Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Mustafa Fetouri
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Will Iran pick up the pieces of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ while surviving another 4 years of Trump?
With Donald Trump officially in the White House as the 47 President of the United States of America, some countries, like the Islamic Republic of Iran, are already pondering the immediate and long-term impact of this “unconventional” master of the White House. Iran has already survived the flurry of executive...
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What the Trump presidency will not do in Africa
President-elect Donald Trump is not known as an African enthusiast. He never visited the continent during his first term (2017-2021). Not many African leaders are known to be close to him in any capacity. There is no record of him setting foot on the continent even as private citizen but...
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Remembering the First Intifada and the birth of Hamas
The Palestinian First Intifada started on 7 December, 1987, marked by mass demonstrations, first in Gaza before spreading to the entire Palestinian occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Frustrated, angry and dispossessed Palestinians from all ages and all walks of Life took to the streets, throwing stones at the...
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Libya now finds itself in the crosshairs of the superpowers
In his first comment on post-Assad Syria on 16 December, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia maintains relations with all groups in Syria and countries in the region and that most are interested in Russia’s military bases “remaining” in Syria. A week earlier, his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said...
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The hidden side of the Lockerbie Bombing that is never talked about
On 15 April 1992, I and my future wife took a flight from Tripoli to Cairo to spend few days before heading back to school in Athens. Midnight of that day was a milestone because the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 748 would come into effect, banning all...
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Is Eastern Libya a viable strategic alternative to Russian retreat from Syria?
On 30 September, 2015, Russian military jets bombed targets in Syria for the first time in what was the start of a long Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war, in progress since 2011. Earlier in the day, the Russian Duma authorised President Putin to deploy Russian air forces...
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Is France being chased out of Africa for good or could it launch a comeback?
Landlocked Chad, a West African country, announced that it is breaking off its military and security ties with its former colonial master, France. Chad’s Foreign Minister, Abderaman Koulamallah, in making the surprise announcement on 28 November, declared that France should consider that “Chad has grown up, matured and is...
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AFRICOM: Will it survive the Trump presidency and how will it operate in the future?
United States Africa Command, or AFRICOM, is a military structure founded in 2007 with the entire African continent as, to use the military jargon, its “theatre of operations”. The idea behind establishing the Command is hegemonic in nature and interventional in practice. The Command’s mission statement says AFRICOM “counters...
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Desperate to appease Israel, Germany goes out of its way
Since October 2023 and the Palestinian Resistance’s daring attack on Israel, Germany – not any other European country – emerged as the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, second only to the United States. The Swedish Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), estimated that, while the US provided 69...
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Libya’s municipal elections expose the hypocrisy of the rotten political elite
16 November marked an important day in Libya as it managed to, successfully, organise elections in 58 municipalities across the huge country despite all difficulties facing such a big operation. From Al-Burdy on the Egyptian borders to Al-Kufra near the Sudanese borders, all the way to Ubrai near the...
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Trump’s victory means Americans voted for the Republic not the Empire
Back in 2016 when Donald Trump first announced his presidential bid, almost every senior US politician dismissed him, usually with a kind of mockery that made fun of him. President Obama, for instance, said Donald Trump “will not be president”. Why? Because, he said, his trust in the “American...
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Israel's US-backed long war against the United Nations
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted its Resolution 69 on 4 May, 1949 recommending that the UN General Assembly (UNGA) admit Israel as a member state. Interestingly enough, paragraph 1 of the Resolution reads: the Council “Decides in its judgement that Israel is a peace-loving State and is...
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Israel forced the world to create UNRWA; now it wants UNRWA dead
At last, Israel took the decision it has been threatening for a long time: declare UNRWA an illegal entity, denying it the right to work from any territories under its control, including occupied lands in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Simply said, Israeli Knesset just banned the organisation...
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Despite being dead for 13 years, Gaddafi is still a commanding figure in Libya
20 October, 2024 marks 13 years since the late Libyan leader, Muammer Gaddafi, was murdered as he tried to leave Sirte, his home town on the Mediterranean coast, where he made his last stand against the NATO-supported rebels. When he arrived there, Sirte was already under intense attack by...
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Now that the historical leadership of Hezbollah is gone, will the Party go, too?
Over the last three months, starting last July, Israel succeeded in targeting the top Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon through a series of well coordinated and targeted assassinations that wiped out the entire organisations’ founding leaders. By 1 October, it managed to kill the Islamic Resistance’s political and military commander,...
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Is Iran about to let go of its regional allies, from Yemen to Lebanon? Could it actually do that?
Social media is rife with conspiracy theories focused on how Iran sold out its allies, from the late Ismail Haniyeh to the late Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Similar theories also surround the exploding pagers and wireless devices that killed and injured thousands in Lebanon. In both cases, it all comes down...
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Madrid Peace Conference, Take 2: challenging the failed US Middle East policy
On 13 September, Madrid hosted a group of Muslim and European nations, aimed at reviving the long-since-forgotten Middle East peace process. This time, though, what Spain and other European countries, including the EU itself want is a little different from what the United States wants, despite both sides agreeing...
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The Contact Group for Gaza: Arab-Muslim hypocrisy at its finest
Early last November, barely a month after the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza had started, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia convened an extraordinary joint summit that brought together heads of states and government of both the League of Arab States (LAS) and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) aiming...
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No war is coming to Libya and here is why
On 9 August, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) published a statement warning of a potential war in the country. The Mission, mediating reconciliation efforts in the country, pointed out that “recent mobilization of forces in various parts of Libya, particularly in the southern and western regions”...
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Libya in light of Egypt-Turkiye rapprochement
With the arrival of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in Ankara, on 4 September, for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the long feud between the two regional powers appears to have ended on good terms. For years, both men have been trading barbs against each other, until relations...
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Money in US elections: pro-Israel money corrupting the entire system
“Strengthening bipartisan support for the US-Israel relationship”: this is how the American-Israeli Affairs Public Committee (AIPAC) on X, former Twitter, profiles itself, giving the impression that it is only a simple group of lobbyists, among thousands of others, in a land where lobbying for whatever cause is legal, welcomed...
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Libya’s Central Bank crisis exposes lack of legitimacy and strong foreign meddling hampering Libya’s progress
Crises in Libya multiply, sometimes, at a daunting speed, making tracking and analysing them a difficult task even for pundits and professional commentators. In many cases, it takes the most trivial of triggers to engulf the country, particularly the capital, Tripoli, in a spiralling crisis usually involving guns and...
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Memories of the fall of Tripoli 13 years ago and the striking similarities to what is going on today
13 years ago, on 20 August, 2011, the fall of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, began. It was not a swift end to the battle for the capital and the seat of power in a country already at war with itself. It was not slow, either. Rebels fighting under the...
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It is time for Arabs to stop blaming Hamas for the genocide in Gaza. Blame yourselves, instead
The overwhelming majority of ordinary Arabs and Muslims support and sympathise with the Palestinian people. They usually express this support and show such sympathy through their use of words in referring to Hamas and other resistance groups fighting Israel. They commonly call them heroes, courageous men and, when they...
