Al-Akhbar Under Cyberattack for Revealing Saudi, UAE Regimes Bankrolling Normalization Deals

BEIRUT (Middle East Monitor) – The website of the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper has been under a cyberattack since Tuesday morning, following the newspaper reporting on Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates’ efforts to bankroll normalization deals between Arab, Islamic countries and the Zionist regime.
On Monday, Al-Akhbar published a report on Saudi and Emirati plans to finance the new Arab normalization agreements with the occupying regime, citing a Moroccan diplomat anonymously.
The diplomat said that the United States promised countries who sign deals with the regime would receive aid packages and financial incentives.
"[This] will be provided directly by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, or through participation in investment projects in which Israel plays a direct role, especially in terms of logistical and technical expertise,” the diplomat said.
Al-Akhbar also published a leaked Saudi intelligence document, drafted by the head of General Intelligence Khalid al-Humaidan to the royal court in 2018. The document outlines the "limits of normalization benefits” of the Persian Gulf countries from the Zionist regime.
A few hours later, Al-Akhbar’s website was attacked via the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) method, by which hackers flooded the server and pushed it to shut down with more than 200 million user visits in less than 48 hours, according to a statement by the newspaper.
"This cyber attack on Al-Akhbar is not the first of its kind. The newspaper’s website was previously targeted with a similar attack after it published WikiLeaks documents. A similar attack in 2011 was traced back to Israel’s Ministry of Public Security,” the statement said.
It has since released a beta version of the website saying that these cyberattacks "will not change its professional ideals or prevent it from publishing similar documents and that the continuous efforts to silence its discourse will fail”.
Since August, four Arab countries have signed agreements with the Zionist regime - the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September, Sudan in October and most recently Morocco.
The deals have caused anger in the Muslim world. Palestinians have called the deal a betrayal of their cause.