03/10 18:00 - Reading : 4 minute(s)
Nawaf Salam Lebanon Syria Gaza Hamas United States
A year after Israel defanged Hezbollah, and in the wake of the annual opening of the UN General Assembly and several developments related to the Middle East, it may be a good time to take stock. In my 38-year career of diplomacy in the Middle East, anytime someone expressed optimism, I would suggest a head examination might be in order. However, ...
04/11 09:00 - Reading : 6 minute(s)
Lebanon Hezbollah Pope Vatican
Pope Leo XIV’s expected visit to Lebanon later this month comes at a moment of peril for the country. Lebanon’s most recent war, launched by Hezbollah on October 8, 2023, has barely ended, with Israel threatening to renew the conflict at any moment should Hezbollah not disarm. The Lebanese government has pledged to assert state power and ...
10/12 17:10 - Reading : 6 minute(s)
Israel Benjamin Netanyahu USA Lebanon Syria Gaza
On December 2 Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israel Defense Forces soldiers wounded in recent fighting in southern Syria. Their injuries followed a November 26 IDF raid on the village of Beit Jinn in southern Syria, an operation that left several Syrians dead and wounded a number of Israeli soldiers. Netanyahu had a ...
10/12 16:15 - Reading : 4 minute(s)
Lebanon Israel Palestine Syria Tom Barrack
U.S. envoy Tom Barrack keeps warning that Lebanon will be “reabsorbed” into Syria unless Hezbollah is disarmed, a historically unfounded threat from someone who derides the Sykes-Picot boundaries as colonial nonsense yet treats Syria’s borders as sacrosanct. His selective anti-colonialism spares Syria, disregards Kurdish and Druze ...
10:30 - Reading : 6 minute(s)
Lebanese Army Lebanon US congress NDAA Hezbollah Disarmament
The U.S. Congress has sent a clear, stern message to Beirut that Washington’s support for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) is no longer a blank check. The latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), up for a vote in the House of Representatives, imposes new conditions and restrictions on U.S. aid to the Lebanese army, ...
31/10 09:00 - Reading : 2 minute(s)
Lebanon Hezbollah Palestinian camps United States
The killing of Elio Abu Hanna by Palestinian gunmen in Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp this past weekend is not just another crime. His murder is a serious test for a Lebanese government dragging its feet on its commitment to disarm Hezbollah and other militias. There is no reason the Shatila refugee camp should remain off-limits to the ...
04/10 17:30 - Reading : 3 minute(s)
Lebanon’s Constitutional Council issued a ruling partially annulling Law No. 23/2025 on banking reform and restructuring, following an appeal filed by ten MPs. In form, the Council accepted the appeal, as it was filed within the legal timeframe and met all procedural requirements. In substance, it decided to annul parts of the contested ...
08/12 11:00 - Reading : 5 minute(s)
Lebanon Israel Hezbollah United States
Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Leiter’s diplomatic opening to Lebanon is a major turning point amid the encumbered political horizons, uncertainties, and doomsaying enveloping the country. Coming at the heels of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s peace offer, the benevolence and the moral density of this statement cannot be overlooked ...
10/12 18:00 - Reading : 5 minute(s)
Psychoanalysis Path Desire Culture Way Culture
Within this framework, the statement can be read as an ethic of movement, desire, and fruitful incompleteness. It suggests that truth is not a fixed object, but a direction; not a trophy, but a process. Likewise, failing is not a mistake, but the condition of one who is on the journey. As Franck Pavloff, French writer and psychologist, puts it in ...
15:00 - Reading : 6 minute(s)
Lebanon Syria Hezbollah Sunnis Divisions Shia
There was an unmistakable irony on Monday as Lebanon’s “Sunni street” marked the first anniversary of the fall of the Bashar al Assad regime. The same community that has condemned its Shia counterparts for venerating Iran’s rulers now engages in the same political canonization, this time for Syria’s new leaders. The motorbike convoys ...
09/12 18:05 - Reading : 3 minute(s)
Lebanon Hezbollah Israel United States UNIFIL France European Union
Through Jean Yves Le Drian and the French military team in Lebanon, France has informed Lebanon’s political and military leadership that it is ready to take charge of an international force to be stationed south of the Litani River once UNIFIL pulls out at the end of 2026. The message added that Paris is working to rally backing for this ...
20/10 16:00 - Reading : 5 minute(s)
United Kingdom Prince Andrew London Prince William King Charles III
On Friday evening, Prince Andrew, long embroiled in scandal, announced he would relinquish all his royal titles and honors under pressure from his brother, King Charles III, and heir apparent Prince William. Accused of sexual abuse dating back to 2001, involving a 17-year-old and linked to his controversial friendship with billionaire Jeffrey ...
14/07 11:15 - Reading : 4 minute(s)
Lebanon Syria Islamist Hezbollah
The issue of Syrian prisoners in Lebanon has resurfaced, alongside that of Islamist detainees, many of whom have been held for years without trial or clear charges. This tragic reality highlights a blatant pattern of ongoing political and judicial injustice, where hundreds of individuals are denied their most basic legal and human rights under ...
06/08 15:50 - Reading : 4 minute(s)
Nawaf Salam Lebanon Hezbollah Joseph Aoun
Yesterday, an exceptional Cabinet session was held at the Baabda Presidential Palace, lasting nearly six hours and marking a major political turning point in Lebanon’s modern history. Under the presidency of the Head of State, General Joseph Aoun, the government adopted a bold and unprecedented decision: to set a deadline for the disarmament ...
2024-07-25 12:05 - Reading : 6 minute(s)
Last Friday morning, the world was hit by one of the most significant IT blackouts in history. Thousands of Windows machines failed to boot up or reboot, disrupting banks, airlines, TV broadcasters, healthcare companies, major retailers, and numerous other businesses globally. While the cause of the outage is known and efforts to restore ...
15/11 10:30 - Reading : 7 minute(s)
Following Saint John Maron of Kfar-Hay (685–770) and Saint George of Yanouh (770–1120), Patriarch Peter I established his seat at Our Lady of Ilige in 1121. Ilige lies in a valley of the Mayfouq region, high above Byblos, annually cloaked in a thick mantle of snow. The monastery of Our Lady was built upon the remains of a Phoenician temple, ...
2024-12-28 16:50 - Reading : 4 minute(s)
One might think that Hezbollah has a short memory. But no. It resorts to manipulation and counts on the very short memory of certain Lebanese who still see it as a protective shield because they do not want to – or dare not – face reality. They refuse to admit that if part of Lebanon is destroyed and if the Israeli army is present in certain ...