Hazem Saghieh

Hezbollah, as we have heard from its leader and lawmakers, remains adamant that its weapons will not be handed over, regardless of the terms and no matter the circumstances. It has supplemented this insistence with threats, both direct and indirect, against anyone with the urge to suggest otherwise…

Recently, some Israelis and Jews opposed to Netanyahu’s government have noticed that the images coming out of Gaza resemble, to some extent, images that conveyed faces from the Jewish Holocaust. The densely populated civilian areas punished indiscriminately - killed by weapons as well as starvation…

After the Assad regime fell and the emergence of Sharaa as the new leader, Syrians were inundated with talk of “optimism” and “pessimism.” But, to a large extent, so were the Lebanese, as they had also witnessed a change to their governance. These two concepts, optimism and pessimism, are…

A few days ago, an Israeli website quoted what it called a source "close to Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa" as saying that Syria had demanded that Israel cede control over at least a third of the Golan Heights. One of the two potential scenarios for this "deal" would see “the Lebanese…

The voice of rejectionism, despite coming to us from beneath the rubble, has not stopped trying to convince us of its victory. The fact is that turning the page on this rejectionism- its regimes, its militias, and all its defeated self-proclaimed victors- is the only shift unfolding in the region…

Two extensively developed distinctions often rise to the forefront of debates about peace as concept and practice. The first is the distinction between laying solid foundations for peace, on the one hand, and being content with converting the outcomes of the hostilities into political and legal…

True to form, the Lebanese are evading discussions of existential questions regarding their present and future. Instead of debate, we find vitriolic quarrels in which each side antagonizes the other, using grand causes to score petty points. In similarly typical fashion, their "opinions" reflect…

The apprehension of many, myself included, about the inflated stature that Netanyahu’s Israel will enjoy in the region following recent regional developments is well founded, especially since every country in the Levant has either collapsed or been shattered. Still, it would be misguided and…

After the 1967 defeat, Arab political thought developed a strong penchant for decay, and for divestment from everything that modernity and modern organization of politics and social life had produced, yearning for a return to what had come before. The Islamist critique defined by the formula “We…

One question that has dominated the discussions related to the war between Iran and Israel is whether the Jewish state will manage to become a regional "hegemon"- that is, whether it will manage to win the hearts and minds of its neighbors and engage with their interests. As Stephen Walt has argued…