World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Last week, a significant number of world leaders, mostly European, and with them US President Joe Biden, came together on the northern coast of France to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the historic Normandy landings. As history books have taught us, these landings marked the beginning of the end…

Once upon a time, a man named Saddam Hussein took a pivotal dangerous decision. He ordered his forces to invade Kuwait and he headed to Basra to oversee the operations. Throughout that day he did not reply to messages that urged him against hurtling towards the abyss. One of the people who worked…

The malaise in Britain’s corporate sector can be traced to policies and problems predating Conservative rule. But successive Tory administrations have been slow to stop the rot. The UK stock market should be beacon of prosperity. Instead, it has struggled to foster and retain high-growth companies…

If we are to believe the press reports and opinion polls, we should expect a dark day for Europe; that day is today. The continent’s elections, according to these reports and polls, could grant the far right more power than the centrist forces, whether on the right or left. This is not good news…

Negotiations are always shrouded in secrecy, with some parties keen on declaring victory for having succeeded in the negotiations and others doing everything in their power to avoid seeming like they had foiled them. However, when in the case of the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza, it is a different…

From Iraq to Lebanon, dates converge and events intersect, but differ only in names, to the point where the history of the two modern countries, that is, since their founding more than a century ago, can be described as a common history of two states, or two common histories of one country. If…

Barring the usual hitches in any plan related to the Israel-Palestine saga, what Washington is marketing as Biden’s peace proposal may soon well become reality. Presented in the classical style of a diplomatic plan the proposal suggests three phases for its implementation. In the first phase a six…

Fatah, which established the Palestinian revolution, and then led it for decades, would not have maintained its leadership during the most critical phase in the history of the Palestinian people if it had not transformed the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Indeed, it was Fatah that…

US President Joe Biden has proposed a three-phase initiative to end the war in Gaza that I have called the "parachute plan." Crucial details, such as what happens the day after in Gaza and who will govern it, have not been addressed by this plan. One of the most notable omissions from the plan,…

What Iraq and Lebanon have in common today is that both are the target of a combined assault: on the one hand, the lynching of the nation-state and the burial of its corpse deep beneath the ground to avert resurrection; on the other hand, the erosion or distortion of national history and culture,…

It is said that in 1897, the great American satirical writer, Mark Twain, famously remarked that "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," after reading his own obituary in a newspaper. This applies to Donald Trump today, after the former - and possibly future - US President, was…

Let me tell you a medical story; you decide what you make of it. A person has a routine medical experience, the kind that all their neighbors have had as well. But afterward they have weird symptoms, odd forms of pain, fatigue that just goes on and on and on. The medical system can’t help them, so…