World News Insights: Opinion Articles

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…

I am always happy when I wake up early on a cold morning in Riyadh and meet my old friends at our favorite cafe in the Business Gate complex. There, we discuss the news, as well as the performance of major corporations and brands. We agree and often disagree, as it is natural for people to differ,…

Today, Iraq seems to be both an identity searching for a location and a location searching for an identity. These two perplexed searches suggest two things: that the country is undergoing a foundational phase- in the sense that it seeks to align the location and the identity, and to link them to a…

In 2012, the commander of Al-Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, received in Tehran a Hamas official named Yehya Sinwar. Observers said the Iranian general and the Palestinian visitor with a “Brotherhood” and security background hit it off. They added that the meeting ended with both men feeling that…

Love it or hate it, the United States has an imperial presidency, and in his first term, Donald Trump demonstrated a record of using such powers with noted relish on the world stage. As in many areas, he does not have a conventional approach to global relations. But it may turn out that, like…