Lebanon PM-designate Nawaf Salam faces complex consultations to form government

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: The Israeli military’s top commander in the occupied West Bank condemned recent violence by Israeli settlers against police and “unacceptable” conduct by soldiers, in a video shared by the army on Friday.
A military statement said that Major General Avi Bluth addressed a “series of unusual incidents” while visiting Israeli police officers in the West Bank, near the site of a riot involving settlers earlier this week.
Israeli police said they had arrested 17 suspects over the “violent riot” on Wednesday near the settlement outpost of Givat Habaladim, northeast of the Palestinian city of Ramallah, during which Israeli settlers threw stones at officers and torched a police car.
Bluth “emphasized that these are exceptional incidents that must be addressed with the necessary severity,” the military statement said.
Referring to the settlers’ attack on Israeli forces, Bluth said in the video: “Beyond the fact that this is a red line that has been crossed and will be dealt with seriously, there is no greater act of ingratitude.”
Rights groups often accuse the army of protecting Israeli settlers in the West Bank, and the United Nations has said that settler attacks against Palestinians are taking place in a climate of “impunity.”
In a recent incident Bluth did not address in the video, the army said that this week “dozens of Israeli civilians... set fire to property” in the Palestinian village of Duma, injuring several people.
The Israeli general mentioned “vandalism and graffiti” by reserve soldiers during a military raid on Wednesday, in the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem.
While a major offensive since January has focused on refugee camps in the northern West Bank, Dheisheh in the south has seen an uptick in Israeli army raids in recent weeks.
Images shared on social media showed vandalized apartments, where furniture was broken and Israeli nationalist slogans spray painted on walls.
Bluth said that “the conduct in Dheisheh by our reserve soldiers is not what we stand for.”
“Vandalism and graffiti during an operational mission are, from our perspective, unacceptable incidents. It is inconceivable that IDF (army) soldiers do not act according to their commanders’ orders,” he said.
Since war began in October 2023 in the Gaza Strip — a separate Palestinian territory — violence has soared in the West Bank.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 917 Palestinians, including militants, in the West Bank since October 2023, according to Palestinian health ministry figures.
Palestinian attacks and clashes during military raids have killed at least 33 Israelis, including soldiers, over the same period, according to official figures.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, home to about three million Palestinians, since 1967.
Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, around 490,000 Israelis live there in settlements and outposts that are illegal under international law. Outposts are also illegal under Israeli law.

TUNIS: Libya’s suspension of 10 international humanitarian groups, part of a broader crackdown on African migrants, is aimed at masking domestic failures and securing external concessions, particularly from Europe, analysts have said.
Libya’s Tripoli-based authorities announced on Wednesday a decision to suspend the Norwegian Refugee Council, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Terre des Hommes, CESVI and six other groups, accusing them of a plan to “settle migrants” from other parts of Africa in the country.
War-torn Libya is a key departure point on North Africa’s Mediterranean coast for migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan African countries, risking dangerous sea voyages in the hope of reaching Europe.
Anas Al-Gomati, director of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute think tank, said “this isn’t about NGOs — it’s about creating enemies to distract from failures.”
The UN-recognized government of Abdulhamid Dbeibah is “tapping into conservative anxieties while masking their inability to provide basic services,” he told AFP.
Libya has struggled to recover from the chaos that followed the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that overthrew longtime leader Muammar Qaddafi.
It remains split between the UN-recognized government in Tripoli and a rival authority in the east, backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar.
The ultimate goal, according to Gomati, is to “extract concessions from Europe which, fearing potential migration surges, will offer new funding packages and prop up the government in Tripoli.”
On Wednesday, Rome announced the allocation of 20 million euros to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to finance “voluntary repatriations” for 3,300 sub-Saharan migrants who arrived in Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.
“This isn’t coincidence — its coordination. The Libyan authorities shut down NGOs providing monitoring and protection (for migrants) precisely as Italy announces 20 million euros for ‘voluntary’ returns,” said Gomati.
“Italy gets to claim they’re funding ‘voluntary’ returns while Libya gets to demonstrate ‘sovereignty’, all while vulnerable migrants face extortion in detention before being labelled ‘volunteers’ for deportation.”
Libya analyst Jalel Harchaoui noted that the Tripoli government is adopting a similar tone to Tunisian President Kais Saied, who in early 2023 denounced what he called “hordes of sub-Saharan migrants” who threatened to “change the country’s demographic composition.”
Harchaoui, of the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said Dbeibah was facing considerable difficulties, particularly in gaining access to public funds, and his once pragmatic relationship with the Haftar family in the east had deteriorated.
The two rivals had previously struck a kind of non-aggression pact in exchange for sharing oil revenues.
“In its bid to assert control and project strength, the Dbeibah government has turned to demonizing sub-Saharan migrants and denouncing NGOs,” Harchaoui said.
This aims to “show who’s in charge in Tripoli and create the illusion that he is curbing migration flows.”
Exiled Libyan human rights activist Husam el-Gomati said on X that “this crackdown appears not only to limit the influence of these organizations but also to prevent the documentation of human rights violations and delay any potential punitive measures against militia leaders involved in these abuses.”
Various reports from the United Nations and NGOs such as Amnesty International have denounced the arbitrary detentions of government opponents, journalists and lawyers in recent months, as well as abuses against migrants, including the discovery of mass graves.
Following the NGO ban, aid groups have expressed concern for both their Libyan colleagues and the migrants who have been made more vulnerable in a country that, according to the IOM, is home to more than 700,000 residents from sub-Saharan countries.
The International Commission of Jurists on Friday condemned the “recent collective expulsions, arrests, violent attacks and the surge of hate speech, including that which constitutes incitement to violence, against migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Libya.”
The organization noted that the Libyan interior ministry has pledged “the deportation of 100,000 migrants every four months.”