Israel receives Hezbollah report on Ron Arad

Israel has received a report from Hezbollah on airman Ron Arad who went missing in Lebanon in 1986, under a deal for a prisoner swap expected to take place next week, Israeli media said on Saturday.

The cabinet has approved the deal under which it is to release five Lebanese prisoners, the remains of Hezbollah fighters and a number of Palestinians in exchange for the bodies of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

The media reports, which were not immediately confirmed by the government, said the Lebanese group Hezbollah said in its report that Arad had died but it had no specific information.
Officials had made it clear the deal would go ahead only after Israel received intelligence on the air force navigator missing since a mission over south Lebanon during the country's civil war.

According to news reports, Hezbollah told Israel through U.N.

negotiator Gerhard Konrad that Arad is dead.

Israel wanted the Shiite militia to explain how it reached that conclusion and why it could not locate Arad's remains.

The government is to decide on Tuesday whether to go ahead with the exchange without specific new information.

Goldwasser and Regev were captured by Hezbollah in a cross-border raid in July 2006 that sparked a devastating 34-day war in Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet the two soldiers were dead.

UK adds Hezbollah's military wing to terrorist list

Britain on Wednesday moved to ban the entire military wing of Hezbollah, adding it to its list of designated terrorist groups.

Toughening its stance on the Shiite Lebanese movement, the Home Office (interior ministry) move makes it a criminal offence to belong to, raise funds and encourage support for the group's military wing.

The ministry said it took the action because Hezbollah's military branch was supporting militants in Iraq and Palestinian terror groups.

London has already banned Hezbollah's External Security Organization (ESO), which it considers the organization's "terrorist wing".Home Secretary Jacqui Smith laid the order in parliament, which, if approved, would substitute the existing proscription against the ESO."Hezbollah's military wing is providing active support to militants in Iraq who are responsible for attacks both on coalition forces and on Iraqi civilians, including providing training in the use of deadly roadside bombs," junior Home Office minister Tony McNulty said."Hezbollah's military wing also provides support to Palestinian terrorist groups in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad."It is because of this support for terrorism in Iraq and Occupied Palestinian Territories that the government has taken this action."Proscription of Hezbollah's military wing will not affect the legitimate political, social and humanitarian role Hezbollah plays in Lebanon, but it sends out a clear message that we condemn Hezbollah's violence and support for terrorism," he said.The home secretary can proscribe any organisation she believes is "concerned in terrorism", which means committing, participating, preparing for, promoting, encouraging or otherwise being concerned in terrorism in Britain or abroad.Groups can also be banned for glorifying terrorism.Proscription also makes it a criminal offence to wear clothing or carry articles in public "which arouse reasonable suspicion that a person is a member or supporter".More than 40 groups are classed as international terrorist organisations

-- including the ESO

-- and proscribed under Britain's Terrorism Act 2000.Two are proscribed for glorifying terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2006.

Fourteen organisations in Northern Ireland, among them the Irish Republican Army (IRA), are proscribed under previous legislation.Hezbollah is on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organisations and as such Washington has no dealings with the group.

The movement is taking part in Lebanon's new government of national unity.Hezbollah, which claimed to have forced Israel's pullout from south Lebanon in May 2000 after two decades of occupation, sees itself as the legitimate "resistance" to the Jewish state

Lebanon set to elect Suleiman as president

The Lebanese parliament convenes on Sunday to elect army chief Michel Suleiman as president in a first step towards defusing an often deadly 18-month standoff between feuding political factions.

Lawmakers will gather at 5:00 p.m. (1400 GMT) to cast their votes at a long-awaited parliamentary session due to be attended by 200 invited guests including Arab and Western dignitaries.

The main challenge for Suleiman, 59, will be to impose himself as a neutral figure and reconcile the Western-backed parliamentary majority and the opposition, which is backed by Iran and Syria.

Bickering between the two camps had left the presidency vacant since Emile Lahoud's term ended in November, and 19 previous attempts to get lawmakers together to elect a successor failed.

Last Wednesday, the rivals finally agreed to elect Suleiman and form a national unity government, in which the opposition has veto power, after five days of intense talks brokered by the Arab League in the Qatari capital.The Doha talks came after 65 people were killed in fierce sectarian battles earlier this month between supporters of the Hezbollah-led opposition and pro-government forces.

It was the deadliest internal political violence since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war and threatened to ignite an all-out conflict, as Hezbollah staged a spectacular takeover of mainly Sunni Muslim west Beirut.

Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa and a US congressional delegation are due to attend the election.

The foreign ministers of Syria, Iran and France are also among the 200 dignitaries invited to witness the event, Ali Hamdan, spokesman for parliament speaker Nabih Berri, told AFP.

The US delegation will be headed by Representative Nick Rahall, a West Virginia Democrat of Lebanese origin, Hamdan said.

In nearly 10 years at the helm of the army, Suleiman managed to stay out of the political storm. But as president he will have to tread a fine line to keep the peace with the same neutrality.

"I cannot save the country on my own," he told local media this week.

"This mission requires the efforts of all. Security is not achieved by force but joint political will."Suleiman has been accused by some of being a supporter of Syria, Lebanon's neighbor and former powerbroker.

His predecessor Lahoud was pro-Syrian.After the new head of state is sworn in, the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora will resign in line with the constitution.

On the eve of the vote Siniora, 64, told AFP he was satisfied with the Doha accord and ready to step down.

"I am satisfied that this is a deal for which we all gave in for the sake of the country," he said.

"I served for three years, and I believe it is somehow time for a change."Lebanon has been mired in political paralysis since November 2006 when six opposition ministers quit the Siniora cabinet in a bid to gain more representation.A career soldier, Suleiman joined the army in 1967.

He was appointed military chief in December 1998. He is married and has three children.

Lebanon rivals sign deal, elect president Sunday

Rival Lebanese leaders signed a deal on Wednesday to end 18 months of political conflict, pulling their country away from the brink of civil war and paving the way for the election of a new president.

Parliament will convene on Sunday to elect army chief General Michel Suleiman as head of state, aides to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri told Reuters in Qatar, where the feuding sides signed the accord after six days of Arab-mediated talks. The agreement between the U.S.-

backed ruling coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition resolved a dispute over a law for holding 2009 parliamentary elections and met the opposition's long-standing demand for veto power in cabinet. It followed a Hezbollah military campaign this month against ruling coalition leaders which bolstered the opposition's political strength. Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, routed its rivals in the conflict that killed 81 and prompted the Qatari-led mediation bid.

It was Lebanon's worst civil conflict since the 1975-1990 war and exacerbated tensions between Shiites loyal to Hezbollah and Druze and Sunni supporters of the government.

Today, we are opening a new page in Lebanon's history," said Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni politician who leads the governing coalition.

His supporters were among those defeated by Hezbollah. Hezbollah delegation leader Mohammed Raad said the deal would help "towards strengthening coexistence and building the state". Iran and Syria welcomed the agreement, as did France.Paris, which supports the ruling alliance, last year tried but failed to resolve a power struggle complicated by the factions' ties to competing foreign states.

Power struggle
The anti-Damascus ruling coalition had long refused to meet the opposition's demand for cabinet veto power, saying the opposition was trying to restore Syrian control of Lebanon.

Syria was forced to withdraw troops from Lebanon in 2005 after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, Saad al-Hariri's father.

The United States held up the withdrawal as a foreign policy success but the Hezbollah-led opposition has steadily piled pressure on Washington's allies in Lebanon.Opposition ministers quit Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's cabinet in November 2006 in protest at the governing alliance's refusal to meet the demand for veto power.

The resignations stripped the cabinet of all its Shiite members and upset Lebanon's delicate sectarian power-sharing system.

Hezbollah's military campaign this month forced the government to rescind two measures which the Shiite group viewed as hostile enough to justify an armed response.The opposition began to remove a protest encampment controlled by Hezbollah in central Beirut. The tent city, erected next to the government's headquarters, has paralyzed the central commercial district since December 2006.

Under the deal both sides pledged not to use violence in political disputes.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, who announced the deal in Doha, will attend Suleiman's confirmation by parliament on Sunday. The Lebanese leaders had thought of holding the vote as early as Thursday, but postponed it until Sunday to allow Sheikh Hamad and other dignitaries to attend. Once elected president, Suleiman will chair talks among the leaders on strengthening the Lebanese state.

Lebanon govt slams Hezbollah's "coup" in Beirut

Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah group took control of the Muslim half of Beirut on Friday in what the U.S.

-backed governing coalition described as "an armed and bloody coup". The United States accused Syria of "fanning the flames" and said "we're seeing now some evidence of those groups that are linked to Syria that are in Lebanon right now..," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

At least 15 people have been killed and 34 wounded in three days of battles between pro-government gunmen and fighters loyal to Hezbollah, a Shiite political movement which has a powerful guerrilla army and is an ally of Syria. The fighting, the worst internal strife since the 1975-90 civil war, began this week after the government decided to dismantle Hezbollah's military communications network. The group said the government had declared war.

Army personnel take over pro-govt positions in the southern city of SaidaIn scenes reminiscent of the darkest days of the civil war, young men with assault rifles roamed the streets amid smashed cars and smoldering buildings. Fighting died down as outgunned government supporters handed over their weapons and offices to the army, which has tried to remain neutral during 17 months of political conflict between the Hezbollah-led opposition and the government. The anti-Syria governing coalition condemned the "armed and bloody coup", saying it was aimed at increasing Iran's influence and restoring that of Syria, forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in 2005.

Beirut will remain shut

A senior opposition source said that Hezbollah and its allies would maintain the road blocks, including barricades on routes to the airport, until a full resolution of the crisis. "All issues are linked.

Beirut will remain shut until there is a political solution," the source said.

The political crisis has paralyzed the country and left it without a president since November 2007.

An airport official said all flights had been cancelled on Friday with the main road from Beirut barricaded by Hezbollah fighters. "As soon as they open the road, the flights will resume."An influential pro-government leader called for dialogue. Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Druze minority, said Hezbollah "regardless of its military strength, cannot annul the other". "Dialogue alone brings results. Running away from dialogue is not useful," he told the pro-government LBC television.

Killed trying to escape

The dead included a woman and her 30-year-old son killed while trying to flee Ras al-Nabae -- a mixed Sunni-Shiite Beirut district and scene of some of the heaviest clashes. "They were trying to flee to the mountains.

Instead ... they reached the hospital, dead," said a relative, who declined to give her name because of security fears. "It was terrifying during the night. We couldn't even move about in the house," said another woman, a Ras al-Nabae resident who fled the area at first light with her children. "We spent the night in the corridor." Witnesses recounted the chaos and fear that reigned in Beirut overnight as people rushed to stores that remained open to stock up, while others were trapped in their homes."It was a hellish night.

The armed militants were everywhere shooting all over the place," said west Beirut resident Rima.

"Occupier of Beirut"

Opposition gunmen guard pro-govt detainees in west BeirutHezbollah had steadily seized the offices of pro-government factions, including the Future group of Sunni politician Saad al-Hariri, in the predominantly Muslim western half of the city.Backed by gunmen from the Shiite Amal group, Hezbollah handed over the offices to the army. Hariri supporters gave up their offices to the army elsewhere in the country. Hezbollah also moved into Hariri-owned media outlets, and Hariri's television and radio stations went off the air. Opposition gunmen of the Syrian Socialist National Party set ablaze a building housing studios of Hariri's TV station. "It certainly leaves the government weaker and the Future movement weaker," said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. But Hezbollah does not want to be seen as an "occupier of Beirut", he said, and handing control to the army appeared the most likely exit. The European Union, Germany and France urged a peaceful resolution. Syria said the issue was an internal Lebanese affair.

Normal life in Christian areas

A crowd of Lebanese citizens jostle at a bakery to buy bread in the southIn Beirut, most shops and businesses remained shuttered while tanks rolled through the streets and hundreds of riot police and troops patrolled the city but with orders not to intervene in the conflict.

Lebanon was largely cut off from the outside world, with the international airport and Beirut port shut and several key highways blockaded.

But hundreds of people were able to flood to border crossings with Syria to escape the violence and foreign governments began putting in place plans to pull out their nationals.Although west Beirut was virtually under siege, in the predominantly Christian eastern sector of the city, life was going on as usual, with shops and other businesses open.

Proxy war with Iran

Lebanon's feud is widely seen as an extension of the confrontation pitting the United States and its Arab allies and Israel against Syria and Iran, which back Hezbollah -- regarded as a terrorist group by the West.

Israeli President Shimon Peres claimed the violence was fomented by archfoe Iran to further what he said was Tehran's goal to control all of the Middle East.

While Iran accused the United States and Israel of fueling the deadly fighting.

"Adventurous efforts and interventions by the United States and the Zionist regime are the main cause of the continuous chaotic situation in Lebanon," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.

The long-running political standoff, which first erupted in November 2006 when six pro-Syrian ministers quit the cabinet, has left the country without a head of state since November, when Damascus protégé Emile Lahoud stepped down.

Child labor rampant in Lebanon

It is early morning and eight-year-old Ibrahim Khodar Arja is already hard at work, his face and hands covered with dirt as he repairs a car at the mechanics shop where he works six days a week, 10 hours a day.Ibrahim should be at primary school but his job leaves him no time for that.Like thousands of children across Lebanon he has joined a growing force of child laborers whose fate is as much dictated by their family's dire economic situation as by the country's turbulent politics.

Officials estimate that at least 100,000 children -- one in 10 -- up to 18 years of age work in Lebanon, mainly in the agriculture sector or as mechanics as well as in jewelry workshops and sweatshops.

"The 10 to 15 age group is the most affected," Nabil Watfa of the International Labor Organization office in Beirut told AFP.

"But children as young as eight have also been noted to work."These kids, the majority of them boys, work handling chemicals, in garages, in metal-welding shops, carpentry, marble cutting and in farms where they are exposed to pesticides."Most of the child laborers hail from the northern regions of Akkar and Tripoli, where many families live below the poverty line.

Others work in the eastern Bekaa Valley and in the south of the country, where poverty is also endemic and the main industry is agriculture, including tobacco plantations.In Bab al-Tebbene, a rough neighborhood in the northern city of Tripoli, a majority of the mechanics or scrap metal shops that line the streets employ children, including Ibrahim.

The kids can be seen welding, using dangerous machinery, or handling toxic chemicals, all with no protective gear.

More than a dozen children interviewed between the ages of eight and 16 seem resigned to the fact that theirs is a future of hard work rather than play.

Their tough gaze betrays a lost childhood.Mustafa Yassin, 13, entered the work force last year as an apprentice mechanic. He earns 10 dollars a week, working 10 hours a day, six days a week.

"School was not for me and I prefer to learn a trade so that I can help my family and maybe one day open my own garage," he said shyly.

Social workers say many of the children drop out of school and seek work as they come from needy families, often of 10 children or more.They also point to appalling conditions in state schools where standards are poor and where children are often left to fend for themselves.

"We are placed in these schools which are like prisons and many of the kids are dismissed or drop out because no one looks at them," said Rabih Saifeddin Danash, 25, who began working at age 15 at his father's garage.Watfa said that although Lebanon in 2001 signed on to the ILO convention on child labor, it has been unable to efficiently implement it for lack of resources.

Nationwide there are a mere 91 inspectors tasked with enforcing labor laws in general, said Naha Shallita, head of the child labor unit at the labor ministry.

She added that no money has been allocated in the state budget to specifically combat child labor.Social workers warn that if the state fails to seriously take on the issue, many children could fall prey to extremist groups known to recruit in poor areas of Lebanon.

They also cautioned that prostitution and drug use was prevalent among working children.

"These kids are being denied their most basic rights," said Fatma Odaymat, of the Rene Moawad Foundation, a non-governmental organization.

"We are finding that sexual and physical abuse have become a major issue.

"She said although there are success stories and efforts to provide children with vocational training, the country was far off from overcoming the scourge of child labor.

"The success stories are a drop in the bucket," Odaymat said.

"When you go down to these communities and see the situation, you realize we have a long way to go

Sabra Shatila massacre recalled

In Video
Watch Zeina Khodr's report on the Sabra and Shatila survivors - 25 years on

By : Iman Azzi in Beirut, Lebanon
Twenty-five years after surviving the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, Jamila Khalife still mourns family members who were killed at the hands of Phalangist Lebanese forces.

Her life since then, she says, has been a daily reminder of the horrors she witnessed as a 16-year-old Palestinian refugee from Jaffa living in the camps at the height of the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war.

This was my father," said Khalife, pointing to a black and white photo of a man lying face down in a narrow street.
"They shot him in the head."
Three of her relatives were also killed.
"After it was over, on the way to find my mother at the nearby hospital, I saw a woman on the street, her intestines were spilling out. She died holding her baby," Khalife recounted as her own daughter, Ghram (Arabic for Love), sat on her lap.
Dusk massacre
In September 1982, Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) fighters, evacuated from their Beirut barracks and the Israeli army, surrounded the refugee camps.

On the afternoon of September 16, Israeli forces allowed members of the Lebanese Forces (LF) - an offshoot of the Phalange party - into the camps allegedly to search for suspects in the slaying of Bashir Gemayel, then Lebanese president.
Gemayel, who also headed the LF, had been killed by a car bomb outside his office a day earlier, angering many of his supporters and plunging war-torn Lebanon into further chaos. Palestinian forces quickly distanced themselves from Gemayel's death, but it did not save the camps from reprisals.
Khalife says she remembers seeing both Israelis and Phalange party members inside the camps that day.
"The Israelis were wearing military uniforms. The Phalange wore jeans, normal clothes and military arm bands. They swore at us in Lebanese Arabic," she said.
Most aid organisations working in the camps in 1982 say around 2,000 civilians were killed over the course of three days.
Feigning death
Nabil Mohammad, a Palestinian refugee who lost all but one of his six siblings, said: "The Israeli military were bombing the camps and the worst case scenario was that the Israelis would come in and collect the young men so my uncle sent me away, thinking it would be safer."
Mohammad, his cousin and his cousin's wife dodged snipers as they made their way to a retirement home where his aunt worked. When the fighting had subsided and they returned to their home, they discovered that five of his siblings and his mother had been killed.
His younger brother Munir survived by feigning his death a few feet away from his mother's body.
Mohammad was only 19 when the killings took place, but every year since then he tries to keep the memories of his loved ones alive by returning to the camps, now home to 45,000 Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians.
He remains bitter that fellow Arabs would commit what he called atrocities.
Avenging Gemayel?
But a former LF fighter, who spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity, insisted that the Israeli military, and not the Lebanese, should shoulder full responsibility for the killings.
He said: "After Bashir Gemayel was killed, Lebanon was at a boiling state. We were angry, we were lost. We knew that something was going to happen but didn't know what."
He admitted that the LF was angered by the assassination of Gemayel but had no idea what was planned at Sabra and Shatila. The soldier, who began fighting with the LF when he was 13 in 1979, said his unit had been confined to barracks at the Beirut airport and not allowed to leave after Gemayel's murder until they were deployed around Sabra and Shatila.
"It was not the LF [who were responsible for the killings]. It was the Israeli soldiers who went inside those camps," he said.
Where is Sabra and Shatila?
But 25 years later, some Lebanese are unfamiliar with the events of Sabra and Shatila.

Elias, 20, said he had never heard of Sabra and Shatila.
"Where are Sabra and Shatila?" he asked turning to his friend. "Iraq? They never mentioned it in school."
George Hanna, 43, a resident of East Beirut, said: "It was between Christians and Palestinians during the war. I've never been there. What would I do there if I went?
"I never gave Sabra and Shatila any thought."
Nevertheless, Palestinians in Lebanon are determined to keep the history of the camps alive, at least for their community.
Kassem Aina, a co-ordinator for the 'Never forget Sabra and Shatila' campaign, told Al Jazeera: "We tell the children not only about the massacre of Sabra and Shatila. We tell them about all massacres from Deir Yassin to Tel Zaatar to Sabra and Shatila. I feel sad we have so many massacres in our history."
Never forget Sabra and Shatila was founded by Stefano Chiarini, an Italian journalist and activist, who passed away last February.
To mark the 25th anniversary this year, delegations from Italy, France, Spain and other nations will join Palestinian and Lebanese memorials planned for the week.
Seeking justice
The memorials mark the events at the camps, but also push for bringing perpetrators to justice.
To this day, there has been no direct accountability for the killings.
Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, was forced to resign as defence minister after he was found both "indirectly" and "personally" responsible by the 1982 Kahane Commission of inquiry which investigated Israeli culpability in Sabra and Shatila.

LF commander Elie Hobeika, who led the incursion into the camps, received amnesty like all militia leaders following the Lebanese civil war, and went on to become a member of parliament.
He claimed he had evidence that would prove his innocence and directly implicate the Israelis, but was killed one month before he was to testify against Sharon in a case brought by camp survivors in Belgium in 2001.
This weekend, the streets of Sabra and Shatila remain densely packed with people struggling to live normally at the scene of one of Lebanon's worst modern tragedies.
Legal resolution may arrive later but on this year's anniversary the families of the victims are working to balance memories of their loved ones with the ability to move beyond the tragedy.
"You can forgive but you can never forget," said Aina