Hazem Saghieh

One cannot fail to notice the perpetual re-emergence of a sharp contrast between two spectacles. On the one hand, we have the scenes from festivities organized by parties that are labeled ideological or secular, in commemoration of an anniversary or in honor of a founder or leader. On the other…

A few days ago, French President Emmanuel Macron said that today’s conflicts are being waged in outer space and that wars of the future will begin there. After going over the threats posed by Russia, he announced that France will allocate billions of euros for military spending in outer space. …

The administration of the Beirut theater “Masrah Al-Madina” has announced that it will hold a gathering under the title “Reviving Hamra Street: Memory and Life.” The fact is that there is a need and demand for such an effort, especially since Hamra Street is unlike any other street in Beirut, nor…

Every now and then, a public figure gets up to reconsider his previous positions on the Lebanese Civil War that erupted in 1975 and did not end until 1989. In saying that his generation had burdened Lebanon with more than it could bear, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam became the newest member of this…

Many hyperbolic and false claims, in both directions, have been made about the New York mayoral race and Zohran Mamdani’s victory. Contrary to the campaign that smacks of McCarthyism launched by his opponents, he is not a communist nor a jihadist, nor is he a threat to Americans. And contrary to…

The Levant, in the broader sense that includes Egypt, is currently moving in several contradictory directions. From the moment that the cessation of hostilities went into effect in Gaza, "corpses" have dominated the headlines. Counting, returning, and examining corpses, verifying the identities…

Is Iran changing? We might be on the eve of something of the sort. Since the murder of Mahsa Amini in the summer of 2022, overt defiance of the compulsory veil has been increasing. After the recent war, several clips of women challenging this law have gone viral on social media; some of them are…

Since the early-mid nineteenth century, with the reforms of Egypt’s Ibrahim Pasha and the Ottomans’ Tanzimat, two broad historical narratives have been wrestling over history and, by extension, reality. However, these two grand narratives have branched off into many sub-narratives, with new…

The question of arms and disarmament has, in the cases of Hamas and Hezbollah, taken a trajectory that does not align with the population’s suffering, nor the ethical obligations dictated by the population’s living conditions and the need to end that suffering. From the very beginning, the…

The great modern-era defeats of the Levant have never raised the issue of these countries’ territorial integrity or questioned it. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. As these recently established countries had been basking in their nascency and independence, military coups brought to…