Worldcrunch
Iranian officials have been unnerved by the Assad regime’s collapse, with one top general admitting the country was “defeated very badly” in Syria. A shaky ceasefire in Gaza follows 15 month of war in which Tehran’s proxy Hamas was decimated. Will unrest in the region spill over to Iran, where problems — both foreign and domestic — are piling up for the regime?
Israel has killed thousands of Hamas fighters. But the Gaza-based terrorist organization has not yet been completely destroyed, nor have its allied militias in the region.
Qatar was crucial to the ceasefire negotiations in the Middle East. It proves that you don’t need a large army or nuclear weapons to play an important role in the world.
Janurary 20 – January 26, 2025
As the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire offers brief respite for Gaza, the Arab world’s response remains divided. While some celebrate diplomatic efforts, others remain skeptical, highlighting the ongoing humanitarian toll and the uncertainty of lasting peace.
As Israel and Hamas reach a ceasefire deal, one major question is who would lead Gaza in the post-war period. That person must not only be acceptable to Israel and the United States, as well as the Arab and international parties but also to the Palestinian people and the people of Gaza. Among the most prominent names is Mohammed Dahlan, whose real ambition is to lead a united Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 1,000 healthcare workers have been killed in the war in Gaza. Those on a mission to save lives are losing their own in what some human rights groups say are systemic and targeted attacks on medical facilities in Gaza.
A ceasefire could happen any moment now in Gaza, with Donald Trump’s surrogates playing a key role in softening Benjamin Netanyahu. The president-elect wants to reenter the White House having already ended a conflict, even if nothing is actually resolved for the long term.
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 radical far-right in Israel’s government is demanding to build settlements in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s army is creating the conditions for this.
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.
Palestinian writer Feda Ziyadh shares a personal fear, which she says cannot be understood or explained: that of getting used to a sense of the present that has been created by what she calls a “saga of displacement.”
Israel’s decimation of Iran’s proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and now events in Syria, have shown the Tehran regime is far weaker than it had wanted the world and its neighbors to believe. The Supreme Leader is now scrambling to rationalize it all, as the Islamic Republic clings to power.
After meeting Bashar al-Assad, then heir to the Syrian dictatorship, then Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said he feared for the country’s future.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, use of the term “evil” has increased. The more heinous and public the murder, the more the evil of the murderer would be revealed and “the world” would be pushed to intervene. Yet in both Syria and Gaza, that world has been satisfied with symbolic responses.
Israel and Lebanon have reached a U.S. and France-brokered ceasefire agreement. It’s an intricate agreement that requires a withdrawal of Israeli forces within 60 days, contingent on Hezbollah retreating north. And it shifts focus, allowing the war in Gaza to continue unabated.
Tipped to succeed slain leader Yahya Sinwar, Hamas commander Mohammed Deif, has just been targeted by an ICC arrest warrant. Back in July, Israel said Deif had been killed in a strike, but Hamas has insisted that he is alive and well.
Palestinians need to rationalize their anger and resentment for the sake of a humanitarian project that enjoys global support.
In his first term, Donald Trump tried to undermine the strategy that Jordan had bet on for more than two decades, to protect itself from the risk of transferring the Palestinians from the occupied West Bank to Jordan. What will a second Trump term mean for the country?
In more than a year since the Israel-Hezbollah conflict escalated, news of bombing has become a habit in Lebanon. In an essay for the Beirut-based independent media Daraj, Lebanese journalist Pascale Sawma discusses how war has become “normal” — and what that means for her and her work.
The question of who will succeed Yahya Sinwar is essentially a question of whether Hamas will return from its “Iranian exile” and embrace the Muslim Brotherhood.
The death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack is just the latest Israeli strike against those who have tried to monopolize the notion of “resistance” as a purely military pursuit. The result has been the absolute destruction of Gaza, and now Lebanon, and the reinforcement of the Israeli occupation.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and above all ‘mastermind’ of October 7, is dead. Washington and Paris are calling on Israel to seize this opportunity to put an end to the war, but Netanyahu may choose to cash in another dividend.
October 21 – October 27, 2024
The Israeli military says Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, has been killed in Gaza. The strike is a major victory for Israel, closing a chapter in recent Palestinian history in which Sinwar rose to the top of Hamas, and bet everything on the Oct. 7 attack, which made him more divisive than ever among the people of Gaza.
Israel’s war on Gaza has turned into a bloodbath, as ultimately demanded by the country’s ultra-religious rulers to remain in power as long as possible.
Benjamin Netanyahu escaped the growing calls to stop the war in Gaza and bring the hostages back, by launching another war on Hezbollah. It’s a taste of what’s to come.
Israel’s aggression over the past few months, no matter how successful, is ultimately a sign of its weakness. Yet it is able to achieve its goals from the support it receives from a number of players inside and outside the region, whether they realize it or not. That even, paradoxically, includes Iran.
The international press is marking one year since Hamas militants launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, triggering a war that has killed tens of thousands and triggered a dangerous escalation in regional tensions. “A complicated grief” as one headline put it…
Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei vowed on Friday that the country’s regional allies would “not back down” against Israel. Yet neither criticism of Tehran has been growing among Hezbollah supporters since the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah.
Was it the “Mother of Miscalculations?” Tehran’s decision to launch a second missile attack on Israel demonstrates its weakness at home and abroad. The Iranian regime may soon face the consequences, as a possible series of events could be triggered by a reprisal from the better-equipped Israeli military.
The call in Lebanon to “postpone politics” is driven by a narration of the war as a religious, and not a political, event: that’s the root of Hezbollah’s ideology.
Israel has killed Hassan Nasrallah, longtime charismatic head of Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah. His recent leadership had been marked by a new kind of realism in the face of the balance of power, and served as a complement to Hezbollah supporters’ knee-jerk celebrations even when they are defeated.
Nearly a year into the war in Gaza, the people of Lebanon are paying a price for both a failing of Hezbollah security, and more broadly for a support war so ambiguous that it’s impossible to understand its cause, purpose, or if anything has been achieved.
As Israel pounds Hezbollah in Lebanon, after its well-orchestrated attack on the group’s remote devices, the militia’s patrons in Tehran were increasingly concerned they could become the next targets of Israel’s ruthless campaign.
It was the exceptional time that changed the equation, and revived the Palestinian dream. It also awakened the hidden Israeli plans: the extermination of the Palestinian people, the liquidation of their cause, and the evacuation of their land.
With its unprecedented attacks on pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon that again killed innocent victims, Israel now faces the risk of losing the war not just on moral and legal grounds, but also from a strategic perspective.
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.
If there is a real peace project and an Israeli intention to solve the Palestinian tragedy, Hamas would have lost its justification for existence. Not just Hamas, but all the resistance factions.
It’s been weeks since Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s killing in Tehran. Will Iran end up striking Israel, as it promptly said it would, or persist in an unnerving waiting game, leaving the rest of the word in the dark as to its plans, resolve and capabilities?