompting security forces to return fire.
The Revolutionary Guards said five members of its forces and the volunteer Basij militia were killed during the Sept. 30 violence.
Authorities blamed a Baluchi militant group. Neither that group nor any other faction claimed a role.
Protests had been fueled by allegations of the rape of a local teenaged girl by a police officer.
Officials have said the case was being investigated.
After protests erupted in Zahedan again on Friday, deputy interior minister for security, Majid Mir Ahmadi, said calm had returned, official news agency IRNA reported.
He said 150 “thugs attacked public property and even those shops belonging to Sunnis.”
Rights groups say the government has long discriminated against ethnic minorities including the Kurds.
The state denies accusations of discrimination.
In Iran’s Kurdish region on Saturday, videos posted online showed shopkeepers on strike in several cities in the northwestern Kurdish region, including Sanandaj, Saqez and Bukan.
PARIS: Shopkeepers and factory workers went on strike in Iran on Saturday as women-led nationwide protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini entered a sixth week, activists said.
The death of 22-year-old Amini, after her arrest for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict dress code for women, has fueled the biggest protests seen in the Islamic republic for years.
Young women have led the charge, removing their headscarves, chanting anti-government slogans and confronting the security forces, despite a crackdown that human rights groups say has killed at least 122 people.
Activists issued a call for fresh demonstrations as Iran’s working week began on Saturday, but it was difficult to gauge the turnout because of curbs on Internet access.
“On Saturday… We will be together for freedom,” activist Atena Daemi said in a Twitter post that bore an image of a bare-headed woman raising her fist.
Iran’s deputy interior minister Majid Mirahmadi told state media the protests were in their “final days.”
“There are various gatherings in some universities, which are decreasing every day, and the riots are going through their final days,” he said.
The 1500tasvir social media channel told AFP there were “strikes in a couple of cities including Sanandaj, Bukan and Saqez,” while adding it was difficult to see evidence of them online as “the Internet connection is too slow.”
Saqez, in the western province of Kurdistan, is Amini’s home town, where anger flared at her burial last month, helping trigger the protest movement.
Verified footage spread on social media showed dozens of students holding Iranian flags and chanting outside one of Iran’s largest campuses, Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran.
Some female students among them did not wear the mandatory headscarf.
In northwestern Iran, dozens of students clapped and chanted slogans during a protest at the Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, verified footage showed.
Iran accused its arch enemy the United States of seeking to use the protests to gain concessions in talks aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear agreement.
“The Americans continue to exchange messages with us, but they are trying to fan the flames of what has been going on inside Iran in recent days,” said Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
The organizers of a mass rally in Berlin in solidarity with the Iranian protesters called on “democratic governments… to STOP negotiating with the criminal state called the Islamic republic.”
In a statement, the Iranians for Justice and Human Rights group also called for the expulsion of Iran’s ambassadors.
“We are not asking you to interfere in Iran, wage war or sanction Iran’s people,” it said.
“We want you to impose targeted sanctions on the leaders, operatives, oligarchs and lobbyists of the Islamic republic.”
The Berlin rally, which police said drew more than 80,000 people, was one of a number of demonstrations around the world, including in Australia and Japan.
A teachers’ union in Iran has called for a nationwide strike on Sunday and Monday over the crackdown that rights group Amnesty International says has cost the lives of at least 23 children.
The Co-ordinating Council of Teachers Syndicates said the “sit-in” would be in response to “systematic oppression” by the security forces at schools.
Activists have also accused the authorities of a campaign of mass arrests and travel bans to quell the protests, with athletes, celebrities and journalists caught up in the dragnet.
Overnight an Iranian climber, who was reportedly placed under house arrest for competing abroad last weekend without a headscarf, thanked her supporters on Instagram.
Elnaz Rekabi, 33, wore only a headband in an event at the Asian Championships in Seoul, in what many saw as gesture of solidarity with the Amini protests.
“I sincerely thank all those who came to the airport for welcoming me, I love you,” Rekabi said in her first social media comments since returning on Wednesday to a hero’s welcome.
The BBC and London-based Iran International television said on Friday that Rekabi had been placed under house arrest. Her phone had reportedly been seized from her before she flew home.
On Friday, the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran called on the International Federation of Sport Climbing to do more to protect Rekabi and all Iranian athletes.
RAMALLAH: Officials in Palestine have welcomed the UN’s appeal to Israel to end the administrative detention of Palestinian detainees.
Qadri Abu Bakr, head of the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission, lauded the UN move.
He told Arab News that the Palestinian Authority has made similar appeals for several years and has repeatedly urged international organizations and allied countries to pressure Israel into ending the detention practice.
Israel uses administrative detention — imprisoning a person without trial for a period of six months — to clamp down on Palestinian activism, Abu Bakr said.
He lamented that some prisoners had spent almost eight years in administrative detention without trial because detention orders were renewed every six months.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, said in a press conference that the UN had repeatedly called on Israel to end the practice of administrative detention, either by releasing or prosecuting detainees.
Dujarric added that the UN was following up on the case of Salah Hammouri, a Palestinian lawyer held by Israel without charge under administrative detention.
The spokesman’s remarks came after independent experts had called on Israel to immediately release Hammouri, who recently ended a 19-day hunger strike in objection to the systematic policy of administrative detention.
Dujarric added: “We are closely following the situation of Mr. Hammouri and other Palestinian administrative detainees held by Israel.
“We are aware that there are about 30 detainees, including him, who recently ended their hunger strike, which had been going on since September. And obviously, we have repeatedly called for Israel to end the practice by either releasing people or charging them when there are grounds to do so.”
Israeli retaliatory measures against Hammouri escalated after following his work with the Conscience Foundation for Prisoner Care and Human Rights.
UN experts also expressed their deep concern about the widespread misuse of administrative and criminal law procedures by Israel, and its use of confidential information against Palestinians, including Hammouri.
Abu Bakr said that there are 780 Palestinian administrative detainees, including at least six minors and two female prisoners. Most of the detainees are held in the Negev and Ofer prisons.
Since 2015, Israeli authorities have issued more than 9,500 administrative detention orders.
Since the beginning of this year, authorities have issued about 1,365 administrative detention orders, including 272 in August alone.
Since late 2011, prisoners in Israel have carried out more than 400 individual strikes.
Abu Bakr said that the prisoners have repeatedly demanded that Israeli authorities bring them to trial.
In a separate development, Israel reportedly intends to allow the Palestinian Authority — for the first time since 2001 — to acquire two civilian helicopters for high-level flights in a move aimed at enhancing President Mahmoud Abbas’ position.
Haaretz reported that Israeli security leaders had objected to such proposals for years on the grounds that the helicopters would be used for smuggling purposes, as happened under former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat.
According to the report, Israeli security officials recommended that the government accept the request of President Abbas as part of steps to strengthen his position within the Palestinian Authority.
According to the plan’s draft, Israel intends to allow the Palestinian Authority to buy two helicopters with money donated by Gulf states.
The two helicopters would be stationed in Jordan, and will remain on standby to transport senior officials from the Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinian Authority will be required to request a flight permit when traveling through Israeli airspace, which includes the occupied West Bank.
PA officials currently rent helicopters belonging to the Royal Jordanian Air Force to transport themselves and diplomatic guests between Ramallah and Amman.
Each flight costs them about $100,000, though President Abbas owns a private jet stationed in Amman for his trips around the world.
Israel allowed the late president Arafat to acquire three Soviet-made Mil Mi-8 helicopters following the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 1993.
However, then-Israeli PM Ariel Sharon ordered the helicopters to be destroyed during the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 after they were allegedly used to smuggle weapons and wanted criminals.
The helicopter pads in both Ramallah and Gaza were destroyed.