World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Journalists traveling with US Presidential Envoy Amos Hochstein have reported that he did not want to come to Beirut during his recent trip to the region. He felt certain that nothing new would come of the visit, but senior White House and State Department advisers told him that he should make a…

Contrary to the American political tradition, where "federalism" is a concept with positive connotations, the French experience offered a different meaning. The term may have been used as a slur for the first time following the French Revolution of 1789, when cities across France witnessed…

By regarding Hajj, I mean the general affairs of pilgrims and arrangements that - God willing - ensure their safety and security, facilitate their movement, improve the quality of the services provided to them, and allow them to perform their rituals in safety and tranquility. I am not referring to…

News from Lebanon indicates a daily shift towards a more grim and pessimistic outlook. Despite claiming to oppose this trend, many parties seem to be sliding further into worsening conditions, like sleepwalkers heading towards disaster. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned days ago that …

Debates are perilous for incumbent presidents, and for obvious reasons — they have everything to lose and little to gain. Richard Nixon, overshadowed by John Kennedy in the first televised presidential debate in 1960, declined to debate George McGovern as an incumbent in 1972. Gerald Ford’s…

In the past decades, the Middle East has given birth to warriors who dreamed of exhausting the West. Through the “invasions of New York and Washington,” Osama bin Laden dreamed of luring the American army into Afghanistan, hoping to inflict on it the same fate of the Soviet Red Army. He did not…

This time of year, college campuses like the one where I live fill up with high school seniors preparing to make what feels like a momentous choice. The first imperative is to find a school that they can afford, but beyond that, many students have been advised to find one where they can see…

Between Hezbollah’s “hoopoe” drone - which flew in the skies of occupied Palestine and returned with pictures of strategic Israeli locations, especially in the city of Haifa and its port, in addition to important factories and military installations - and the White House “hoopoe”, that is, the US…

It is still too early to decide how Emmanuel Macron might be remembered by history. But one distinction he is unlikely to win is that of “master of timing.” Yet his entourage claims that his decision to call an early general election was a master stroke in good timing. This is how the argument…

I was recently surprised to watch a video dating back to June 2021 in which Yehya Sinwar calls on all Palestinians for a confrontation with Israel, with the aim to establish a state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, and secure the right of return for refugees. The…

In general, it is easy to use a "demographic bomb" to destroy fragile entities like Lebanon. Despite having been around for over 100 years now, the country lacks a national consensus and coherent identity to this day. Lebanon has no ceilings or walls to protect it from regional storms and upheaval…

Silicon Valley prides itself on disruption: Start-ups develop new technologies, upend existing markets and overtake incumbents. This cycle of creative destruction brought us the personal computer, the internet and the smartphone. But in recent years, a handful of incumbent tech companies have…