The Real Apartheid in the Middle East

by Khaled Abu Toameh • February 10, 2022 at 5:00 am

Where is the outcry from Amnesty International and other human rights organizations? When an Arab country subjects Palestinians to actual apartheid measures, the international community is too busy lying about Israel's alleged abuses to take notice.
"It is estimated that 65% of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live under the poverty line." — UNRWA, October 2017.
Palestinians in Lebanon have long been prevented from practicing such professions as medicine and law, given that only the Lebanese could join professional syndicates.
Thirty-nine professions remain prohibited to Palestinians in the following fields: healthcare (general medicine, dentistry, nursing, midwifery, pharmacy) transport and fishing, services and daycare, engineering, law, tourism, and accounting.
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are at risk of food insecurity, electricity blackouts, increased health problems and complications amid the shortages of medicine and health-care interventions. — UNRWA, January 2022.
"My husband works as a driver and earns less than two dollars a day. We mainly eat vegetables and beans because that's all we can afford. Meat and chicken have become a dream; we can't buy them because prices have increased so sharply. We no longer eat three meals a day, and sometimes I send my kids to bed without dinner." — Rihab Maajel, a 50-year-old Palestinian from Shabriha in southern Lebanon, UNRWA, January 2022.
"I fear that I may freeze to death this winter. I cannot afford to buy gas for heating." — Nawal Kayed, 66, Palestinian in Lebanon, UNRWA, 2022.
The group also noted that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who want to receive medical treatment in a Lebanese hospital have to wait for weeks to obtain a permit. — palhrw.org, January 20, 2022.
When Palestinians in Lebanon cannot feed their children this winter, chalk it up to the world's unjust lethal obsession with Israel.

Five thousand homes belonging to Palestinians in Lebanon are at risk of collapsing and are in dire need of renovation, according to a report in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar. These are the kind of reports that Amnesty International and many human rights organizations around the world apparently choose to ignore because Israel is not involved. Pictured: Jerry-rigged electrical connections between apartment buildings in UNRWA's Borj al-Branjeh refugee camp for Palestinians in Beirut, Lebanon. (Photo by Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)

Five thousand homes belonging to Palestinians in Lebanon are at risk of collapsing and are in dire need of renovation, according to a report in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.

These are the kind of reports that Amnesty International and many human rights organizations around the world apparently choose to ignore because Israel is not involved.

The report was published on the 25^th anniversary of the Lebanese authorities' decision prohibiting the entry of construction and repair materials into Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon without a permit. The decision was issued by the Lebanese government in 1997, and the order for its implementation was referred to the Ministry of Defense because the army is responsible for granting construction permits to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

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Russia Eyeing Kazakhstan? China and Russia Vying for Influence

by Lawrence A. Franklin • February 10, 2022 at 4:00 am

The widespread violent unrest in Kazakhstan and subsequent arrival of mostly Russian troops who helped restore order last month exposed a further contest of rivals for power there between its ostensibly friendly neighbors, Russia and China.
One also might wonder if Russia was taking advantage of the crisis of the large Russian troop presence deployed along the Ukrainian border to divert the West's attention from Putin's objective of also eventually reabsorbing Kazakhstan into the Kremlin's orbit.
Russian troops already occupy portions of several former Soviet republics, including Georgia, the Ukraine, and Moldova -- "uninvited."
Russia also deploys elements of the former 201^st Motorized Rifle Division on its base in Tajikistan, another former Soviet republic.
Kazakhstan is home to 15% of the world's supply of uranium -- necessary for nuclear weaponry as well as nuclear power plants, and is the world's largest producer of uranium.

The widespread violent unrest in Kazakhstan and subsequent arrival of mostly Russian troops who helped restore order last month exposed a further contest of rivals for power there between its ostensibly friendly neighbors, Russia and China. Pictured: Kazakh soldiers patrol on a street in Almaty on January 10, 2022. (Photo by Alexandr Bogdanov/AFP via Getty Images)

What can one believe about the recent events in Kazakhstan? According to the autocratic post-Soviet regime in Kazakhstan, peaceful protests by Kazakh citizens purportedly demonstrating against steep fuel price hikes implemented on New Year's Day were transformed into violent riots by foreign-trained terrorists. There is no indication, however, from the many thousands of arrested protestors that any of them were foreigners.

While the fuel price hike was the immediate cause of people taking to the streets of Kazakhstan's major cities, there also appears to be deep-seated anger over the wealth disparity between elites of the former Communist regime and the rest of the populace. By way of response, Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jobart Tokayev, in an apparent attempt to reduce anti-regime anger, fired his cabinet and canceled the fuel price hike.

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