Middle East Experience

As public anger over a lack of justice grows, the United Nations said many children remain traumatized by the August 2020 explosion and that citizens who required assistance after the event are still in need.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: UN says Lebanese, Syrians still suffer from Beirut explosion one year later

The British military said a bitumen tanker off the coast of the UAE experienced a "potential hijacking," prompting a denial from Iran. Israel and the UK also blamed Iran for a drone attack last week that killed two crew members on an oil tanker.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: Iran again denies involvement in Gulf maritime incident

Iran's conflicts with its neighbors once again loom over Biden's ambitions to return to the Iran deal.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: Pentagon doesn't rule out response for Gulf shipping attack

The popular ice cream maker decided in July to stop selling its products in the Palestinian territories in opposition to the Israeli occupation, which prompted criticism from Israeli and American politicians.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: US state of Florida blacklists Ben & Jerry's

Hamas hopes its support for Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who retains wide popularity, will pay political dividends.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: Hamas insists Marwan Barghouti be part of any prisoner swap with Israel

August 4 marks the one-year anniversary of the Beirut blast, but the wounds inflicted on the city and people have yet to heal.The blast, one of history’s largest non-nuclear explosions, was caused after a warehouse that had been storing 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate caught fire. Investigations into the blast, which left over 200 dead and injured thousands, have yielded little in the way of results, while many Lebanese continue to call for justice.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Rita Freiha Khoury, a blast victim, is still recovering from the physical and mental wounds caused by the explosion. She was in a coma for two weeks and had to have surgery for several injuries to her skull and body after the blast.On August 4, 2020, Rita was getting her hair and nails done at a beauty salon in the capital.“I don’t have any memory of where I was and what happened, I was told that the blast of the explosion pushed me very hard onto the floor and I had all the ceiling, the door and the elevator hit and fall on me.”The beauty salon staff later told her that she was knocked unconscious and was unresponsive at the time.“I was lucky enough that an ambulance was passing by and drove me to the hospital Hotel Dieu where doctors later on told my husband that I was in a very unstable and critical situation and that the only thing they were able to do was to incubate me to check if I was stable enough to live or if I was going to die. Can you imagine?” Rita said.Rita’s family couldn’t find her for 16 hours after the incident since she did not have her ID on her when she was admitted to the hospital. Her husband was able to identify her due to the pink nail polish that the salon staff had applied.“I stayed two weeks in a full coma, and after six weeks, I had a surgical reconstruction of the skull,” she said. “I suffered from a severe skull trauma, with cerebral edema and hemorrhagic contusion. I also had broken bones at the left side of my face, and a broken waist, and of course I did surgeries everywhere. I stayed in the hospital for one month. I also had to go under surgery for decompressive craniectomy where the neurosurgeon had to remove a part of my skull to ease the pressure inside my head.”Rita is set to undergo surgery again on Thursday due to the large number of unhealed scars on her scalp from the day of the blast, with doctors worrying about that the scars could cause infections inside her head or skull.Investigations into the blast have so far yielded few results, with no top officials questioned over the explosion, leaving many Lebanese angry.“Until now, [there is] no real feeling of hope for me for the future. I need truth. Truth is really missing here in this country for what‘s happened since the explosion. Until now, only the truth is missing. I need to know what happened, I need justice, to be able to heal my wounds, and the sadness inside of me.And I think this feeling is also being felt by everyone in the country,” Rita said.‘It’s a healing process, but it takes too long to complete’ Another victim, Bachir Ramadan, was in his office at the time, 500 meters away from the site of the blast.“We were at work and when we first saw the fire and white smoke, we thought it was just a fire and that it would be okay because firefighters were going to put it out,” Bachir said. “Little did we know that what we were looking at was about to explode.”Moments later, the explosion ripped through the surrounding area, killing and injuring several people.Bachir’s right eye, left hand, neck and skull were injured by the blast.“I did four surgeries, I had a cut nerve in my left finger index finger, and I did two surgeries on my right eye, my eyes were not sitting on the correct level, they also put a metal plate in my skull so it can sit in a proper position,” he told Al Arabiya English.“This is how it hurt me physically,” he said, adding that the blast brought with it some equally painful wounds to his mental health.“It is a healing process, it takes far too long to complete but I guess I am still at the beginning of that cycle. I’m perfectly healed physically but I don’t think that I can ever mentally recover properly from this traumatic experience, it will take a long time.”The blast rocked the entirity of Beirut, with many now left without homes and jobs.“It was a traumatizing experience to say the least, it affected every part of Beirut. All of Beirut is broken, damaged, it’s not the Beirut we know, or the Beirut we grew up living in so it is really sad and frustrating to see all that,” added Bachir .The explosion, which happened exactly one year ago today, left the Lebanese capital in shambles, with over 300,000 people homeless and 70,000 jobless. It also left 73,000 apartments, 9,200 buildings, 163 schools and education centers, 106 healthcare facilities damaged.Prior to the blast, the country was already grappling with an out-of-control pandemic and instability, years of corruption and national debt brought on by the ruling elite.Many are anxiously waiting to see what the newly elected Prime Minister designate Najib Mikati will do for the country as he is set to soon announce an entirely new cabinet, which is no easy feat.Read more:Lebanese diaspora frustrated with lack of progress on Beirut Blast probe one year onBeirut blast: Lebanon’s crisis hotline witnesses surge in calls as anniversary nears‘They kill us every day’: Survivors of Beirut port blast call for justice one year on
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: ‘The truth is missing’: Blast victims call for justice as trauma, wounds remain

Lebanon has now marked one year since the port explosion, the country’s worst-ever peacetime disaster. The blast, which left 214 people dead, was equivalent to a 3.3 to 4.5 magnitude earthquake.While the explosion wreaked havoc on Beirut and pushed the country further into economic crisis, it also left a permanent mark on the psyche of Lebanon’s residents and overseas nationals, leaving many in a state of shock and guilt. For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Survivor’s guilt, also known as survivor’s syndrome, is a mental condition that occurs when someone survives a traumatic, life-threatening experience while others did not, and is a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Often, those suffering from the affliction can be left with feelings of extreme guilt, and questioning why they survived while others did not, causing ongoing emotional and mental stress.The emotional damage caused by the blast has yet to heal, with many members of Lebanon’s large diaspora expressing feelings of guilt for not being in-country to help their relatives and the people of Beirut during the time of the explosion.Survivor’s guilt Al Arabiya English spoke with Dr. Shaju George, specialist psychiatrist at Dubai’s Medeor Hospital, to weigh in on the concept of ‘Survivor’s Guilt’ and how Lebanese expats might be grappling with it.“Survivor guilt, as the name suggests, is the guilt of people who survived a traumatic incident or survived when they lost their significant one. So generally, this is something we discuss in the context of grief, and it is one of the major reasons for developing complicated grief,” explains Dr. George.“Survivors feel that they could have avoided the calamity or catastrophe by their timely intervention – these thoughts are usually illogical or irrational.”He added that people facing survivor guilt often feel that they “haven’t done what they could to avoid the catastrophe,” or “that their act resulted in the catastrophe,” explaining that generally the syndrome occurs when involving close family members and sometimes close friends.“Generally, these kinds of situations we see in unanticipated deaths or catastrophes where either the survivor witnessed or couldn't be there due to some reasons,” George said.“Lebanese people who weren't there during the blast can have survivor’s guilt, and they may think that they should have been there in the place of their affected family members.”Many members of Lebanon’s diaspora across the world mobilized efforts and donated food, clothes and other basic necessities to help those who were hardest hit by the blast.“On the day of the blast, I was having a casual day with friends and family – just as the victims, the injured, and the witnesses of the blast were – and during a conversation I was having with a friend while driving down Sheikh Zayed road, my friend interrupts and utters the words ‘they bombed Beirut’,” Dubai-based Lebanese expat Lynn Habbal said.“The first thought I had was ‘here we go again, another war with our neighbors’ – come to think of it, it was such a normalized and indifferent response,” she said.“Minutes later my social media was flooded with videos of the blast, and the screams of the injured. Phone lines were down, and I didn’t know whether my parents and my little sister [who are based in Lebanon] were safe, or not. Dead or alive. I didn’t know whether my close friends and their families were safe too. I, like so many others in the Lebanese diaspora, was not only left in the dark, but completely without control and in complete shock,” she added.The Beirut blast came as a huge shock to many who had already been desensitized by Lebanon’s ongoing crises and history of occasional conflicts.Dubai-based Lebanese expat Raghd Zahr said that he was at the office at the time of the blast. He noticed his Arab and Lebanese colleagues panicking, calling each other to discuss what they had seen on social media.“It really seemed serious,” says Raghd. “I finally asked: ‘What happened?’ and the stares they cast at me, were haunting.”When they told him about the blast, he said that he had tried to dismiss it.“I tried to brush it off with a ‘But doesn‘t that normally happen there?’ to which I was met with ‘I think someone dropped a bomb on us.’”Raghd’s reaction quickly changed when he went online to see the scale of the blast, noting that it “terrified” him.“I remember hearing about a warehouse malfunction and how firefighters went to meet the scene just recently, only to realize, by seeing what I saw, that they were all probably dead and killed instantly by the explosion,” he said.What started as a fire in the port warehouse, turned into one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history, leaving many in a state of utter shock.“I didn‘t know what I felt at first, to be honest – disbelief maybe? Anger? Resentment? I felt many things at once, but the one emotion that eclipsed all of them was concern; I spent the next hours calling every Lebanese person that I knew,” he said.Raghd took to social media, sharing every post he could to raise awareness of the blast, including urgent calls by the Lebanese Red Cross for blood donations for critical, life-saving transfusions.He described as the overall expression of his colleagues that day as “saddening,” adding that the Beirut office was completely “thrashed and destroyed.”When asked if he envisioned a future for himself in Lebanon, he said: “I am looking to immigrate [somewhere] soon, since I am fortunate enough to do so, but nothing saddens me more than those who are more capable than I, but lack the means to do so since they are trapped in Lebanon.”“I feel our [the Lebanese diaspora’s] relationship with our country of origin will forever be painful; it is difficult to love Lebanon when everyone reminisces about its beautiful past and the ‘Paris of the Middle East’ and fails to see its miserable present and even bleaker future,” he concluded.Abu Dhabi-based influencer and coworking space manager Stephanie Haddad, who was born and raised in the UAE, said that at the time of the incident, she was watching TV at home when a headline appeared at the bottom of the screen: Loud sound heard in Beirut Port. “Because we’re so used to these types of headlines and media coverage, I didn’t think much of it, but I still needed to call my brother who was in Lebanon at the time,” she said.Her brother did not pick up, she said, so she began to panic and proceeded to call more and more people, but she couldn’t go through.“Tried my brother again – nothing. I didn’t know where he was. Then the family voice notes started [on WhatsApp] and that’s when it got real … Everyone was hysterically crying, unaware of what happened but confident it was horrible, I felt helpless and confused and we mourned for days,” she said.“Each time any news came up, it was about a new death, or a new person being found, and we relived it again and again.”“I don’t feel like I deserve to have any feelings about this because I wasn’t there,” Stephanie said.With information coming in slowly, Stephanie and her friends felt like they were “constantly addicted to the news,” and trying to share as much information as possible.“It became an addiction to find out what was happening, and this is why many of us [diaspora] could not get the image of the explosion out of our heads, we couldn’t sleep,” she said.Stephanie explained that she and her Lebanese friends in the UAE felt ashamed to go out and live their lives normally after the blast because their families in Lebanon did not have the same luxury.“I felt guilty for sharing photos of my daily life on social media because it would have been insensitive,” she said.Because Stephanie was not present in Beirut during the blast, she said she felt that couldn’t be sad or guilty as she had not physically experienced it herself.“It was not until I spoke to my sisters who are also based here in Dubai about how I was feeling and recognized that they were also feeling ashamed, anxious, tired and they couldn’t eat or sleep, with no motivation to get work done at their jobs,” Habbal added.The blast was one of Lebanon’s most tragic disasters which, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, has plunged the country into an economic depression that has been deemed by the World Bank as one of the world’s worst crises since the mid-nineteenth century.Today marks one year since the blast, and no answers have yet to been found. So far, probes into the explosion have ignored Lebanon’s entrenched political elite, with no top officials standing before a judicial inquiry.Recently, Najib Mikati took up the mantle as Prime Minister designee while Lebanon continues to try to navigate its way out of political crisis. Mikati has previously served as Lebanon’s Prime Minister and was in office when the shipping vessel carrying the ammonium nitrate that caused the blast arrived in 2013.Read more: ‘The truth is missing’: Blast victims call for justice as trauma, wounds remainBeirut blast: Lebanon’s crisis hotline witnesses surge in calls as anniversary nearsLebanese diaspora frustrated with lack of progress on Beirut Blast probe one year on
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Beirut Blast: Lebanese expats still grappling with survivor’s guilt one year on

Oman provided first official confirmation on Wednesday that the Asphalt Princess tanker was involved in a hijacking in the Arabian Sea after Britain’s maritime trade agency earlier reported the incident was over.Three maritime security forces had told Reuters on Tuesday that the Asphalt Princess tanker had been seized by suspected Iranian-backed forces, which Iran denied.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Oman’s Maritime Security Center said on Twitter that it had received information about the Panama-flagged Asphalt Princess being subjected “to a hijacking incident in international waters in the Gulf of Oman” and that the sultanate’s navy had deployed several ships to help secure international waters.“The Royal Air Force of Oman is carrying out sorties near the area, and the Royal Navy of Oman deployed several ships to help secure international waters in the region,” it added.The boarding took place in an area in the Arabian Sea leading to the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for about a fifth of the world’s sea-borne oil exports.Iran’s senior armed forces spokesman, Abolfazl Shekarchi, on Tuesday denounced reports of maritime incidents and hijacking in the Gulf area as “a kind of psychological warfare and setting the stage for new bouts of adventurism.”Tensions have simmered in the region after a suspected drone attack last week on an Israeli-managed tanker off the Omani coast killed two crew and was blamed on Iran by the United States, Israel and Britain. Iran denied responsibility.The United States and Britain have said they would work with allies to respond to the attack on the Mercer Street, a Liberian-flagged, Japanese-owned petroleum product tanker.Tehran has said it would respond to any threat against its security.Regional tensions have worsened since 2018, when Washington re-imposed sanctions on Iran after abandoning a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and global powers. Read more:Hijackers have left targeted vessel off UAE’s coast: British navyUK warns of non-piracy ‘incident’ off the coast of UAE’s FujairahIran-backed forces believed to have seized tanker off Fujairah: Maritime sources
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Oman confirms Asphalt Princess Tanker involved in hijacking incident

French President Emmanuel Macron pledged on Wednesday a further 100 million euros ($118.54 million) worth of emergency aid for Lebanon, and 500,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines for the country.Macron also criticized a “failing” Lebanese political class he blamed for their country’s economic turmoil as he opened a donors’ conference marking the anniversary of the Beirut port blast.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.One year since an explosion ripped through the capital’s port and plunged Lebanon further into economic crisis, its politicians have yet to form a government capable of rebuilding the country, despite French and international pressure.“Lebanese leaders seem to bet on a stalling strategy, which I regret and I think is a historic and moral failure,” Macron said in opening remarks as host of an international donors’ conference that aims to raise at least $350 million.“There will be no blank cheque for the Lebanese political system. Because it is they who, since the start of the crisis but also before that, are failing.”France has led international efforts to lift its former colony out of crisis.Macron has visited Beirut twice since the port blast, raised emergency aid and imposed travel bans on some senior Lebanese officials in his quest for a reform package.He has also persuaded the European Union to agree on a sanctions framework that is ready to be used.But his initiatives have been in vain so far.US President Joe Biden will participate in the conference that is co-hosted by the United Nations, Macron’s office said, along with about 40 other world leaders.Last year’s conference in the wake of the blast raised about $280 million, with the emergency aid being kept away from politicians and channeled through NGOs and aid groups.The new aid will be unconditional, Macron’s office said, but about $11 billion raised in 2018 remains locked away and conditional on a series of reforms.Read more:Beirut Blast: Lebanese expats still grappling with survivor’s guilt one year on‘The truth is missing’: Blast victims call for justice as trauma, wounds remainLebanese diaspora frustrated with lack of progress on Beirut Blast probe one year on
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: France to offer Lebanon over 0 mln in aid, 500,00 COVID-19 vaccines : Macron

Saudi Arabia’s plan to reach herd immunity and vaccinate at least 70 percent of its population against the coronavirus by October this year is on track as a quarter of people in the Kingdom have already received two doses. For more coronavirus news, visit our dedicated page.Eight million citizens and residents – the equivalent of 25 percent of the total population – have received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, while over 19 million people (56 percent of the population) have received their first dose. More than 28 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered around the country as of Tuesday in over 587 inoculation centers, the Ministry of Health said. For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.The average number of doses administered daily is slightly above 365,000, according to official data. Saudi Arabia has approved four COVID-19 vaccines: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca, and the Johnson & Johnson single-dose jab. Curbs on unvaccinated citizens, residents To encourage more people to get vaccinated, Saudi Arabia has imposed restrictions on unvaccinated citizens and residents in the country. Without proof of vaccination, individuals cannot enter malls, restaurants, cafes, beauty parlors, barbershops, shopping centers, governmental and private facilities, public and private schools, weddings, events, and markets.Public transport and all economic, commercial, cultural, recreational, and sports activities are limited to vaccinated individuals. While Saudi Arabia has reopened its borders to tourists, only those who have been vaccinated with the approved COVID-19 jabs will be granted entry. Here is the full list of countries whose citizens can apply for an e-visa to Saudi Arabia.Tourists who received the Sinopharm or Sinovac vaccine can enter the Kingdom if they have received a booster shot from any of the four approved vaccines.Read more:Saudi Arabia permits entry with Sinopharm, Sinovac vaccines after booster shotsSaudi Arabia allows citizens from 49 countries to apply for e-visa: Full listStudents in Saudi Arabia must receive first COVID-19 vaccine dose before Aug 8
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Saudi Arabia vaccinates 25 pct of population, on track to reach herd immunity by Oct