JERUSALEM: Israel will allow unvaccinated tourists entry for the first time since the pandemic began as infections and deaths caused by the coronavirus decline, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced on Sunday.

“We are seeing a consistent decline in morbidity data,” Bennett said.

Israel shut its borders to travelers in early 2020 as the coronavirus spread worldwide.

“It is time to gradually open what we were the first in the world to close,” the prime minister said.

The Jewish state was also an early trailblazer of a national vaccine rollout and among the first countries to demand a vaccination certificate, which it called the green pass, to enter a range of facilities.

Under new rules taking effect on March 1, tourists will need to take a PCR test before boarding a flight to Israel and a second one upon landing.

Israeli citizens will only be required to take the test upon arrival.

On Thursday, Bennett cited a decline in infections when he announced an end to the green pass. More than 10,000 new cases of Covid-19 were reported Sunday in Israel, down from a high of more than 85,000 daily cases in late January.

A total of 9,841 people have died from the illness, including seven reported Saturday.

An attempt to open the borders to vaccinated visitors last November foundered after just a few weeks because of the fast-spreading omicron coronavirus variant.

AMMAN: Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood movement has received a huge setback after losing control over the Engineers Association in recent elections.

By losing in places such as Zarqa and Irbid on Friday, the Islamists have lost their last stronghold in Jordan.

Numo — which won Friday’s governorate elections — represents a wide range of engineers who are “unhappy with the way the union worked after 25 years of Islamist influence,” said long-time union activist Mutaz Shawareb. 

Shawareb, a civil engineer, is a nominee on the winning Numo list.

“For years, we have been trying to change the election process to allow for proportional representation and to lower the age of nominees. Despite earlier agreements, the Islamists have rejected the reforms for as long as they have been in power.”

Making accusations of electoral meddling and forgery, the Islamists announced on Saturday that they were withdrawing from elections for the engineering sectors, the office of the head of the union, and the secretariat of the union.

A leader from the Islamist Unified List claimed that Friday’s elections included “the usurping of the will of the engineers as a result of external interventions, bad management, and lack of guarantees for the freedom, integrity, and secrecy of the polls.” 

Engineer Badi Rafia of the Unified List told Arab News that the withdrawal from any further participation was done as a protest against “blatant, rude and direct interventions.”

Rafia, also a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, added: “What happened is a violation of the basic rights of freedom and secrecy of the elections.

“Therefore, we have decided to stay away from this farce comedy so as to keep our professional union independent and to protect the integrity of Jordanian engineers.”

Rafia said that “unprecedented interference by all the parties in the elections led to the forgery of the will of the engineers and their free voices.”

Veteran unionist Shawareb, however, scoffed at the accusations by the losing Islamists.

“Their reaction to the loss was withdrawal from the elections, and this is the kind of excuse that losers make when they are unable to win at the ballot box.”

Zaid O. Nabulsi, a strong critic of Islamists in Jordan, told Arab News that their excuse for the loss was “laughable.”

Nabulsi said: “They are objecting to the fact that their opponents lobbied and united against them.”

He added: “Well, Islamists have been lobbying since the 1970s against us in mosques, schools, universities, and even on street corners.

“Now that they lost, they are playing the victim role, claiming — without proof — that others have forged the results.”

Nabulsi said that the “Muslim Brotherhood are fighting for survival after they were exposed.”

“Ironically, the only place in the region that they have found a foothold is inside the Israeli Knesset, where they have allied with the nastiest right-wing Zionist in the history of the entity,” Nabulsi said.

On Jan. 26, the Islamic Action Front, which is considered the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, announced withdrawal from participation in the local council elections planned for March 22.

Murad Adaileh, director-general of the Islamic Action Front, told Arab News that authorities had failed to take advantage of the “positive results of the recent royal commission for the modernization of political processes.”

A number of prominent Islamists were nominated to the commission, including the head of the fifth Shoura Council Hamzeh Mansour, the former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Abdel Rahim Okor, and former MPs from the Islamic Action Front Dima Tahboub and Ibrahim Al-Izz.

“Although we agreed to some of the results of the royal commission and rejected others, there was premeditation in passing constitutional changes,” Adaileh said. “These changes aimed to transform the country into an absolute monarchy while weakening the authority of the government and instituting policies based on limited freedom, as has been demonstrated in action against a member of the Islamic Action Front in parliament and the arrest of protestors against normalization with the Zionist enemy.”

The Islamists were also sharply criticized by Omar Kullab in an op-ed on Sunday for the Jordanian daily Al-Rai: “What has led to the losses in the Engineers Association elections is a result of their attitude of denial — a refusal to admit the problems that they are facing.”

JERUSALEM: Israel’s prime minister on Sunday criticized an emerging deal over Iran’s nuclear program, saying it would be weaker than a previous agreement and would create a “more violent, more volatile Middle East.”
World powers have been negotiating in Vienna in a bid to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, which was left in tatters after the Trump administration, goaded by Israel, withdrew.
The original deal granted Iran relief from crippling economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. Israel vehemently opposed that accord and has urged negotiators to take a hard line against Iran in the current round of talks.
In a speech to Jewish American leaders Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned that Iran has used the interim period to march ahead with its enrichment of uranium to levels approaching weapons grade.
He also noted the 10-year limits on enrichment and other key aspects of Iran’s nuclear program in the original deal are set to be lifted in 2025 — just two and a half years from now.
That “leaves Iran with a fast track to military-grade enrichment,” Bennett told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
In the meantime, he said that lifting sanctions right away will deliver billions of dollars to Iran to spend on hostile proxy groups along Israel’s borders.
“For Israel and all the stability-seeking forces in the Middle East — the emerging deal as it seems is highly likely to create a more violent, more volatile Middle East,” he said.

He repeated his pledge that Israel will not allow Iran to become a threshold state and said Israel would not be bound by a new deal. “We have a clear and un-negotiable red line: Israel will always maintain its freedom of action to defend itself,” he said.
Bennett delivered a similar message earlier in the day during the weekly meeting of his Cabinet.
Israel considers Iran to be its greatest enemy. It strongly opposed the 2015 deal and has watched with trepidation as the current talks have carried on.
It says it wants an improved deal that places tighter restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and addresses Iran’s long-range missile program and its support for hostile proxies along Israel’s borders, like the Lebanese militant Hezbollah.
Israel also insisted that the negotiations must be accompanied by a “credible” military threat to ensure that Iran does not delay indefinitely.
Under the strong encouragement of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump withdrew from the original deal in 2018, causing it to unravel. Since then, Iran has stepped up its nuclear activities — amassing a stockpile of highly enriched uranium that goes well beyond the bounds of the accord.
Despite Israel’s support for Trump’s withdrawal, prominent voices in the country have said in retrospect that the move was a blunder.
In Iran, meanwhile, the Iranian parliament’s news agency, ICANA, reported that 250 lawmakers in a statement urged President Ebrahim Raisi and his negotiating team to obtain guarantees from the US and the three other European counties that they won’t withdraw from the deal after it is renegotiated.
Iran’s hard-line dominated parliament has the power to approve or reject any proposed agreement between Iran and the other parties in Vienna.
The United States has participated in the current talks indirectly because of its withdrawal from the original deal. President Joe Biden has signaled that he wants to rejoin the deal.
Under Trump, the US re-imposed heavy sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Tehran has responded by increasing the purity and amounts of uranium it enriches and stockpiles, in breach of the accord — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.
Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful. But the country’s steps away from its obligations under the accord have alarmed its archenemy Israel and world powers.
Tehran has started enriching uranium up to 60 percent purity — a short technical step from the 90 percent needed to make an atomic bomb, and spinning far more advanced centrifuges than those permitted under the deal.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told participants at the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday that the talks have come a long way over the past 10 months and “all elements for a conclusion of the negotiations are on the table.” But he also criticized Iran for stepping up its enrichment and restricting inspections by monitors from the UN nuclear agency.
Iran’s foreign minister said that it’s up to Western countries to show flexibility and “the ball is now in their court.”

TRIPOLI: Libya’s interim prime minister announced a series of populist spending plans as he sought to strengthen his position against a push by the eastern-based parliament to replace him.

Abdul Hamid Al-Dbeibah, who has sworn only to hand over power after an election, pledged help for Libyans buying land and homes, and said he would raise some state salaries and continue to subsidise weddings.

However, his position and that of the internationally recognized Government of National Unity that he represents hangs in the balance with the parliament tasking former Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha to form a new administration.

Dbeibah, who outlined the plan in a speech marking the anniversary of the 2011 uprising that forced out Muammar Qaddafi, says he does not recognize the validity of Bashagha’s appointment.

Bashagha has been holding consultations with political and regional factions and is due to propose a new Cabinet next week — a moment that may determine the success or failure of the parliament’s push to replace Dbeibah.

It comes at a key moment in the fragile attempt to wrest Libya from more than a decade of chaos and violence after the collapse in December of a planned national election, as many Libyans fear the new political crisis could trigger new strife.

The parliament, which mostly sided with eastern forces in the civil war that started in 2014, moved to seize control of the political process after the elections collapsed.

Parliament Speaker Aguila Saleh said the GNU was no longer valid and the chamber set a roadmap that involved redrafting the temporary constitution, appointing a new interim government and pushing back elections.

Critics of Saleh accuse him of seeking to postpone elections that would replace the parliament and of abusing parliamentary processes to push through Bashagha’s designation as prime minister, both of which he denies.

Dbeibah has said that eight years after the parliament was elected, its legitimacy has expired and he has promised to issue his own roadmap in the coming days for national elections in June.

LONDON: Lebanon’s health system is in a precarious state following wave upon wave of political and economic crisis. As the country reels from medical supply shortages, COVID-19 case surges and an exodus of skilled medical professionals, the urgency of the sector’s need for outside help is no longer a matter of debate.

In most countries, it might seem reasonable to look to the government to implement reforms to rescue the health system from collapse. But in Lebanon, where it is arguably politics itself that is making the nation sick, the embattled state is unlikely to offer solutions.

A new study led by King’s College London and the American University of Beirut suggests Lebanon’s health system is in decline thanks in large part to the same disastrous political decisions and systemic problems that led to the country’s 2019 economic collapse.

The study, “How politics made a nation sick,” conducted by the Research for Health in Conflict–MENA project (R4HC-MENA), shows how a series of politically driven disasters has created a crisis state that is unprepared to deal with a deepening public-health emergency.

Dr. Adam Coutts, one of the R4HC-MENA project leads, describes the health situation in Lebanon as “a slow moving trainwreck, which sped up in the pre-pandemic period when the economy collapsed in 2019.”

Ever since the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990, sectarianism, clientelism and corruption have dominated political life and driven the country into successive bouts of unrest and instability.

Corruption, hyperinflation and the 2019 banking sector collapse have plunged Lebanon into the worst economic crisis in its modern history. The arrival of millions of refugees from neighboring Syria has only compounded the strain on its creaking infrastructure.

About 19.5 percent of Lebanon’s population of 7 million are refugees from neighboring countries. Already living precariously in impoverished communities, few of them have the means or the connections to obtain vital medications at a time of scarcity.

Meanwhile, the drastic devaluation of the currency has made health insurance unaffordable for many Lebanese.

“The social and economic situation in Lebanon right now is dire,” said Dr. Coutts. “We have been working on health, economic and social issues in Lebanon for ten years and have never seen it this bad.”

The steady depletion of foreign-currency reserves has made it difficult for Lebanese traders to import essential goods, including basic medicines, and has led banks to curtail credit lines — a disaster for a nation that depends so heavily on imports.

Furthermore, patients have been left struggling to access appointments and surgeries as medical staff flee the country in droves.

According to the R4HC-MENA study, about 400 doctors and 500 nurses out of the country’s 15,000 registered doctors and 16,800 registered nurses have emigrated since the onset of the crisis.

To make matters worse, Lebanon’s chronic electricity shortages have forced hospitals to rely on private generators to keep the lights on and their life-sustaining equipment functioning. But generators run on fuel, which is also perennially in short supply.

Despite the severity of the health care emergency, the Lebanese government has been unable to respond, lacking both the financial means and the willpower amid a multitude of overlapping crises.

“Health always seems to be viewed as the poor relation in development and early recovery compared to economic stabilization, education and security,” said Dr. Coutts. “The problem is if we continue to neglect health and health systems this leads to even bigger problems in the future.”

The COVID-19 pandemic arrived at the worst possible moment for Lebanon, further exposing the health system’s weakness and placing additional strain on the country’s battered economy.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic shows, if you neglect health systems you cannot respond to health emergencies,” Dr. Coutts said. “Health is a top concern among people. It’s the street-level issue which affects everything in people’s day-to-day lives. Development needs to be about lives and livelihoods.”

While COVID-19 infections are currently falling in Lebanon, successive waves of the virus have exacted a devastating toll on Lebanon’s health system. In December 2020, for instance, about 200 doctors who lacked sufficient protective equipment to avoid infection were placed in quarantine.

The R4HC-MENA study found that successive peaks of the virus overwhelmed hospital capacity and resources, exacerbating shortage of staff, to say nothing of equipment such as ventilators and pharmaceuticals.

“Many private hospitals were reluctant to undertake COVID-19 care for fear of ‘losing’ income from more lucrative services, losing their physician and nursing staff, and lack of trust that they would actually be reimbursed by the government,” Dr. Fouad M. Fouad, R4HC-MENA project lead in Beirut, told Arab News.

Just when it seemed things could not get any worse for Lebanon’s health sector, the Beirut port blast of Aug. 4, 2020 leveled a whole city district.

More than 220 people were killed in the blast, about 7,000 injured, and some 300,000 left homeless. Within hours of the explosion, people began to pour into the city’s hospitals with all kinds of trauma, disfiguring burns and wounds caused by flying glass and masonry.

However, the blast also shattered the city’s health infrastructure. According to a WHO assessment, four hospitals were heavily affected and 20 primary care facilities, serving about 160,000 patients, were either damaged or destroyed.

“The explosion generated multiple health and rehabilitation needs among survivors,” Rasha Kaloti, research associate on the R4HC-MENA project, told Arab News.

“It also caused many patients to miss routine care for a variety of conditions, including critical care therapy such as cancer treatments, with many having to move to other hospitals, which led to delays and a lack of continuity of care.”

Meanwhile, the mental health impacts of the blast have only now started to become apparent, with survivors experiencing anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Embrace, a mental health awareness NGO in Lebanon, surveyed about 1,000 people aged 18 to 65-plus in the first 10 days after the blast. It found that 83 percent of respondents reported feeling sad almost every day, while 78 percent reported feeling very anxious and worried every day.

The blast has also accelerated the brain drain of skilled workers, including health staff. According to the R4HC-MENA study, 43,764 Lebanese emigrated in the first 12 days after the blast.

R4HC-MENA outlined several recommendations to help Lebanon salvage its health system. “The first thing that needs to happen is that clear political commitments are given to securing the health and wellbeing of the Lebanese and refugees,” said Dr. Fouad.

“A new social contract needs to be created. Just signing a WHO declaration on Universal Health Care is not enough.”

Indeed, the causes of Lebanon’s health care collapse are largely political. For Dr. Coutts, a good first step might be to redefine the definition of “state failure” to incentivize the international aid community to pour resources into the health system.

“It is hard to see how Lebanon is not a failed state when the health system is on its last legs, half the population cannot afford to access the health system, three quarters of the population are on the World Bank poverty line, and a massive man-made explosion occurred in the middle of the capital city for which no one has been held accountable,” he said.

“If that is not state failure, then state failure needs redefining.”