Every student of political science knows that politics, whether we call it a science or an art, is about the state: it revolves around state affairs and examines its possibilities, weaknesses, and strengths, as well as proposing alternatives when conditions deteriorate, or thinking about how to…

As some voices call on Hezbollah and Hamas to become more open to criticism, increasing numbers are demanding that no criticism be made of either groups while they fight Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. Faced with such an appeal, one would assume that one of two things has happened: ● Either the…

One of the "ingenious innovations" of the Russian Civil War that broke out following the 1917 October Revolution, was the establishment of "blocking units," communist forces positioned behind the soldiers fighting on the front lines. As for their task, it was to shoot the soldiers fleeing battle…

As has become clear for all to see, there are two stages in the negotiations regarding Palestine-Israel: The first deals with an immediate question of security, and it is essentially aimed at bringing about a six-week ceasefire during which dozens of Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian…

The matter will not be of interest to those who see politics as the "art of the impossible." As for those who see it as the "art of the possible" and believe that a lot of compromise and half-solutions are inherent to it, they cannot but be struck by the remarks of Democratic Senate Majority Leader…

Tragedy has hit one country of the Arab Levant after another, and yet a foundational tragedy has been deliberately neglected, despite the fact that many of the others were either linked to it or caused by it. The prominent position that Arab nationalists and socialists have occupied in Arab…

Reading the extensive interview (published in three episodes by this newspaper) that my colleague Ghassan Charbel conducted with Yasser Abed Rabbo, the former Secretary-General of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), is the sort of exercise that could make a…

The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) may have been the first to defend the notion of legitimate opposition, albeit somewhat reservedly. He argued that the opposition should have a limited negative role in overseeing the government's work, but he warned against taking discord and splits…

The matters addressed here are not novel, but they have resurfaced with unprecedented clarity since the war on Gaza broke out. That is because the milieu of Arab intellectuals seems, once again and more than ever, highly inclined to describe and extremely reluctant to prescribe. Here,…

We do not need to be too patriotic, or well-intentioned, to realize that all the Lebanese have something to gain whenever two sectarian communities come closer to each other. However, that is not what happened when Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) signed the Mar Mikhael Understanding…