WorldcrunchElias Kassem is an Egyptian journalist based in Cairo.
The United Arab Emirates has been funding and supplying weapons to the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF), accused of atrocities in Sudan. With the ICJ now hearing a case brought by the East African nation accusing the UAE of being “complicit in the genocide” during the current civil war, it’s up to the international community to put pressure on Abu Dhabi.
President Donald Trump’s proposal for the United States to take over Gaza and resettle the 2.1 million Palestinians living there has pushed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to delay his trip to the White House. But Trump holds some big cards that Cairo knows it will have to face.
Many parties in Syria have resorted to foreign fighters. Following the Assad regime’s downfall, the country’s new government has two options to tackle the issue of thousands of foreign fighters there: either abandoning them, or integrating them into Syrian society.
The recent Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal means that displaced Palestinians could return to their homes in the Gaza Strip in the coming weeks. When exactly will they return? And what will they find there? Palestinian writer Feda Ziyadh, who is among the 2.3 million displaced by the war, considers these questions — which four generations of her family has had to ask.
Palestinians must engage in deep domestic dialogue to end their division and agree on a set of principles to address the towering challenges they face, including their ties with Syria’s new rulers.
The United States, which was stung twice in Afghanistan, recently warned Syria’s new administration against adopting hardline policies like the Taliban. While HST leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has said that he did not want to turn Syria into a copy of Afghanistan, doubts remain over the former al-Qaeda member’s assurances and pledges.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian families have been torn apart by the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza. Cairo-based independent news website Al-Manassa talks with Palestinians in Egypt who are separated from family members trapped in the coastal enclave.
Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, there are many questions about the future of Syria. Yet the regional and international powers who planned his collapse did not consider the Syrian people or their future in their calculations. Syrians may be out of Assad’s frying pan, but they’ve been thrown into a fire of armed fundamentalist groups.
Returning to their destroyed villages in the south, Lebanese found no one waiting for them. Others have no possibility to return. Meanwhile, Israel considers it just a 60-day pause in fighting. What deal was cut behind closed doors?
Israel has been long hailed as an oasis of democratic rule in a region of would-be savage Arabs. But now, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has essentially ruled that it is a racist rogue state.
“Then the white man found the Middle East: a distant place, rich in nature and humanity, with a beautiful climate. He invaded it, then divided it, then separated the sections accordingly.”
Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly urged the Lebanese to turn on Hezbollah, as he drops bombs that kill thousands of civilians. But every citizen knows what an occupier looks like.
Egyptian authorities give Gaza’s refugees a 45-day tourist visa which doesn’t allow them to apply for residency, study or work in the country. But online learning platforms, including the West Bank’s official educational system, are helping children with their schooling, despite the war.
With results in Sunday’s election showed Kais Saied winning the election by a landslide, Tunisia may have definitively returned to dictatorship and closed a chapter on democracy in the Arab world that began a generation ago on the streets of Tunis. Daraj took a pre-election look at what it means for the people who live there.
Israel doesn’t know how far it will push into Lebanon, a great deal will depend on how much resistance they face. All of it adds up to a tragedy-in-the-making for the people of Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out a careful plot to push and ultimately shatter the long-established “rules of engagement” in the Middle East. It caught everyone, from Iran to Hezbollah to the White House, by surprise. The aim is to remake the whole region to revolve around Israel.
The author, whose family was forced to flee during the 1947 “Nakba” expulsion of Palestinians, sees how the event has been used by leaders in the Arab world to wield authority without actually improving anyone’s life.
Striking with the knowledge that innocents will die is the same genocidal approach that has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza. The particular approach, detonating electronic devices by remote control, should worry everyone in the world.
The Muslim Brotherhood is heading back into Jordanian politics, 30 years after being excluded following the 1994 peace deal with Israel. It’s a post-Oct. 7 sign from Amman about the specter of masses of Palestinians flooding into Jordan from Gaza and the West Bank is scary enough to play ball with the Islamist Brotherhood.
Residents of southern Lebanon believe that their hometowns will remain an open arena for a long-term war between Israel and Hezbollah, even if this has only happened so far in a way that allows both sides to stop short of declaring an all-out war.
Hezbollah’s Imad 4 underground missile facility, which was revealed on Aug. 16, is just another layer of the Lebanese tragedy. For Hazem El-Amin, the footage brings back memories of his experience during the Lebanese Civil War.
Imane Khelif not only won a boxing gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, but she also triumphed over brutal stereotyping and ignorance about women that is part of a broader story of sports and politics that traces back to Hitler and Jesse Owens..
Over the past five years, tuk-tuk prices have soared because of a government ban on importing the vehicle, and the inflation waves that rocked the Arab world’s most populous country. But tuk-tuks are not only a preferred system of transport, they are also a source of income for a large part of the Egyptian population — and the price hikes are crushing many young people’s dreams.
Is there anyone among us who can live with the guilt of turning away those who escaped death and sought refuge in Egypt? Can our conscience bear the death of an individual because we closed our door and let him die?
A series of strikes occurred just days after Netanyahu returned from the United States, which will have difficulty denying a role in the targeting of three capitals in the region in 24 hours, and may spark a much wider war in the Middle East.
In the Arab world, it is a regional sport to blast the biases and prejudice of Western media. But voices criticizing the performance of Arab media are rare. That is a serious problem, for multiple reasons.
The Muslim Brotherhood called for anti-government protests on July 12, yet again failing to understand what is really on Egyptians’ minds and overestimating their readiness of taking to the street against the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
The recent images showing a wounded Palestinian tied to the hood of an Israeli military vehicle is not an isolated incident. Despite the accumulation of evidence indicating the Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the country’s politicians and officials continue to claim that their army is the world’s most moral.
In Lebanon, as in many countries in the Arab world, abortion is criminalized, leaving women with few safe options to end a pregnancy. In the Beirut-based independent digital media Daraj, Nour, 20, shares her story of learning she was pregnant out of wedlock and seeking a secret medical abortion.
The Islamic Bands were especially popular in the early 2000s, then became a tool of the Muslim Brotherhood after their victory following the Arab Spring. Then they largely disappeared, until showing up more recently on social media.
Hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers have been detained, many of them deported, in recent months in Egypt amid an orchestrated campaign that is targeting African refugees in the country.
For three decades, negotiations to solve the Palestinian cause focused on giving Israel guarantees and reassurances out of fear for its security and continued existence, not to end the occupation and the suffering of the Palestinians.
The killing of an Egyptian soldier by Israeli fire on the border with Gaza, and Israel’s control of a buffer zone has increased tensions between Israel and Egypt, which finds itself in a difficult position.
The efforts of chief prosecutor Karim Khan to try Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister over the Gaza war could be a starting point to hold Israeli political and military officials accountable for crimes have committed over many years against Palestinians.
The higher cost of the war will not deter Hamas leaders from claiming victory once any truce is reached. It will only push the discussion of a real solution for the region farther away from all.
Prime Minister Netanyahu felt the pressure to follow through on his threats to enter Rafah, which may have earned him the space to finalize a ceasefire and get the hostages back.
With the increase of the tyranny of religious fundamentalism and its bureaucratic apparatus, we see related reactions spreading towards non-normative women. And among those who want to deny rights to trans women are certain feminist groups and activists.
Very different attitudes of modern Egyptian men and women about contraception and family planning — with troubling proof that the idea of sharing responsibility has not gained much momentum in Egypt’s male-dominated society.
Iran has some influence over Hamas, but not like Hezbollah in Lebanon or other Iranian-backed groups in the region. Hamas, instead, has more links with Jordan, the birthplace of some of its top leaders.
With their country in an intractable civil war, thousands of Yemeni women have been unable to obtain passports and other official documents without the permission of a male guardian or relative — as warring authorities have been systematically violating Yemeni law and women’s right to freedom of movement.