Hazem Saghieh

Until the 1970s, a proclivity for one-size-fits-all solutions to the region's problems had shaped Arab political thought, particularly in the Levant. "Unity,liberation," and, occasionally, socialism initiated by a "national democratic regime," were presented as the pathway for realizing the…

One can confidently say this that year was the autumn of illegal arms. The trade in illusions and lies of the hollow “resistance” of Hezbollah was exposed. Non-state actors’ failures have shown that they neither deter nor protect. Their arms could not even protect the men who carry them, let alone…

Hezbollah has, for the thousandth time, refused to lay down its arms, as have Hamas and Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujabaa. It is, of course, easy to demonstrate how Iran’s wishes and its need for the continued armament of our militants contribute to determining their stance. Radical…

The conclusion Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli religious and nationalist Right drew from the October 7th operation is that “strength is the only thing Arabs understand," and that Hamas’s operation had provided them with an opportunity to act on this principle. This conclusion was not an epiphany…

Some events may seem insignificant, yet it is precisely their insignificance that gives them importance. I am referring here to the “Arab Socialist Baath Party” in Lebanon changing its name to the “Hezb Al-Raya Al-Watani” (National Banner Party). As for the first reason for its importance, it is…

Every now and then, we find, despite everything that has happened and continues to happen, someone getting up to deride Lebanon’s “sectarian system” and hold it responsible for the condition of the devastated country. The “sectarian system” is not something one can defend, nor can it be absolved…

Why were the forces of the “Axis of Resistance” defeated in the war triggered by the October 7, 2023, operation? Why have the regimes of the Arab Levant, along with their societies, been dragged, as a result of this defeat, into a second defeat that could prove even more bitter and cruel? Why has…

Iraq’s designation of Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis (Ansar Allah) as terrorist organizations, whose assets must therefore be confiscated, was a warm-up for ending the era of Iranophilic militias. Swiftly walking this step back, under the flimsy pretext that the designation had been made …

Most of all in the Gaza Strip, but also in Lebanon and Syria, the options have been narrowed down to two, both of which could be named after the two men behind them, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. It is either the American “applying pressure” or the Israeli “being pressured,” per the…

“New Gaza” and “Green Rafah” are the two catchwords of a rubric coming at us with promises of a prosperous future for Gaza. They join the other catchwords for rubrics that mirror real-estate projects and profitable ventures, after the French Riviera was proposed as the model to emulate. One…