Just as they do in England, Gaza’s Christians normally celebrate Christmas with a special meal. It might be stuffed lamb or chicken, with a rich array of salads, vegetable stews, flatbreads and fragrant rice. Their traditional dessert is burbara, a …
Syria is doomed to instability
The House of Assad endured for over half a century, but crumbled in 10 days. Ba’athism is dead and Abu Mohammed al-Jolani now finds himself the de facto leader of a government in Damascus, led by his rebel coalition Hay’at …
How Syria will shape Europe’s future
War is of its nature an uncertain business. Only in retrospect does Assad’s fall, so improbable last week, now look fated. It is ironic, given the opprobrium with which Arab normalisation with his regime was greeted by pro-rebel advocates, that …
Will Syria re-open Lebanon’s wounds?
For most of Lebanon’s modern history, the Assads have been as immovable as its mountains. As far back as 1976, early in the Lebanese Civil War, Hafez al-Assad ordered Syrian troops over the border. And there they remained, for 29 …
What next for Syria?
It was the clock tower that settled it. The images of rebels driving around the central square of Homs, its famous clocktower visible, confirmed they had taken the city. This meant they could now sever Damascus from the coastal regions, …
Hamas is not invincible
It has become conventional wisdom in Washington that Hamas will survive no matter how hard it is pummelled by Israel. Leaders will fall; new leaders will rise. Hamas’s ties to the Palestinian people will sustain it regardless of the horrors …
Hezbollah has weakened Iran
It’s finally over. After 14 months of fighting, including the worst the country has seen in decades, the guns of Lebanon have fallen still. Nothing, of course, is certain: the Israel-Hezbollah agreement may yet flounder, and both sides have already …
The ICC has emboldened Netanyahu
International law has spoken once again. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, are now wanted men. The International Criminal Court has, for the first time in its 22-year history, issued arrest warrants for …
How Israel and Lebanon can stop the slaughter
In the Middle East, transitions between US presidential administrations are often times of bold attempts at diplomacy. It was in the last days and hours of the Clinton administration that intense final status talks were advanced for an Israeli-Palestinian peace, …
What happened to America First?
“No more wars, I’m going to stop wars” vowed Donald Trump in his first post-election speech to voters. And his campaign was marked by his critique of neocon-led military engagements in the Middle East, though with little detail as to …
The art of Trump’s Israel deal
It is tempting these days to think that all reality revolves around the State of Israel, but Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris was overwhelming enough to discredit explanations that stress any single factor. The psychic shocks of the post-October …
Gaza’s children have no future
When I was a boy, growing up in Gaza, we used to play a game called “Arabs and Jews”. Two children would be designated captains and pick their teams, then we would find some sticks, pretend they were guns, and …
Israel’s plan to weaken the Iranian regime
Before Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei set out to conquer the Sunni Arab world in 1989, there were self-imposed rules that set real limits to Arab-Israeli warfare. In all the conflict between Israel and Arab states since May 1948, the world …
Israel and the trials of liberal solidarity
October 7 kicked Israel into terror of body and mind. The savage massacres, unfathomable in themselves; the mounting evidence of rapes, beheadings, immolations; the government’s colossal failure; the nightmare of Israelis, young and old, captive in Hamas tunnels; the foreboding …
The shallow triumph of Sinwar’s death
At dawn on 22 March, 2004, a half-blind paraplegic cleric was returning home after his prayers in the Mosque in Gaza City when he was assassinated by two low flying Israeli helicopters. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was the founder of Hamas, …