Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Muhammad Hussein
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France is curbing freedom in the name of freedom
France under President Emmanuel Macron has been making more than a few international waves over the past few months. It has involved itself in the dispute between Greece and Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean, for example, and given tacit support to the rogue Libyan Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar against...
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Remembering the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal
On this day nine years ago, the historic prisoner exchange deal between Israel and the Palestinian resistance group Hamas took place, with its long-lasting effects still impacting on the present day....
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The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance
Rashid Khalidi’s telling of the story of the loss of his homeland and its gradual invasion is a deeply personal one, and is unlike other more detached accounts I have read. The author hails from a prominent family in the traditional Palestinian elite in the city of Jerusalem. He...
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Will Turkey join the Axis of Resistance?
The past few years have demonstrated to the Axis of Resistance – the motley alliance of “anti-imperialist” imperialists – that its efforts in the Middle East have not gone unrewarded. Russia and Iran’s military intervention into Syria has allowed Bashar Al-Assad to survive years of onslaught by opposition groups...
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Macron’s ‘red lines’ against Turkey reveals France’s neo-Napoleonic mission
Not since Napoleon stepped foot on the shores of Alexandria in July 1798, embarking on his short-lived invasion of Egypt, has a Frenchman so imperiously sought to topple a native regional power in the eastern Mediterranean while still appealing to the local population. Under the name of “God, on whom...
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How long will Lebanon and Iraq tolerate militias which undermine national sovereignty?
A week ago, justice of sorts was meted out to those suspected of being behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005; one member of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia was charged with the crime and three others were acquitted. Although the result of that UN...
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The Gulf’s recognition of Israel opens new doors, but will kill the dream of an Arab Jerusalem
While the US’ Deal of the Century ran out of traction earlier this year before it even took off, Israel’s own version took effect last week when it reached a historic peace deal with the United Arab Emirates. In return for delaying its annexation plans in the West Bank,...
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State-imposed secularism will never work in the Middle East
Almost a month after the Turkish government overturned the 1934 ruling that converted the Hagia Sophia into a museum, the response from the international community to it becoming a mosque again was telling. Condemnation from the likes of Greece and the Vatican was expected, as was the praise by...
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Remembering the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire
What: The dissolution and division of the Ottoman Empire and its former territories through the Treaty of Lausanne, leading to the establishment of the modern Republic of Turkey When: 24 July, 1923 Where: Turkey What happened? By the early 1900s, the Ottoman Empire had long been decaying and declining from decades – over...
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Remembering Israel’s killing of four children on the beach in Gaza
On 16 July 2014, Israeli missile killed four children of the same family on a beach in Gaza...
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‘We will not let anybody harm Turkey’s interests’
An interview with former Deputy Prime Minister Cevdet Yilmaz...
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France directs EU foreign policy against Turkey, and the bloc is too weak to stop it
It is rare to see a government throw a sustained tantrum against another due to differences over foreign policy, especially without first attempting to solve it through diplomatic means. That, though, is exactly what France has been doing for months against Turkey over its influence in the Mediterranean and...
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Are the Idlib civil war and HTS domination the end of the Syrian revolution?
The remainder of the rebel-held province of Idlib is proving to be the greatest experiment in nation-building that the modern world is witnessing, even if the world has largely neglected the Syrian revolution. Consisting of displaced Syrians, refugee camps and an assortment of independent and Turkish-backed groups, the province has...
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The US Caesar sanctions are a punishment not a solution for Syria
Seeing is believing, as the saying goes. And after seeing the 53,275 photographs proving the torture and arbitrary killings committed by the Syrian regime which were smuggled out by a former police photographer named “Caesar” in 2014, the US has finally decided to impose maximum pressure on the regime...
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The protests may reveal America’s social and political decay, but don’t expect another revolution
Imagine that you are a peaceful protestor, never having broken glass or drawn blood, who demonstrated against institutional racism and police brutality in your local area. At home one night during the curfew, you dream of a free society and a more open political system, before being taken by...
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It is time for the Iran-backed axis militias to be treated exactly like Daesh
Conflicts are meant to involve the living, with the dead being long withdrawn from the complex web of political alliances and bloody feuds that mankind revels in. So when the grave of the eighth century Umayyad Caliph Umar Ibn Abdul Aziz – along with that of his wife and...
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Profile: T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt
On 19 May, 1935, Thomas Edward Lawrence passed away following a week of remaining in a coma caused by a motorcycle crash in Dorset, England. The British Arabist, linguist, author of one of the most acclaimed works in the English language and military strategist, who had a senior role...
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While the House of Assad crumbles, the West plays Sykes-Picot 2.0 with Syria’s Kurds
Syria has undergone more drastic and chaotic shifts within the past month than it probably has throughout the past nine years of its conflict. The House of Assad now suffers from a rift caused by the president’s own cousin – the influential wealthy businessman Rami Makhlouf – who took to...
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Turkey will soon be forced to tackle the rebels in Idlib
Long before Turkey’s revenge attacks against the Syrian regime in February, and even before the regime’s offensive to recapture Idlib and its bombardment of the province, Turkey and Russia struck a now apparently forgotten agreement in September 2018. This focused on the “demilitarised zone” which Turkey hoped to create...
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Hajj, the coronavirus and technical innovation
The coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic has caused countless events to be cancelled, forcing them onto the digital realm and leaving them to rely on the power of modern technology. Even the G20 summit ended up online. The annual Hajj pilgrimage, however, is one of those events that cannot be held digitally....
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Haftar and the Gulf states are leading a hypocritical, fake war against Islamism in Libya
In 2017, Abu Dhabi’s Foreign Minister, Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan told a forum that, “There will come a day that we will see far more radicals, extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe because of a lack of decision-making, trying to be politically correct, or assuming that they know...
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Remembering the Douma chemical attacks
A chemical weapons attack was carried out on the people of Douma, south-western Syria, killing around 85 people...
