Jordanians vote in election overshadowed by Gaza war
Jordanians vote in election overshadowed by Gaza war/node/2570767/middle-east
Jordanians vote in election overshadowed by Gaza war
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Jordanian women arrive to vote for parliamentary elections at a polling station at the Al-Baqaa Palestinian refugee camp near the capital Amman on September 10, 2024. (AFP)
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Jordanian voters arrive to cast their ballots for parliamentary elections at a polling station at the al-Baqaa Palestinian refugee camp near the capital Amman on September 10, 2024. Jordan holds parliamentary elections on on September 10, with anger over the war in Gaza and concerns over lagging tourism leaving voters disgruntled. (AFP)
Jordanians vote in election overshadowed by Gaza war
Of Jordan’s 11 million people, 5.1 million are registered voters aged over 18
Updated 10 September 2024
AFP
AMMAN: Jordanians voted Tuesday in a parliamentary election overshadowed by the Gaza war and concerns over a slump in tourism, a sector vital to the kingdom’s economy.
It is the first vote since a 2022 reform increased the number of seats in the house, reserving more for women and lowering the minimum age for candidates.
Despite these efforts to modernize the legislature, voters and candidates said the war in the Gaza Strip dominated the election.
After voting, Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh said he hoped the turnout would not be affected by “this brutal Israeli aggression.”
“We hope that the vote will be high and befitting of this national occasion,” he said.
Independent Election Commission chairman Musa Maaytah later told a news conference he expected turnout “to be around the average of the previous elections in 2020 and 2016” when it was “around 30 percent.”
Polls closed at 7:00 p.m. (1600 GMT), with the electoral authority announcing a turnout of about 32 percent.
Chief European parliament observer Zeljana Zovko had earlier told reporters voting was “going smoothly.”
Analysts had predicted a high abstention rate, with Islamist candidates struggling to harness public anger over the devastating war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel.
Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, becoming only the second Arab state to do so after Egypt. But around half its population is of Palestinian origin, and protests calling for the treaty’s cancelation have been frequent since the war erupted.
Tensions escalated further two days before polling day when a Jordanian gunman killed three Israeli guards at Jordan’s border crossing with the occupied West Bank — the first such attack since the 1990s.
Voters meanwhile fear the ongoing war will continue to strain the economy until Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas reach a ceasefire.
Tourism — a sector Jordan relies on for about 14 percent of its gross domestic product — has declined since the war began.
“The situation, frankly, is going from bad to worse in terms of job opportunities, and the salaries are low with long working hours,” said 21-year-old engineering student Fayez Al-Disi.
Retired schoolteacher Dalal Moussa said it was important to choose the best candidates “so that we have a role in what is happening around us” in the region.
Compounding the country’s economic woes, public debt has neared $50 billion and unemployment hit 21 percent in the first quarter of this year.
Candidates include tribal leaders, centrists, leftists and Islamists from the country’s largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamic Action Front (IAF).
According to the election commission, more than 5.1 million people are registered to vote in the country of 11.5 million.
“What is happening in Gaza... (the) killing, destruction and tragedies broadcast daily on television, makes us feel pain, helplessness, humiliation and degradation, and makes us forget the elections and everything that is happening around us,” said Omar Mohammed, a 43-year-old civil servant.
Islamist candidates have sought to capitalize on the public anger.
“The Gaza war and the Palestinian cause occupy a major place in Jordanian elections, as all eyes and minds are on Gaza and Palestine and the massacres taking place there against the Palestinian people,” said IAF candidate Saleh Armouti.
He told AFP the elections “serve the Palestinian cause and the region, but I also fear that there will be some abstention from voting due to these events.”
Oraib Rantawi, head of the Amman-based Al Quds Center for Political Studies, agreed that turnout was likely to be hit but said significant Islamist gains were unlikely.
“The improvement in these forces’ status and parliamentary representation will be modest,” he told AFP.
Israeli tank fires two rounds into south Lebanese town, Lebanese security sources say
Lebanon’s state news agency said two people were wounded
Updated 9 sec ago
Reuters
BEIRUT: An Israeli tank fired two rounds into the southern Lebanese town of Markaba on Thursday, two Lebanese security sources said, 24 hours after a ceasefire barring “offensive military operations” came into force. One of the security sources said two people were wounded. Lebanon’s state news agency said two people were wounded and transferred to hospital after an Israeli attack on the town, without specifying the type of attack. A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah took effect on Wednesday under a deal brokered by the US and France, allowing people in both countries to start returning to homes in border areas shattered by 14 months of fighting. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah and Israel on the tank rounds. The agreement, a rare diplomatic feat in a region racked by conflict, ended the deadliest confrontation between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group in years. But Israel is still fighting its other arch foe, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip.
Syria war monitor says more than 130 dead in army-militant clashes in north
Clashes followed “an operation launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
The air forces of both Syria and its ally Russia struck the attacking militants
Updated 12 min 15 sec ago
AFP
BEIRUT: A monitor of Syria’s war said on Thursday that more than 130 combatants had been killed in clashes between the army and militant groups in the country’s north, as the government also reported fierce fighting.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll in the clashes which began a day earlier after the militants launched an attack “has risen to 132, including 65 fighters” from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, 18 from allied factions “and 49 members of the regime forces.”
Palestinian leader Abbas lays ground for succession
Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president
Updated 28 November 2024
AFP
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday announced who would replace him in an interim period when the post becomes vacant, effectively removing the Islamist movement Hamas from any involvement in a future transition.
Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president.
Under current Palestinian law, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) takes over the Palestinian Authority in the event of a power vacuum.
But the PLC, where Hamas had a majority, no longer exists since Abbas officially dissolved it in 2018 after more than a decade of tensions between his secular party, Fatah, and Hamas, which ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.
In a decree, Abbas said the Palestinian National Council chairman, Rawhi Fattuh, would be his temporary replacement should the position should become vacant.
“If the position of the president of the national authority becomes vacant in the absence of the legislative council, the Palestinian National Council president shall assume the duties... temporarily,” it said.
The decree added that following the transition period, elections must be held within 90 days. This deadline can be extended in the event of a “force majeure,” it said.
The PNC is the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has over 700 members from the Palestinian territories and abroad.
Hamas, which does not belong to the PLO, has no representation on the council. The PNC deputies are not elected, but appointed.
The decree refers to the “delicate stage in the history of the homeland and the Palestinian cause” as war rages in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, after the latter’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel in October last year.
There are also persistent divisions between Hamas and Fatah.
The decree comes on the same day that a ceasefire entered into force in Lebanon after an agreement between Israel and Hamas’s ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The Palestinian Authority appears weaker than ever, unable to pay its civil servants and threatened by Israeli far-right ministers’ calls to annex all or part of the occupied West Bank, an ambition increasingly less hidden by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli military says it downed drone smuggling weapons from Egypt
Updated 27 November 2024
Reuters
CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Wednesday it shot down a drone that was carrying weapons and crossed from Egypt to Israel.
When asked about the latest drone incident, Egyptian security sources said they had no knowledge of such an incident.
In two separate incidents in October, Israel also said it downed two drones smuggling weapons from Egyptian territory.
Israeli officials have said during the war in Gaza that Palestinian militant group Hamas used tunnels running under the border into Egypt’s Sinai region to smuggle arms.
However, Egypt says it destroyed tunnel networks leading to Gaza years ago and created a buffer zone and border fortifications that prevent smuggling.
Will ceasefire deal to end Israel-Hezbollah war achieve lasting peace for Lebanon?
Iran welcomes “end of Israel’s aggression” despite terms requiring withdrawal and disarmament of its proxy Hezbollah
For Israel, the ceasefire is not necessarily an end to the war, but a pause in the fighting, according to analysts
Updated 28 November 2024
NAJIA HOUSSARI & ANAN TELLO
BEIRUT/LONDON: The world has largely welcomed a ceasefire deal which ends 13 months of fighting betrween Israel and Hezbollah that has claimed the lives of at least 3,700 Lebanese and more than 130 Israelis.
The deal between the governments of Israel and Lebanon, brokered by the US and France, came into effect on Wednesday at 4 a.m. local time.
From the Israeli army’s perspective, the war in Lebanon was coming to a point of diminishing returns. It has succeeded in weakening Hezbollah’s military standing and eliminating its top leadership but has been unable to wipe it out entirely. For its part, Hezbollah has been seriously debilitated in Lebanon; the war has eroded its military capabilities and left it rudderless.
Looking at it optimistically, the diplomatic breakthrough — which unfolded on Tuesday night as Israel unleashed a barrage of bombs on central Beirut — could be the beginning of the end of the long-standing “Israel-Iran shadow war,” as a new administration prepares to assume power in Washington.
Hezbollah and the Israeli military began to exchange cross-border fire on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a deadly Hamas-led attack.
The conflict dramatically escalated on Sept. 23 this year, when Israel began heavily bombing several parts of Lebanon, including Hezbollah’s stronghold in the south. The airstrikes killed thousands of Lebanese, displaced some 1.2 million others, flattened residential buildings, and devastated 37 villages.
While the ceasefire deal calls for a 60-day halt in hostilities, President Joe Biden said that it “was designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.” Negotiators have described it as laying the groundwork for a lasting truce.
Under the terms of the deal, Hezbollah will remove its fighters and arms from the region between the Blue Line and the Litani River, while Israeli troops will withdraw from Lebanese territory during the specified period.
Thousands of Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers will deploy to the region south of the Litani River. A US-led international panel will oversee compliance from all sides. However, uncertainty persists, as both Hezbollah and Israel have warned that they will resume fire if the other party breaches the agreement.
Lebanese army soldiers drive in Qana, southern Lebanon, on Nov. 27, 2024, after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect. (Reuters)
Hezbollah stated it would give the ceasefire pact a chance, but Mahmoud Qamati, the deputy chair of the group’s political council, stressed that Hezbollah’s support for the deal depends on clear assurances that Israel will not resume its attacks.
Likewise, Israel said it would attack if Hezbollah violated the agreement. The army’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, also urged residents of southern Lebanese villages — who had fled in recent months — to delay returning home until further notice from the Israeli military.
David Wood, a senior Lebanon analyst with the International Crisis Group, believes that while the ceasefire is desperately needed, it “will almost certainly not bring Lebanon’s troubles to an end.
“Many of the country’s displaced may not be able to return home for months, as Israel has razed entire villages near the Blue Line border,” he said. “Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s domestic foes claim they will no longer accept the group’s dominance over Lebanese politics — a pledge that promises still more instability.”
United Nations peacekeepers patrol in the southern Lebanese village of Zibqin on Nov. 27, 2024, as people returned to check on their homes after a ceasefire between the warring sides took effect. (AFP)
Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, also cannot see this ceasefire bringing an end to Lebanon’s problems as the war has already triggered shifts in internal alliances.
Describing the deal as a “capitulation,” he said during an interview with the BBC that “the majority of the Lebanese people, including Hezbollah's own support base, did not want to see Lebanon dragged into this war.”
“After all this devastation, after Hezbollah having now to capitulate and withdraw away from that border north of the Litani River, having to accept an American-led mechanism led by a general who is part of CENTCOM in the region, this is going to be highly embarrassing,” he said. “And there's going to be a day of reckoning for Hezbollah in Lebanon once the ceasefire actually goes into effect.”
Israeli army forces stand outside a house that was hit by rockets fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon in the northern Israeli border town of Kiryat Shmona on Nov. 26, 2024, hours before a ceasefire agreement took effect. (AFP)
He added that politically, this means that “the various Lebanese parties and the various also alliances that had been in place before this war are no longer going to be there.”
“We saw, for example, Hezbollah’s crucial Christian ally distance itself from the group now, very much moving towards the center or even in opposition to Hezbollah.”
Gebran Bassil, leader of the Maronite Free Patriotic Movement and a close ally of Hezbollah since 2006, said earlier this month that his party is “not in an alliance with Hezbollah.”
In an interview with Al-Arabiya TV, he added that Hezbollah “has weakened itself and exposed its military strength, leaving Lebanon as a whole vulnerable to Israeli attacks.”
A man celebrates carrying a picture of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut's Dahiyeh district following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Nov. 27, 2024. (AP)l
Also acknowledging the toll on Hezbollah is Lebanese political analyst Ali Al-Amin. He expressed concern that, while the ceasefire deal is a positive development, its terms signal a significant shift for Hezbollah.
“People were happy at first glance about the ceasefire agreement, as it is a basic demand after a fierce, destructive war,” he told Arab News. “However, there are many (unanswered) questions, starting with the nature of the agreement and its content.
“In a first reading, I believe that Hezbollah’s function has ended. The prohibition of military operations and weapons, the necessity of destroying and dismantling weapons facilities, and the ban on the supply of weapons are all preludes to ending the party’s function.”
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Hezbollah’s main ally, Tehran, expressed support for the ceasefire. Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, welcomed the end of Israel’s “aggression against Lebanon.”
He also reaffirmed his country’s “firm support for the Lebanese government, nation and resistance.”
Before the Israeli cabinet approved the deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the ceasefire would allow his country to “intensify” pressure on the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza and focus on the “Iranian threat.”
Residents who had fled the southern Lebanese border village of Shebaa return to their homes following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah on Nov. 27, 2024. (AFP)
Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israeli analyst with the ICG, believes that “for Israel, the ceasefire is not necessarily an end to the war, but a pause” in fighting.
She said: “It will free up forces and resources to Israel’s other fronts in Gaza, the West Bank, and Iran, and is a chance to test out Israel’s ability to take military action to enforce the ceasefire, which is being sold as the main difference between the resolution that ended the 2006 war and this time around.”
Al-Amin believes Iran, Israel’s biggest adversary, has accepted this shift affecting its ally Hezbollah. However, he stressed that while the deal remains “subject to implementation,” it raises questions about the enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and Washington’s role in overseeing its execution.
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Echoing Al-Amin’s concern, Heiko Wimmen, ICG project director for Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, said: “The ceasefire is based on the commitment of both Lebanon and Israel to finally implement Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
“The challenges are the same as 18 years ago, namely, how to make sure that both parties comply in the long term and what to do with Hezbollah’s military capabilities, which constitute a threat to the security of Israel, and potentially other Lebanese, whether they are present on the border or a few kilometers away.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who welcomed the ceasefire deal, reiterated on Wednesday his government’s commitment to implementing Resolution 1701.
Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati delivers a statement to the press in Beirut on Nov. 27, 2024, after a government meeting to discuss the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. (AFP)
UN Security Council Resolution 1701, adopted to resolve the 2006 Lebanon war, called for a permanent ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel, the establishment of a buffer zone free of armed personnel other than UN and Lebanese forces, Hezbollah’s disarmament and withdrawal from south of the Litani River, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.
However, Maksad of the Middle East Institute, emphasizes that implementing a ceasefire in Lebanon — US-led and otherwise — will demand more than just adhering to the deal’s terms, especially on the domestic front.
“There is a crucial need to rearrange the deck in Lebanon,” he said in an interview with the BBC.
“You need to elect a president in Lebanon, one that is a sovereign-minded president that would work with the Lebanese army and provide it with the political cover it needs to help and implement this resolution together with the UN troops that are there and also the international community.”
A displaced people make their way back to their homes in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on Nov. 27, 2024, after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect. (AFP)
He added: “You also cannot begin the task — the mammoth task — of rebuilding, the reconstruction, the tune of billions of dollars if you don’t have a reform-minded government.”
And while the ceasefire brings a faint hope for Lebanon’s displaced population, many of those affected perceive its terms through the prism of personal loss, questioning what, if anything, had been gained from the war.
Nora Farhat, whose family home in Anqoun in Beirut’s southern suburbs was reduced to rubble, lamented that the agreement “will not restore our destroyed homes or bring back those who were killed — loved ones we have yet to bury.”
The scale of destruction in southern villages means return is not an option for many, who are left wondering about Hezbollah’s future and its ability to maintain its influence in the region.
Hezbollah supporters celebrate as they return to their destroyed homes in Beirut's southern suburbs, after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect on Nov. 27, 2024. (Reuters)
Analyst Al-Amin believes that Hezbollah’s immediate focus will likely shift to managing the domestic narrative.
“Hezbollah’s priority now will be how to reverse the defeat into victory at home, and how to prevent the Lebanese from questioning what happened and why it happened,” he said.
Some of those displaced from Shiite-majority villages in the south expressed frustration at being caught in the crossfire of Hezbollah’s conflicts with Israel.
For Ahmad Ismail, who was displaced from his home in south Lebanon, the war and its aftermath seemed “futile.”
A resident who had fled the southern Lebanese border village of Shebaa unloads personal belongings upon returning to his home on Nov. 27, 2024. (AFP)
He told Arab News: “There was no need to open a southern front under the slogan of supporting Gaza, as those who sought this war sought to humiliate us.
“If only we had implemented the May 17 agreement in the 1980s with Israel, we would have been spared wars, killing and destruction, and the Shiite sect would not have reached the point of displacement, death, and frustration it has reached today.”
Ismail, who was previously imprisoned in Israel, believes the ceasefire is the only positive aspect of the US-brokered truce deal.
“It is a good initiative toward making this the last of the wars and a step toward disarming illegal weapons,” he said. “It also paves the way for restoring the state to its role, which Hezbollah undermined by monopolizing decisions of war and peace without consulting anyone.”
Despite the Israeli military’s warning, Lebanese people displaced from their homes in the south began flocking to their villages.
Members of a displaced Lebanese family return to their village in Zibqin, southern Lebanon, on Nov. 27, 2024, to find their home demolished by Israeli strikes. (Reuters)
Ismail believes “people are currently in shock. Some still cannot believe that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has been killed, and many have not yet seen what happened to their homes and villages.
“When they wake up from the trauma, we will see the repercussions.”
Ismail added: “A disaster has befallen the Lebanese people, and Hezbollah must be held accountable. Hezbollah is no longer able to mobilize the people through the power of weapons, excess force, and money.”
As Lebanon begins to pick up the pieces, many still wonder if this ceasefire will offer more than just a temporary reprieve — or if it will be the beginning of an uncertain future.
