Region

BEIRUT — Banks and schools in Lebanon were closed on Tuesday as protesters tried to prevent employees from clocking in at state institutions nearly one month into an anti-graft street movement.

Unprecedented protests erupted across Lebanon on October 17, demanding the ouster of a generation of politicians seen by demonstrators as inefficient and corrupt.

The government stepped down on October 29 but it remains in a caretaker capacity as no overt efforts have been made to form a new one.

Dozens of protesters gathered near the Palace of Justice in central Beirut on Tuesday morning, demanding an independent judiciary, an AFP correspondent said.

They tried to prevent judges and lawyers from going to work, as a demonstrator in a panda suit made an unusual addition to the protest.

In the town of Aley east of Beirut, in the southern city of Tyre, and the eastern town of Baalbek, demonstrators held sit-ins outside or inside the offices of the state telecommunications provider, local media reported.

Many schools and universities were closed, as were banks after their employees called for a general strike over alleged mistreatment by customers last week.

Banks have restricted access to dollars since the start of the protests, sparking fears of the devaluation of the local currency and discontent among account holders.

The central bank on Monday, however, insisted the Lebanese pound would remain pegged to the dollar and said it had asked banks to lift restrictions on withdrawals.

Students, who have emerged as key players in the uprising, were expected to hold further demonstrations later in the day ahead of a presidential address in the evening.

The leaderless protest movement first erupted after a proposed tax on calls via free phone applications. 

But it has since morphed into an unprecedented cross-sectarian outcry against everything from perceived state corruption to rampant electricity cuts.

People in the street say they are fed up with the same political families dominating government institutions since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Protesters are demanding a fresh Cabinet include independent experts not affiliated to traditional political parties, but no date has yet been set for required parliamentary consultations.

Government formation typically takes months in Lebanon, with protracted debate on how to best maintain a fragile balance between religious communities.

The World Bank says around a third of Lebanese live in poverty, and has warned the country’s struggling economy could further deteriorate if a new Cabinet is not formed rapidly.

ISMAILIA, Egypt — Since the Suez Canal was inaugurated amid pomp and ceremony 150 years ago, it has become one of the world’s most important waterways. But its anniversary will only be discreetly marked in Egypt.

The man-made canal was excavated between 1859 and 1869, in an ambitious project to connect the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and cut shipping times for growing international trade from Europe to Asia.

The Suez Canal is “not a prerogative of one nation”, declared Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat credited with masterminding the project, drawing from the dreams of the pharaohs who dredged a similar channel 4,000 years earlier.

“It owes its birth to, and belongs to, the aspirations of humanity,” he said in an 1864 speech.

A million Egyptians, using camels and mules as beasts of burden, laboured over the decade-long construction, according to official figures. And tens of thousands died in the process, experts say.

The first ships sailed down the 164 kilometre canal on November 17, 1869, with hopes that fair winds would permit a faster route to and from Asia, avoiding a lengthy and perilous circumvention via the tip of southern Africa.

But the waterway’s history has followed the turbulent ebbs and flows of the volatile Middle East region.

Its watershed moment came in July 1956. Egypt’s iconic late president Gamal Abdel Nasser, a staunch defender of Arab unity, defied British and French interests and nationalised the Suez Canal Company which ran the waterway.

The decision, which saw Nasser’s popularity rise at home, triggered an international crisis. France and Britain — countries which both controlled the company at that point — as well as Israel attacked Egypt around three months later.

The canal also served as a frontline during Arab-Israel wars in 1967 and 1973.

‘Record-breaking’ asset 

Today the vital sea route is managed by the Suez Canal Authority and was expanded in 2015 to accommodate modern, larger vessels. It has grown into a major economic asset, providing passage for 10 per cent of all international maritime trade.

But the region’s volatility is never far away. Running along the southern rim of the Sinai, the canal is today heavily secured by the Egyptian army which is battling a long-running insurgency against Islamist militants in northern Sinai.

Dug in the 19th century using “rudimentary tools”, today the waterway has become “a lifeline to Egypt”, Osama Rabie, head of the authority told AFP.

In 2015, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi staged a grand ceremony for the opening of a new 72 kilometre  lane parallel to the canal after 12 months of excavations.

The authority has since boasted new cargo and transit records saying the new lane has facilitated the crossing of larger shipping convoys and decreased transit times.

In August “a record breaking number” of 81 ships carrying a total of 6.1 million tonnes transited the canal in one day, the authority said.

“The tonnage has lept,” according to Jean-Marie Miossec, shipping specialist and professor at the University Paul Valery-Montpellier.

He believes the growth is linked to an “increase in container traffic between Asia and Europe as well as Europe and the Indian subcontinent”.

“By expanding the canal, Egyptian authorities offer augmented potential, especially with regard to vessel sizes and transit time,” he said.

Revenues for the fiscal year 2018-2019 reached $ 5.9 billion, up 5.4 per cent from the previous year, the authority said in August.

And Egypt is planning for revenues to rocket to $13.2 billion in 2023.

Stamps, museum 

Sumptuous feasts and banquets even attended by French Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, were held during the initial inauguration in 1869.

But in stark contrast, no celebrations are planned for the canal’s 150th anniversary.

Arnaud Ramiere de Fortanier, from the association in the memory of Ferdinand de Lesseps and the Suez Canal, believes the anniversary is “bit tricky”.

“The issue of 1956 went wrong,” he said, maintaining that for the company’s former shareholders the entire Suez crisis was mishandled by all sides and was a “disaster”.

Rather than highlighting the canal’s pre-1956 history, Egyptian authorities are preferring to underscore the canal’s current performance and its contributions to the country’s battered economy.

“Everyone writes history their own way,” said French Ambassador Stephane Romatet, noting Egyptians only started benefitting from the canal after the 1956 nationalisation.

In Egypt and France, stamps bearing images resembling de Lesseps have been printed to mark the anniversary.

And a conference titled “The Suez Canal: A place of memories” is to be held in Egypt’s famed Bibliotheca Alexandrina on November 13.

Egypt has also dedicated a museum, currently under construction, to the canal in the city of Ismailia at the historic premises of the Suez Canal Company. But no opening date has yet been set.

NAJAF, Iraq — The United Nations' top official in Iraq and the country's most senior cleric urged authorities on Monday to get "serious" about reforms after anti-government demonstrations that have left hundreds dead.

Mass rallies calling for an overhaul of the ruling system have rocked the capital Baghdad and the Shiite-majority south since October 1 — the largest and deadliest popular movement in Iraq in decades.

The bloody unrest has sparked serious concern from the UN, human rights groups and the White House, which on Sunday called on Baghdad "to halt the violence against protesters" and pass electoral reform.

After weeks of paralysis, Iraq's top leaders seem to have agreed to keep the system intact, but the UN in Iraq (UNAMI) urged them to enact a host of changes.

These include electoral reforms within two weeks, the prosecution of those responsible for the recent violence as well as of corrupt officials, and the passing of anti-graft laws.

On Monday, UNAMI chief Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert met the country’s highest Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in the holy city of Najaf. 

She said the seat of Shiite religious power in Iraq, known as the marjaiyah, had stressed that “peaceful demonstrators cannot go home without sufficient reforms” to answer their demands.

“The marjaiyah expressed its concerns that the political forces are not serious enough to carry out such reforms,” said Hennis-Plasschaert. 

“If the three authorities — executive, judiciary and legislative — are not able or willing to conduct these reforms decisively, there must be a way to think of a different approach,” she warned without elaborating.

There was no statement attributable directly to Sistani, who is 89 and never appears in public.

In his recent sermons, delivered by a representative, Sistani has described the protesters’ demands as “legitimate” and called for the rallies to be handled with “restraint”.

In recent days, more than a dozen protesters have been killed as security forces have cracked down on demonstrators.

They have cleared streets and squares in Baghdad, in the port hub of Basra and the southern city of Nasiriyah, where four protesters were shot dead on Sunday.

Security forces there even chased down demonstrators into a children’s hospital and fired tear gas inside. 

On Monday, protesters struggled to come out in large numbers there and security forces reopened roads in Basra, stifling attempts to stage sit-ins near the provincial headquarters.

In Baghdad, live rounds rang out in neighbourhoods close to the main protest camp of Tahrir (Liberation) Square.

But thousands of demonstrators took to the streets again in Hillah, Diwaniyah and Kut.

Aside from the crackdown, activists and volunteer medics have described a widening campaign of arrests and intimidation intended to keep them away from protests.

The UN has warned that “a climate of anger and fear has set in”, and its human rights council was to meet later on Monday for a periodic review of Iraq’s rights record.

Iraq’s President Barham Saleh had last month proposed an early vote after reforms, but the suggestion seems to have been widely rejected by the political class.

Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi cast them as unrealistic and even firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr, who first demanded snap elections supervised by the UN, has gone silent.

The initial fissures among the political elite appear to have closed this week following a consensus brokered by Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign operations arm.

Soleimani, who often appears in Baghdad in times of political crisis, has led a series of meetings with Iraq’s top-tier politicians, sources told AFP.

The agreement, they said, included a series of reforms in exchange for keeping the broader system in place.

Those proposals will likely fall short of the demands of protesters, who demand a complete overhaul of a regime they see as deeply corrupt.

Demonstrators say the current system means government jobs are doled out based on bribes or nepotism, shutting out applicants who are politically independent.

Youth make up 60 per cent of Iraq’s nearly 40 million people and the unemployment rate among them stands at a staggering 25 per cent, according to the World Bank.

One in five people lives below the poverty line, despite the vast oil wealth of OPEC’s second biggest producer.

“We don’t want amendments, we want change — total change,” one protester in Baghdad told AFP on Monday.

“We don’t want this government, or parliament, or any political party.”

HEBRON — Confrontations erupted between Palestinians and Israeli forces Monday during demonstrations marking the 15th anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death in the occupied West Bank, leaving a Palestinian shot dead, medics and Palestinian officials said.

Demonstrations were held in Ramallah and the Hebron area in the West Bank to commemorate the legacy of Arafat, revered as a hero by Palestinians.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who succeeded Arafat, laid a wreath at his tomb at a ceremony in Ramallah, where hundreds gathered with pictures and flags for the anniversary.

"Israel says the martyrs are criminals, terrorists and murderers", Abbas said.

“We will never agree to give up on our martyrs, our most sacred martyrs.”

Sporadic confrontations erupted with Israeli forces, including in the Hebron area, where a Palestinian man was shot dead, the Palestinian health ministry and medics said.

Palestinian medical sources identified the man as 22-year-old Omar Al Badawi, who was hit in the chest with live fire at Al Arroub refugee camp before being taken to Ahali hospital in Hebron, where he was pronounced dead.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said a large number of Palestinians threw stones and firebombs at soldiers, who responded with “riot-dispersal means and live fire”.

Live fire

Medics also reported Israeli use of live fire in clashes at Fawwar, south of Hebron, one of the most tense cities in the West Bank.

Palestinians threw stones at Israeli soldiers in Hebron itself and troops responded with tear gas, an AFP journalist reported.

The Palestinian Red Crescent reported at least 49 injuries in total, including two from live fire.

Palestine Liberation Organisation Secretary General Saeb Erekat called on the International Criminal Court to investigate the shooting of Badawi.

Arafat died on November 11, 2004, at a hospital near Paris from unknown causes at the age of 75.

Palestinians have long accused Israel of poisoning him, charges the Israeli government firmly denies.

His body was exhumed in 2012 for tests, but a subsequent French investigation found no proof of poisoning.

Hamas, the Islamist leaders of the Gaza Strip, prohibited a Fateh movement event to mark the death of Arafat in the coastal Palestinian enclave.

Hamas and Fateh, which Arafat led, have been deeply divided since a 2007 near civil war when Hamas overthrew Abbas’s forces in the blockaded Gaza Strip.

‘Very foundation’ 

No Palestinian elections apart from local polls have been held since 2006 because of the split, but both sides have spoken of a renewed push to do so.

Abbas, 84, spoke again of holding elections on Monday, saying legislative polls should be held first, followed by a presidential vote. 

He has insisted on holding the elections in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip and in Jerusalem.

Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. 

It later annexed East Jerusalem and considers the entire city its capital, while the Palestinians view the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

Israel prevents any Palestinian Authority activity in East Jerusalem.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday also spoke of elections, saying they were “at the very foundation of the Palestinian national project”. 

In 2005, Abbas comfortably won presidential elections held in both the West Bank and Gaza.

But a year later, Hamas shocked the world by beating Abbas’ Fateh movement in parliamentary polls.

QAMISHLI, Syria — Three simultaneous bombings killed at least six civilians in the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria on Monday, a Kurdish security source and a Britain-based monitor said.

There was no immediate claim for the bombings, but they occurred shortly after the Daesh terror group said it was responsible for the killing the same day of a priest from the same city.

In Qamishli, an AFP correspondent saw charred cars and smoke rise from the site of the blasts.

Firefighters tried to put out the flames caused by the explosions, as rescue workers carried away the victims.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, which relies on sources inside Syria, said two car bombs and an explosives-rigged motorcycle blew up in a market and near a school in the city.

More than 20 people were wounded in the simultaneous attacks, said the Britain-based monitor said.

The blasts come after Daesh claimed to have killed an Armenian Catholic priest from Qamishli.

The observatory said the priest and his father were killed by gunfire as they made their way to the eastern province of Deir Ezzor to inspect the restoration of a church there.

Kurdish fighters have led the US-backed battle against Daesh in Syria, expelling the extremists from the last scrap of their proto-state in March.

But the extremists have continued to claim deadly attacks in northeastern and eastern Syria ever since.

In July, Daesh said it was responsible for a massive truck bomb that killed at least 44 people in Qamishli.

A Turkish cross-border attack against Kurdish fighters on October 9 heightened fears that Daesh extremists could break out in mass from Kurdish jails.

But a fragile Turkish-Russian ceasefire deal has more or less halted that offensive, and seen Kurdish forces withdraw from areas along the Turkish border, except Qamishli

BEIRUT — Fearing food shortages in protest-hit Lebanon, Sanaa crammed bags of fava beans into a packed trolley, one of dozens of shoppers who rushed to buy basic supplies in a Beirut department store.

"I don't remember ever stocking up on so much food," said the 40-year-old woman. "We are preparing for the coming days and the murky phase awaiting us."

Around Sanaa, a civil servant who asked to use a pseudonym, shoppers swarmed the meat refrigerators and vegetable stalls, mostly ignoring the alcohol and sweets aisles to focus on essential food products.

Lebanon has been gripped by an unprecedented wave of grassroots protests since mid-October, with citizens demanding an overhaul of a political class deemed incompetent and corrupt.

Across the country, supermarkets have been hit by panic-buying amid rumours of an upcoming shortage in food staples and additional price hikes. 

Fears were deepened by warnings from petrol station owners and hospitals of a shortage of fuel and medicine after banks limited access to the dollars they needed to pay for supplies.

Standing beside a row of canned food, Antoine Dirani said the restrictive bank measures were causing panic, driving people to withdraw money from their accounts and stock up on supplies. 

“We are now living in the heart of the crisis,” he said. 

Looking around him, the 63-year-old recalled Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war and said: “I hope such days won’t come back.”

“I remember how we used to stand in line and beg for bread.”

Bank restrictions 

Demonstrators have targeted banks and state institutions, demanding better living conditions in a country they say has become unaffordable for ordinary people. 

For two decades, the Lebanese pound has been pegged to the greenback, with the currencies used interchangeably in daily life.

But banks have been reducing access to dollars since the end of the summer, following fears of a shortage in central bank reserves.

Access was further limited days ago after banks reopened for the first time since the unprecedented popular uprising began on October 17.

They have halted all ATM withdrawals in dollars and severely restricted conversions from Lebanese pounds.

This has forced people to change money on the black market where they are charged higher exchange rates, in what amounts to a de-facto devaluation of the pound.

The official exchange rate remains fixed at 1,507 Lebanese pounds to the dollar, but the rate on the parallel market has passed 1,800, leading to price hikes.

‘Scared of shortage’ 

Zouhair Berro, head of the Lebanese Consumers Association, said the price of meat had increased seven per cent and vegetables by more than 25 per cent in the past week. 

“Prices are all over the place,” mainly because suppliers and importers are imposing their own arbitrary exchange rates, he said. 

Back in the department store, long queues formed at checkouts and employees said they were working longer hours to meet demand. 

“Business is busier than usual. It’s as busy as the holidays,” said Eireen Saif. “This is all because people are scared of a shortage.”

One shopper, who asked not to be named, voiced worries about the excessive buying, saying that “all this food people are buying will spoil before it is consumed”.

By Amanda Mouawad

ABU DHABI — Yemen's rebels will have a role in their country's future, a UAE minister said Sunday, voicing optimism that a recent peace deal between the government and southern separatists could lead to a wider solution.

The comments were the latest conciliatory move in the long-running Yemen conflict, after the Iran-backed Houthis offered in September to halt attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Anwar Gargash, minister of state for foreign affairs in the United Arab Emirates — a key member in the Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen's government against the Houthis — urged all sides to maintain momentum for a political solution.

"Such an agreement must take account of the legitimate aspirations of all parts of Yemeni society. That includes the Houthis," Gargash said at a political conference in Abu Dhabi.

"Houthi militias have wreaked havoc on the country, but they are a part of Yemeni society and they will have a role in its future."

The Houthi rebels have been fighting the internationally recognised government and its allies for more than four years in a war that has pushed the country to the brink of famine. 

But Gargash said he was hopeful that a power-sharing deal between the government and the secessionist Southern Transitional Council, inked in Riyadh last week, could pave the way for a wider peace deal.

“The agreement solidifies the anti-Houthi coalition and provides a more robust basis for reaching a political solution,” he said. “Now we need to build on the momentum this has given us.” 

The Riyadh Agreement would see Yemen’s government return to Aden — the interim capital seized by separatists in August — and place the forces from both sides under the authority of the defence and interior ministries.

Gargash’s comments came after a rally organised by the Houthi insurgents to mark the birthday of Prophet Mohammad on Saturday drew hundreds of thousands in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, a much larger crowd than last year.

Rebel chief Abdulmalik Al Houthi addressed the crowd via a video message played on a large screen, while many chanted slogans in support of the insurgent leader.

The Iran-backed rebels took Sanaa in 2015, after which Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their allies intervened in the conflict in support of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

Since then, tens of thousands of people — most of them civilians — have been killed in a conflict that has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.