Amid the carnage in Gaza, it’s not immediately obvious that what is taking place has less to do with Israelis…
Author: Michael Young
What do the recent shoe-throwing incident with Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, the uncertain truce in Gaza, and Lebanon’s national dialogue…
“Don’t panic,” the former US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, told his Lebanese friends at a conference organized jointly last…
Rarely a day goes by without someone offering new advice to the incoming Obama administration on how to deal with…
You have to hand it to Michel Aoun, he never goes half-way. Here was everyone else staying in Syria for…
According to press reports, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will set March as the deadline for work to begin…
George W. Bush: good, bad, and ugly A large part of the hope accompanying the election of Barack Obama as…
So, Israel’s strategy the next time it enters into a war with Hizbullah is to destroy much more of Lebanon…
The national dialogue is on track again, albeit with its next session delayed until November 5, no doubt so that…
The headline in the pro-opposition Al-Akhbar newspaper on Tuesday described the reconciliation in Tripoli as an event that “broke” the…
Not very long ago, you will remember, there was the Friends of Lebanon group of states, whose declared aim was…
It was remarkable that so few Lebanese politicians responded to the statements that Bashar Assad made last week to a…
Weeks ago, Michel Aoun’s political adversaries were already predicting that the general’s first act once the government was formed would…
If you’re wondering what happened yesterday in Tripoli, where a bomb exploded alongside a bus, killing several Lebanese soldiers and…
There is growing concern in Israel and the United States that Hizbullah intends to alter the status quo in Lebanon…
Walid Moallem came to Beirut on Monday, proving that absence doesn’t necessarily increase a sense of longing. In his short…
So, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, is now saying that United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 is dead. It’s not…
It is easy to dismiss the National Christian Gathering established last week as largely an assemblage of pro-Syrian politicians, has-beens,…
From an article in Al-Hayat last Monday, citing a European diplomatic source, we learn that France asked Syria to intervene…
No one likes to take a prediction back, but last week I wrote that Michel Aoun would be unable to…
There is a scene in the film “Apocalypse Now” where two characters, Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz, are talking. Kurtz…
If there is one thing that has characterized commentary on the Middle East in the United States in recent years,…
The most worrying development in the coming months in Lebanon may be only partly visible today: a concerted effort by…
Listening to the speeches of President Michel Suleiman and Hizbullah’s Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah earlier this week, it is becoming apparent…
Whatever else is said about the agreement between Lebanon’s leaders reached in Qatar on Wednesday, it will likely transform the…
It was a mixed week for the head of the Democratic Gathering, Walid Jumblatt. His call for an all-party dialogue…
Let’s thank Michel Aoun for informing us that the shooting of two Phalangist sympathizers in Zahleh on Sunday by a…
Senator Barack Obama has gotten much heat for suggesting that when people lose faith in Washington, they “end up voting…
Amid rumors that the political furniture is being moved around in Damascus, perhaps the strangest thing is how Syria has…
A determined refrain heard among those thinking about or dealing with the Middle East is that the Gordian knot of…
When Syria’s foreign minister and one of its Lebanese marionettes both mention the Hariri tribunal in the space of two…
Recently, we’ve heard Hizbullah’s secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, pick up on a theme dear to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.…
Detlev Mehlis did not say much that was new on Tuesday evening, when he was interviewed by May Chidiac on…
There is a passage in Samantha Power’s “A Problem from Hell,” her Pulitzer Prize And-the-Winner-Is-Them-Again -winning book on how the…
In recent weeks, a message has been coming out of Iran, one transmitted to Arab leaders and now through proliferating…
The USS Cole has certainly created a ruckus in Lebanon, especially when no one has actually seen the ship. But…
Another round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is certainly likely, but I don’t consider it inevitable, particularly in the…
Rarely a day goes by without someone writing an article protesting against the incapacity of Lebanese politicians to come to…
Syria has vowed to soon release the results of its inquiry into the assassination of Hizbullah official Imad Mughniyeh. However,…
For months, we’ve been hearing the presidential candidates promise American voters “change.” But as the US primaries move beyond their…
You know that French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner didn’t expect to be long for the Sarkozy administration when he decided…
The tragic and senseless killing of demonstrators in Shiyyah last Sunday was, perhaps rightfully, seen as the opening shot in…
Berlin Detlev Mehlis speaks slowly. So when he says, “I haven’t seen a word in his reports during the past…
For some years now, Arab diplomacy has been a chronicle of death foretold. In Iraq, Darfur, and the Palestinian territories,…
You have to wonder what Michel Aoun thought when he heard the sound of the bomb that went off next…
Nicolas Sarkozy and what American candidates might learn from France’s permanent reality show History, even trivial history, does indeed repeat…
So unreliable have Syrian commitments to Lebanon’s normalization been in recent months, that almost no one anticipates success for the…
Maybe 2008 will be the year when we are finally rid of that vacuous belief that “the neocons” are in…
What is left of Lebanon’s confessional democratic system as the country pursues its cold civil war? At no time in…
It’s not often that one has the stomach to call on political realists – all too frequently purveyors of foreign…