An aid conference for Lebanon opens in Paris Thursday in the hope of raising hundreds of millions of dollars, with hosts France also targeting diplomatic progress for the war-ravaged country.
But in the absence of key players, any political breakthrough appears remote around the conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has so far claimed more than 1,500 lives and displaced 700,000 people.
Israel launched a ground offensive against Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in late September after a year of exchanging fire over the border.
Paris is also seeking an increase in humanitarian aid for a country to which it has historic ties and which has a large diaspora in France.
Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told broadcaster RTL on Wednesday that around 70 countries and 15 international organizations would attend, vowing that France “will not let Lebanon down”.
“Everyone we invited said yes,” he added, from a list that did not include Iran or Israel.
There has been uncertainty over what level of officials would attend the conference from each participating country, although Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati will be present.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with Mikati on Wednesday at the Elysee Palace, will open the conference.
“The president is doing his job by organizing a summit to show that he’s not abandoning the people of Lebanon, but I don’t expect much from it,” said Agnes Levallois of France’s Iremmo Middle East Research Institute.
Nevertheless, the conference “is at least happening”, said Hasni Abidi of the Geneva-based Cermam Center on the Arab World. He called the conference “the only diplomatic movement underway” since France and the United States pushed at last month’s UN General Assembly for a temporary ceasefire in Lebanon.
– ‘Not by military means alone’ –
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, during a surprise visit to Beirut, said that she would attend the Paris conference “to discuss with our international partners, Western as well as Arab, how a political solution to this situation can be found”.
It was also “urgent to ensure, in coming days and weeks, that aid for the people of Lebanon arrives directly”, she said.
“This conflict cannot be resolved by military means alone,” Baerbock said.
EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell in a statement called the gathering “an important occasion to mobilise the urgent political and economic support to the Lebanese people and country’s sovereignty”.
On Thursday, “the objective is first of all to restate the need for a ceasefire, a diplomatic resolution, and an end to hostilities,” Barrot said.
France wants to “mobilize humanitarian aid from as many countries as possible,” he added.
Macron’s office said Wednesday that the conference would aim to fill the coffers of a $450-million UN appeal for aid to Lebanese displaced by the fighting.
In Lebanon, “the needs are so vast that even if the aid totaled hundreds of millions of dollars, you could cynically see it as a sort of palliative care,” said Karim Bitar, an international relations expert at Beirut’s Saint-Joseph University.
On the diplomatic front, France wants to re-apply UN Security Council resolution 1701, which sealed the end of the last Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006.
The document stipulates that the only armed forces on Lebanon’s southern frontier with Israel should be UN peacekeepers and the Lebanese army.
Fully reinstating 1701 would “allow us to guarantee Lebanese sovereignty and unity on the one hand and on the other to give security guarantees to Israel”, Barrot said.
Lebanon needs a lot more
More than 2,000 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon in the past month and more than 1.2 million have been displaced
Lebanon will need $250 million a month to help more than a million people displaced by Israeli attacks, its minister in charge of responding to the crisis said on Tuesday, ahead of Thursday’s conference in Paris to rally support for Lebanon.
Nasser Yassin told Reuters the government response, helped by local initiatives and international aid, only covered 20% of the needs of some 1.3 million people uprooted from their homes and sheltering in public buildings or with relatives.
Those needs are likely to grow, as daily waves of airstrikes push more people out of their homes and leave Lebanon’s government scrambling to find ways to house them, Yassin said.
“We need $250 million a month” to cover basic food, water, sanitation, and education services for the displaced, he said.
Schools, an old slaughterhouse, a fresh food market, an empty complex – all of them have been turned into collective shelters in recent days. “We’re transforming anything, any public building,” Yassin said. “There is a lot to be done.”
Yahoo/ AFP/ Reuters
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