Sam Menassa

The "2023 Gaza War" that began just over three weeks ago has turned long-held beliefs and formulas for understanding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on their head. The developments seen will inevitably have political and military implications for the countries of the region. It will change their…

The Aqsa Flood operation Hamas launched against Israel could change the course of the entire region’s politics for decades to come. Israel’s wound will not heal quickly or easily, given the sense of humiliation it engendered and the number of people killed, wounded, and taken hostage after Hamas…

A conversation with a senior figure who has occupied several high-ranking positions pushed me to write this article. Our discussion revolved around political powers that have become part of the system despite operating outside of it. Lebanon has undergone several major crises since its…

Rarely have global politics seen changes and shifts like those that have occurred since the war between Russia and Georgia in 2008, which was the first of its kind in Europe after World War Two. It was then followed by Russia's invasion of the Crimean Peninsula, and finally, the ongoing Ukrainian…

It has been exactly thirty years and three weeks since the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were signed, and the situation in Palestine, and the conditions of the Palestinians, are worse than ever. Indeed, parts of the West Bank are on the brink of turning…

The developments seen in the region over the past few days and weeks seem contradictory and incomprehensible, from the visit of the US Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Energy Security Amos Hochstein’s visit to Lebanon, which coincided with the arrival of Iranian…

The third anniversary of the Beirut port blast was uneventful and failed to rise to the occasion. This was evident in both the turnout and the speeches and testimonies that were delivered. Most of them were mundane and monotonous, rehashing the same talking points, providing an assessment of the…

There is nothing new about the infighting among the Palestinians in the Ain el-Hilweh camp near Sidon, the capital of southern Lebanon. City locals and the Lebanese in general have grown accustomed to the cyclical violence of the Palestinian factions, and their approach to settling differences,…

More than anything else, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech marking the anniversary of the July 2006 war was blunt and explicit. He told us that instead of equivocation, this moment demands clarity. The speech left no contentious questions unanswered and presented no…

The most accurate way to see the military operations in Jenin, West Bank, and Gaza, is that they were conducted during a domestic standstill in Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu feels the impact of this standstill particularly sharply, as well do the Palestinians and the impotent and worn-out Palestinian…