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Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Friday remained coy over how his group would respond to the assassination of Hamas deputy Saleh Al Arouri in Beirut earlier this week, although he insisted retaliation was inevitable.
“The response is undoubtedly coming,” he said on Friday. “We will not remain silent about a violation of this level because this means that all of Lebanon will be exposed.”
While Hezbollah has insisted it will respond to the attack, it has not given exact details about what a retaliation would look like.
But the Hezbollah chief warned that if Israel's succeeds in achieving its goals in Gaza, south Lebanon would be next.
Mr Nasrallah's speech, which marked the recent death of a close aide, was his second since the killing of Mr Al Arouri on Tuesday.
Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon have engaged in daily cross-border exchanges with Israel since October 8. Those clashes had been confined to Lebanon's southern border, but the strike that killed Mr Al Arouri was the first to hit Beirut since 2006.
Mr Nasrallah said Hezbollah and its allies had carried out 670 operations on Lebanon-Israel border in the three-month period, averaging six to seven a day.
He insisted that Israel was hiding the true extent of its losses on the border as “part of its strategy”.
Israel has said nine of its soldiers and four civilians have been killed since October 8, when Hezbollah first began its cross-border conflict against Israel in an attempt to deter Israel from its assault on Hamas and its allies in the Gaza Strip.
Mr Nasrallah said Hezbollah's actions were part of efforts “to halt [Israel's] aggression against Gaza” and “to alleviate the military pressure on Gaza”.
He warned the Israelis against escalating the conflict on the Lebanon-Israel border, which Hezbollah has attempted to maintain while avoiding a full-scale war.
“The settlers of northern Israel would be the first to pay the price” of a war on Lebanon, he threatened.
Mr Nasrallah also said Lebanon was “facing a historic opportunity today to liberate every inch of our Lebanese land and prevent the enemy from violating our borders and airspace”.
The Hezbollah chief also commended the actions of the group's allies in the region – part of the so-called Axis of Resistance, led by Tehran.
Yemen's Houthis have attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea, disrupting global supply routes with the intended strategy of exerting international pressure on Israel to deter it from its invasion of Gaza. Attacks towards Israel have also been launched from Syria and Iraq.
Anger is brewing in Iraq after a missile, launched by the US, killed a senior leader of an Iran-aligned group. Iraq's Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani said his government would form a committee tasked with ending the presence of US troops in Iraq, who are part of an international coalition tasked with clamping down on any re-emergence of ISIS.
“Today there is an opportunity to get rid of the presence of American forces in Iraq,” said Mr Nasrallah.
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Dolittle
Director: Stephen Gaghan
Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Michael Sheen
One-and-a-half out of five stars
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Diriyah%20project%20at%20a%20glance
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The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
The%20specs
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Jeff Buckley: From Hallelujah To The Last Goodbye
By Dave Lory with Jim Irvin
