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A routine legal complaint filed by a Lebanese attorney against his country’s top diplomat in the United States has ignited a cross-regional political firestorm, unleashing sharp new US pressure on Beirut to repeal a decades-old law that criminalizes direct contact with Israeli citizens. The high-stakes dispute comes just as Lebanese and Israeli military delegations prepare to gather this week at US Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, for the next round of Washington-brokered negotiations, raising questions about the future of Lebanon’s longstanding boycott legislation.

The controversy traces back to a September 27 report from local Lebanese outlet Beirut Review, which claimed that Lebanese Ambassador Nada Hamadeh Moawad had placed a condolence call to her Israeli counterpart in Washington, Yechiel Leiter, after Leiter’s son was critically injured in a car-ramming attack at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. The report was quickly picked up by multiple Israeli media outlets, prompting Beiruti lawyer Hassan Bazzi to file an official complaint with Lebanon’s top public prosecutor in late September.

Bazzi’s complaint, which was eventually referred to military court government commissioner Claude Ghanem, did not seek to directly convict Moawad; instead, it asked the Lebanese judiciary to confirm whether the media accounts of the call were accurate. Speaking to Middle East Eye, Bazzi emphasized that as both a sitting ambassador and a member of Lebanon’s official negotiating team with Israel, Moawad’s actions carry unique weight. “She is not an ordinary citizen,” Bazzi said. “An ambassador and a negotiator should be fighting in the name of the Lebanese people and their pain, especially southerners,” who have born the brunt of decades of cross-border conflict. Neither Moawad nor Lebanon’s foreign ministry issued an official denial of the reported call, though Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has publicly defended the ambassador, confirming the contact never occurred and warned that anyone seeking to undermine the US-backed peace process is committing a crime against the Lebanese state.

Lebanon’s 1955 Boycott Law, the legislation at the center of the dispute, has stood for nearly 70 years, imposing penalties of three to 10 years of hard labor for any citizen who engages in contact with Israelis. In recent years, the law has been used to bring complaints against a range of public figures, including popular Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram earlier this 2024. While repealing the law only requires a simple parliamentary majority, no formal repeal legislation has ever been introduced for a vote. The law has taken on new relevance since April, when Moawad and Leiter became key participants in the US-brokered direct peace talks between the two nations. Those talks culminated in a landmark framework agreement signed in Washington on June 26, which outlines an Israeli military withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the deployment of the Lebanese army to the border region, Hezbollah disarmament, and a permanent end to cross-border hostilities.

The US response to Bazzi’s complaint was far swifter and more forceful than the lawyer anticipated, breaking with the typical slow pace of Lebanese judicial proceedings. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott called the decision to hear the complaint against an ambassador acting on behalf of her legitimate government “embarrassing,” arguing that Lebanon’s military judiciary should redirect its limited resources toward prosecuting Hezbollah operatives accused of threatening the Lebanese state. The US also labeled Bazzi a “pro-Hezbollah lawyer,” a label he has forcefully rejected, noting he has filed complaints against political actors across the Lebanese spectrum over corruption and security breaches since 2011, with no singular partisan agenda. More notably, a senior US official confirmed to The Times of Israel that Washington is actively considering imposing economic sanctions on the Lebanese judges assigned to hear the complaint, escalating pressure to dismiss the case.

In mid-October, Ghanem dismissed the complaint, ruling that even if the reported call had occurred, it would not qualify as a criminal offense under the 1955 law. The commissioner reasoned that the legislation only applies to commercial transactions with Israeli entities, not private or diplomatic contact. Bazzi has decried this ruling as an extremely dangerous departure from decades of legal precedent, arguing that the boycott law’s first clause explicitly includes “any other type of dealing” that has been broadly interpreted by successive governments and courts to cover cultural, athletic, and diplomatic contact. “This interpretation means that if the contact happened, it is not a criminal offense,” Bazzi said. “We would be opening up very serious security and political breaches by giving Lebanese people licence to contact anyone in the enemy state.” He has called for the investigation to be expanded under Article 278 of the Lebanese penal code, which criminalizes contact with agents of an enemy state.

The legal dispute has supercharged a months-long US campaign to pressure Lebanon into repealing the boycott law entirely. Earlier this year in March, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers pressed US Ambassador to Beirut Michel Issa to ramp up lobbying for the law’s suspension. In April, following a White House-hosted round of negotiations, former President (and current President) Donald Trump told reporters he had been unaware of the law and called for its immediate elimination. “It’s crazy to have such legislation and I will work to put an end to it,” Trump said. A day after Ghanem dismissed Bazzi’s complaint, Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised the issue in a formal phone call with President Aoun, describing the law as “impractical” and arguing it is repeatedly misused for politicized prosecutions that block progress toward peace. Ambassador Issa has echoed that sentiment, saying the law is indefensible amid direct US-sponsored talks, and has been lobbying Lebanese MPs, particularly those from anti-Hezbollah blocs, to support repeal.

Within Lebanon, the push to abolish the law has only garnered a small group of public supporters. Beirut MP Fouad Makhzoumi has called for an immediate suspension, arguing that official peace negotiations require clear legal protection for diplomatic engagement. A small number of anti-Hezbollah commentators and activists have gone further, calling for full outright repeal. However, most of Lebanon’s anti-Hezbollah parliamentary blocs have remained hesitant to publicly back repeal, choosing to defend Moawad without endorsing changes to the boycott law. Kataeb Party official Salim Sayegh said the party sees no need to revisit the ban on contact with the enemy at this stage. Free Patriotic Movement MP Jimmy Jabbour called the issue “not up for discussion at all” under current conditions. Progressive Socialist Party MP Bilal Abdallah noted any debate on the law can only happen after Israel completes its promised withdrawal from Lebanese territory and a formal non-aggression agreement is reached. Hezbollah and its political ally the Amal Movement have refused to engage in any debate on the issue, with MP Waddah al-Sadek noting that most lawmakers are unwilling to open a debate that would trigger a major domestic political crisis.

As the dispute over the law unfolds, the upcoming Tampa talks mark a key shift in the US-brokered negotiation process, moving from diplomatic bargaining to military implementation talks. The discussions will be led by US Marine Corps Major General Joseph Clearfield, with the Lebanese delegation expected to raise persistent Israeli violations of the “pilot withdrawal zones” outlined in the June framework agreement, where Israeli troops were supposed to hand over control to the Lebanese army. Lebanese officials cite ongoing Israeli attacks, cross-border incursions, and the killing of Lebanese civilians as evidence of these violations. According to Lebanese outlet L’Orient Today, Washington and Israel have made direct military-to-military coordination between the Lebanese and Israeli armies a core precondition for moving negotiations forward. At present, the political negotiation track remains effectively frozen, and implementation of the June framework agreement has stalled entirely.

US officials have explicitly called for direct military-to-military communication between the two sides, a requirement that directly conflicts with the long-standing judicial interpretation of Lebanon’s boycott law. For opponents of repeal, the Moawad affair is a clear warning of the pressures that will continue to mount as negotiations progress. Bazzi emphasizes his complaint was filed weeks before the current escalation of the repeal campaign, and was only intended to uphold a longstanding legal principle. That principle is now under growing pressure both at the Tampa negotiating table and from sustained US lobbying in Beirut. “If this call is true, it is a capitulation to the Israelis,” Bazzi said, “and a provocation to our feelings as southerners.”

France is facing one of its most severe domestic political crises in modern history after a chaotic, violence-fueled weekend left two civilians dead, thousands injured, and major urban centers resembling war zones, as law enforcement struggled to regain control of public streets. The unrest has cast a deep shadow over the final months of President Emmanuel Macron’s tenure in office.

The scale of the rioting, widely described as the worst period of civil disorder France has seen since the mass student and worker uprisings that pushed the nation to the edge of revolution in May 1968, prompted Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu to convene an emergency crisis cabinet meeting on Monday to coordinate a government response.

Following the closed-door meeting, Lecornu announced that the government was asking local municipal governments across affected regions to implement targeted partial curfews to stem further violence. The prime minister also confirmed that the administration had not ruled out implementing a nationwide state of emergency if unrest continues to escalate.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Lecornu emphasized that the government was “fully resolved to restoring public order” across the country. He noted that if security authorities determined a state of emergency was required to contain the violence, the administration would move forward with the declaration. At this stage of the response, however, Lecornu added that targeted partial curfews appeared to be a more proportional and appropriate measure.

Law enforcement agencies have already taken at least 2,000 protesters into custody across the nation since the unrest erupted, with widespread reports of serious life-altering injuries among demonstrators. Two protesters have had hands completely severed by police stun grenades, and earlier this month, a 15-year-old boy also lost a hand after being hit by a police stun grenade in a separate incident.

In a controversial decision that has drawn sharp criticism from opposition groups, President Macron rejected the resignation offer from Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, even after government authorities acknowledged that “failures in anticipation and intelligence” on the part of security services directly worsened the scale of the crisis. Macron opted to keep Nunez in his post to preserve an uninterrupted chain of command for security operations, as police and national security forces continue to work to contain spreading unrest.

“Those who destroyed must pay,” Macron stated in an address to the nation on Sunday evening. “Those who looted must pay back. Those who sought to bring down the Republic will be held accountable.”

The unrest began on Saturday, when an estimated half a million people marched across the country to protest soaring living costs, long-standing underperformance in the state education system, and steadily deteriorating public services. The initial protests were followed by widespread looting and arson, with independent estimates indicating that rioters damaged or destroyed more than 1,500 independent shops and small businesses across the nation.

The roots of the current movement stretch back to September, when student and teacher strikes began in under-resourced, impoverished suburbs of Paris. The strikers were demanding increased funding and resources for schools that lacked basic equipment and staffing. While government officials ultimately agreed to meet the core demands of the initial strikers, the movement struck a powerful chord across the nation, with millions of French people who had long held frustrations over the education system and stagnating economy joining the protests.

A harsh, heavy-handed crackdown by police, marked by frequent incidents of violence against student protesters, pushed thousands more previously uninvolved citizens onto the streets to join the demonstrations, amplifying the scale of the unrest.

In the southern port city of Marseille, which saw some of the worst weekend violence and looting, local authorities issued an official order banning all public gatherings and demonstrations from midday to 8 p.m. on Monday to prevent further disorder.

By the end of the chaotic weekend, the French capital of Paris had been reduced to what one visiting observer described to Reuters as a “war zone,” with burned-out vehicles, broken storefronts, and debris littering major commercial districts.

“It’s heartbreaking, heartbreaking seeing our city like this,” 59-year-old Marseille resident Farida, who declined to share her last name with Reuters, told reporters. “If every protest ends with all the shop windows smashed and stores trashed, this simply cannot go on – it cannot go on.”

The outbreak of large-scale unrest comes as France, the European Union’s second-largest economy, is already reeling from overlapping fiscal and social crises. The nation narrowly escaped falling into a technical recession in the second quarter of this year, and the sharp spike in global energy prices driven by ongoing geopolitical conflict in the Middle East has hit the country’s energy-dependent economy particularly hard.

Weeks before the current unrest erupted, the Wall Street Journal warned that growing “uncertainty about the country’s political and fiscal future has also contributed to a slowdown in what was once one of Europe’s more reliable growth engines.”

New survey data from Medef, France’s largest national employers’ federation, underscores the deep anxiety French business leaders hold over ongoing political instability. The survey found that 82 percent of responding business leaders expressed pessimism about the current government’s economic policy agenda. Sixty-six percent of respondents added that their companies face a high risk of bankruptcy or increased financial fragility if major changes to national economic policy are not implemented over the next three to five years.

Two weeks ago, a celebratory announcement in Baku painted a rosy picture of Turkey-Azerbaijan cooperation. Senior Turkish military and defense industry figures gathered with Azerbaijani counterparts to unveil $500 million in new arms supply contracts, a visible milestone in the bilateral relationship shaped by shared ethnic, religious, cultural, and historical bonds. This partnership was formalized and deepened by the 2021 Shusha Declaration, a mutual defense pact that anchored the two nations’ commitment to one another’s security. Beyond defense, the alliance has grown to encompass multi-billion-dollar cross-investments spanning energy, transportation, construction, and agriculture, making the sudden public eruption of tension all the more striking.

Months after Israel’s full-scale military campaign reduced most of Rafah to rubble, Egyptian construction companies have completed initial site assessments for a new residential development dubbed the ‘Green Rafah’ project in the ruins of the southern Gaza Strip, two anonymous Egyptian sources confirmed to Middle East Eye.

Once a vibrant hub of 250,000 Palestinian residents, home to crowded refugee camps, lively local markets and sprawling agricultural green spaces on Gaza’s southern border, Rafah has been left nearly unrecognizable by the war. Israeli military operations have demolished at least 80% of all structures across the governorate, displacing nearly the entire population and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

A senior Egyptian military source stationed in North Sinai told MEE that Egyptian engineering teams accessed multiple survey sites in eastern Rafah, accompanied and supervised throughout the entire mission by Israeli ground and air forces, before exiting the blockaded Palestinian enclave. Under current plans, the first phase of the development will house approximately 20,000 displaced Palestinians, the source said, with long-term oversight to be carried out by a multinational peacekeeping force that will deploy across multiple regions of Gaza under the terms of the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement.

Debris clearance and full construction work will likely not begin until after Israel’s upcoming national elections, the source added, to avoid the project being politicized by opponents of incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and disrupting the electoral process.

A second source, an employee of the Organi Group, a conglomerate linked to powerful Sinai-based businessman and tribal leader Ibrahim al-Arjani, confirmed the details of the mission, noting company leadership had ordered teams to deploy to the earmarked residential site to complete surveys. Arjani, 49, has well-documented long-standing ties to Egypt’s national security establishment, and has been accused over the years of leveraging those political connections to expand his multi-sector business empire across North Sinai and broader Egypt. Two of his connected firms already hold extensive control over cross-border movement of people and goods through the Rafah border crossing: Sons of Sinai, a construction and contracting firm, manages exit permits for cargo trucks, while Hala for Consulting and Tourism Services holds exclusive rights to coordinate traveler transportation between Egypt and Gaza.

“The survey of the designated area has already been delivered so that the necessary engineering drawings and studies can be prepared ahead of construction, including rubble removal and land preparation,” the Organi Group source said. “Work would proceed once we get the go-ahead to clear the debris and level the land so we can begin construction. Green Rafah is intended to fall under international administration, separating Gaza from Israel.”

Both sources confirmed that construction firms linked to Organi are positioned to secure the majority of the reconstruction work assigned to Egypt, with smaller sub-contracts expected to be awarded to other Egyptian construction companies. MEE requested comment from both the Organi Group and Egypt’s State Information Service prior to publication, but received no response.

The Green Rafah proposal is not an isolated initiative: it aligns with a broader US-backed Gaza reconstruction vision, the ‘New Gaza’ plan, unveiled by former US President Donald Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year. Kushner’s framework calls for a full-scale redevelopment of Gaza, including over 100,000 new permanent housing units concentrated in a redeveloped Rafah, 200 new educational facilities, new industrial zones and upgraded transport infrastructure. The plan has faced widespread criticism for its lack of clarity on critical issues: it makes no mention of transferring land ownership deeds to Palestinian residents, provides no framework for allocating new housing to displaced families, and does not explain how thousands of Palestinians still living in intact structures in central Gaza and western Gaza City would be relocated to make way for planned redevelopment.

Details of the Green Rafah project first emerged publicly in August, when Israeli Army Radio reported that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz had approved preliminary infrastructure work in eastern Rafah, on the Israeli-controlled side of the Yellow Line, for a residential development for Palestinians living outside of Hamas governance. The report added that the project would include full excavation and connection to water, electricity and sewage networks, and that all Palestinian contractors and workers would be required to pass security screenings by Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency before being allowed to enter the work site. Netanyahu’s office later walked back parts of the report, clarifying that Green Rafah is a UAE-backed pilot initiative that had already been in development for several months, with all infrastructure work to proceed under Israeli military oversight.

According to the senior Egyptian military source, the entire survey operation in Rafah has full backing from the United States, with formal instructions conveyed by CIA Director John Ratcliffe during his recent visit to Egypt. During a September 20 meeting in Cairo with Ratcliffe and Egyptian General Intelligence chief Hassan Rashad, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi emphasized the need to fully implement the second phase of Trump’s Gaza peace plan. Public statements released by the Egyptian presidency after the meeting only noted that Sisi called for a consolidated permanent ceasefire, protection of civilian lives, and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid into Gaza, while Ratcliffe praised Egypt’s role in brokering the current truce and ongoing mediation efforts. No public mention was made of the Green Rafah project during the readout.

To date, progress on large-scale Gaza reconstruction remains severely stalled by a massive funding gap. A joint assessment published in April by the United Nations, World Bank and European Union estimated that Gaza will require $71.4 billion over the next decade to recover from the war and rebuild, with $26.3 billion needed in the first 18 months alone. The Board of Peace, the body overseeing the New Gaza initiative, has confirmed that only $280 million in funding has been committed to date. Kushner stated at a Board of Peace event in late September that any company interested in participating in reconstruction will be able to bid through a “transparent bid process”, but the organization declined to answer MEE’s questions about the potential role of Egyptian firms including Organi-connected contractors. MEE also requested comment from the White House, CIA and Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and received no responses prior to publication.

Thus far, only one reconstruction contract has been awarded for work inside Gaza: US-based Louisiana firm Arkel International has been tapped to build a military outpost to house 150 international peacekeeping troops.