Syrian, Israeli missile debris land in Lebanon

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by- The Daily Star BEIRUT: Parts from Syrian surface-to-air missiles used against Israeli planes carrying out strikes near Damascus landed in Lebanese border towns Saturday. Casings from the surface-to-air missiles fired over Syria towards an Israeli planed landed in the southeastern town of Kawkaba in Hasbaya, falling in the middle of a lemon grove, a security source told The Daily Star. A separate source said that Lebanese Army and UNIFIL unit were on the ground in south Lebanon conducting searches for more missiles parts. Missile casings also fell in the Bekaa Valley towns of Sireen al-Fawqa and Ali al-Nahri, near the Lebanese-Syrian border, the state-run National News Agency reported. The Army later released a statement confirming the findings. It added that they appeared to be from Israeli missiles that had been aimed at targets in Syria. The Daily Star could not independently confirm the origin or the make of the projectiles. Visiting the debris near Kawkaba, Hezbollah MP Ali Fayyad said: "I think the [Syrian strike] demonstrates how much progress the resistance has made." Fayyad, an MP for Marjayoun-Hasbaya, toured the area where the missile had landed and met with local residents. "All the shops are open, people are going about their day... the situation is normal and stable," he said. When asked if they are expecting any surprises, Fayyad declined to answer.

The NNA reported significant Israeli aerial activity over southern Lebanon, including above the occupied Shebaa farms, and residents from South Lebanon reported hearing air raid sirens early Saturday coming from settlements in occupied Palestine as the raids were conducted over Syria. Al-Manar TV reported that Israeli construction of the contentious border wall on the Lebanese southern border was halted Saturday. Israeli forces began construction of the controversial wall near the southern border Wednesday, U.N. peacekeepers spokesperson Andrea Teneti told The Daily Star earlier this week. The Al-Manar report said that there was no sign of workers carrying out construction Saturday, unlike previous days where men were seen installing the large concrete blocks near Naqoura.

Lebanon to begin offshore energy search in block disputed by Israel

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by Lisa Barrington - BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon said on Friday it had signed its first offshore oil and gas exploration and production agreements for two blocks, including a block disputed by neighboring Israel. Lebanon’s energy minister said the dispute with Israel would not stop Lebanon benefiting from potential undersea reserves in the contentious Block 9, while consortium operator Total said it would not drill the block’s first well near the disputed zone. A consortium of France’s Total, Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek signed the agreements for the two blocks, which are among five that Lebanon put up for tender in the country’s much-delayed first licensing round. Israel and Lebanon, which regard each other as enemy states, have exchanged threats and condemnation over the tender, amid rising tensions over territorial and marine boundaries between them. “Today, we announce that we have started our petroleum path ... after signing the agreements and launching the exploration activities,” Lebanese Energy Minister Cesar Abi Khalil said at a ceremony in Beirut. The contracts had already been signed on Jan. 29. Data suggests there are reserves in Lebanon’s waters, but no exploratory drilling has taken place to estimate their size. Abi Khalil has said a second offshore licensing round will happen once the first commercially viable discovery is made.

TENSIONS

The first exploratory well will be drilled in Block 4 in 2019, said Stephane Michel, Total’s head of exploration and production in the Middle East and North Africa. The second well will be drilled in Block 9 more than 25 km (15 miles) from the maritime border claimed by Israel, he said at the ceremony. “There is no reason not to proceed in this way,” Michel added. Lebanon has an unresolved maritime border dispute with Israel over a triangular area of sea of around 860 sq km (330 square miles) that extends along the edge of three of its total 10 blocks. Total said in a statement the disputed waters comprise 8 percent of Block 9 and that its exploration well “will have no interference at all with any fields or prospects” in the disputed sliver of water. Lebanese and Israeli officials said David Satterfield, acting assistant U.S. secretary of state, was in Israel last week and in Lebanon this week on a mediation mission. U.S. officials confirmed his travels without detailing his agenda. Israel last went to war in Lebanon in 2006, against the heavily armed, Iran-backed Shi‘ite Muslim Hezbollah movement. Israel says Hezbollah has increased in strength since helping sway the Syrian civil war in President Bashar al-Assad’s favor. Abi Khalil told Reuters the heightened tension between the two countries in recent weeks has “not had an effect” on the consortium’s plans to explore.

EAST MED

Lebanon is on the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean where a number of big sub-sea gas fields have been discovered since 2009. Eni reported the Mediterranean’s largest discovery in 2015: the Zohr field off Egypt which holds an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of gas. And on Thursday Eni said it and Total had discovered a promising natural gas field off Cyprus. Fuad Krekshi, Eni’s executive vice president of the Middle East, said Eni’s entry into Lebanon’s market is a “natural consequence” of its existing role in the Mediterranean region. Total, with 40 percent, heads the consortium drilling Lebanon’s first offshore well. Eni also holds 40 percent and Novatek 20 percent. Vyacheslav Mishin, head of Novatek’s new Lebanon office, said the projected global growth in natural gas and LNG consumption was key to his company’s future growth. “The Middle East market for LNG consumption is forecast to grow by more than 100 percent by 2030,” he said.

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS

Potential reserves could be used domestically or exported. Both are attractive for Lebanon which has been short of electricity since its 1975-90 civil war and has an anemic economy battered by war in neighboring Syria and political tensions. It is also hoped the developing oil and gas industry will create jobs and economic growth. To this end, the EPA contracts say 80 percent of people employed by the consortium should be Lebanese, with priority given to local suppliers and contractors. But the commercial viability of potential reserves depends on energy market prices, the ability to secure customers and the cost and politics of building export infrastructure. “For all the fields in the region, there are commercial, political, and technical challenges that hinder exploitation for the purposes of export,” Tareq Baconi, a European Council on Foreign Relations visiting fellow on MENA energy told Reuters. “Many of the challenges for export will be faced by Lebanon as well when, and if, it discovers offshore reserves,” he said

Homeless Lebanese dishwasher becomes Michelin-starred chef

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PARIS (AFP) - When Lebanese chef Alan Geaam first arrived in Paris two decades ago he found himself sleeping on the streets, lost and penniless with hardly a word of French. This week Geaam, who began his career as a dishwasher while he was sleeping rough in a Paris park, received his first Michelin star from the French gastronomic bible for his acclaimed new restaurant within a stone's throw of the Arc de Triomphe. "I never thought the Michelin would be interested in someone like me, who was self-taught, who had to sleep in the street at 19 and who began as a dishwasher," he told AFP. "I thought the guide was about chefs in big fancy hotels or those trained by the great masters. But it turned out to be the opposite. It's a wonderful surprise," said the 43-year-old, who was born to Lebanese parents in Liberia, before they exchanged one war zone for another by returning to Beirut. By then Geaam's fascination with food was clear, watching cookery shows on television rather than cartoons after school. He started cooking while doing his national service in Lebanon, and the colonel of his regiment was so impressed he made him his personal chef. But Geaam never thought we would be able to cut the mustard in France, and only got his break when the chef of the restaurant where he was washing the dishes was rushed to hospital when he slashed his hand with a knife.

'BUT YOU CAN COOK!'

"I worked during the day as a construction worker and at night delivering pizzas and washing dishes. One night the cook cut his hand and had to go to hospital. No one asked me, but I just took over. There were 14 tables and so I just feed the customers and at the end of the night they were delighted. "The owner said to me, 'But you can cook!' and I said, 'Yes.'""The reason I cook is to make people happy," said Geaam. And he has certainly spread joy among restaurant critics with Michelin's rival Gault Millau guide raving about his langoustines and chard and its dark chocolate-coloured sauce tinged with Vietnamese cardamom. Alexander Lobrano, author of "Hungry for Paris", was even more effusive, declaring this "gentle, shrewd, self-taught chef as one of quiet men of Paris gastronomy... who has a brilliant future ahead of him." Although Geaam delights in bringing the very best of French produce to his table, Lobrano said he also brings the "tender buds of his very personal cooking that makes references to the lost world of a little boy born to a foreign family living in tropical Africa." .

POMEGRANATE LACQUERED FOIE GRAS

And the influence of his Lebanese roots is never far away either. One of Geaam's favourite dishes at the moment is "an escalope of foie gras lacquered with pomegranate molasses served with a tartlette of beetroot and pomegranate. "I ate a lot of pomegranates when I was a kid," he said. "I made juice with them, I made lots of reductions with them, and I loved putting this very Lebanese touch with something so French as foie gras." Since Geaam got his Michelin star on Monday night (Feb 5) his restaurant's phone has not stopped ringing. His said his small, tight team of highly-talented chefs - whose CVs he admits look far more impressive than his own - "really feel that something has happened in our lives. "You can criticise the Michelin guide but I can tell you the effect, a star massively boosts a restaurant." Within hours the restaurant was booked up for three weeks. "It is quite something," he said. Geaam, who told how his son boasted to his friends at school that his father got a Michelin star, put his success down to his own parents, who "lost everything" in Liberia only to have to struggle again in Lebanon during the civil war. He said working with his father in his grocery shop from the age of 10 gave him a taste for business while his mother "taught me how to love people and how to cook".

Russian fleets control ports of Lebanon

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MiddleEastMonitor.com A Russian media sources revealed that on Tuesday Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, instructed the Russian Defence Ministry to begin talks with its Lebanese counterpart to sign a military cooperation agreement between Russia and Lebanon. The draft agreement to be signed between the parties included the opening of Lebanese ports in front of Russian military vessels and fleets, in addition to making Lebanese airports a transit station for Russian aircrafts and fighters, and the dispatch of Russian military experts to train and strengthen the capabilities of members of the Lebanese army, according to the Russian agency Sputnik. The draft agreement provides the exchange of information on defence issues and the promotion of mutual trust to combat common terrorism, as well as the development of relations in the field of joint military training in various areas related to military service, medicine, engineering, geography and others. The agreement also included the participation in maritime search and rescue activities, combating terrorism and piracy. Russia will also grant Lebanese military delegations the right to attend all Russian military exercises, meetings and conferences that are to be held on military and defence matters.

Satterfield Tours Blue Line, Meets Aoun and Army Chief

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by Naharnet -- David Satterfield, the U.S. acting assistant secretary of state, on Thursday toured the Blue Line – the U.N.-demarcated border line between Lebanon and Israel – amid high tensions in the area. Accompanied by General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, Satterfield arrived earlier at the headquarters of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in Naqoura where he held talks with the force commander Maj. Gen. Michael Beary. The National News Agency said talks tackled the latest developments in the South, especially the issue of Israel's construction of a controversial border wall which Lebanon says would encroach on its territory. Later in the day, Satterfield held talks in Baabda with President Michel Aoun. The meeting addressed “the general situations and the latest developments in the South in light of the Israeli threats, after Israel started building a cement wall off the southern border and following its defense minister's claim that (offshore gas) Block 9 belongs to Israel,” NNA said. “The discussions tackled the U.S. efforts addressing the new situation, with Satterfield offering suggestions aimed at preserving stability and calm in the border region,” the agency added. Aoun for his part informed the U.S. visitor of Lebanon's stance, which was declared in Thursday's cabinet session and in the meeting of the Higher Defense Council on Wednesday.

Satterfield meanwhile emphasized to Aoun his country's support for the Lebanese state institutions, especially the army and security forces, lauding “the role they are playing to protect stability in Lebanon,” NNA said. Also on Thursday, the visiting U.S. official held talks with Army Command General Joseph Aoun, in the presence of U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Elizabeth Richard. Talks tackled the general situations in Lebanon and the region and cooperation between the two armies, as Gen. Aoun briefed the U.S. visitor on Israel's violations against Lebanese sovereignty and the latest developments in the South. The army chief warned that Israel is seeking to build a wall that passes in areas claimed by Lebanon. Separately, Satterfield and Richard visited the tomb of slain ex-premier Rafik Hariri in downtown Beirut where the U.S. diplomat laid a wreath of flowers. Satterfield described the late ex-PM as an unforgettable person and a great friend of the United States.

Lebanon to put taxi driver on trial in murder of British woman

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Lebanese judge has ordered the trial of a man suspected of the December murder of Rebecca Dykes, a British woman who worked at the British embassy in Beirut, court documents showed on Thursday. Hanna Braidi, investigative judge for the Mount Lebanon district where the crime occurred, released a charge sheet for Tariq Houshieh, an Uber driver accused of raping and killing Dykes in the early hours of Dec. 16. The charge sheet said Houshieh had confessed to raping and strangling Dykes, who was 30 and worked at the embassy for Britain's Department for International Development.

Braidi called for Houshieh to face the death penalty. Lebanese investigative judges routinely call for death sentences in cases of murder, but the country has an unofficial moratorium and has not carried one out since 2004, according to the monitoring group Human Rights Watch. A memorial service for Dykes was held in Beirut on Wednesday. Britain will award a scholarship under Dykes' name each year to a Lebanese or Palestinian woman for a masters degree in Britain, the British embassy said. Her family has set up a charitable foundation to help refugees, with a particular focus on preventing violence against women. (Reporting by Dahlia Nehme and Angus McDowall; editing by Andrew Roche)