Arab Region Archives

Analyses

Arab Region

Brother Wissam drives his pickup truck to the convent where he lives alongside other Franciscan friars. He’s on his way back from Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, where he picked up his nephew Francius, 19, on vacation in Iraq on his own for the first time. Like many Christian Iraqis, especially ordained ones, Wissam studied abroad for a few years, but never considered leaving his country permanently. The city he calls home is Qaraqosh (in Syriac) or Bakhdida (in Arabic), thirty kilometers from Mosul, the symbol, since 2014, of the Islamic State’s fury against Christians.

International Affairs
Biden is Right: the US’ 2003 Catastrophe
Should be Avoided at all Costs
Hussein Ibish 20 October 2023

Hamas obviously thinks that if it wants to take over the Palestinian movement, it needs another sustained insurgency against Israeli occupation. Hamas is hoping to lure the Israeli military back into the interior of Gaza for the urban combat that favors insurgent groups. Hamas hopes a sustained insurgency can eventually result in a steady drip of killed and captured Israeli conscripts, allowing Hamas to claim that it alone is actively fighting for Palestine. What this means is that in trying to fulfill the pledge to “eliminate Hamas,” Israel could well deliver everything Hamas is counting on.
International Affairs
Away from Treacherous Traps:
Why Biden is Holding Netanyahu Back
Siegmund Ginzberg 19 October 2023

Why does Hamas deliberately flaunt the horrors it perpetrates? To demonstrate Israel’s lack of preparation and Hamas’s own military prowess? To spread terror? To disorient, to humiliate, to foster a sense of paralysis and powerlessness? To say: look, we can get you when and how we want? Or perhaps to say: yes, we are the beasts you say we are, come and avenge yourselves, come and get us in Gaza?
International Affairs
Rached Ghannouchi’s Arrest: the End of the Tunisian Exception
Alessandra Tommasi 1 June 2023

Twelve years after the Arab Springs, the curtain is closing on what has been the only Arab democracy: the so-called Tunisian exception. On May 15, Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi was sentenced to one year of prison as part of a crackdown on dissent that has become more acute since early 2023, but started at least one year ago according to Andrew March.
Migrations, Society
A Fractured Maghreb: Infighting and Grudges
Instead of Unity and Cooperation
Rabii El Gamrani 22 December 2022

The Maghreb countries cooperated with each other to the birth of the Arab Maghreb Union. Thirty-three years after, even circulating is hard
International Affairs
Saudi Arabia Plays East Against West While Smothering Dissent
Federica Zoja 11 November 2022

Mohammed Bin Salman is deftly playing a chess game aimed at positioning the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a foreign policy leader both regionally and internationally, exploiting each of the great powers’ primary weaknesses (and desires): energy prices in the US, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and China’s desperation to assert its regional dominance. His sudden rise to the head of the desert kingdom was consolidated recently with his appointment as Prime Minister and heir apparent to his aging father, securing his untouchability and immunity when it comes to human rights violations, putting partners like the United States in the particular quandry of not being able to use their traditional soft power levers and leaving evermore domestic dissidents at risk.
Religion
Religion, Politics and the Challenge of Reforms:
The Case of Yusuf al-Qaradawi
Mohammed Hashas 13 October 2022

The passing away of the ‘global sheikh’ closes an epoch of engaged Islam. A portrait of Muslim Brotherhood’s former ideologist by Mohammed Hashas.
International Affairs
After the Referendum, Tunisia’s Democracy on the Brink
Federica Zoja 4 August 2022

Ten days after a largely boycotted vote on a new Constitution pushed forward by president Kais Saied, official results have yet to be announced, while a new IMF loan is urgently needed to keep the country afloat. The coming weeks will be crucial for the destiny of the young North African democracy.
Society
Two Years After the Port Blast, Lebanon Struggles for Renewal
Nicole Hamouche 13 July 2022

A recent parliamentary election opened a way for civil society to get into Lebanon’s institutions. But that seems too little to allow for the country to be shaked and saved.
Philosophy
Farewell to Hassan Hanafi, the Intellectual Father
of the Islamic Left and Occidentalism
Mohammed Hashas 12 January 2022

The late Egyptian philosopher has reshaped Islamic theology, challenged Western thinking and called to fight injustice. Mohammed Hashas draws his profile.