World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war in Gaza lacks a clear long-term political plan. That is evident from his recent suggestion that Arab countries help a Palestinian civilian government run Gaza after the war. Outside the framework of perpetuating the conflict without ending it…

I am still uncertain about the implications of US President Joe Biden’s decision to suspend “advanced weapons” to Israel in response to the defiance of Benjamin Netanyahu and his “war cabinet,” who have ignored Washington’s “requests” that they refrain from invading the city of Rafah. Frankly, I am…

While it’s become fashionable to dump on the aging social media platform Facebook, I quite enjoy using it. Many of my high school and college friends use it to celebrate birthdays and share news of their children and their travels. Eight years ago, I reconnected with a college housemate on the…

A ceasefire agreement between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas hangs in the balance. The two men principally concerned know that it would spell the end of the war, and that ending the war means the beginning of their political end. The war will end one day, whether through a negotiated ceasefire that…

Given his experience, Yehya al-Sinwar knows that nothing can break the will of an Israeli government and its generals like one of its soldiers being taken prisoner by the Palestinians. In 1988, Sinwar was again arrested and sentenced to four life terms. But in 2011, he was freed, along with 1,026…

Foreign policy can make a mockery of moral certitude. You’re trying to master a landscape of anarchy policed by violence, where ideological differences make American polarization look like genial neighborliness, where even a superpower’s ability to impose its will dissolves with distance, where any…

Let us remember what happened in Beirut in 2002 for a moment. Despite over two decades having gone by, recalling this juncture remains useful for understanding the present. Not only has the past not truly passed, it has become more present and painful with time, and its meanings have become more…

Every country that was plagued by foreign occupation gained its independence through national struggle that sprung from its own land and nation and made the occupier’s continued presence unsustainable as the losses came to outweigh the gains. This was and remains a law governing the relationship…

To those of us old enough to remember the good (or bad) old days of student revolt in Western universities in the 1960s, current disturbances in a number of European and American universities appear as a bad remake of a controversial original. The current disturbances are on a much smaller scale. …

Because nothing is more important than warding off the imminent threat to Lebanon, preventing its annihilation, and protecting the lives of its people, UN Resolution 1701, which created a bulwark protecting the country after the 2006 war, has been rediscovered. Is it still a lifeline that can save…

While colonialism, including the settler variant, is obviously an acute and vicious problem in Palestine and for Palestinians, this does not mean that decolonization is a universal issue that all of humanity must contend with. In fact, this assumption goes against the popular claim that…

Hamas agreeing to a ceasefire on Monday evening, especially since it came after Israel had called on the residents of Rafah to evacuate that morning, shows that Rafah, not even the Israeli hostages, was Hamas' last bet. What happened, according to the news reports and statements we saw on Monday,…