World News Insights: Opinion Articles

In some of the ancient civilizations each year was designated with a label rather than a number. For example, there was a Year of the Locust, a Year of the Flood, or a Year of Golden Harvest. Following that tradition, what label do you think would suit 2025? One suggestion is: the Year of…

In biology, the concept of “adaptation” was introduced to describe how human beings adjust to rapid environmental change. The timeline of this adaptation varies from one species to another. It is a useful concept for those interested in animal husbandry, as acclimating animals to a new reality…

President Donald Trump is now working from Florida after he and his senior aides left the White House for the Christmas and New Year holidays. Crises do not take days off, but they do follow their protagonists, and so the three mediators followed their American partner in Miami. Seeking to…

On December 19, 2025, US President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which included the permanent repeal of the Caesar Act. Nearly a month earlier - before this step lifted the crippling sanctions imposed on Damascus under the former regime - Ahmad al-Sharaa visited the…

It is difficult to understand developments on the two burning fronts of Lebanon and Gaza in isolation from the outcomes of Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington. The visit is unlikely to generate magical solutions to these deeply complex crises, but it could determine whether the growing…

How difficult it is to wait in Gaza; hungry children wait for meals and mothers wait for a let up from the wind that has uprooted tents and rainwater that has spread diseases. Fathers are helpless as they wait on weak pledges and face the cruelty of the enemy. How difficult it must be to have…

You are watching the 2016 Republican primary campaign, trying to figure out if Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio can stop Donald Trump from winning the Republican nomination. A man from the future steps out of a shimmering portal and informs you that the winner of the primary campaign will go on to be the…

The conclusion Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli religious and nationalist Right drew from the October 7th operation is that “strength is the only thing Arabs understand," and that Hamas’s operation had provided them with an opportunity to act on this principle. This conclusion was not an epiphany…

The Sydney attack that targeted Jewish Australian citizens that everyone condemned, Arabs and non-Arabs, Eastern and Western alike, and was denounced even by the staunchest supporters of the Palestinian cause because it assaulted civilian citizens solely because of their Jewish faith, after a…

Lebanese equivocation is a chronic existential threat engendered by successive periods of subjugation and occupation. These factors have generated two discourses: both considered “patriotic” by those who espouse them but irreconcilable. Together they encapsulate Lebanon’s divisions over major and…

I was pleased to take part in The eleventh Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) held in Riyadh this week, a capital of alliances and coexistence, in the presence of the United Nations Secretary-General Mr. António Guterres; Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Saudi Minister of…

Some events may seem insignificant, yet it is precisely their insignificance that gives them importance. I am referring here to the “Arab Socialist Baath Party” in Lebanon changing its name to the “Hezb Al-Raya Al-Watani” (National Banner Party). As for the first reason for its importance, it is…