World News Insights: Opinion Articles

By general consensus, if the policies of President Trump’s first administration were a compromise between his impulses and the doctrines of the pre-Trump Republican Party, then Trump 2.0 is Trumpism in full. The old order is dissolved, the Bush and Reagan Republicans are exiled or subjugated, and…

Extraordinary progress has been made since the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman, and his Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, introduced Vision 2030 and set the Kingdom on a trajectory toward reform and innovation eight years ago. I will not go over the list of everything that has been…

The State of Israel emerged in 1948, and its emergence was accompanied by a war and the expulsion of the Palestinian population. Its birth thus became the foundational act that precipitated many subsequent wars and, eventually, the “Arab-Israeli conflict.” However, its emergence was also…

In one of his memorable comments on the current state of Europe, the late Pope Francis expressed the wish that in a world gripped by turmoil and war the old continent becomes a field hospital for victims from the four corners of the globe. The comment implies that real or imagined victimhood…

Were the Lebanese really liberated on the 25th of May twenty-five years ago? The official answer has not changed: yes. The commemoration of this occasion and its elevation into a national holiday, “Resistance and Liberation Day” was born of this answer. The residents of the region that had been…

In mid-June, the Lebanese authorities will begin receiving weapons handed over by Palestinian factions operating in refugee camps, starting with the camps in Beirut and its southern suburbs. By implementing this decision, Lebanon will end a dangerous chapter of history that began in the aftermath…

For fourteen years, the people of Syria waged a struggle to topple the criminal Bashar al-Assad, defeat Iran and its proxies (foremost among them Hezbollah), and break Russia’s link with Assad. They have been on the receiving end of Israeli strikes both before and after Assad’s fall. The new…

Camp David II ended in utter failure in 2000. However, what concerns us most, here, is how extremists’ campaigns undercut the talks and contributed to that failure. In addition to the fact that they were held during the last year of Clinton’s term, both Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat were outdoing…

The Palestinians, through their legitimate representatives, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian National Authority, have decided to disarm. In full cooperation with the legitimate Lebanese authorities, they are seeking to hand the Palestinian factions’ arms in the camps…

It would be a mistake to overlook the unique opportunities presented by the region’s shifting strategic landscape following the resounding success of President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Until recently, this all seemed almost unimaginable, and seizing this opportunity…

Baghdad is relieved because it managed to avoid falling into several traps. Iraqi factions entertained the idea of expanding the conflict in wake of the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation in Gaza and opening of the “support front” in Lebanon. However, internal advice and external warnings steered Iraq clear…

Last week, global and regional media outlets focused on President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi. Some of the piles of analysis we saw were objective and fact-based; others were fanciful and prejudiced. Some theories have now been shown to be misguided. One is the theory…