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Life gradually returns to Lebanon in parallel with societal immunity

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by arabnews.com -- NAJIA HOUSSARI -- BEIRUT: Having entered the stage of “gradual societal immunity,” according to the Minister of Health Hamad Hassan, Lebanon’s commercial complexes, hotels, cafes and museums reopened their doors to customers on Monday after closing for two-and-a-half months due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. People and employees underwent complete sanitization when entering malls, and adhered to putting face masks on in the street and in their cars, buses, shops and offices. However, the movement remained slow. The streets did not witness major traffic jams, due to the new system of allocating days to drivers whose car license plates end in odd and even numbers on a rotating basis.

According to the decision of the Ministry of Interior, places still excluded from reopening are cinemas, theaters, assembly and wedding halls, gyms, nurseries, children’s entertainment spaces, and electronic game arcades and internet centers. The curfew hours also decreased; they are now from midnight to 5 a.m. Shops in many markets seemed empty and closed, while some owners replaced their usual goods with others, with fruit and vegetables most popular.

Lebanese demand bread, Hezbollah offers hot air and fantasies

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by arabnews.com -- BARIA ALAMUDDIN -- Once upon a time, an incautious word against Hezbollah — whether from lowly journalists or leading politicians — could merit a death sentence. Nowadays, ridiculing the “Axis of Resistance” has become a Lebanese national pastime. In recent days, a flood of videos and articles have boldly questioned how Lebanon benefits from Hassan Nasrallah’s promises of breakfasting in Jerusalem, while penniless citizens struggle to obtain breakfast in Beirut. “The image of the Israelis packing their stuff and getting on planes and ships is in front of my eyes,” Nasrallah blustered in his latest fusillade of lies and obfuscations. Nasrallah nowadays has no stomach for confronting the “Zionist enemy.” He believes that being the most rabidly outspoken anti-Israel voice excuses him from acting on his pronouncements. His nonsensical rhetoric is Hezbollah’s pretext for pointing its weapons at the heads of Lebanese and Syrian citizens. Hezbollah doesn’t stand for “muqawamah” (resistance) against Israel — its real war is against Lebanon’s dignity, identity, prosperity, culture and national pride.

Just as Antoine Lahd and his South Lebanon Army were regarded as traitors for aligning with Israel, social media activists are incessantly denouncing Nasrallah as a traitor for selling out his nation to Iran. Hezbollah’s very existence guarantees that Lebanon will never receive sufficient international financial support, which represents its only possible exit from the current catastrophic impasse. Intellectuals, economists and academics are sounding the alarm bell that the cancerous tumor of Hezbollah is steadily killing the Lebanese state. Can nobody propose a procedure for excizing it before it’s too late?

Is Lebanon’s Natural Gas Boom Dead In The Water?

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Lebanon's first offshore gas drill is a huge disappointment | News ...

By Viktor Katona -- oilprice.com -- The Eastern Mediterranean has been a household name in European energy circles for quite some time, with the undisclosed demise of erstwhile plans to link Turkmenistan to Europe elevating it to priority level for Brussels as there was no other realistic non-Russian pipeline project around. The Levantine Basin did indeed produce some remarkable discoveries, especially in the early days of exploration of early 2010s – the Israeli Leviathan (2010) and Egyptian Zohr (2015) have substantially boosted both countries’ upstream standing. Hence, when Lebanon awarded three Blocks in its offshore zone to a European consortium comprising of the French Total, Italian ENI and Russian NOVATEK, hopes were running high that the EastMed craze might have a new standard-bearer.

Hopes for a 2020 breakthrough for the Eastern Mediterranean were first curbed by ExxonMobil announcing that it would postpone two exploration wells next to its 2019 Glaucus discovery, later accentuated by the ENI-Total tandem adjourning appraisal works on their 2018 Calypso discovery, effectively bringing Cyprus drilling activity to an almost halt this year. But the real enthusiasm-killer came several weeks later when the Total-ENI-NOVATEK consortium stated that the first-ever exploration well in Lebanese waters, the Byblos-1 well in Block 04, turned out to be dry. Things might still turn for the better if the consortium’s second well planned for 2020, in Block 09, is not postponed (there are some rumours about it being moved to H1 2021) and discovers commercial hydrocarbon deposits.

Private schools and universities in Lebanon are in economic crisis

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by arabnews.com -- NAJIA HOUSSARI -- BEIRUT: The future of thousands of Lebanese students is at stake as private educational institutions assess their ability to continue operations in the next academic year, due to the economic crunch facing Lebanon. “If the economic situation continues, private schools will be forced to close down for good, a move that will affect more than 700,000 students, 59,000 teachers and 15,000 school administrators,” said Father Boutros Azar, secretary-general of the General Secretariat of Catholic Schools in Lebanon, and coordinator of the Association of Private Educational Institutions in Lebanon.

Over 1,600 private schools are operating in Lebanon, including free schools and those affiliated to various religion societies, Azar said. The number of public schools in Lebanon, he added, is 1,256, serving 328,000 students from the underprivileged segment of society and 200,000 Syrian refugee students. “The number of teachers in the formal education sector is 43,500 professors and teachers — 20,000 of them are permanent staff and the rest work on a contract basis,” Azar said. This development will also have an impact on private universities, whose number has increased to 50 in the past 20 years. Ibrahim Khoury, a special adviser to the president of the American University of Beirut (AUB), told Arab News: “All universities in Lebanon are facing an unprecedented crisis, and the message of AUB President Dr. Fadlo R. Khuri, a few weeks ago, was a warning about the future of university education in light of the economic crisis that Lebanon is facing.”

Khoury said many universities would likely reduce scientific research and dispense with certain specializations. “Distance education is ongoing, but classes must be opened for students in the first semester of next year, but we do not yet know what these classes are.” Khoury added: “Universities are still following the official exchange rate of the dollar, which is 1,512 Lebanese pounds (LBP), but the matter is subject to future developments.” Lebanese parents are also worried about the future of their children, after the current school year ended unexpectedly due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

Lebanon's black market currency trade

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Though illegal, black-market currency exchange transactions have become commonplace in economically ravaged Lebanon, and are arranged between people who meet through popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram [File: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters]

by aljazeera.com -- Timour Azhari -- Beirut, Lebanon - A four-wheel drive vehicle pulls up to the curb of a narrow side street in Beirut and collects a customer who climbs into the front passenger seat. "How's it going? Thanks for doing this on short notice," says the customer to the driver. Pleasantries exchanged, the two get down to business. The customer pulls out a small roll of United States $100 bills, counts them individually and hands them to the driver, who counts them again. The numbers confirmed, the driver reaches into a door compartment, pulls out a bulging envelope and hands it to the passenger, who opens it. Inside are dozens of crisp blue and green Lebanese pound notes, 50,000 and 100,000 denominations, each bearing the name of Lebanon's central bank. The passenger counts the notes. By the time he's finished, the driver has circled the block. He drops the passenger off where he was picked up. "Let me know when you have more," he says, and disappears up the street.

This transaction, which Al Jazeera observed recently, is a black-market currency exchange. Though illicit, such transactions have become commonplace in the crisis-torn nation, arranged between people who meet through popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. Some of those groups have swelled since late April to boast hundreds of members. Due to a government crackdown on legal, parallel exchanges, the black market is the only way most people in the country can currently swap rapidly devaluing Lebanese pounds for increasingly scarce US dollars. Lebanon black market exchange Some messaging app groups connecting black market buyers and sellers of currencies in Lebanon have swelled since late April to boast hundreds of members, after a government crackdown on legal, parallel exchanges backfired and drove the trade deeper underground

Protests, quarrels and slammed fists: Lebanon's amnesty bill row rumbles on

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by middleeasteye.net -- By Kareem Chehayeb -- Inside parliament and out, a controversial Lebanese amnesty bill has been stoking anger, drawing resentment and sparking quarrels and protests. Postponed once again on Thursday evening, it is a row that looks set to rumble on. Divisions between parties at the last minute hampered an agreement on the bill, which had removed a controversial provision that would allow ex-militants who collaborated with Israel during its occupation of southern Lebanon to return home. Parliament speaker Nabih Berri slammed his table angrily as MPs, including the Free Patriotic Movement leader Gebran Bassil, threatened to leave the session, which was then adjourned before the adaptation of the amnesty law.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri and other Future Movement MPs left the session telling the media that there was constant interference to prevent lawmakers from reaching a consensus. “I don’t know why they find a way to outsmart each other in this country so each one comes out looking like a hero,” an outraged Hariri told reporters. The amnesty bill was among 37 measures to be discussed on Thursday, the third time parliament had met for a legislative session since the coronavirus outbreak. The session was held at a makeshift conference hall at Beirut’s Unesco Palace in accordance with social distancing measures.

Amnesty for ‘Israeli agents’

Although discussion of the draft amnesty law didn’t take place until Thursday evening, in the morning demonstrators in surgical masks and wearing keffiyehs - traditional scarves associated with Palestinian resistance - had gathered outside the Unesco Palace. The demonstrators were voicing their opposition against the provision in the draft bill that would allow ex-militants who collaborated with Israel during its occupation of southern Lebanon to return as long as they relinquish their Israeli nationality. “Qana urges you to not let the [Israeli] agents return,” one sign read, referring to the southern town that Israel shelled twice; once at a United Nations compound in 1996 where civilians sought refuge, and another time in 2006 which killed 54 civilians, over half of which were children.

For Lebanese families made poor by crisis, dinner means bread and no meat

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by reuters -- BEIRUT: At a street market in southern Beirut, Lebanese crowd around volunteers handing out free rations of bread and pasta, staples that have become a lifeline to families whose living standards have plunged during a financial crisis. “People can’t buy meat or fish anymore. Chicken is getting more expensive. They can only afford vegetables and bread,” said Salwa Hable, an organizer helping distribute the privately donated food. Lebanon’s economic crisis has brought mounting hardship for its roughly 6 million people. Prices have soared, the result of a dollar crunch that has sunk the local currency since October and eviscerated purchasing power. “It’s going to soon turn into hunger protests,” said Hable.

It was getting harder to solicit donations from better-off Lebanese, themselves feeling the pinch of the most destabilising crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war, she said. The worsening conditions have already threatened more serious unrest. Last month protesters defying a coronavirus curfew rioted, burning banks and leaving a demonstrator dead. Prime Minister Hassan Diab said last week the double-blow of the financial meltdown and coronavirus pandemic could tip Lebanon into a full-blown food crisis as basics like bread become unaffordable. People are eating less, with butchers complaining of shrinking sales, restaurants empty, and families making do with simple carbohydrates — even during the holy month of Ramadan, typically a time of nightly feasts. “We stopped buying fruits for ourselves. We get something small for my daughter, but that’s it,” said George Ortass, 46, a taxi driver.