israel-hamas-war
  • Ilaria Romano 7 August 2024
    Since the end of the war of liberation against ISIS in 2017, Iraq has experienced a situation of relative stability, meaning the absence of open conflict, regularly undermined by internal and regional crises. Involved in the tensions between Iran and Israel since the beginning of the war in Gaza, due to the ties of Iraqi Shiite militias with Tehran, the country has also worsened its relations with the United States, which still maintains military outposts on its territory
  • Vanessa Breidy 31 July 2024
    Twenty-four hours after Israel’s declaration of war following October 7, 2023, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah announced a “war of support for Gaza” from South Lebanon. This declaration was made solely by the political armed party Hezbollah, not the Lebanese government, thus constituting a clear violation of Lebanese state sovereignty and the rule of law. This breach has elicited varied reactions from Lebanese parties, with some Christian parties declaring the inevitability of political system reform and emphasizing the necessity of opening up the debate as soon as the war ends.
  • After 1967, Israel rediscovered itself as a strong state, capable of imposing its will on Arab enemies and setting the rules of the game. In a country that had just a few days earlier feared for its existence in the face of a joint Arab attack, the stunning military victory achieved in the Six-Day War sparked huge relief and considerable national pride for the technical and military achievements attained in less than twenty years of national history. Since then, the project of creating new settlements in the OPTs has faced opposition only from the more radical anti-Zionist and leftist factions at the fringes.
  • The Gaza war is a reminder that the Europeans left behind an unstable status quo a century ago. Absent a Sunni consensus, Iran is making an indirect power play. Iran’s weakness is also a strength: as non-Arab, Shiite Muslims, Iran’s leaders can’t trace their ancestry to the prophet Muhammad’s qureysh tribe—as can Jordan’s and Morocco’s monarchs, and as ISIS’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi claimed. Though around 85 percent of Muslims are Sunni, the demography of global Islam has long favored much larger non-Arab populations. The dynamic might be resolved with a Vatican City-style solution for Al Aqsa.
  • Renzo Guolo 27 February 2024
    Benjamin Netanyahu’s consistent refusals pose a challenge to those seeking to quell the Middle East conflict. Despite global pressure, Netanyahu remains steadfast in his decision to advance the fighting towards Rafah. In this area, millions of Gazans find themselves trapped between the Israeli Defense Force’s Merkava tanks and Egypt’s increasingly fortified barrier, which serves as the final obstacle preventing further dispersal of Palestinians from the Strip.
  • Claudia De Martino 10 January 2024
    Qatar is a small Gulf state that has recently returned to the spotlight as a mediator in the hostage crisis between Hamas and Israel. This is due to its good relations with both Washington and Tel Aviv, as well as its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood movements in the Arab world. Doha serves as the main sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region. To date, Qatar has successfully facilitated the only prisoner exchange between Israel and Gaza, resulting in the release of 121 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian political prisoners. In addition, a seven-day truce was achieved, which benefited Hamas and facilitated the entry of much-needed humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. However, Doha remains an unscrupulous player in international relations, detached from the logic of inter-state loyalty and multilateral alliances, and continues to act as a free agent (or, if anything, aligned with Erdogan’s Turkey), lacking any normative approach in the international community.
  • Seyla Benhabib 15 November 2023
    October 7, 2023 is not just a turning point for Israel and the Jewish diaspora; it must be a turning point for the Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian people must free themselves of the scourge of Hamas. The acts of violence by Hamas do not only constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity; they also reveal that Islamic Jihadi ideology, which revels in the imagery of violence, which has overtaken the movement.
  • Israel’s actions in no way justify anti-Semitic reactions, especially not in Germany. It is intolerable that Jews in Germany are once again exposed to threats to life and limb and have to fear physical violence on the streets. The democratic ethos of the Federal Republic of Germany, which is orientated towards the obligation to respect human dignity, is linked to a political culture for which Jewish life and Israel’s right to exist are central elements worthy of special protection in light of the mass crimes of the Nazi era.
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