🌳 Nine points to peace
Shou el akhbar. Hezbollah has put a nine-point negotiating paper on the table, Lebanon's deposit recovery talks are hitting a wall at the IMF, and the Education Minister just received what could be the most consequential document in Lebanese schools since the civil war. It's a lot for a Saturday morning—let's break it down.
TOP STORIES
Hezbollah Floats Nine-Point Negotiating Paper as Regional Diplomacy Accelerates
- Hezbollah has drafted a nine-point negotiating framework covering a ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal, prisoner exchanges, a pledge against assassinations, reconstruction guarantees, displaced persons' return, and the cancellation of all outcomes from the November 27 session—with no secret annexes.
- Egyptian and Omani channels are now open with Hezbollah, with a senior Egyptian security delegation reportedly visiting and proposing a return to UN Resolution 1701 as the basis for a ceasefire—Hezbollah listened without signaling yes or no.
- Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty's Beirut visit was more than humanitarian theater: Cairo is working alongside Turkey, Qatar, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to broker de-escalation, though frustration is mounting over Israel's refusal to engage the Egyptian initiative.
- Israeli ground forces are advancing faster than during the autumn 2024 offensive, with reports of scenarios extending military reach toward the Zahrani river and beyond the Litani, raising PM Nawaf Salam to formally warn the UN of annexation risk.
The backstory: The November 27 ceasefire agreement formally halted fighting but has held only on paper. Israel has continued military operations in southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah has maintained its armed posture, and the Lebanese state has struggled to assert sovereignty over the south.
What to watch: Whether Iran—which insists any Lebanese settlement cannot be negotiated in isolation from its own standoff with Israel and the US—gives Hezbollah the green light to move from listening to negotiating.
IMF Calls Lebanon's Four-Year Deposit Repayment Timeline 'Unrealistic'
- Banque du Liban Governor Karim Saade and deputies met IMF officials in Paris last week alongside Finance Minister Yassine Jabber and Economy Minister Amir Bsat, in a working session designed to lay groundwork ahead of the Fund's April spring meetings in Washington.
- The IMF signaled that the four-year installment period for deposit repayments in the current draft law is unrealistic, and also questioned the logic of repaying deposits up to $100,000 in cash to all depositors regardless of size.
- The core disagreement remains sequencing: BDL wants to first cancel irregular claims to clean up the banking sector and identify which banks are viable; the IMF wants full bank capital write-down before any restructuring proceeds.
- Parliament's Finance Committee chair Ibrahim Kanaan says he's waiting for a binding written commitment from the government before the Financial Stability and Deposit Recovery bill moves forward—the committee has received objections from multiple international institutions and professional syndicates.
The backstory: Lebanon's financial sector collapsed in 2019, wiping out an estimated $72 billion in depositor savings. A restructuring law has been in draft limbo for years, delayed by the war, political gridlock, and competing visions between the central bank, government, banks, and the IMF.
Why it matters: Every month the deposit recovery law stays unresolved is another month Lebanon's banking sector remains in legal and financial limbo, blocking any serious economic recovery or IMF program.
Lebanon Gets a New School Curriculum—Its First Major Overhaul in Decades
- Education Minister Rima Karami received the draft decree for Lebanon's new national curriculum from the Educational Center for Research and Development president Professor Hiyam Isaaq, in the presence of the full drafting committee of legal and academic experts.
- The curriculum is built on a competency-based approach prioritizing citizenship, modernity, digital literacy, and artificial intelligence integration—a significant philosophical shift from the rote-learning model that has defined Lebanese classrooms for generations.
- Ishaq called the handover a "historic moment," noting the framework includes a national matrix for scope and sequence across all grades, with built-in flexibility allowing partial revisions every three years or adjustments within any subject or grade level at any time.
- Karami will convene a follow-up meeting to finalize observations and prepare the decree for submission to the Council of Ministers, the formal approval step required before implementation can begin.
The bigger picture: Lebanon's last curriculum overhaul dates to the post-civil war reconstruction era of the 1990s, and a generation of students has since navigated economic collapse, multiple wars, and a pandemic with textbooks that never caught up with the world they're inheriting.
QUICK HITS
- The minister who just showed up: Cabinet minister Fadi Maki became a political lightning rod—not for anything scandalous, but simply for attending a cabinet session that Amal and Hezbollah boycotted, prompting smear campaigns and village disavowal statements against him, per Daraj.
- Army on the streets: Lebanese Army Commander Rodolphe Haikal inspected units in Beirut and Saida as the Third Intervention Regiment deployed under a new security plan aimed at preventing tensions between displaced communities and host neighborhoods amid over a million displaced people.
- Egypt docks 1,000 tons: An emergency Egyptian humanitarian shipment of nearly 1,000 tons—medical supplies, food baskets, and hygiene kits—arrived at Beirut Port aboard a CMA CGM vessel under the "Containers of Hope" initiative, delivered free of charge during Egyptian FM Abdelatty's fifth visit to Lebanon in under two years.
- Easter dates, officially: Education Minister Rima Karami announced Easter school closures: Catholic schools off April 2–6, Orthodox schools off April 9–13—a small but welcome bit of calendar certainty in a country that has precious little of it right now.
- 'Now they watch the sky': Around 750,000 people are displaced across Lebanon, and psychologists at Restart Center warn of severe cumulative trauma—one mother described her children no longer reacting to bombs with fear, but simply looking up in silence.
INTERNATIONAL
Hungary's 2026 Election: AI Deepfakes, Russian Operatives, and a Post-Reality Campaign
- Hungary's parliamentary election, set for 2026, has become what analysts are calling the world's first "post-reality" political campaign, with pro-government TikTok accounts flooding Hungarian phones with AI-generated videos depicting opposition leader PĂ©ter Magyar making statements he never made, alongside fabricated invasion threats from Ukraine.
- Russia's Kremlin-backed Social Design Agency has deployed propagandists in Budapest tasked with producing AI videos and mobilizing bot networks, while a Washington Post investigation revealed Hungary's foreign minister regularly briefs Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov after EU meetings.
- The Hungarian government confiscated $82 million in gold and cash from a Ukrainian bank's routine cash-transport trucks in March, arresting seven employees—one of whom lost consciousness after being injected with an unidentified substance—before releasing all of them without charges.
- U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Budapest in February to publicly endorse Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, with Vice President J.D. Vance also scheduled to visit, and President Trump delivering a "complete and total endorsement" by video at a CPAC rally held in Budapest.
The bigger picture: Hungary's election has become a proxy battleground where Russian propaganda infrastructure, U.S. far-right political backing, and AI-generated disinformation are converging in ways that analysts warn could set a template for democratic elections elsewhere.
Germany Races to Build Europe's Strongest Military as Russia Threat Grows
- Germany's armed forces commander General Carsten Breuer has warned that Russia could be capable of launching a large-scale attack on NATO territory by 2029, having rebuilt its military capacity to nearly double pre-Ukraine war levels through expanded conscription and weapons spending.
- Germany plans to spend approximately 162 billion euros (around $175 billion) on defense by 2029, up from 95 billion euros in 2025, after parliament amended the constitution to lift strict borrowing limits—a move one Carnegie Endowment researcher described as a "cultural revolution."
- The Bundeswehr currently numbers around 182,000 troops, with Breuer targeting an increase of 20,000 within one year and 60,000 over a decade, backed by a reservist force of up to 200,000; recruitment applications in February rose 20% year-on-year.
- German trust in the United States has collapsed under Trump's second term—in 2024, 74% of Germans said they trusted the bilateral relationship; by 2025, only 27% viewed relations as good, per Pew Research, accelerating Germany's push for NATO "operational independence."
Zooming out: For the first time since NATO's founding, Germany is positioning itself as Europe's primary conventional military power—a shift that, given its 20th-century history, carries profound implications for how European security architecture is being reimagined without reliable U.S. guarantees.
Scientists Film Whale Birth—and Discover Non-Primates Help Each Other Deliver
- Researchers from Project Ceti, an international whale communication study, documented a sperm whale giving birth off the Caribbean island of Dominica on July 8, 2023, filming the event over nearly five and a half hours using drones, boats, and underwater audio recording equipment.
- The birth itself lasted 34 minutes, during which unrelated adult females dove beneath the labouring mother, positioned themselves on their backs facing her, and then immediately after birth surrounded the newborn—squeezing it between their bodies and pushing it to the surface to prevent it from sinking and to enable its first breaths.
- The findings, published in Scientific Reports and Science, mark the first recorded evidence of birth assistance in non-primate mammals; previously, only humans and other primates were known to help each other through labour, making this discovery a landmark in cetacean behavioral science.
Why it matters: The discovery that sperm whales—whose ancestors returned to the ocean more than 36 million years ago—developed cooperative birthing behavior independently of primates suggests that social support during birth may be a deeper evolutionary imperative than scientists previously understood.
GHER HEK
- Ahmad Kaabour, one day at a time: Daraj published a beautiful tribute to Lebanese singer Ahmad Kaabour—still recording songs, still insisting on finishing "Ounadikom" to the end on stage—a man Beirut made from pure kindness, alongside Marcel Khalife and Ziad Rahbani, woven into fifty years of Lebanese memory.
- Maamoul szn is here: Easter is approaching and Lebanon Traveler has your definitive guide to the best maamoul across the country—from Hallab 1881's classic buttery fillings to Cannelle's French-inflected lighter texture, because nobody in Lebanon agrees on the best one and that's exactly the point.
- Joseph Bou Nassar, gloriously evil: Lebanese acting legend Joseph Bou Nassar described his villain role in hit Ramadan series "Bkhams Arweh" as "the most refined kind of evil"—and revealed with quiet pride that the show's acclaimed cinematography was shot by his own son Kamal, who studied in Australia and returned home.
- Taylor's 41st trophy: Taylor Swift swept the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards with seven wins including Artist of the Year, bringing her all-time record total to 41 awards—and delivered the most relatable speech of the night, reminding everyone she once thought songwriting was just a hobby.
That's your Saturday—go enjoy it.