News Sources The Washington Institute
Media www.rajawalisiber.com – Like many Arab countries, Lebanon maintains a decades-old “anti-normalization” law that criminalizes contact with Israeli citizens on penalty of prison.
Since Iran-backed Hezbollah came to dominate the country, the law has also served as a tool to persecute opponents of Tehran’s agenda.
Now Hezbollah and its allies have found a further use for it: to attack the Abraham Accords by telling the 300,000 Lebanese citizens who reside in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain that they will face jail time or worse if they connect with a visiting Israeli there.
Amid economic turmoil and international isolation, this policy threatens to sever one of Lebanon’s major financial and human lifelines to the outside world.
To discuss the perils of such laws and how the United States can work with local allies to overcome them, The Washington Institute is pleased to announce a virtual Policy Forum with Nadim Koteich, Majid Harb, Hanin Ghaddar, and Joseph Braude.
Nadim Koteich is a renowned UAE-based political analyst and satirist who hosts DNA, a daily news and commentary show on the pan-Arab channel Sky News Arabia.
Majid Harb, an attorney and legal activist residing in Beirut, has courageously sued Hezbollah in Lebanese courts, accusing the party of money laundering, customs law evasion, and other criminal offenses.
Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Fellow in The Washington Institute’s Geduld Program on Arab Politics and former managing editor of Now Lebanon.
Her research focuses on Shia politics throughout the Levant. Joseph Braude is president of the Center for Peace Communications, which hosts the Salem Initiative, a project devoted to protecting Arab civil peacemakers from retribution for engaging in people-to-people contact with Israelis.