(BEIRUT/PARIS: 13 May 2007): As Lebanon heads down the fast track to trade liberalisation, some commentators, including UK-based charity Oxfam, are predicting a devastating impact on small-holder farmers. Unable even to sell produce on the Lebanese market let alone for export, these farmers are painfully unprepared to compete with subsidised imports. Yet little is being done to fortify the agricultural industry as the fruits of major bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) and liberalising reforms loom on the near horizon.

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By Rami Zurayk, 1 May 2007, Scoop

Much of the land in South Lebanon has remained unfarmed this year. In  spite of the active de-mining efforts deployed by the UN and by local NGOs, it has been difficult to plough, sow and harvest, as only a fraction of the million and a half Israeli cluster bombs have been removed. These bombs were sown by the Israelis in August 2006, in the last 72 hours of the war, and after a cease fire was agreed upon in the UN Security Council. Now why would the Israelis do something like that? (more…)

By Fawwaz Trabulsi, Assafir.

Translation from Marxist in Lebanon, Additions / Editing from Tadamon! Montreal

At a time when “politics” is reduced to little more than a clash of wills, sectarianism and tribalism, a measure of social security should go some way in decreasing religious and sectarian divisions and tensions. This is not to say, however, that the social and economic situation, on its own, is not deserving of a remedy. With politics having prevailed in the ongoing and escalating conflict between the two parties, the government published the paper submitted to the Paris III conference. It will be said that the timing and purpose of the paper’s publication are political since the standing rule is that everything is political in Lebanon. However, there is a need to discuss the paper and its vision and methods for addressing the socio-economic crisis with all its political ramifications. Here are some remarks:

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Reuters, Report:

Beirut & Baghdad – Violence in Iraq and instability in Lebanon are driving hundreds of thousands of people abroad in an upheaval not matched in the Middle East since the exodus of Palestinian refugees when Israel was created in 1948.

While Lebanese usually migrate legally to countries of their choice, Iraqis are fleeing across borders in distress to escape the bombings, death squads and sectarian cleansing that have savaged their country since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Most of the Iraqis are ending up in countries that already host large Palestinian communities drawn from the 4.3 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations. The carnage in Iraq has also uprooted about half the 30,000 Palestinian refugees who lived there in Saddam Hussein’s time, forcing them into a second exile or stranding them in limbo.

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Mohamad Bazzi – The Nation

Ever since Hezbollah and its allies began an open-ended protest against the US-backed government on December 1, Beirut’s gilded downtown–built for wealthy Lebanese and foreign tourists–has become more authentically Lebanese. Where Persian Gulf sheiks once ate sushi, families now sit in abandoned parking lots, having impromptu picnics, the smell of kebabs cooked over coals wafting through the air. Young men lounge on plastic chairs, smoking apple-scented water pipes, and occasionally break out into debke, the Lebanese national dance.

A car on display outside a Cartier boutique in “Solidaire”, the downtown area that has recently regained a more popular character with the opposition sit-in …

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From Kosovo to Lebanon, cluster bomb casualties continue to mount

By Frida Berrigan – IN THESE TIMES

In just one week in October, a series of bomb scares swept across Germany. Outside of Hannover, 22,000 people were evacuated when three bombs were discovered. A few days later in the same city, a weapons removal squad defused a 500-pound bomb found near the highway. Finally, a highway worker was killed when his cutting machine hit a buried bomb on the main highway into Frankfurt.

The bombs hadn’t been planted by terrorists, and they weren’t the opening salvos of the next war. The culprit was unexploded ordnance left over from a war fought more than 60 years ago. “We’ll have enough work to keep us busy for the next 100 to 120 years,” the owner of a bomb-defusing company told the New York Times.

The submunitions dispersed by cluster bombs are a lot smaller than 500 pounds, but their use in every major conflict since World War II ensures that bomb clearers the world over will have work for decades—even centuries—to come. From Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, to the countries of the former Yugoslavia, and onto Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, modern battlefields are littered with bombs that continue to kill long after wars have ended. Ninety-eight percent of those killed or injured by cluster bombs are civilians. And yet international efforts to restrict the use of cluster bombs—modeled after landmine treaties of previous years—are being undermined by lack of U.S. participation. Worse, instead of destroying old cluster bomb stockpiles, the United States is exporting them to allies around the world. (more…)

UN estimates Israel war cost to agriculture industry some US $280 million, farmers left in debt, poverty.

BEIRUT – Desperate Lebanese farmers are urging their government to do more to help them recover from a war that the United Nations estimates has cost the vital agriculture industry some US $280 million and left them facing “a downward spiral of debt and poverty”.

“I personally lost over 50 million Lebanese pounds [$35,000],” said Mohammed Mokahhal, a farmer from the eastern Bekaa Valley, describing his losses in the month-long summer war between Israel and militants from the Lebanese Hezbollah political party.

“I couldn’t harvest my potatoes or tend to vegetables like lettuces and peas which I had planted a week before the Israeli attacks began,” said the father of two. “And even when I managed to pick some I couldn’t transport them to the market because of the threatening situation.” (more…)

Move hailed as step on path to WTO
 
Daily Star – BEIRUT: The United States expects to finalize a new trade agreement with Lebanon by the end of November, marking progress in Beirut’s stalled bid for membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Viewed as a prelude to a bilateral free-trade agreement between the two countries, the new Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) should eventually lead to Lebanon’s ascension to the WTO, US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman said in a speech at a dinner hosted by the Lebanese American Chamber of Commerce on Friday.

“What that means is economic opportunities for Lebanon,” Feltman said of the country’s anticipated inclusion in the world body.

Lebanon, which gained WTO observer status in 1999, has missed several target dates for ascension due to the governments’ failure to adopt the required legislation on a range of trade issues, including piracy, anti-dumping, customs duties and food safety standards.

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Almost 30 Montrealers travelled to Toronto to participate in this conference. The movement to boycott Israeli Apartheid is growing in Montreal: contact Tadamon or the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (www.cjpp.org) to find out how you can get involved.

The landmark conference held in Toronto from 6-8th October 2006 “The Struggle Continues: Boycotting Israeli Apartheid“, was an inspiring and significant event. Over 600 people attended the conference sessions, one of the largest Palestinian solidarity conferences ever held on this continent.

Although the conference was primarily designed for Palestine solidarity activists in Ontario, a significant number of participants came from across Canada including Montreal, Halifax and Vancouver as well as the US. International guests included Jamal Jumaa from the Stop the Wall Campaign in Palestine, Salim Vally from the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa, Betty Hunter from the Palestine Solidarity Committee in the UK, and Jonathan Rosenhead, Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics and member of the British Committee for Universities in Palestine. Robert Lovelace, Co-Chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, closed the conference with a powerful comparison of the experience of colonialism in Canada and Palestine.

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by Emad Mekay, Committee for the Cancellation of the Third World Debt

http://www.cadtm.org/article.php3?id_article=2017

Lebanon is firmly en route to becoming the third nation in the Middle East after Iraq and the Palestinian territories to experience a devastating Washington-backed war and a massive influx of new illegitimate debt to cover reconstruction expenses, anti-debt activists say. (more…)