Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

The Shia have a problem. While many Sunni-majority states, from the Gulf states to Turkey, have achieved varying degrees of governance success and economic growth, Shia-led political projects have little to show for themselves. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, they have been at the center of wars, terrorist networks, and state failure even as Iran sits atop some of the world’s largest energy reserves. So what, exactly, has gone wrong?

As nationalism and modernization swept across the globe in the 19th century, Sunni Arabs were divided over how to respond. The debate centered on whether Islam should adapt to modern ideas of government and progress or return to what some viewed as its 7th-century purity. This intellectual movement became known as the Arab Renaissance. At roughly the same time, Jews worldwide engaged in a parallel debate—the Haskalah, Hebrew for “enlightenment” or “reason”—about their place in the modern world.

The Sunni conversation produced secular, often military, regimes whose governance record proved disastrous. When those failed, they were replaced by Islamists who insisted “Islam is the solution.” Those efforts, too, ultimately collapsed. The Sunni states that fared better were the ones that evolved more organically with less foreign meddling, chiefly the Gulf monarchies and Turkey. The Jewish Haskalah, meanwhile, gave birth to Zionism, one of the most successful national projects of the modern era, culminating in the creation of Israel.

The Shia, by contrast, were largely absent from these debates. In Sunni-majority countries and Iraq, they were excluded from the political conversation and left on the margins. The few Shia scholars who produced serious work, such as Iraqi historian Jawad Ali and sociologist Ali al-Wardi, rarely addressed the specific political and economic challenges facing their own community. Ali wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Twelfth Shia Imam and the evolution of Shia political thought, but he published it only in German, fearing the wrath of Shia hardliners. The book was translated into Arabic only after his death.

As time passed, swelling Shia populations gravitated toward secular ideologies such as pan-Arab nationalism and communism, yet even within these movements they felt marginalized. They were primed for a national project of their own, but who would do the intellectual heavy lifting? With their intellectual ranks so thin, the vacuum was filled by a toxic alliance of Shia clerics and communists.

The clerics imported notions of Islamic government from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, while the communists contributed the language of the “downtrodden” and mass politics. The grotesque hybrid that emerged was Velayat-e Faqih, the “Guardianship of the Jurist,” that anchored the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The term “Islamic Republic” is itself an oxymoron. In traditional Shia theology, the legitimate ruler, God’s shadow on Earth, is the hidden Twelfth Imam, who has been in occultation since the 9th century. In his absence, ordinary Shia were historically told to obey the clerics on religious matters and to remain loyal citizens of whatever state they lived in. In the Islamic Republic, the supreme leader simply anointed himself the Imam’s deputy and claimed divine authority. Beneath him is an elected president, hence the “republic.”

The communist elements erased borders and fused Iranian imperialism with a transnational Shia identity. The result is a structural deformity seen across countries with significant Shia populations, where cleric-commanded militias within parallel power structures often outmatch the national army.

Whether in Iran through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or in Lebanon through Hezbollah, this duality erodes the rule of law, subordinates the economy to ideology, and cedes foreign and defense policy to the militia, leaving the hollowed-out state to manage everything else. Successful modern states cannot function this way. In functioning states, foreign and defense policy serve the economy, while the Shia Islamist model of governance subordinates the economy to ideology.

Significant criticism of this stillborn project within Shia communities remains limited, as many self-identified Shia intellectuals function primarily as propagandists for the Iranian regime and its proxies. They do not debate the fate of the Shia community or its political organization in ways compatible with the 21st century. Instead, their goal is to accelerate martyrdom in service of a death cult invented by Ruhollah Khomeini and consolidated by his successors.

The Shia problem runs far deeper than Iran’s nuclear program, its missiles, its control of the Strait of Hormuz, or the terrorist militias it commands across the region. At its core, the crisis is one of identity. The Shia must revisit who they are, disentangle religious and mystical beliefs from the practical interests of believers, and accept their role as citizens of the countries in which they live. The Shia debate must start in earnest and its transnationalism must end.

By ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN

The Jerusalem Post

Attorney Alan Dershowitz’s bestselling 2003 book The Case for Israel was flawed from the get-go by the fact that its author is Jewish and American. This is a topic best handled by an insider – and not a Jew, but an Arab. An Arab with intellectual curiosity, integrity, courage, and journalistic expertise. Lebanese-Iraqi journalist and scholar Hussain Abdul-Hussain fits the bill.

His current work of political analysis and essays The Arab Case for Israel is the book that I would recommend above all others for anyone who sincerely wants to understand the entrenched conflict between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Raised in Beirut, Baghdad, and Baalbek, Abdul-Hussain witnessed Israeli airstrikes as a child, marched in anti-Israel protests as a young man, covered Middle East news for Beirut’s The Daily Star, and then plunged into rigorous research that blew his previous misconceptions out of the water.

Abdul-Hussain’s case for Israel rests on decades of firsthand experience in the Arab world, years of work in Beirut, Kuwait, and Washington as a journalist and policy analyst – currently he’s a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies – and an authentic familiarity with the Arabic-speaking world, Hebrew source material, and Western attitudes toward the Middle East.

His meticulous examination and exhaustively footnoted presentation of historical facts challenge the foundational yet fictional or ignorant narratives that dominate Arab and Western progressive discussions of Israel. Anyone could dig up this information, but few bother to do so.

This extraordinary work is not just a debunker of decades of damaging propaganda.

The author makes two compelling overall observations: that the Jewish state is good for the Arabs; and that the Arabs have never articulated a cogent alternative, dwelling on an imagined past rather than an imagined future.

“Palestinians have always wanted to rewind the clock, but to what time, exactly?… The problem for Palestinians has been that no matter which period in history they chose, they would never find a time when the Arabs of Palestine were sovereign over the land,” he writes.

“Throughout history, the only locals to have ever been sovereign over the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea were… the Jews.”

And, “Palestinians have never admitted their inability to imagine a future modern Palestine, or their failure to build a single modern institution in their history, let alone to build and manage a functioning state that is not the kind of medieval Islamist emirate that Hamas constructed in Gaza after 2007.”

Arabs should seek peace with Israel ‘out of conviction’

Arabs should seek peace with Israel, he writes, not “out of despair or fear, but out of a conviction that – as a friend and an ally – the State of Israel is much more valuable to the Arabs than ejecting it and constructing in its stead a Palestine that would, at best, be a mediocre state.”

When Abdul-Hussain arrived in the United States in 2004, he studied Hebrew until he was fluent enough to read and listen to Israelis debating in their native language.

“My biggest surprise was that, unlike most Arabs and I had thought, the Israelis were not obsessed with killing Arabs. The Jews around the world had a story of their own, one that made sense,” he writes.

His research revealed that “when the PLO was founded in 1964, its primary motive was to join Egyptian Nasser’s United Arab Republic, which had lost Syria in 1961 and failed to annex Yemen after 1962. Palestine was a Nasser project, both to exact revenge on his rivals Jordan and Saudi Arabia – who obstructed his annexation of Yemen, and to compensate for losing Syria and Yemen in his union. So much Nasserism was behind the declaration of the PLO and Palestine that Saudi Arabia voted against the creation of Palestine at the Arab League at the time.”

Abdul-Hussain observes, “Since the time Muslims gained power over Jews and others in the region, they had treated them the same way they treated one another: coercion by violence. Originally, this was typical for empires subjugating those they colonized. But since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, it took on nationalistic characteristics, and this was when the story of Palestine was honed, evolving into the imagined nationality that we see today: the one that claims to have unfairly lost its sovereignty to the Jewish state, despite never having existed as a sovereign state.”

Concerning the explosive topic of Jerusalem, he discovered that “In over two millennia, since the Arabic language first started taking shape, there was never an Arab or Muslim dynasty that considered Jerusalem to be its capital.”

These and many other revelations led him to believe that “Perhaps if the Arabs, including Palestinians, realize that their national identity is not as ancient and fixed as they think, they will find it easier to trade it for more useful advantages, such as a higher standard of living.”

Abdul-Hussain calls for Arab introspection and a substantial adjustment of their viewpoint “not only to let Jews live in peace, but for the sake of a better future for the Palestinians and all the Arabs.”

If they ever choose to “prioritize measurable higher living standards over unquantifiable, manufactured, and manipulative concepts of pride, dignity, and national sovereignty, they will realize that peace with Israel, rather than defeating it, is their actual victory.”

As if acknowledging how naïve that all sounds, the author bluntly outlines the high cultural hurdles blocking such a radical change.

“It is Palestinians that need to be liberated, not Palestine,” he declares.

“Arab society is perhaps one of the most violent on the planet today … whether in the form of militias, bandits, secret police, thugs, honor crimes, and domestic abuse. Yet now, since the theory of ‘decolonization’ has become all the rage in Western academia, inadequate Islamic traditions that should be replaced with modern ideals are being praised as indigenous.”

Nor is Abdul-Hussain naïve about the likely reaction to his writings. “I have no illusion about the insults, invective, or worse that the thesis I present in this book will bring upon me,” he writes.

The book also considers a host of related angles, including ever-evolving geopolitical obstacles to peace (“Qatar with its soft power, and Islamist Iran with its militias in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen”); the sickly government-to-government Egyptian-Jordanian model of peace vs. the healthy people-to-people model of the Abraham Accords; and “the destructive politics Islamization has brought with it to the American scene.”

A comprehensive section on the history of the region, up to the present day, should be required reading in every American institution of higher education. It’s been well documented that students and faculty attending anti-Israel demonstrations know little about Israel or its neighbors and how the conflict has shapeshifted over time. I consider myself fairly well informed, but I learned much from this section, especially regarding the inner politics driving Israel’s neighbors.

The Arab Case for Israel is jam-packed with quotable insights. In choosing a few to share in this limited space, I zeroed in on quotations regarding the rise of Islamism and its implications:

“As Islamism replaced Arab nationalism, so did Islamist anti-Judaism replace Arab nationalist antisemitism. … The Arabs switched from recovering the Arab province of Palestine and annexing it to the imagined greater Arab nation, to engaging in a zero-sum religious war between Islam and Judaism.”

“The Iranians imported from the Egyptians the idea that Islam was not only a religion, but a comprehensive social and political code that was superior to all other global creeds.”

“Hezbollah was not founded to liberate Lebanon, or Palestine for that matter. It was created as one of the arms of Islamist Iran in its global fight against America and the West.”

“Activist Arab- and Muslim-Americans clearly endorse Islamism as a system superior to democracy and Western ideals. … The war on Israel, a liberal democracy, is one of their fronts … [and] is, for the Arab Islamists who are leading the fight against the West inside Western countries, just a stepping stone to their vision of destroying Western civilization as a whole.”

Though much of the book may leave readers hopeless of any possibility of getting past the complex web of hatred, intrigue, and politics to the ideal of mutual understanding and peace in the Middle East, there are some glimmers of positivity within the pages, too.

In the chapter on the Abraham Accords, Abdel-Hussain writes, “Hundreds of thousands of Arabs, whose countries have no ties with Israel, live in the UAE, and many of them are now getting the chance to see Israelis up close, as regular people, just like them. Such experiences have humanized Israelis and Israel in the eyes of many of my friends and family who live in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.”

Abdel-Hussain acknowledges that his observations on emerging issues, such as post-Assad Syria, will necessarily be incomplete or obsolete, given the rapidly evolving events buffeting the world. The book was issued on February 26, and by the following week the chapter on Iran already could have used a major update. Nevertheless, the history and insider insights the author provides to frame these issues remain instructive and valuable.

Whether this important book proves to enlighten and even possibly change minds – especially in the media and on college campuses – or whether its influence will stay within the pro-Israel echo chamber remains to be seen. Either way, people with a sincere desire to more deeply understand this intractable conflict should put The Arab Case for Israel at the top of their reading list.

THE ARAB CASE FOR ISRAEL AND OTHER ESSAYS FROM A DISTANT CONFLICT
By Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Wicked Son/Z3 Institute
for Jewish Priorities
330 pages; $18.99

Even if the establishment of the State of Israel brought injustice to Palestinians and Arabs, accepting this reality, moving forward, and treating Israel as an advanced country in a region surrounded by failing states is a net gain for Arabs. It serves their national interest and represents a far wiser, more productive use of time and resources than attempting to rewind history to an era before Israel existed, an era when, frankly, very little of note existed either.

I make this case in my book, which was released today: The Arab Case for Israel.

Order it here: https://a.co/d/0iyjiFj2

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

Walid Jumblatt, Lebanon’s most seasoned and cunning political operator, has navigated every twist of the country’s turmoil since taking the reins of the Druze community in 1977. Convinced that his father Kamal’s assassination stemmed from political overreach, Jumblatt has pursued relentlessly cautious and conservative policies, always hedging his bets and aligning with the likely winner at home and abroad.

Jumblatt’s one bold deviation came in 2005, when his Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) supported the pro-Western March 14 alliance that emerged from the mass protests that forced an end to Syria’s hegemony over Lebanon. But Hezbollah’s May 2008 military attack on its political opponents in Lebanon, which threatened Jumblatt’s ancestral stronghold in the Chouf, pushed the Druze leader back into a defensive minority mindset.

While Jumblatt’s risk-averse stance has spared the Druze from bloodshed, it has condemned the community to a marginal existence in Lebanon. The once prosperous and politically commanding Druze are now impoverished and sidelined in their historic mountain stronghold.

In 1932, Lebanon’s last census pegged the Druze at roughly seven percent of the population. Recent voter rolls, updated through 2026, put them at approximately five percent. Like nearly every non-Muslim minority in Lebanon and the broader Levant—with the exception of those in Israel—the Druze are dwindling.

Without reversing this trend, extinction looms for the Druze and similar groups. Jumblatt himself acknowledges the decline. He likens his community and the Maronites to Native Americans, doomed to lose their ancestral lands.

Jumblatt recognizes the threat, but has taken no decisive action to counter it. What distinguishes Jews from other regional non-Muslim minorities is their refusal to accept demographic erasure—they have fought relentlessly for survival. Jumblatt, by contrast, appears resigned to his sect’s purportedly inevitable fate.

It need not end this way. Perhaps genuine retirement is overdue, passing real power—not just a figurehead role as head of the PSP—to his son Taymour. Some observers claim Taymour may break sharply from his father, seeing peace with Israel as vital for Lebanon and especially its Druze. However, his intentions remain uncertain.

Historically, the Druze have depended on self-reliance and geographic isolation, using rugged mountain terrain to deter potential invaders, particularly Islamist militants. At their peak between the 16th and 18th centuries, they wielded enough power to rule Mount Lebanon and territories beyond.

Globalization and the knowledge economy have flipped the script on Druze survival, which now requires openness and engagement. The Druze still hold territorial control over their mountain home in Lebanon, which needs to become a hub for tourism, education, and skilled services to reverse stagnation and population decline.

They can insulate their enclave from Lebanon’s Palestinian entanglements and leverage their political influence to champion normalization with Israel. Ultimately, minorities flourish in peace and wither in war.

In this time and age, the Druze of Lebanon and Syria should be free to openly express their views, like their brethren in Israel. Policies rooted in the historic survival tactic of Taqiyya, or protective concealment of their faith, will not cut it anymore.

Jumblatt lacks any vision for the future. His strategy clings to the status quo while preserving his personal dominance. It shields the Druze from regional firestorms but blocks access to resources, investment, and growth.

He must wean his community off dependence on foreign patrons. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait face fiscal constraints; their aid to sustain Jumblatt’s patronage machine is outdated. Qatar may fund him, but only with heavy Muslim Brotherhood conditions that are incompatible with Druze beliefs and traditions.

To reverse Druze decline and prosper, Jumblatt—or his successor—must embrace the community’s potential and modernize the mountain’s economy following Dubai’s model. This can be achieved by attracting diaspora seed capital, inviting genuine market capitalism—not political cronyism—and building economic momentum.

He should abandon pro-Palestine rhetoric, which no longer yields tangible benefits. When Israel recently announced new West Bank measures, only five Arab League members signed on the statement that condemned them, while most stayed silent. Among Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) states, condemnation was even thinner.

Shouting about Palestine is a hollow relic, useful only for performative politics. Real Druze growth demands fresh policies, and normalization with Israel would facilitate their progress. Jumblatt must either reinvent his approach or step aside. Let his son Taymour—or another Druze leader—seize the moment and push forward the necessary change.

Lebanese voters are expected to go to the polls in May to elect a new parliament. Reviving Lebanon and its economy requires candidates to champion normalization with Israel. If Jumblatt joins such a campaign, the fate of the Druze—and the prospects of his successors—will be much brighter.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

The Jewish Chronicle

Last week Thursday, Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman visited Washington and met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Senator Lindsey Graham. The Saudi readout said the meetings reviewed “strategic relations between [the two] countries, prospects for enhancing cooperation… and efforts to advance regional and global peace and stability.”

The next day, state-sanctioned sermons in Saudi Arabia featured rhetoric that could hardly advance regional peace. In Mecca and Medina, government-appointed imams called on God to support “our downtrodden brothers in Palestine,” to “reverse their weakness into strength,” and to grant them “victory against the Zionist aggressors.” These clerics are state employees, and the content of their sermons is approved by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs.

The surge in anti-Israel – and at times even antisemitic – language, evident across editorials, columns and state-aligned media, is unmistakable. It marks a clear shift in the policy of Saudi Arabia, whose crown prince and de-facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), once described Israel not as an enemy but as a potential ally. The reasons are multifaceted.

Riyadh has been lobbying Washington to confront the Iranian regime since at least 2002, when the late Saudi King Abdullah visited President George W. Bush at his Texas ranch. “Cut off the head of the snake,” the Saudi monarch urged, a request Bush later recorded in his memoir Decision Points.

As Washington hesitated, Saudi Arabia gradually gravitated towards Israel, which shared the kingdom’s fear of the Islamist regime in Tehran.

In parallel, when MBS first came to power in 2015, high oil revenues allowed him to experiment with reshaping Saudi society. Islamism was repressed and women were granted expanded rights, including the ability to drive and travel independently. After 9/11, Saudi Arabia had already curtailed domestic Islamism – the kingdom’s most effective tool for projecting influence abroad. MBS went further, promising to transform Saudi Arabia into a Middle Eastern analogue of Dubai, the city many Arabs and Muslims aspire to live in.

But with revenues shrinking due to persistently lower oil prices, MBS now finds it harder to keep the Islamist genie in the bottle and appears to be loosening his grip to relieve internal pressure.

Vision 2030 – an ambitious plan to diversify Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy, reshape its society, and position the kingdom as a global investment hub – now appears increasingly out of reach. As a result, the crown prince seems to have abandoned the Emirati model of economic transformation – moving from oil rents towards services – and replaced it with a Turkish-style approach: masking economic trouble with populist appeals to restored Islamic glory, beginning with hostility towards Israel.

Saudi Arabia’s shift back towards Islamism may have been inspired by Qatar and Turkey, whose Muslim Brotherhood-aligned policies expanded their regional influence without triggering alarm in Washington, thanks in part to the strength of Doha’s and Ankara’s lobbying operations in the US capital.

Meanwhile, Iran is no longer the existential threat that once pushed Riyadh towards Jerusalem. Over the past year, Israel has weakened Iranian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, contributed to the downfall of Tehran’s ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and – in June – directly bruised Iran itself, significantly degrading the regime’s ability to project power across the region.

Saudi Arabia thus found itself freer of the Iranian menace and, with that, saw little urgency in pursuing either an implicit defence pact with Israel or an explicit one with Washington – both of which would have required normalisation with the Jewish state.

At the same time, the survival of a weakened Iranian regime has become more valuable to Riyadh than the prospect of a sanctions-free Iran capable of flooding an already oversupplied global oil market. With additional supply expected from countries such as Venezuela – and potentially Iran itself – oil prices are likely to remain under pressure, posing a serious challenge for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), whose social contract rests on generous state spending.

That model worked in the 1970s and 1980s, when oil prices were high and populations small. Today, Saudi Arabia’s population has grown dramatically, while energy revenues are far less reliable. Budgetary belt-tightening now threatens the foundations of Gulf stability.

Of the six GCC states, only Qatar and the United Arab Emirates currently enjoy sustained budget surpluses. Qatar benefits from enormous gas revenues and a small population, while the UAE anticipated the end of oil-driven largesse and diversified its economy over the past two decades. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, remains heavily dependent on oil income and has struggled to balance its budget.

By late 2025, Saudi Arabia drew on its sovereign wealth fund and turned to bond markets through its state oil company, Aramco.

Despite these measures, the fiscal outlook appears increasingly strained. With political change effectively impossible—since leadership transitions could unleash unrest over austerity—Saudi has reverted to the most familiar tool for deflecting domestic discontent and bolstering popularity: hostility towards Israel.

After 9/11, the United States removed two Sunni regimes – the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq – allowing Iran to expand its Shia influence across the region. That expansion was eventually halted and reversed by Israel after October 7. Washington tolerated the post-2003 Shia expansion, a mistake with long-term consequences. Today, it is watching – at times even cheering—the spread of Sunni Islamism, which may prove just as dangerous.

Saudi Arabia sees little reason not to ride this rising Sunni Islamist wave, using it to expand regional influence while diverting attention from domestic economic turbulence. Washington must wake up to the Sunni Islamist threat before it finds itself confronting yet another variant of the same old menace.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

Lebanon’s neutrality in regional conflicts is the single most important strategic choice it can make today, serving its core national interests and those of Israel in equal measure. If the Lebanese understand this, their country will be well on its way not only to recovery but to an economic boom.

More than a year after the November 2024 Cessation of Hostilities between Beirut and Jerusalem, Lebanon stands at a pivotal moment. Hezbollah’s military capabilities have been severely degraded, Iran’s regional axis has weakened, and a new executive under President Joseph Aoun is asserting state authority. Yet everything feels precarious and reversible.

Aoun should hit the road and campaign across Lebanon for peace, explaining to the Lebanese the endless benefits of Lebanon’s non-alignment in regional conflicts, a policy that gave Lebanon its golden days in the 1950s and 1960s. When Arab regimes fought the devastating Six-Day War of 1967, Lebanon — only a stone’s throw away from the unfolding events in the Syrian Golan — was instead reaping the economic benefits of sitting out the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Neutrality—detaching Lebanon from proxy wars, Iranian entrenchment, and the “resistance” ideology—offers the only credible path to sovereignty, reconstruction, and long-term prosperity. It would end Lebanon’s history of abuse as a battlefield for others, beginning with the disastrous 1969 Cairo Agreement, under which Lebanon conceded its sovereignty to Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) militias. Decades later, the country has yet to fully regain it.

Neutrality would also allow the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to enforce the state’s monopoly on weapons. Freed from external agendas, Lebanon could rebuild its infrastructure, revive banking and tourism, attract diaspora investment, and position itself as a stable, innovative hub. In doing so, it would become the envy of a fractured region, much like the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, countries that prioritized pragmatism over ideology and entered into the Abraham Accords with Israel.

Israel’s interests in this matter converge with Lebanon’s in near-perfect harmony. A neutral Lebanon would eliminate the existential threat on its northern frontier. Jerusalem would no longer need to contend with Hezbollah’s arsenal, Iranian weapon factories, or the risk of a surprise multi-front war.

Since communities in the Israeli Galilee are located minutes from the border, any security incident immediately endangers civilian life and national security. While Lebanon’s partial implementation of the cessation of hostilities has lowered these immediate risks, sustained neutrality would cement these gains.

Israel’s decision to retain limited strategic positions on five Lebanese hilltops reflects its demand for verifiable assurance against Hezbollah’s rearmament and should not be misconstrued as territorial expansionism. In late 2025, direct civilian-led talks between Lebanon and Israel expanded channels beyond strictly military matters, demonstrating Jerusalem’s openness for deeper engagement once Lebanon proves its commitment to staying out of regional conflicts.

Both countries’ mutual interests stand in stark contrast to the unreliability of other actors. The U.S. chairs the ceasefire monitoring mechanism hosting the talks and has sent envoys, yet its support is inconsistent, shaped by domestic politics, election cycles, and broader negotiations.

The U.S. has abandoned its partners before. Syria’s Kurds serve as the most recent example. Lebanon could easily become a bargaining chip in talks over Iran, energy corridors, or other priorities.

Like Washington, Arab capitals with interests in Lebanon tie their support to their own agendas. Saudi Arabia long viewed Iran as an existential threat and pursued policies to weaken the regime, a stance that helped counter Hezbollah and bolster Lebanon’s sovereignty.

But with Tehran now weakened, Riyadh prefers a hobbled Iran under sustained sanctions to a revitalized one that could surge oil exports and further depress already low prices. Today, therefore, Saudi interests diverge substantially from Lebanon’s.

This makes allying with Israel Lebanon’s best option. Bound by geography, Israel has an inescapable, self-reinforcing stake in Lebanese neutrality, as instability next door directly threatens its own citizens. No distant power can match thislevel of enduring commitment.

Aoun has gone to places in talks with Israel no Lebanese president has gone to since 1983. But for more durable results, Lebanon’s president should travel to Jerusalem and address the Knesset, declaring neutrality as a shared national interest: “a quiet, secure border that allows Lebanon to rebuild its future and Israel to live without fear from the north.”

Such a move, reminiscent of Anwar Sadat’s historic November 20, 1977 speech to the Knesset, would signal irreversible intent, unlock reconstruction aid, invite technical cooperation in water management, agriculture, and technology, and open pathways to joint economic initiatives.

Skeptics will point to history, including the wars in 1982 and 2006, lingering grievances, and to official Lebanese positions linking broader relations to the Arab Peace Initiative from 2002 and Palestinian statehood. Yet historical wounds do not have to dictate the future. The alternative to Lebanon’s normalization with Israel is a grim scenario of renewed proxy wars against Israel, fought on Lebanese territory, and economic stagnation.

Lebanese neutrality would deliver what both Beirut and Jerusalem need most. With it, Lebanon would regain agency and revival, while Israel would secure lasting calm without the burdens of occupation. The convergence of interests between Israel and Lebanon is no longer deniable, and the moment to act is now.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

Algemeiner

“Land for peace,” the mantra since Camp David, has brought the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to a dead end, with Palestinian militias remaining active despite the promise of statehood. It’s now time to reverse this broken policy into “peace for land,” where Palestinian acceptance of Zionism earns them territory to govern themselves. A version of this model is being tested in Gaza as part of President Trump’s peace plan. Its success is imperative. Its failure risks more of the same.

“Land for peace” is outdated — it belongs to 1967, when a fledgling Israel sought Arab recognition. The late Defense Minister Moshe Dayan delivered his famous statement after Israel took the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Sinai from Egypt. To his offer, the Arabs responded with the famous “three nos” from the Khartoum Arab League summit.

Israel has come a long way since 1967, growing from a young nation seeking acceptance to a confident and strong one whose friendship is now sought after. When Saudi Arabia was on the cusp of securing a normalization deal with Israel, in 2023, but then slammed on the brakes by inserting a Palestinian state as a prerequisite, a senior Israeli official told a small gathering, in confidence, that “Israel has lived 77 years without normalization with Saudi Arabia, and can afford another 77 years.”

The problem is that the Saudis are still hung up on the old days, when their country was the biggest, wealthiest, and most influential. In 1981, when Riyadh first proposed the “two-state solution” according to the principle of land for peace, the Saudi population was six million — one-sixth of what it is today. Global oil prices were skyrocketing, Saudi GDP per capita was among the highest in the world, and surpluses allowed the kingdom to buy enormous influence.

But today, Saudi Arabia needs to sell every barrel of oil at around $96. The 2025 global market price hovered around $65. Riyadh funded a significant portion of its expenditures through borrowing. Its deficit ballooned to $65 billion or 5.3 percent of GDP. And if Venezuelan oil comes back online — and maybe Iran’s too — the Saudis will find it extremely hard to balance their books.

If the Saudis don’t transform their economy to services, the very social contract of the Saudi kingdom will start shaking. To keep it stable, populism — in terms of Islamism and antisemitism — will be the most effective tool, thus pushing Saudi Arabia further away from peace.

And yet, the Saudis still believe that peace with Israel, along the lines of “land for peace” and without the Palestinians agreeing to Jewish nationhood, is a reward to the Israelis, who, for their part, are not lured by the Saudi offers and counter by offering “peace for peace” that serves the mutual interests of both countries.

But as long as the Saudis hang on to the antiquated “land for peace,” and as long as Palestinians — alongside Qataris, Turks, and the Muslim Brotherhood crowd in general — hide their hate toward Zionism behind the “two-state solution,” peace will not come. The order for peace must be reshuffled.

First comes Palestinian and general Arab endorsement of Zionism — that is, the acceptance that Israel is the country of the Jews on their land. This means that, if there is ever a two-state solution that mandates Jews pull out of the Palestinian state, it also means that all Arabs live under Palestinian rule and that the Palestinian leadership relinquishes what it calls the “right of return.”

Once it is established that Palestinians and the Arabs understand they cannot use demographics as a Trojan Horse to undermine Jewish sovereignty, peace becomes within reach.

And once the 8 million Jews of Israel are reassured that the 493 million Arabs are not out to get them and take away their state, the rest becomes administrative detail: Palestinians will be able to govern themselves within delineated territory that does not even need a barrier with Israel, just like any two states within the US or the EU.

This is what peace looks like, and it can only be the result of “peace for land,” not “land for peace.”

As for Saudi Arabia, if it signs “peace for peace” with Israel, not only will its economy have much better chances of transforming into services, but its newfound friendship with Israel becomes an asset for Palestinians. If Israel trusts the Saudis, and the Saudis guarantee that Palestinians have come to terms with Zionism and want to live at peace with a Jewish state, then we’re almost near the finish line.

It is unfortunate, however, that the Saudis seem to be going in the opposite direction. They’re taking the Palestinians with them and wasting more time on top of all the decades wasted because of unrealism, populism, and the hope of one day seeing Israel go away.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

The new regional order taking shape appears to be a haunting inversion of the post-9/11 era. At the time, the U.S. smashed Sunni powers, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, incidentally empowering Iran and its sprawling proxy network. Washington even called Shia Islamism the more “reasonable” alternative and partnered with Tehran against Sunni jihadists. Today, Washington is poised to make a similar mistake.

Hamas’s October 7 massacres of at least 1,200 Israelis shattered illusions about the rationality of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance,” and spurred Jerusalem to deliver crushing blows to Tehran and its proxies. Having witnessed the destruction of the Shia axis, Washington is betting on different iterations of the Muslim Brotherhood as a “moderate” counterweight. Sunni jihadis, turbocharged by Qatar’s soft power, are now rushing to fill the regional power void.

The collapse of the Iranian-led Shia Islamist order has been swift. In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s diminished influence opened doors for the new government, which has yet to grasp the opportunity. In Syria, the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024—starved of Iranian support—led to a rapid takeover by Islamist forces led by Ahmad al-Sharaa. While Sharaa has traded his fatigues for business suits and rebranded his movement as a technocratic administration, his group’s jihadist DNA casts a shadow over Syria and the region.

Ideally, the collapse of Iran’s proxy network should have strengthened the Abraham Accords, with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco having already provided the blueprint for normalization with Israel, pragmatic governance, and economic modernization. Yet, the post-war reality has tilted toward a repackaged version of radical Sunni jihadism.

Qatar and Turkey have been the architects of this shift. Leveraging its vast natural gas wealth, Doha has funneled tens of billions into regional influence, positioning itself as the indispensable mediator and financier of the new Levant.

In Syria, Qatar and Turkey have emerged as the primary backers of the Sharaa government, providing debt settlements and infrastructure investment that have effectively bought the new regime’s legitimacy. While the West has offered sanctions relief in the name of humanitarian stability, it has inadvertently subsidized the rise of an Islamist-leaning state.

In Gaza, the dynamic is equally perilous. Qatar and Turkey have successfully redirected the international discourse from “disarmament” to “reconstruction.” Billions in aid, ostensibly for civilian welfare, are flowing through networks that critics argue sustain the very Muslim Brotherhood ideology that birthed Hamas.

In Lebanon, while the government fails to disarm Shia Hezbollah, the Sunni loyalists of Sharaa are surging. Civil war is brewing as the Lebanese state continues going in circles.

Sharaa in Syria and Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen are performing a masterclass in “taqiyya,” feigning moderation to secure Western aid and diplomatic recognition while consolidating Islamist control locally.

Once entrenched, these groups will inevitably revert to their true aims. Their core ideology remains fundamentally incompatible with the existence of a Jewish state or Western liberal influence.

By embracing Turkey and Qatar’s vision for the region, the U.S. is enabling a rollback of the progress made by the Abraham Accords. Even in Saudi Arabia, where modernization has been the watchword, the creeping influence of a triumphant Sunni Islamist bloc has blocked the drive toward normalization. Saudi press and social media are now on an all-out campaign against both the U.S. and Israel.

Washington must reverse course before the Muslim Brotherhood’s “peace” becomes as deadly as Hamas’s war. The U.S. should treat the emerging Muslim Brotherhood sphere of power as a strategic threat comparable to the Iranian axis.

Support must be redirected exclusively to non-Islamist governments, and reconstruction aid must be conditioned on the absolute disarmament of militant groups and a formal rejection of Brotherhood ideology.

Israel’s battlefield victories have provided a rare, historic opportunity to cleanse the region of extremist vetoes. If the U.S. allows Qatar and Turkey to fill the void with “Islamism Lite,” Washington will soon find that it has merely traded one existential threat for another. Only by championing the pragmatic, inclusive model of the Abraham Accords can the Middle East finally achieve a lasting peace.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

The National Interest

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia announced that its fighter jets bombed arms shipments unloaded by two United Arab Emirates (UAE) vessels in Yemen. The shipments had been destined for the South Transitional Council (STC) forces. The strike marked a major shift in Saudi policy and aimed at preventing the STC from reviving South Yemen, a formerly independent nation that merged into greater Yemen in 1990. An independent South Yemen is the country’s best bet to weaken the Houthi insurgency in the northwestern part of the country that has disrupted global shipping and raised inflation since 2023.

The STC’s drive toward independence also suppresses the Islah Party, a branch of the global Muslim Brotherhood that the US Congress is currently considering whether to declare a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Earlier in December, the STC, led by one of the Presidential Leadership Council’s (PLC) seven vice presidents, Aidarus al-Zubaidi, launched a campaign through which it seized control of most of the province of Hadramout—Yemen’s main oil reservoir—until then under the control of the militia of PLC president Rashad al-Ulaimi and his Islamist Islah allies. Globally recognized as Yemen’s government, the PLC was formed in 2022 and entrusted with managing a transitional period.

Ulaimi is allied with Saudi Arabia, and so are three of his vice presidents, two of whom are Islah members. Zubaidi and three other vice presidents are aligned with the UAE. The PLC is therefore locked in a stalemate.

Starting in December, thousands of Yemenis took to the streets, calling for secession and the revival of South Yemen. This internationally recognized nation existed between its independence from Britain in 1967 and its union with North Yemen in 1990. The STC and Zubaidi appear determined to pursue secession and seek international recognition for a revived southern state.

Saudi Arabia, Ulaimi, and the Islamist Islah Party oppose secession. After Saudi airstrikes on Emirati shipments, Riyadh demanded Abu Dhabi withdraw its troops, which had entered Yemen as part of the Saudi-led coalition to combat the Houthis in the north in 2015. Abu Dhabi obliged, but the southern Yemenite secession campaign continued.

In 1990, the North and South united into one country. A decade later, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) launched a terror campaign and controlled swaths of land. President Obama eliminated the group’s leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen of Yemeni origin, as Washington gave a nod to the northern Houthi militia to help the government in Sanaa defeat AQAP. The Houthis seized the opportunity to take the capital in 2014, prompting Saudi Arabia to lead a coalition in 2015 to roll back the Houthis to their northern mountainous region and restore the government of Abdrabbu Hadi.

In the war on Houthis, the Saudis and their Yemeni allies underperformed militarily. At the same time, the United Arab Emirates and the STC emerged as the strongest Yemeni faction, building disciplined security forces focused on governance, counterterrorism, and the security of shipping lanes.

The STC successfully dismantled AQAP strongholds—like in Mukalla in 2016—and cut Houthi supply lines while preserving the flow of humanitarian aid. In 2018, STC forces were on the verge of taking the port city of Hodeidah, only for Washington to force the operation’s halt on the grounds that capturing the port would stop humanitarian aid flows into Houthi-controlled areas.

Seven years later, the STC has shifted its attention to consolidating its power by clearing non-Houthi territories of the Islamist Islah, perhaps reasoning that, since they could not reunite Yemen, it can at least build a successful state in the parts it controls.

The contrast between the STC and the Ulaimi-Islah alliance explains why the latter clings to the narrative of “unity [of Yemen] versus rebellion [secession of the south].” Framing southern aspirations as treasonous preserves the Islamists’ international legitimacy as defenders of a unified Yemen.

However, Southerners see their cause as redressing chronic injustice: decades of marginalization since unification in 1990 have fueled resentment and contributed to the outbreak of the conflict.

Despite the strong arguments for independence, Washington remains committed to Yemen’s formal unity, viewing secession as a threat to stability and the wider post-World War II order. But with President Donald Trump openly skeptical of said order, redrawing global borders might offer a better way for Yemenis to cut themselves out of a Gordian Knot-like civil war.

In fact, Yemen is already de facto divided. Clinging to outdated frameworks risks alienating a capable ally against Iran-backed militants in the north and Islamist extremists in the east.

A pragmatic US approach would recognize southern self-determination as a stabilizing force. A supervised, post-conflict, and internationally monitored referendum could formalize independence while respecting local diversity. Such a plan aligns with international law and would empower a partner committed to counter-terrorism, maritime security, and regional stability.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

U.S. envoy Tom Barrack keeps warning that Lebanon will be “reabsorbed” into Syria unless Hezbollah is disarmed, a historically unfounded threat from someone who derides the Sykes-Picot boundaries as colonial nonsense yet treats Syria’s borders as sacrosanct. His selective anti-colonialism spares Syria, disregards Kurdish and Druze self-determination there, and happily erases Lebanon’s sovereignty entirely.

A brief history of Lebanon shows how it emerged as the Levant’s first nation-state—a 17th-century Western concept that later reached the region—and remains its oldest still standing, with every historical right to stay that way. Lebanon is not perfect, but it is not the illegitimate upstart in the room.

In its prehistory—beginning 3,200 years ago with the Phoenicians—what is now Lebanon was organized into competing city-states: Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and later Carthage. At times, one Phoenician city-state took over or unified with another, resulting in a thalassocracy, a maritime empire. Yet, like all ancient kingdoms and empires, the Phoenicians were not a nation-state.

In the ensuing millennia, empires invaded one another continuously. Dynasties that anointed themselves God’s shadow on earth—like the Ottoman Turks in the Levant—subdued other kingdoms. This was the only system of human government, until warring European kingdoms stumbled, in 1648, upon a more peaceful arrangement: the Treaty of Westphalia.

The Westphalian state is the modern sovereign nation-state model, characterized by territorial exclusivity and by states pledging not to interfere in one another’s domestic affairs. It took nearly two centuries for the nation-state concept to reach the Muslim world, beginning with Napoleon’s 1799 invasion and three-year rule over Egypt.

Confronted by a far more advanced West, Muslims split into two camps: Islamists, who blamed decline on the abandonment of what they considered pure seventh-century Islam and demanded its militant revival, and modernizers, who urged the adoption of Western secular ideas. The modernizing current spread most rapidly among the empire’s long-oppressed non-Muslim communities, who had endured centuries of subordination.

In Mount Lebanon, where Christians and Druze formed the densest concentrations, European ideas sparked a powerful drive for autonomy and eventual secession, backed by European powers eager to secure commercial footholds along the routes to India.

Beginning in the 1700s, Lebanese tribal chiefs, who doubled as tax farmers for Istanbul, started acting independently. European powers supported them while the Ottomans turned Muslims against them. Mount Lebanon thus suffered two rounds of civil war in 1840 and 1860, but after each round, the area coalesced as an autonomous entity that eventually emerged as the nation-state of Lebanon.

None of the other territories in the Levant had large enough non-Muslim communities pushing for independence. Levantine Muslims were content living under the Turkish sultan. Syria continued to be two or more Ottoman provinces, and so were Palestine and Jordan.

When France was granted the Levant mandate in 1920, it did not invent Lebanon out of thin air. It simply enlarged the already existing, historically recognized Mount Lebanon entity, known as the Mutasarrifiyyah, by adding Beirut, the north, the south, and the Bekaa – regions that had strong economic and cultural ties to Mount Lebanon and, crucially, large Christian and Shia populations who largely welcomed inclusion in Greater Lebanon.

Syria, by contrast, had never existed as a nation-state before 1927. Even after independence in 1946, Syria’s Sunni Arab majority never fully accepted its borders. This fueled endless Baathist and Nasserist dreams of swallowing Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine into a “Greater Syria.”

Palestine followed a similar path: it had no prior unified statehood, its borders were drawn in 1920, its Sunni Arab majority rejected the state, while its Jewish, Druze, and Christian minorities endorsed it. The binational Arab-Jewish Palestine ultimately failed. In 1948, the Jews declared their own nation-state, Israel. In 1964, the Arabs demanded an explicitly Arab and Muslim Palestine within the 1920 borders.

Lebanon alone entered the twentieth century carrying the markers of an already mature national identity: a centuries-old cedar emblem, long used as the official seal of the Maronite Church; a distinctive flag, free from the pan-Arab Hashemite colors that would later dominate every neighbor; and an uninterrupted tradition of locally elected councils stretching back to the 1860s.

So when Barrack speaks of Syria as if it were an organic nation and Lebanon as the colonial hodgepodge, he has it precisely backward. Lebanon’s core, Mount Lebanon, was the first part of the Levant to achieve recognized autonomous proto-statehood in the modern era. Syria is the newer, more artificial construct – and the one whose pan-Arab nationalist, and now Islamist, myths have caused endless trouble for its neighbors.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

FDD

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — consisting of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait — has formally endorsed the U.S.-led vision for ending Sudan’s devastating civil war, dealing a severe diplomatic blow to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), its commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Islamist factions that prop up his regime.

At its summit last week, the GCC explicitly backed “a political transition through the establishment of a civilian government that excludes extremist groups and entities that have committed crimes against the Sudanese people.”

In the context of Sudan, “extremist groups” unmistakably refers to the Islamist parties — primarily the remnants of Omar al-Bashir’s regime that was overthrown in the 2019 popular revolution — and the various armed factions and political networks that have aligned themselves with the SAF since the war began. The phrase “entities that have committed crimes against the Sudanese people” is equally clear: it targets the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group originally created by Bashir and the SAF in 2013 from the Janjaweed militias responsible for genocide in Darfur two decades ago. On Tuesday, the Department of Treasury sanctioned a “transnational network recruiting Columbians to fight in Sudan’s civil war” as part of the RSF.

By simultaneously condemning both the SAF-led Islamist coalition and the RSF, while calling for an immediate ceasefire followed by a transition to a civilian government that excludes both the army and the militia, the GCC has thrown its weight behind the framework first articulated in September by the Quad — comprising of the United States, Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

The SAF’s reaction to the peace plan has been predictably hostile. Ever since the Quad roadmap was announced, in September, General Burhan and his allies have rejected any solution that would strip the military and its Islamist allies of power. Even when Burhan dispatched a delegation to Washington for indirect talks — ostensibly to avoid appearing completely intransigent — SAF forces refused to stop the war. Burhan and the Islamists have insisted that the only acceptable outcome is the total surrender and dissolution of the RSF.

The battlefield reality, however, has moved decisively against Burhan and the Islamists. What began in April 2023 as an SAF attempt to crush the RSF in Khartoum has turned into a protracted humiliation for the regular army. After initial gains, the SAF has suffered a string of crushing defeats. In October 2025, the RSF captured Bara, capital of North Kordofan. In November, after a brutal 500-day siege, the RSF captured El-Fasher, the last major SAF stronghold in Darfur. Days later, the RSF announced the seizure of Babnusa, a strategic hub in West Kordofan. With each loss, the army’s supply lines are threatened, its morale collapses further, and its dependence on Islamist militias grows more desperate.

Facing military reversal and mounting diplomatic isolation, Burhan and the Islamists have fallen back on defiance laced with conspiracy theories. Their slogan “bal wa bas”— roughly “only by the sword, nothing else” — has become the rallying cry of a coalition that promises total victory even as it loses province after province. Unable to offer a credible path to battlefield success, the Islamists have instead redirected their propaganda fire outward, accusing the UAE, Israel, the Quad, and most recently U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa and Sudan, Boulos Massad, of waging a neo-colonial plot to dismember Sudan and hand it to “Zionists” and “secular liberals.”

General Burhan and the Islamist old guard now face a stark choice: accept a negotiated exit that preserves some of their wealth and liberty in exchange for handing power to civilians, or cling to the illusion of total victory until the RSF — or sheer state collapse — removes them by force.

The GCC’s endorsement of the Quad framework, coming on top of near-universal international condemnation, has stripped away the last pretense of legitimacy. The era when Sudan’s generals and clerics could play great powers against each other is over.

Whether Burhan recognizes this before Khartoum falls to the RSF a second time, or whether Sudan must first endure even greater bloodshed, will determine not only his fate but that of an entire nation exhausted by decades of militarism and ideological fanaticism. The world has drawn a line; Sudan’s Islamists and their military protector now stand almost entirely on the wrong side of it.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

Algemeiner

Regions in Africa are collapsing. Across most of the continent’s 54 countries, governments are tyrannical, Islamist, or both. Many have ceased to function as states, splintering into warring ethnic and religious tribes. The resulting civil wars are not modern conflicts bound by Geneva Conventions, but extermination campaigns. State collapse breeds terrorism, narco-trafficking, and mass migration. Whatever happens in Africa never stays in Africa.

Western discourse about these horrors is predictably partisan. One camp demonizes the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for backing anti-Islamist warlords; the rival camp vilifies Qatar, Turkey, and Iran for bankrolling political Islam. Meanwhile China quietly locks entire governments into multi-generational debt, Russia swaps Wagner mercenaries and weapons for gold and diamond mines, and Europe issues pious statements about human rights while signing migration-control deals with whichever militia currently controls the coast.

The contradictions have become absurd. A Wall Street Journal investigation recently suggested that the UAE deliberately funneled roughly $20 million to Al Qaeda in Mali by paying ransom for an Emirati businessman, from the ruling family, and several Malian politicians. The unspoken accusation was that Abu Dhabi had chosen to fund global terrorism.

Yet the transaction is almost identical to repeated American practice. Washington has unfrozen billions in Iranian assets and granted major concessions to Moscow to secure the release of detained US citizens. In recent years, paying hostage-takers has become standard behavior, not evidence of secret jihadism sympathy.

When Sudan gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, the terrorist used Khartoum to plan the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Gulf of Eden.

Bin Laden is dead. His host, Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist regime, was overthrown in 2019. Yet the military and paramilitary forces that once served Bashir — the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — staged a coup in 2021, ejected the civilian transitional government, and plunged the country into a new civil war in April 2023.

Washington believes Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood — in its various iterations — instigated the war and are now backing SAF commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against RSF’s General Muhammad Daglo — aka Hemedti. The US has imposed sanctions on both generals and on Burhan’s Islamist allies.

Together with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), America has proposed a “Quad” peace plan in which both Burhan and Hemedti step aside and hand power back to civilians. Hemedti pretended to agree to the deal. Burhan vowed war to the bitter end. Short of deploying troops on the ground, the Quad has no tools to force the warring parties to accept the plan.

A Burhan victory risks Sudan sliding back into the global Jihad hub it was in the 1990s, potentially allying with Islamist insurgencies across the Sahel. Senior Islamist militia commander Mosbah Abuzeid, a key Burhan ally, regularly appears draped in a Palestinian keffiyeh, promising his fighters will one day “liberate Jerusalem.” A Hemedti victory, by contrast, installs in Khartoum a ruler accused of genocide, but whose ambitions appear national rather than transnational.

Neither outcome offers Sudan — or the world — anything resembling stability. The pattern repeats across the Sahel and beyond.

In Niger, site of the 2017 ambush that killed four US Green Berets, the military seized power in 2023. Washington rushed aid to the new rulers, reasoning that keeping Islamists out of power mattered more than the junta’s gross human-rights violations.

In neighboring Mali, a brutal military regime battles Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), an Al Qaeda affiliate that has been trying to topple Bamako by attacking roads, fuel convoys, and population centers.

As America retreats into neo-isolationism, incorrectly identified as “America First,” the post-1945 order is fading away. A multilateral free-for-all system has replaced it.

Ranked by footprint, the main players in Africa today are China, a patchwork of European nations, the US, wealthy Gulf states, and Russia. Each courts local tyrants, bankrolls chosen factions, and carves out resources, ports, or basing rights.

Radical Islamist networks — fed by a loose global coalition — have turned the Sahel, the Maghreb, and the Horn of Africa into human abattoirs. Their opponents answer with equal savagery, often genocide. Libya has been a failed state since 2011. Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Somalia, and eastern Congo are locked in interconnected wars that have already killed millions and displaced tens of millions.

Africa’s tragedy is structural: Predatory elites, tribalized politics, and the total collapse of any legitimate monopoly on violence ensure that extremists of every stripe flourish while moderates are exterminated. External patrons aggravate the problem while pointing fingers at one another.

The consequences will not stay in Africa. Surging Islamist terrorism, exploding narco-routes, and new waves of desperate migrants will crash against Europe’s shores. Instability will radiate into an already combustible Middle East. Israel and America’s allies will be forced to spend ever-larger resources to contain African terrorist sanctuaries, on top of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Blaming this or that foreign meddler feels good, but changes nothing. Until America and its partners commit to coherent, muscular political settlements backed by real power — instead of sporadic sanctions and press releases — the continent will remain trapped in an escalating cycle of atrocity. The only alternatives on the table today are hypocritical half-measures or abandonment. History has already shown that neither works. Failure usually costs the whole world, dearly.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

From the heart of Lebanon—a biblical land living under Hezbollah’s shadow—Pope Leo XIV issued a clarion call for genuine peace, not merely a ceasefire, between longstanding adversaries. Although he refrained from naming Israel directly, the implication was unmistakable: the pontiff was urging Lebanon to pursue normalization with its southern neighbor.

The pope’s arrival and words could scarcely have been more urgent. Lebanon’s Christians, once the sole majority in an Arabic-speaking nation, now constitute barely one-third of the population. They have faced vilification since the state’s founding in 1920.

Islamists across both Shia and Sunni lines have long branded Christians as betrayers of pan-Arabism and its rallying cry, the Palestinian cause. To many Muslims, Lebanon’s Christians appear as a Western-aligned fifth column, more devoted to distant coreligionists than to their Arabic-speaking compatriots.

Yet this suspicion echoes a deeper history. Like other non-Muslim minorities across the Middle East—Jews, Druze, Alawites, Bahá’ís, Ismailis, and nonbelievers—Christians have weathered over a millennium of subjugation under successive Islamic rulers and empires.

Muslims rightly assert that their faith mandates protection for non-Muslims, and this is true in principle. But protection falls woefully short of equality. Beyond Lebanon and Israel, Christians in the Middle East remain second-class citizens. Save for Lebanon, the constitutions of all 21 Arab League member states declare Islam the official religion, enshrine Sharia as a primary source of law, and mandate that the head of state be Muslim. Even Arab League summits commence with recitations from the Quran.

Where pan-Arab nationalism blurs into Islamism, Lebanon’s Christians—and Palestine’s Jews—sought sovereign homelands. The Jews prevailed. The Christians did not.

The final stand of Lebanon’s Christians against Islamism, pan-Arabism, the Palestinian cause, and the resulting wars and devastation occurred during the civil war. In 1970, when Lebanon hosted the Palestinian militias expelled from Jordan, these groups sowed chaos, launching assaults on Israel, provoking brutal reprisals, and terrorizing Lebanese civilians.

In response, Christians rallied into state-loyal militias. They hoped the Cold War’s end would herald peace, but Washington betrayed them. As a quid pro quo for Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad’s role in ousting Iraqi forces from Kuwait during the Gulf War—and his token attendance at the 1991 Madrid talks between Arabs and Israel—the U.S. ceded Lebanon to the Assad regime in Damascus.

This betrayal taught pan-Arab nationalists and Islamists a bitter truth: for the right price, the West would abandon Levantine Christians. Iran mastered this tactic, with Qatar and Turkey close behind—courting America while crushing Middle Eastern non-Muslims, be they Israel’s Jews or the Christians of Lebanon, Syria, or Iraq.

Pope Leo XIV grasps what the West still fumbles: In the Middle East, Christians and Jews teeter on the brink of extinction, their communities eroding to vanishing points. In Lebanon—the Arab world’s erstwhile Christian-majority beacon—the faithful now hover at one-third of the populace, per official tallies. In truth, with waves of emigration to North America, Europe, and affluent Gulf states, their share likely dips to one-quarter.

Hemorrhage in Christian numbers is stark in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt. In fact, the sole Middle Eastern nation where Christian numbers swell in tandem with the general populace is Israel.

Reversing this decline in an increasingly Islamized region will require years of resolve. Pope Leo XIV’s journey to Turkey and Lebanon marks a vital beginning. His plea for peace merits amplification as binding policy—not just for America, but for Lebanon’s government, still puppeteered by Hezbollah’s chief ally, Speaker Nabih Berri.

Rather than demanding swift, unconditional peace with Israel, Beirut—and even Samir Geagea, head of the largest Christian political bloc in Lebanon—obsess over demonizing Israel. Lebanon insists that curbing Israel’s operations against Hezbollah must come first, a stance that contradicts the Cessation of Hostilities that Lebanon signed with Israel and further entrenches enmity between the two neighboring countries.

Lebanon, and the world, must heed the Pope of Peace over the so-called “Party of God,” Hezbollah. Failure to do so will leave the nation—and the region—languishing in endless war and woe.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

President Joseph Aoun said Lebanon has no choice but to enter into talks with Israel to break the cycle of war, a step that media reports suggest he had agreed on with Hezbollah’s ally, Speaker Nabih Berri. Aoun’s position is commendable, but Hezbollah will use such talks as cover to rearm and prepare for another round of fighting, rather than to bring war to an end.

To give Aoun credit where it is due, he has become the first president to make talking to Israel—rather than “resisting” and “boycotting” the Jewish state—the centerpiece of his foreign policy. Now comes the hard part.

Talks with Israel require an agenda and a goal. Under current proposals, Lebanese “civilian technical experts” will join the Pentalateral Committee that includes militaries of Lebanon, Israel, the US, France and the UN. The committee was formed in November 2024, when Lebanon and Israel signed the Cessation of Hostilities Act that ended the war that Hezbollah had launched on Israel a year earlier. Its goal was to supervise the mechanism of the enforcement of UNSC Resolution 1701, which stipulates the disarmament of Hezbollah across Lebanon. Henceforth, the committee came to be known as the Mechanism.

Now Lebanon wants to add civilian “technical experts” to its military officers on the Mechanism, with the assumption that such experts can demarcate the land border with Israel. The maritime border was agreed upon by a similar Lebanese delegation of military officers and civilian figures in 2022.

With borders demarcated, the remaining contentious issues between the two sides will be narrowed down to the pending disarmament of Hezbollah, Israel’s withdrawal from five Lebanese hilltops, and its release of Hezbollah fighters. During a meeting with Mechanism last week, US envoy Morgan Ortagus said that the disarmament of Hezbollah should be concluded by the end of this year. In a statement last week, the Mechanism advocated the disarmament of Hezbollah by the end of this year.

In theory, Lebanon and Israel look well on their way to peace. In reality, however, that is not the case. Hezbollah and Berri seem amenable to Aoun’s initiative, likely hoping to use the talks to get the US and Israel off their backs. In doing so, Lebanon could get away without enforcing Resolution 1701, allowing Hezbollah to remain armed. State sovereignty will remain compromised.

Hezbollah, in effect, is taking a page out of the playbook of late Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat and Syrian President Hafez Assad: transform the peace process into an open-ended exercise while maintaining the status quo. Arafat and Assad talked until everyone dropped dead, literally, giving negotiations their derogatory term “peace processing.”

Knowing that Israel and the world were eager to achieve peace, Palestinians started using talks for their own leverage. Every time Washington or Jerusalem applied pressure on Arafat to rein in Hamas’s terrorism, he boycotted the peace talks but never ended them. With Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas, talks stalled and died.

No one knows whether the Palestinian Authority (PA) today still upholds the interim peace agreements it signed with Israel. The existence of the PA itself is contingent on these deals, but everything Ramallah says suggests that they regret peace talks and the idea of the two-state solution and that they want one state—Palestine—from the river to the sea.

It is most likely that Hezbollah will try to hide behind Aoun’s talks with Israel to mimic the Palestinian tactic: use talks to relieve American pressure and stall, all while rearming, reorganizing and preparing for another round of war.

Hezbollah’s ploys should not take away from Aoun’s significant step of supporting talks with Israel. There are three approaches in foreign relations, Aoun told a group of visitors—war, economics and diplomacy. Since war with Israel did not pay off, what next? Aoun argued that wars always end through talks, and negotiations are usually between enemies, not friends or allies.

Since his election almost a year ago, Aoun has taken a few wrong turns. But he has been courageous enough to go to places no one has gone to before him, risking his political credibility and probably his life, betting on ending war with Israel through talks.

Coupled with the Mechanism’s statement endorsing Hezbollah’s disarmament by the end of this year, Aoun’s drive for talks with Israel means Lebanon has finally positioned itself on the right track. Fingers crossed that Beirut will start rolling soon.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

FDD

After months of rejecting peace talks with his rivals and insisting that only his victory would end Sudan’s civil war, Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) Commander Abdul-Fattah al-Burhan succumbed to international pressure and agreed to negotiate. However, his rigid conditions signal a likely stalemate.

As the war has grinded on, Burhan’s closest regional allies have grown increasingly anxious about the resurgence of radical Islamism, fueled by the return of elements from the former regime. Egypt, leveraging its influence over the Sudanese general, persuaded him that resisting an international roadmap — drafted by a Quad comprising the United States, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia — was undermining his position and casting him as the sole obstacle to peace.

While Burhan and his SAF deliberated, Washington voiced growing frustration with the army’s ties to Islamist militias and the Islamic Republic of Iran. “Our primary concern with the Sudanese Army has been its connections to radical Islamists and its importation of arms from Iran,” said Massad Boulos, President Trump’s envoy to Africa. “The army has taken steps to sever ties with radical elements from the previous regime,” he added.

Boulos correctly highlighted the SAF’s links to Sudanese Islamists and Iran, but was mistaken in claiming the army had fully cut these ties. Gibril Ibrahim, an Islamist holdover from the previous regime and Finance Minister in the SAF-backed government in Khartoum, visited Tehran a year ago. On September 12, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on him. This month, he ledSAF’s delegation to Moscow.

Burhan relies on Islamists to bolster his position. Lacking popular support and the manpower needed to confront his former allies-turned-rivals, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Sudanese general has sought to balance his domestic dependence on Islamists with the need for support from his anti-Islamist foreign allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

To appease them, Burhan issued a decree asserting that no Islamist militia could operate independently and that all militias were under the strict command of the military. However, this decree did little to alter the status quo in Sudan or assuage the concerns of his regional allies.

Alarmed by the surge in Islamism, the Quad intensified pressure on Burhan to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the war. The Sudanese general and his Islamist allies resisted, denouncing the Quad’s roadmap as “foreign intervention” and imperialism.

The primary reason the SAF and Islamists rejected a peaceful settlement was that, according to leaks, the Quad’s roadmap stipulates that neither the SAF nor the RSF would play a role in Sudan’s transitional or post-war governance.

Yet under mounting pressure, Burhan relented and agreed to talks. Representatives of the SAF and RSF held indirect negotiations in Washington on Thursday and Friday, with the Quad indicating it might convene further discussions in the U.S. capital by the end of the month. The SAF denied that it participated in the talks, but also said that its government’s foreign minister will visit Washington next week, upon invitation from the State Department.

Despite agreeing to talks, Burhan is unlikely to relinquish power under any circumstances. The general views himself as the sole legitimate authority in Sudan, asserting his exclusive right to oversee both the post-war transitional process and the government it produces, as he made clear in a public appearance. The general further insisted that any settlement must result in the dissolution of the RSF, which he refers to as a militia, and the consolidation of SAF control.

Burhan’s statements suggest he aims to achieve through negotiations what he has failed to secure through warfare. This hardline stance virtually guarantees the failure of the Quad’s efforts and the continuation of the conflict.

Conceding on minor issues while remaining inflexible on critical points has become a common tactic among warring Middle Eastern factions, particularly hardliners who refuse to compromise despite the devastating toll of conflict.

In Gaza, for example, Hamas rejected Israeli demands that could have ended the war on its first day, prolonging the fighting for two years. However, when President Trump rallied global support behind his 20-point peace plan, Hamas found itself isolated and was forced to make concessions. It divided the plan into a First Phase, involving a ceasefire and an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, while deferring the most critical issue: the disarmament and dissolution of Hamas. This allowed Hamas to ease global pressure without addressing the underlying triggers that could reignite conflict at any moment.

Similarly, Burhan is attempting to alleviate the Quad’s pressure by agreeing to talks while preemptively rejecting the core requirements of a peaceful settlement, thereby dodging international scrutiny without halting the war, much to the detriment the Sudanese people.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

NY Post

Iraqis head to the polls Nov. 11 to elect 329 parliament members for a four-year term, marking the seventh free election since Saddam Hussein’s 2003 fall. Candidates are treading carefully, pledging neutrality in the geopolitical tug-of-war between the United States and Iran while using accusations of “normalization with Israel” as a weapon to discredit rivals.

The specter of Israel looms large in Iraq’s electoral rhetoric, despite the country’s lack of formal ties with the state.

“There are Shiite and Sunni leaders who have given assurances for free normalization with Israel,” said lawmaker Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie, a member of Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani’s Reconstruction and Development bloc. “There are political figures who have started to flirt and provide assurances to Washington under the table.”

Al-Sumaidaie, who’s running for another term, predicted “the next cabinet will face pressure to join the Abraham Accords” to normalize relations with Israel but bragged only Sudani can stop the advent of Iraqi peace with Israel. His comments reflect the issue’s sensitivity, as any perceived openness to the Jewish state risks political suicide in a country where anti-Israel sentiment runs deep.

The “assurances” accusation is particularly damaging due to a 2022 law criminalizing any form of backing for Israel. This law, which led to a man’s life sentence for a pro-Israel Facebook post, has made “normalization” a radioactive term in Iraqi politics.

Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a Sudani-allied secular Shia with ties to Saudi Arabia, has faced such accusations but firmly rejected them. “Allawi has not and will not call for normalization with the Zionist entity,” his office stated.

Yet Israel is not the only regional player tainting Iraq’s electoral discourse.

Iran, long a dominant force in Iraqi politics, has become equally toxic for candidates. It was once a given pro-Iran factions would hold sway, particularly among Shia politicians. No more. Candidates, even those historically aligned with Tehran, are advocating for neutrality to shield Iraq from regional conflicts, including potential wars involving Iran, the United States or Israel.

MP Diaa al-Nasseri, a member of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law bloc, praised his leader for “sparing Iraq from strikes and the regional war.” Maliki’s coalition, once a staunch Iran ally, is publicly distancing itself from the Islamic Republic. “The Iranian influence is less prominent in Iraq’s new reality,” Nasseri, also seeking reelection, argued.

It’s a departure from the past five elections, in which pro-Iran Shia factions typically united under Tehran’s orchestration. Iran’s weakened regional clout — particularly since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent campaigns against Hamas and other Iranian proxies like Hezbollah — has fragmented these alliances. Shia factions, once tightly knit, are scattered across rival electoral slates, competing against one another in a sign of growing pragmatism over ideological loyalty to Iran. It reflects a broader trend toward interest-driven politics, where local concerns and power dynamics take precedence over foreign allegiances.

Iran’s declining influence is also evident in Iraq’s pro-Iran Hashd Shaabi militias’ troubles. These groups previously sought to emulate Lebanon’s Hezbollah, amassing significant power and resources while dominating state institutions. But weakened by losses and lacking strong leadership, the militias struggle to maintain their grip on state concessions, including an estimated $3 billion annually for 238,000 claimed fighters. Reports indicate only 48,000 fighters exist. The rest are imaginary fighters Iraqis call “space cadets.” Militia leaders cash ghost fighters’ salaries and redirect them to fund Iran’s operations in Lebanon and Yemen.

A proposed law to formalize the militias as government forces, securing their funding, was blocked under US pressure, forcing militia leaders to compete electorally to preserve their access to state resources.

Prominent militia figures are navigating this new reality through electoral politics. Faleh Fayyad and Ahmad al-Assadi, senior Hashd Shaabi members, are running on Sudani’s ticket, while Hadi Ameri campaigns independently under the Fatah banner. Two other militia heavyweights, Qais Khazali and Ammar Hakim, are leading their own tickets, further illustrating the splintering of once-unified pro-Iran factions.

The US-engineered ethnosectarian power-sharing model, which divided influence among Shia, Sunni and Kurds, is eroding. Each community has fractured into rival factions, forming cross-sectarian alliances based on political expediency rather than ethnic or religious identity.

The 2021 election highlighted this shift when Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr’s bloc secured 71 seats but failed to form a majority. When Sadr allied with Sunni and Kurdish factions to cross the 165-seat threshold, Iran-allied Sunni judge Faeq Zaidan controversially redefined “majority” as two-thirds, blocking Sadr’s coalition and revealing Tehran’s lingering influence. But with Tehran’s grip loosening, non-Shia figures like Sunni former speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi, previously banned, are poised to reassert their influence through next month’s election.

Iraq’s stability, underpinned by $120 billion in annual oil revenue, comes at a cost. Corruption and a bloated public sector drain resources, with politicians using patronage to secure loyalty rather than investing in infrastructure or economic diversification.

While Iraq is no longer the regional menace it was under Saddam Hussein — who invaded Kuwait in 1990, attacked Israel and sponsored terrorism — it remains far from a liberal democracy. Yet no dictatorship or civil war and the emergence of peaceful power transitions signal progress.

The 2025 election underscores Iraq’s evolving political landscape. Candidates’ focus on neutrality reflects a desire to prioritize national interests over foreign entanglements. Normalizing ties with Israel could yield economic benefits, as demonstrated by the Abraham Accords’ trade and technology gains, but public opinion, shaped by decades of anti-Israel sentiment, remains a barrier. And while Iran’s meddling in Iraqi affairs has receded, Tehran is certainly planning a comeback in Iraq and the rest of the region.

Economic diversification, critical to moving beyond oil dependency, demands pragmatic policies that normal relations with Israel and Iran could facilitate. But emotional rhetoric often overshadows these practical considerations.

Iraq’s democracy, though nascent, is taking root. The election highlights a shift toward pragmatic alliances and declining foreign influence, offering hope for a more stable and independent future. If this trajectory continues, the 2003 US-led invasion, often viewed as a catastrophe, may eventually be seen as a turning point for the better.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

On October 26, Palestinian gunmen manning a checkpoint at Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp killed Elio Abu Hanna when he inadvertently drove into the camp. The young Lebanese man reportedly panicked at the checkpoint and did not stop his car, prompting the militiamen to open fire with dozens of rounds. The Palestinians must apologize, not only for this crime, but for decades of offenses against the Lebanese people. The Palestinian leadership and intelligentsia must acknowledge the extensive harm their actions have caused Lebanon, from sparking civil war in 1975 to inviting destruction through their militias’ activities.

The roots of the Palestinian problem in Lebanon trace back to the 1960s, when rivalries between regional powers birthed Palestinian nationalism. In 1964, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser was embroiled in a military quagmire in Yemen, supporting putschists to join his United Arab Republic (UAR) against the reigning monarchy backed by his regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Seeking to get the better of his enemies, Nasser steered the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which aimed to establish a Palestinian state out of Egypt’s Gaza and Jordan’s West Bank. Riyadh opposed the recognition of a Palestinian state, fearing it would join Nasser’s UAR. Instead, Saudi Arabia promoted Yasser Arafat and his Fatah Movement as a rival to the PLO, run by Ahmad al-Shuqairi, a former Saudi diplomat supported by Nasser.

In 1968, Arafat capitalized on a failed Israeli military raid against his troops in Jordan and introduced a novel concept, Palestinian nationalism. Palestine was reimagined from a British-created Mandate territory for Arabs and Jews into an eternal Arab and Muslim nation, erasing its binational history. Arafat ousted Shuqairi, took the reins of the PLO, and began building militias in countries neighboring Israel. In Lebanon, Arafat’s forces—operating out of Palestinian refugee camps—waged war against the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). Under pressure from Nasser, Lebanon in November 1969 signed the Cairo Accord, handing over control of refugee camps to the PLO while permitting Palestinian militants to stage operations against Israel.

With Lebanon ceding its sovereignty, Arafat began transforming the country into a launchpad for attacks on Israel, provoking devastating Israeli reprisals. The situation worsened for Lebanon after Jordan expelled Arafat and the PLO in 1970, following their attempts to destabilize the kingdom. The PLO leader and his militiamen moved their bases to Lebanon, which they effectively came to rule. In 1975, Lebanese resistance to this domination sparked a civil war, reducing the “Switzerland of the Middle East” to ruins. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, expelling Arafat to Tunisia. Remnant Palestinian militias remained, including those responsible for the October 26 murder of Elio Abu Hanna.

For 77 years, Palestinians have demanded unwavering loyalty to their cause, often at the expense of other Arabs, including the Lebanese, who have been hosting them since 1948. Today approximately 195,000 “Palestinians from Lebanon,” as they are called by UNRWA, remain in Lebanon. UNRWA, originally established to resettle Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war—as evidenced by its founding documents and early correspondence—shifted its mission. Instead of resettlement, it became a de facto government for Palestinians, managing their affairs while awaiting their “return” to the lands in Israel that their ancestors left 77 years ago. Lebanon has borne more than its share in hosting Palestinians and their “cause.” It is high time that the UN take responsibility for resettling them elsewhere.

Decades later, Palestinians have neither apologized nor sought forgiveness from the Lebanese for the chaos they wrought. Even prominent Palestinian intellectuals, such as Edward Said, expressed regret not for the harm caused but for losing control over Lebanon, revealing little remorse for their occupation of the country. A formal apology is overdue. If the Palestinians express genuine regret, the Lebanese might consider forgiveness, potentially foregoing the hundreds of billions of dollars owed in reparations for devastation. An apology could pave the way for reconciliation by recognizing shared suffering while confronting the historical injustices inflicted on Lebanon.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

“Break the taboos; we demand peace,” declared Marcel Ghanem, host of Lebanon’s premier talk show. “Demanding peace [with Israel] is not a crime,” he emphasized, challenging entrenched narratives. Marwan Hamade, a seasoned Druze lawmaker, appeared on I24 News (French service) to discuss Gaza, signaling a willingness to defy Lebanon’s surreal boycott laws. Pundit Tony Karam condemned deceptive negotiations with Israel and delusions of victory over it, writing, “It’s time for political courage.” A group of anonymous Lebanese launched the “Lebanon Israel Initiative” to foster dialogue and cooperation between the neighboring nations.

Yet, the Lebanese state, cowed by Hezbollah’s influence, remains deaf to these calls for peace and criminalizes dialogue, blatantly violating fundamental liberties and human rights. This suppression stifles voices seeking reconciliation and undermines Lebanon’s democratic principles.

Hezbollah employs multiple tactics to vilify Lebanese peace supporters. The pro-Iran militia unleashes venom on social media, recording videos, circulating them widely, shaming advocates, and demanding their imprisonment. This orchestrated campaign aims to silence dissent and maintain Hezbollah’s grip on public discourse, insisting on upholding “Israel is the eternal enemy” as a non-negotiable national principle.

Such intimidation affects many, including Hamade, a survivor of a 2004 assassination attempt, likely orchestrated by Hezbollah operatives. Hamade later softened his stance, claiming a friend invited him to the interview, believing it was for a different outlet, not an Israeli channel. His retreat reflects the chilling effect of Hezbollah’s tactics.

In response to defiant peace advocates, Hezbollah intensifies its attacks. Beyond social media shaming, a Hezbollah-affiliated lawyer drags pro-peace Lebanese activists to court, charging them with treason. These legal assaults weaponize the judiciary to punish dissent, further eroding free expression.

In Lebanon, opponents of peace often conflate dissent over peace with Israel with acts of espionage. Anyone advocating peace risks being branded a traitor or spy, a dangerous oversimplification that shuts down legitimate debate.

Lebanon’s suppression of pro-peace voices—through courts and Hezbollah’s intimidation—undermines its global credibility.

Reluctance to embrace free expression may stem from a cultural tendency to view dissent as betrayal. A Palestinian militant once remarked, “One of my fears is that treason will one day become a point of view,” a phrase weaponized to stifle debate over recognizing Israel. This sentiment persists among some Lebanese, Palestinian, and Arab communities, reflecting a broader resistance to open dialogue.

Labeling dissent as betrayal is fundamentally misguided. Short of inciting violence or engaging in espionage, no opinion should be deemed treasonous. Freedom of expression, a cornerstone of open societies, must be upheld. Yet, Lebanon and others in the region often fall short. The state must protect open debate and stop harassing citizens engaging with Israelis. Guaranteeing free expression is not merely a legal obligation but a vital step toward a more inclusive, peaceful society.

Worse than Hezbollah’s bullying is the Lebanese state’s weakness. Rather than upholding the “freedom of expression” guaranteed by its constitution, Lebanon trades in half-truths — pretending to pursue peace to appease Washington while evading Hezbollah’s anger. Such duplicity erodes public trust and blocks progress.

When Lebanese officials mention talks with Israel, often misconstrued as peace overtures, they mean “indirect talks” through American mediators to “settle disputes”—a euphemism for border demarcation and a temporary truce rather than genuine reconciliation.

Occasionally, Lebanon clarifies it seeks a truce with Israel, stating it will sign peace only after a Palestinian state is established, aligning with Arab League policy. This stance subordinates Lebanon’s interests to a broader regional agenda.

Fifty-six years after surrendering sovereignty to Palestinian militias in 1969 and later to Hezbollah, Lebanon still prioritizes Palestinian interests over its own. Palestinians turned Lebanon into a launchpad against Israel, triggering devastating reprisals and igniting a civil war that scarred the nation.

Lebanon has sacrificed more for the Palestinian cause than Palestinians themselves, hosting refugees and enduring conflict. It’s time to recognize Israel, ratify a peace treaty, and normalize relations. This policy promises stability, attracts foreign investment, and revitalizes Lebanon’s economy. Ghanem urged Lebanon to put its national interests first — even if it means breaking the long-standing taboo over Palestine.

Until Beirut decriminalizes its citizens’ right to engage freely with Israelis — short of espionage — and recognizes peace as a policy open to debate rather than a pillar of national identity, progress will remain elusive. The state must foster an environment where ideas can be discussed without fear of retribution.

Pro-peace voices in Lebanon are growing louder, reflecting a yearning for change. May peace with Israel, built on mutual respect and cooperation, follow soon, ushering in a new era of stability and prosperity.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

Lebanon’s government warns that disarming Hezbollah, the pro-Iran militia that undermines its sovereignty, risks plunging the country into civil war. Yet, it simultaneously demands that the international community restrain Israel from targeting this group. This contradictory stance exacts a devastating toll: Without Hezbollah’s disarmament, Israel’s low-intensity military campaign will persist, repelling reconstruction funds and foreign investments. Lebanon faces prolonged economic paralysis and political irrelevance, a self-inflicted crisis rooted in its failure to confront the militia that holds its sovereignty hostage.

Lebanon’s leadership appears trapped in a web of fallacious reasoning, seemingly unable to distinguish between its obligations under international law—such as enforcing state control over armed groups per UN Security Council Resolution 1701—and its domestic political entanglements. By failing to assert sovereignty, Lebanon invites external intervention.

Unwilling to tolerate an armed Hezbollah along its northern border, Israel fills this vacuum with relentless airstrikes on militia operatives and arms depots while maintaining control over five strategic hilltops near the border.

Many Lebanese politicians often deflect responsibility, proposing economic development or programs to lure Hezbollah fighters into civilian jobs as alternatives to disarmament. These are mere distractions, delaying the inevitable and empowering Hezbollah, which exploits Lebanon’s dysfunction to maintain its military and political dominance. Such proposals ignore the reality that economic recovery and stability are impossible while an armed militia undermines the state.

The international community, exasperated by Lebanon’s chronic indecision, has no interest in resolving this self-inflicted crisis. The message is clear: Lebanese sovereignty is Lebanon’s responsibility. Beirut must make the hard choice to disarm Hezbollah, whatever the cost, or remain a bystander as Israel continues to neutralize the militia’s threat.

A parallel dynamic unfolds in Gaza, where the refusal to disarm Hamas perpetuates suffering and stagnation. The first phase of the Trump Deal secured the release of all Israeli hostages in exchange for 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. However, unless Hamas surrenders its weapons, Israel will retain control over half of Gaza, including all border crossings.

This stranglehold blocks reconstruction funds and investments critical for rebuilding infrastructure and fostering economic growth. Like Lebanon, Gaza prioritizes militia armament over national interests, sacrificing the population’s desperate need for jobs, housing, and stability. The refusal to disarm Hamas ensures Gaza remains under Israeli military oversight, unable to recover from years of conflict.

The ethos of resistance, embodied by Hezbollah and Hamas, is meant to serve national survival. Instead, both militias invert this principle: Lebanon and Gaza remain crippled so that Hezbollah and Hamas can endure. This perverse dynamic condemns the region to perpetual conflict, economic ruin, and lost opportunities for future generations. By prioritizing their arsenals over the welfare of their people, these militias betray the very cause they claim to champion, leaving Lebanon and Gaza trapped in a cycle of devastation.

A recent Israeli strike in Msailih, a southern Lebanese town and the hometown of Speaker Nabih Berri—Hezbollah’s political ally in the Shia political duo—underscored Israel’s resolve. The target was a company renting small tractors and construction vehicles, which Hezbollah allegedly uses to dig tunnels and build fortifications. These vehicles are also essential for clearing debris and rebuilding Lebanon’s war-torn south.

By striking them, Israel sent a pointed message: as long as Berri and his allies enable Hezbollah’s rearmament and undermine Lebanese sovereignty, no one is immune from Israel’s reach.

Israel’s strategy shifted decisively after October 7, 2023, when it recognized that Arab governments, including Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, lack the power to control militias. This realization redefined Israel’s approach to security and peace. No longer relying on promises from weak states, Israel now imposes its own terms: Disarm Hezbollah and Hamas, or face indefinite military oversight.

In Lebanon, this means continued strikes on Hezbollah’s infrastructure and operatives. In Gaza, it means controlling key territories until Hamas disarms.

The international community’s patience has worn thin. Lebanon and Gaza cannot expect external powers to resolve their crises. Sovereignty demands tough decisions—disarming militias, enforcing state authority, and prioritizing national recovery over ideological resistance.

Hezbollah and Hamas have long exploited the rhetoric of resistance to justify their grip on power, but their actions serve only to prolong suffering. Until Beirut and Gaza act decisively, Israel will continue policing these militias, ensuring both regions pay the price of inaction with prolonged devastation, economic collapse, and the erosion of any hope for a stable, prosperous future. The path to recovery lies in courage, not capitulation to armed groups that hold their people hostage.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

This Is Beirut

Today marks the second anniversary of the horrific attacks when Hamas militants stormed out of the Gaza Strip into nearby Israeli towns. They killed, maimed and burned 1,200 civilians in a brutal door-to-door rampage, kidnapping 250. This assault demanded unequivocal condemnation from Arab and Muslim populations, yet responses ranged from celebration to justification. Two years later, Arab and Muslim introspection remains absent, and failure persists.

The October 7 attack was a tragic massacre of Israelis. No amount of Palestinian desperation or grievances – real or imagined – can justify such barbaric violence.

International law protects the weak – in this case, the Palestinians – against the strong, the Israelis. When the weak abandon the law, their losses far exceed those of the strong, a lesson that Palestinians and their friends have yet to learn.

Instead, the Palestinian approach prioritizes showcasing victimhood to garner global sympathy and immunity. Sympathy is weaponized to vilify and delegitimize Israel, with the ultimate aim of undermining its existence. Immunity is invoked to excuse lawlessness, including non-state violence against Israelis. This model, rooted in emotion rather than reality, perpetuates Palestinian misery.

What Palestinians needed, before and after October 7, was an honest discussion about their options. The failure to establish a Palestinian state is not due to Israeli control over territory but stems from Palestinian inability to form a representative, reliable government that speaks for all of them and delivers on its commitments without shifting goals to suit populist narratives, as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) has done since 1993.

Friends of Palestinians – particularly in the Arab and Muslim world – have failed them. Instead of fostering pragmatic discussions about costs, consequences and governance, many have indulged in emotional rhetoric and populism, focusing on vilifying Israel’s response to October 7 while ignoring the barbaric actions that triggered the response and the Arab and Palestinian failure to force a Hamas surrender that would have ended the war on October 8.

This failure is compounded by restricted information in many Arab countries, even those like Lebanon that claim freedom of expression. Most Arabs lack accurate information about Israel and its people. The information diet fed to Arab audiences often includes selective voices: anti-Israel Jewish intellectuals like Noam Chomsky or Norman Finkelstein, Western-based Arab commentators with limited regional expertise, such as the late Edward Said, and translations of fringe Israeli articles from either far-right war advocates or far-left critics of Israel’s self-defense.

This curated narrative fuels misinformation, particularly used by Islamist media, where antisemitic tropes – such as claims of a Jewish state spanning from the Euphrates to the Nile or allegations of ethnic cleansing – persist unchecked. Vilifying and boycotting Israel is designed not only to pressure the Jewish state but also to keep global audiences, especially Arabs and Muslims, misinformed.

Over the past two years, I have worked to explain Israel to Arab audiences and debunk myths. Reactions have been mixed. While some acknowledge the Arab shortcomings I highlight, a common rebuttal is: Why don’t you criticize Israel? My response: Israel has its own social scientists and intellectuals addressing its issues, and their success is evident in Israel’s achievements compared to most Arab states.

In contrast, Arab intellectuals rarely challenge official narratives, often aligning with populist sentiment. While many focus on criticizing Israel, few address the internal challenges facing Arab societies. For example, while some Arabs celebrated the tens of thousands of Israelis protesting their government for months on end, they overlooked the irony: only a handful of Arabs dared to question prevailing narratives by holding Hamas accountable instead of solely condemning Israel.

Two years after the October 7 tragedy, this piece is not meant to console Israelis or reaffirm their pain and response – I have done that elsewhere. Instead, it serves as a call to my fellow Arabs: most Arab thinkers and writers have failed their people by fixating on Israel’s faults while ignoring their own.

A Palestinian state begins with introspection and institution-building, not merely territorial demands or complaints about perceived injustices. A mature, reliable government capable of negotiating peace with Israel must come first. Only then can a viable state emerge.

The same introspection is needed in Lebanon. After decades of blaming external powers, particularly Israel, for their woes, the Lebanese must look inward, disarm Hezbollah, hold free and fair elections, and rebuild their state.

October 7 is not only a reminder of the horrific massacre of Israelis but also a call for Arabs to learn from this tragedy. Addressing internal challenges is the only way to ensure that such violence, and the devastating war that followed, never happen again.