Saleh's death redraws Yemen's landscape, sharpens Saudi-Iran rivalry

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(CNN)- By Tim Lister -   Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was President of Yemen for decades and once compared governing the country to "dancing on the heads of snakes," was killed on Monday at the age of 75. His death will instantly transform the political landscape in Yemen, a country that's been gripped by conflict for three years. Saleh was killed amid clashes with his erstwhile allies in Yemen -- the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. He had joined forces with the Houthis in 2014, prompting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to launch an offensive against what was never more than a marriage of convenience. For Saleh, the marriage had recently become inconvenient. On Saturday he declared he was calling on "the brothers in neighboring states and the alliance to stop their aggression, lift the siege, open the airports and allow food aid and the saving of the wounded." "In return," he promised, "we will turn a new page by virtue of our neighborliness."

The Houthis' political office immediately accused Saleh of staging a coup against "an alliance he never believed in," and warned that Saudi Arabia and its allies would "pay a heavy price in their own capitals" -- not the first time it has threatened attacks in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Clashes between militias loyal to Saleh and Houthi gunmen have worsened an already grave humanitarian situation. More than 100 people have been killed since the fighting began, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross -- and two hospitals in Sanaa were "running critically low" of supplies. The exact circumstances of Saleh's death are unclear, but it will set off a bitter struggle for control of Sanaa. Saleh's supporters are led by his nephew Tareq Moahmmed Saleh, the former head of Yemen's special forces. The Houthis are effective fighters from northern Yemen who survived multiple offensives by Saleh when he was President. But they now face even more enemies, as well as airstrikes by Saudi and UAE forces. Much will now depend on whether Saleh's allies around Sanaa are able to evict the Houthis, or whether street-by-street battles cause even more destruction. If this is a genuine realignment of forces, and the Houthis are eventually expelled to their northern strongholds, it may bring one step closer an end to the war that has left Yemen on the verge of famine and more than two million people displaced. But there's more fighting ahead before that becomes possible.

The Iran question

Saudi Arabia and the UAE will see the dramatic realignment in Yemen as a path to defeating the Houthis. A senior UAE official, Anwar Gargash, said on Twitter that "the events in Sanaa are murky, but its national uprising needs support ... to protect the Arabian Peninsula from Iranian expansion." Saudi Arabia and the UAE see the Houthis -- a group that follows the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam -- as a proxy for Iran in a far larger contest for influence that also encompasses Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The Saudis stepped up air strikes and a blockade of Houthi-held ports after the rebels fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh airport at the beginning of November. They allege that Iran and Hezbollah -- the Lebanese Shia militia -- have provided know-how and parts to sustain the Houthi missile program. Iran has denied any such involvement. However, Reuters reported last week that a UN panel had concluded that the remnants of missiles fired at Saudi Arabia were "consistent with those reported for the Iranian designed and manufactured Qiam-1 missile." Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that Iranian support for the Houthis amounts to "direct military aggression" that may amount to an "act of war." The question now is whether Iran and Hezbollah will deepen their backing for the isolated Houthis.

The return of a Saleh?

For decades, Saleh was Yemen's great survivor. He became the ruler of North Yemen in 1978 when the south was a separate, communist state. He was adroit in navigating Yemen's complex tribal and sectarian patchwork, and in leading unification with the south in 1990. During the Arab Spring in 2011, he defied massive protests in Sanaa and other cities even as he promised that he would step down. He was then nearly killed in a mortar attack -- and had to leave Yemen for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. Saleh reinjected himself into Yemen's violent and complex politics by taking sides with the Houthis. Even though he is now gone, his family remains powerful. Sources in the Gulf say the coalition may groom Saleh's son Ahmed Ali Abdullah (who was Yemen's ambassador in the UAE) for a role in Yemen, even though he is under United Nations sanctions. The sources say that for the Saudi Crown Prince, a deal with the Saleh clan would be a price worth paying if it marginalizes the Houthis and weakens Iran's position in Yemen. But for now, the country remains a patchwork of fiefdoms awash with weapons and plummeting towards a humanitarian disaster. The Houthis still control important harbors such as Hodeida. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is exploiting the chaos (and the fear among Sunnis of Houthi domination); and ISIS, too, has a presence. So fractured is Yemen -- and so desperate the humanitarian situation -- that it will take years rather than months to return the country even to a semblance of stability.

Lebanon's Hariri to Meet Major Powers in Paris

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PARIS (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri will meet ministers from major powers in Paris on Friday to discuss ways of stabilizing his country a month after his shock resignation plunged it into political turmoil, three diplomats said. The Arab and European diplomats said Hariri would take part in the meeting of the International Lebanon Support Group, a body that includes the five members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. Hariri has now returned to Beirut and indicated that he might withdraw his resignation, which was never accepted by the president. Lebanese officials say Saudi Arabia had coerced Hariri, a long-time ally of the kingdom, into resigning and held him there against his will until an intervention by France led to his return to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia denies this. A European diplomat said the aim of the meeting would be "to put pressure on the Saudis and Iranians". He added that the meeting would be an opportunity to reinforce that the Lebanese must stick by the state policy of "disassociation", or keeping out of regional conflicts. Before Hariri sets off, Lebanon's cabinet is this week set to meet for the first time since the political crisis erupted. The date of the cabinet meeting has not yet been confirmed but it is expected to address Hariri's resignation. A Lebanese MP who met Hariri on Monday said discussions among politicians were "moving positively" and would result in a "unanimous stance" by the cabinet soon. The comments from MP Wael Abu Faour were published by Hariri's office on Monday. The Lebanon support group, launched in 2013, also includes the European Union, the Arab League and the United Nations. (Reporting by John Irish in Paris and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Andrew Heavens) Copyright 2017 Thomson Reuters.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon’s cabinet will meet on Tuesday for the first time since the country entered a political crisis a month ago when Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri offered his resignation in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia. The cabinet’s media office said the session would begin at noon at the presidential palace. The meeting is expected to address Hariri’s resignation which thrust Lebanon back into a regional tussle between Riyadh and its main regional foe, Iran.

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince wants to reengineer his country. Is that even possible?

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By Calvert W. Jones - washingtonpost.com  - Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, isn’t just consolidating power before his probable ascent to the throne. He’s also trying to remake Saudi society. He bluntly told reporters that his country is “not normal.” And so, like Ataturk in post-World War I Turkey, the shah in pre-revolutionary Iran and other authoritarian movers and shakers, he’s going to modernize his society — and fast. McKinsey’s consultants helped design Vision 2030 , the prince’s sweeping reform agenda aimed at ushering Saudi Arabia into a more open, post-petroleum future. Reforms underway emphasize a vibrant private sector, asmaller bureaucracy, curbs on the power of the Wahhabi religious establishment and even the reopening of shuttered cinemas. The crown prince has vowed to restore a more “moderate Islam.” No wonder the international community, despite some lingering unease about Mohammed’s power grab and disillusionment with his disastrous war in Yemen, generally applauds all this social engineering. Thomas Friedman called it “Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, at last.”

But social engineering is a tricky business, and the outcomes are uncertain. Ataturk succeeded in his equally dramatic efforts to remake Turkey along avowedly Western lines. In Iran, on the other hand, the shah’s decadence and modernizing failures triggered a radical backlash that culminated in the Islamic revolution. As it happens, something very similar to the prince’s project has already been tried — next door, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). What leaders there learned was that a top-down social revolution can’t work by fiat; it requires a profound investment in the people it expects to change. Although Saudi Arabia and the UAE have important differences, they share many of the same social and economic challenges. Both are oil monarchies overwhelmingly dependent on resource wealth; both have socially conservative citizenries and large youth populations in need of jobs. They both face notoriously rigid “rentier” social contracts typical of the Persian Gulf, in which citizens expect government positions in exchange for their acceptance of the authoritarian status quo. But ruling elites decided that the UAE needed to become a more globalized society before the oil ran out, and in 2010, they released their own bold and strikingly similar plan: Vision 2021 . Beginning in 2009, I spent six years studying this effort and tracking its progress.

UAE rulers began, as in Saudi Arabia, with high-profile initiatives promoting knowledge, culture and innovation. For example, to spur the new economy, the UAE built Masdar City , which aims to be the world’s first carbon-neutral metropolis, designed to create an ecosystem around renewable energy involving research, innovation, education and product development. Mohammed is developing the city of Neom, which translates roughly as “new future,” with a robotics theme and similarly grand aims. On the social front, the UAE appointed a minister of state for tolerance , while the Saudis have the new Center for Moderation. World-class megacities, museums and universities feature heavily in both countries’ social-engineering efforts. The centerpiece in the UAE is the man-made Saadiyat Island, which houses the new Zayed National Museum, a New York University satellite campus, and branches of the Louvre and the Guggenheim. The problem is that authoritarian modernizers cannot simply command a new attitude among their citizens. Opening cinemas and relaxing gender segregation may impress Saudi youth, but a new economy requires far more. Reformers in the UAE eventually realized — as Saudi rulers will discover, too — that they needed to adapt both the mind-sets and the skill sets of the rising generation. In countries where people see a government job as a right, that means reshaping the very nature of citizenship.

Soon after their reforms began, UAE leaders found that few Emiratis were gaining interest in private-sector employment, and most continued to expect jobs in the unsustainable oil-fueled public sector. So they turned to much deeper social engineering to build “globalization-ready ” citizens through major reforms to public education, starting with kindergarten. These involve what critics of Arab education systems have long demanded: a student-centered approach that focuses on skills mastery, creativity and problem-solving over the rote memorization of the past. The alterations shrink the emphasis on religion and double down on science, technology, business and vocational skills such as in IT and health care. Importantly, they also promote attitudes such as civic-mindedness, tolerance and entrepreneurialism: New curricula, for instance, are designed to boost volunteerism, community service, respect for diversity and love of country with engaging lessons and hands-on activities. The school calendar is packed with events like the Festival of Thinkers, the Summer of Semiconductors and the Young Entrepreneurs Competition, a nationwide business contest held at the landmark Dubai Mall. Teachers also report successful role-playing in which students have a disagreement and then practice what it means to be tolerant. Is this deeper process of building globalization-ready citizens working? To find out, I surveyed more than 2,000 Emirati youth, comparing incoming and outgoing cohorts in regular public schools — i.e., the old system — with incoming and outgoing cohorts in public schools that have implemented the new program. This methodology, called “difference in differences,” is useful because it helps to isolate the effects of social engineering from other forces such as income disparities or maturation. I also interviewed hundreds of ruling elites, education reformers, parents, students, school administrators and teachers, and conducted several focus groups in the schools (in Arabic or English, as students sometimes preferred). My research yielded several important insights. First, social engineering is better at changing civic attitudes than economic ones. Youth in the new schools ended up more tolerant and civic-minded than their counterparts in the older schools — no small achievement. In my surveys, they declared a new emphasis on tolerance relative to other values and said they planned to spend more time volunteering in their communities. But while students were socially “ready” for globalization in the leaders’ eyes, they were not more inclined to think beyond government jobs and compete in the private sector. In fact, they had grown even more supportive of a citizen’s right to a government job and less interested in entrepreneurship. (These results were all statistically significant, even when demographics and other controls were included.)

So if Mohammed is “gambling that personal freedom will encourage financial responsibility,” as Karen Elliott House, a close observer of Saudi Arabia, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, he may need another strategy. Social liberalization does not necessarily mean increased economic productivity. Why did social engineering backfire when it came to these fundamental economic attitudes? In the UAE, I found that leaders had yoked their efforts to a feel-good nationalism that was essentially a form of self-esteem-building, heaping praise upon citizens and encouraging them to feel pride in their nation and themselves as its citizens. (One teacher reported spending more than a month on a unit called “Proud to be an Emirati,” and new schools are awash in motivational posters and patriotic banners.) The idea was that such praise-filled nationalism would help persuade young citizens to take on the new and more active roles envisioned for them in a post-oil society. Being made to feel good about one’s country is not necessarily problematic. But excessive praise can have unintended consequences. I found that, while it did not hamper students’ growing social liberalism, it made them feel overly special — and ultimately even more entitled to the sorts of prestigious government jobs that leaders were trying to wean them off. In focus groups at the reformed schools, students frequently mentioned what they saw as their elevated status, saying that attention from rulers “makes the schools special and the students in the schools special.” Instead of gearing up to work in the private sector, they said they expected to be rewarded with top-level public posts.

The Saudi plan also appears to see feel-good nationalism as a motivating tool. Vision 2030 is full of over-the-top praise for Saudi Arabia and its people, asserting, for instance, that they will “amaze the world.” In downgrading the power of the Wahhabi establishment, the crown prince is necessarily moving toward a more secular nationalism as the basis for regime legitimacy. Yet if he wants young citizens to accept risk and seek jobs in the private sector, he would do well to avoid reinforcing their sense of civic entitlement. Finally, UAE and Saudi social engineers may need to allow wider political participation if they want pro-globalization social engineering to succeed in the long term. The Emirati kids I studied had grown significantly more interested in contributing to public decision-making compared with their anachronistically educated peers. In other words, top-down social engineering can take authoritarian modernizers only so far. To build truly development-friendly mind-sets prepared to compete under conditions of globalization, Saudi rulers are likely to find that they must renegotiate the social contract in more transparent and inclusive ways, going well beyond what government planning alone can accomplish. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Lebanon denies Saudi allegations that banking sector launders Hizballah funds

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by alaraby.co.uk - Lebanon has denied Saudi allegations that its prestigious banking system is being used to smuggle and launder funds for powerful political and militant group Hizballah. "The Lebanese banking system enjoys international legitimacy in relation to its financial and monetary transactions," Riad Salameh, the governor of Lebanon's central bank Banque Du Liban (BDL), told Lebanon's LBCI television network on Saturday. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Friday claimed that Hizballah finances itself by laundering money through Lebanese banks.

During a conference in Italy, Jubeir said "Iran is harbouring and facilitating the movement of terrorists, establishing Hizballah in Lebanon, using it to launder money and smuggle drugs". He also added that "Lebanon will only survive or prosper if you disarm Hizballah. As long as you have an armed militia, you will not have peace in Lebanon". Echoing Salameh, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea said Lebanese banks "are completely complying with the central bank's instructions to coordinate with the US treasury department, and take it upon themselves to apply international standards and banking systems". "I do not think there are any funds for Hizballah going through the Lebanese banking system," he added. Read Also: Lebanese bank hires anti-Hizballah former US Treasury official for terror-financing advice Tensions spiked between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon after Houthi rebels in Yemen fired a ballistic missile that was intercepted outside Riyadh earlier this month. Saudi Arabia has accused Iran and Hizbllah of arming the rebels, charges denied by both. Riyadh is alleged to have forced its ally Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri to resign as head of a coalition government that included Hizballah ministers. Hariri has since signalled he would reverse his decision if Hizballah commits to a policy of non-interference in Arab countries.

Former US President Barack Obama signed the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act in 2015, imposing sanctions on foreign financial institutions that deal with the political party and its affiliated TV channel al-Manar. Since then, banks in Lebanon have refused to deal with Hizballah ministers, MPs and affiliates to dodge the huge fines imposed as a result of the act. However, many argue that US sanctions will not harm the party's financial activities, as Hizballah is said to run its own banking system and does not deal with the dollar. The Lebanese government and central bank have been successfully lobbying US politicians to push Washington towards a softer anti-Hizballah stance to preserve economic stability. Their main concern is that US correspondent banks may find it too risky to carry out business with the Lebanese financial sector and as a result undermine the country's economy, which heavily relies on dollar deposits.

Greek Orthodox Church Sells Land In Israel, Worrying Both Israelis And Palestinians

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by npr.org -- Secretive real estate deals in the Holy Land are putting one of Jerusalem's most powerful and ancient churches in the spotlight. The Greek Orthodox Church calls itself the second-largest landowner in Israel, after the Israeli government. It says it owns some 30 percent of Jerusalem's walled Old City, the city's historic core, and controls the largest stake of any Christian denomination in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, home to the traditional tomb of Jesus. It also owns lands throughout Jerusalem, Israel and the West Bank. But in recent years, church leaders have quietly sold off several properties to anonymous investors fronted by companies registered in far-flung tax havens. Israeli and Jewish businessmen were later identified as some of the buyers. These deals have only recently become public, raising panic among Israelis whose apartments are built on church land and leading to small but growing public protests by some Palestinian church members.

The church leadership is dominated by Greek nationals, but the church's local following is largely Palestinian. Some Palestinians are worried about possible implications for their quest for independence. "We are concerned because these are the properties of the church. And these properties are diminishing year after year," said Hanna Amireh, a Palestinian official in charge of church affairs. "This is part of our land, in a way or another. We don't want this land to be sold ... to our enemy." The question of landownership strikes at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian tug of war over Jerusalem. Israel captured East Jerusalem, whose holy sites include the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Al-Aqsa Mosque and Western Wall, in 1967. But the Palestinians demand that part of the city as the capital of a future independent state. The land dispute saga began a decade ago at Jaffa Gate, the most prominent entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem, where throngs of pilgrims pass on their way to the city's most revered religious sites. Just inside the gate are two hotels run by Palestinian families but owned by the Greek Orthodox Church. In 2005, an Israeli newspaper reported on a secret deal struck the year before by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate — the church leadership — to sell the hotels to Ateret Cohanim, a Jewish settler group that aims to buy up Palestinian-owned properties in strategic locations in Jerusalem to increase Jewish control in the contested city. The church's sale caused an uproar among Palestinians in the Greek Orthodox community. Then-Greek Orthodox Patriarch Irenaios I was accused of conspiring to sell the property. Rumors swirled about the patriarch's relationship with the young man who conducted the secret property deals with the patriarch's power of attorney. The scandal led to Irenaios' ouster – sparking yet another drama.

For years, Irenaios holed himself up in his apartment in the church headquarters in Jerusalem's Old City, refusing to accept his expulsion and afraid he would be locked out if he left the premises. A sympathetic Palestinian grocer brought him food, which Irenaios hoisted up to his window by rope. A new church leader was appointed, Patriarch Theophilos III, who is fighting in Israeli court to annul the sale of church-owned properties in Jaffa Gate during his predecessor's tenure. A lower court recently deemed the sale to be proper, and the patriarch is appealing to Israeli Supreme Court. But Theophilos is now on the defensive. News first broke this summer about additional land deals, which he personally approved. More details about the land deals have been reported in the Israeli press in recent weeks and months. Many of the deals in question are of lands that the church leased in the 1950s to institutions affiliated with the Israeli government, like the Jewish National Fund, a century-old nonprofit dedicated to obtaining land and developing Jewish communities in Israel. The church sold lands in the upscale beachside cities of Caesarea and Jaffa to companies registered in the Caribbean. In other deals, Israeli investors purchased large tracts of land in the most luxurious neighborhoods of West Jerusalem. When the long-term lease on the land expires in a few decades, these companies will decide the fate of the apartments on those lands. Leaseholders in the area say their property values have dropped drastically because of the uncertainty. "I am not doing any renovations," said Nava Bat-Zur, whose apartment is on land sold by the church. "It is hard to sell these properties." She has helped rally residents to lobby Israeli authorities to do something to resolve their predicament.

A bill in the Israeli parliament is proposing that the government immediately expropriate Greek Orthodox Church lands if they are sold to private investors. That has alarmed Jerusalem-based churches of many denominations, and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch is now conducting a rare public campaign, recording a video message in English that warns of of an "assault" on the church, and taking an international tour — meeting with the pope, the archbishop of Canterbury and other faith leaders — to drum up support for churches' property rights. Local Palestinian church members argue whether the property sales are actually benefiting the local flock. "All that [money] was put in projects that serve the preservation of the Christian community in the Holy Land" like church-run schools and a housing project for Palestinian church members in East Jerusalem, said Dmitri Diliani, a Palestinian church member supportive of the patriarch's deals. Ghassan Munayyer, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of the church who opposes the land deals, argues that other churches in the Holy Land invest more in their local flock than the wealthy Greek Orthodox Church does. He says the patriarch has not reached out to the community to explain the recent land deals. "We ask always: 'Why you disgrace us? Why you hate us so much?' " said Munayyer. "You don't invest anything in the local community. And now you sell our land."

The church has conducted some two dozen major land deals in Israel, the West Bank and Jerusalem in recent years, according to a Greek Orthodox Patriarchate official who spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized by the church to speak openly about the matter. The official offered a defense for some of the recent land deals. In the case of the Jewish National Fund, he said the fund asked the church to renew its lease on a large tract of land in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia. The lands were leased to the JNF in the early 1950s for a period of 99 years, and the JNF wished to negotiate a new lease early. The church said the JNF made a low offer for the new lease, and the church felt its hands were tied, believing it could not actually reject the offer and evict the tenants from their upscale neighborhood. In addition, he said, the church was under pressure from Israeli officials about extending the lease of the land. So the church sold the land to an Israeli investor and got rid of a "headache," the official said. Other church properties were sold, either to generate income or to get rid of properties that had caused the church problems, he said. One was sold after the church was found in breach of the lease and an Israeli court ordered it to pay millions of dollars in damages, even threatening Israeli expropriation of a Greek Orthodox monastery property in a politically sensitive part of East Jerusalem, the official said. "None of these deals are endangering the future dream of the Palestinian people. None are siphoning off endowments," the official said, referring to churches and monasteries considered to be ecclesiastical holdings. In a city contested by both Israelis and Palestinians, the story of church-owned land in Jerusalem has always been sensitive.

A former Israeli city planner, Israel Kimhi, said he mapped out all the church-owned lands in Jerusalem for an atlas he helped prepare in the early 1970s. But he said the Israeli government censor prohibited the map from being released to the public. "To see the amount of land that is owned by others, not by Israelis, in those very sensitive areas — at that time, the government decided it was not a good thing to show," Kimhi said. As the public learns more about the Greek Orthodox Church's holdings, it has opened a Pandora's box of worries about the city's future — because other churches own lands and properties in Jerusalem. Some fear that investors with deep pockets and ideological ambitions — Israelis wanting a toehold in a Palestinian area of the city, or vice versa — might pressure a church into selling a property, giving Israelis or Palestinians one more win in the real estate battle for control in the city.

Electoral reforms offer Lebanese expats chance to exercise voting rights

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by Florence Massena - Al Monitor - With long-awaited parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2018, the Lebanese government provided an online platform Nov. 3-20 so non-resident Lebanese could register to vote. More than 90,000 eligible voters took advantage of the opportunity, the first time such an option had been offered. Elections Law no. 25, adopted in 2008, stipulated that out-of-country voting begin with the 2013 parliamentary elections — previously, Lebanese expatriates returned home if they wanted to vote — but balloting has been postponed three times, to 2014, 2017 and currently 2018. Lebanese abroad would have been able to register at embassies and consulates ahead of the 2013 elections.  “The only change is that this registration process could be done online, which is very good, because it increased the number of voters able to register,” Zeina Helou, general-secretary of the Beirut-based Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections (LADE), told Al-Monitor.

“In 2013, a study by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs assessed that around 900,000 non-resident Lebanese were eligible voters, but only 10%, 92,810 people, were registered.” Helou also explained that several thousand people had been unable to complete the process on time. “The government is currently discussing extending the [registration] deadline, notably due to the difficulty of getting the necessary papers for around 8,000 people, but nothing has been confirmed yet,” Helou said. “I think that people abroad might not be that enthusiastic about this election, because it was postponed, and they are afraid it will be [postponed] again. Also, some of them never come to Lebanon.” Among those who did register are young Lebanese who have never voted for parliamentary representation, as they were too young or already living abroad at the time of the last elections. Al-Monitor contacted a few of them via Facebook and email. “I was only 17 when the last elections took place, in 2009, and the voting age in Lebanon is 21,” Kareem Chehayeb, a journalist and political analyst currently studying in London told Al-Monitor. “I could have voted when elections originally were scheduled to take place, in May 2013, but it was the first of several [legislative] term [extensions] until, hopefully, this summer.”

Sandra Geahchan, also studying in London, decided to register so her voice could be heard. She remarked, “Political dynamics have shifted, governments have fallen and have been formed in the last eight years, and no one has ever asked my opinion.” For some people, being able to vote in Lebanon, even if not spending most of their lives there, is their way of exercising their democratic rights. This holds for a French Lebanese woman who lives in Paris and requested anonymity. “It cuts a bit of the distance between you and your family when you are far away and gives [you] the feeling that [you] count a bit,” she told Al-Monitor. “I think it can really change things if Lebanese abroad get involved, notably if there is strong or weak involvement by Lebanese politicians in the country they live in. But I don’t think we can really be sure of the impact [voting] will have, as many people like my parents are still stuck in a war logic that will prevent them from voting for alternative or progressive lists. I also saw that many students didn’t register, because they are still not sure of where they will be at that time.” Hind Hamdan, a student in London, told Al-Monitor, “The influence and relationships between the diaspora toward their country might play in the balance. More important, Lebanese abroad can better overcome sectarian political links and affiliations.”

In addition to online registration, another first for the upcoming elections is the introduction of a proportional representation system. It was adopted in an electoral law passed in June that will also alter the number of districts. Assessing the new system's possible impact, Helou commented, “The fact that the proportional [system] is involved might really push people to vote, because it will have more value.” The previous system law was based on a 1960 law that allotted a certain number of parliamentary seats to different religious sects in each district. Helou also thinks that being able to vote from abroad will advance the democratic process, as more people will be involved. “We have also seen in the past that many expatriates were pressured and paid to go to Lebanon for the elections by [political] parties, so [the new system] will give them more freedom,” she further said. “But we need to monitor now how many voting stations will be set up, as a station requires at least 200 registered voters to be opened.” Expatriates will be need to go to an embassy or consulate to vote. Despite the effort made to allow Lebanese expatriates to register, skepticism about their possible impact remains for those voting for the first time. “A real discussion about the role the diaspora should play in Lebanese politics should be and should have been held when initiating the diaspora vote,” Geahchan said. “Although it is natural that any Lebanese citizen should be given the right to vote for local elections, I am wary of any narrative that points at the diaspora to bring about any real change. The problem with Lebanese politics isn’t the nature of the voters, it is the choice in political programs and candidates that is being given to voters that significantly restricts possibilities for change.”

For Chehayeb, the impact of the Lebanese diaspora should not be underestimated. “Political parties have a huge presence abroad within the Lebanese diaspora, from North America and Europe to Africa and Australia,” he said. “I think the reason we are seeing this [new approach] emerge is because there are many members of the Lebanese diaspora with business interests at a time when Lebanon is looking for more foreign direct investment that is not immediately correlated to political support.” An improved political environment might help persuade those with capital to consider investing it in Lebanon. “This [voter registration] is a step forward in bridging the gap between the government and the diaspora, but I don’t expect any dramatic shifts, to be completely honest. With the 2015 garbage crisis protests, and then the emergence of at least two independent groups in the Beirut municipal elections the following years, we can safely expect something similar to happen. I don’t see a radical shift in Lebanese politics. If we use the new electoral law as a foundation, then one can expect some changes, but nothing dramatic.” For young Lebanese abroad, exercising their right to vote seems to be more important than the results. If elections are indeed held in May, it would be a first step for many toward being heard and acknowledged. More may join in the experience if Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil is successful in his call to extend registration, issued two days after the Nov. 20 deadline.