Articles

In the current Syrian context, a fundamental question arises with particular urgency: who called for the return of the Golan? Who else could it be but Syrian President Ahmed al-Charaa? But why on earth did the Syrian president reopen the Golan “cold case” when he had so many other priorities to deal with? In his view as a former jihadist, appealing to world opinion at the UN General Assembly meeting on September 23 was not merely a reminder of the Israeli-Syrian dispute dating back to June 1967. So what got into him, when in an interview the previous day he had stressed that direct Israeli-Syrian negotiations had taken place under U.S. auspices and that the two sides had reached 90% of a security agreement? (1)

The Petit Palais is devoting its first major retrospective to Eva Gonzalès, running from September 15 through January 24, bringing together nearly one hundred paintings, pastels, and prints. The only official pupil of Édouard Manet, and a contemporary of Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt without ever truly belonging to the Impressionist group, she was above all a woman who forged her own path in a 19th century that offered few such opportunities to artists of her sex. Exceptionally well curated, the exhibition is also moving: behind the pupil, the model, the wife, and the mother, it reveals, work by work, a painter claiming her freedom.

From “Operation Decisive Storm” to “Yemen Dawn” The distance between “Decisive Storm” and “Yemen Dawn” is not merely eleven years of war in Yemen. It is a political and strategic gulf that encapsulates accumulated failures, shifts in the balance of power, and changes in Yemen’s position within the regional conflict, culminating in a moment when the security of the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait has become an integral part of the calculations surrounding the war and its possible outcomes. When Saudi Arabia launched Operation Decisive Storm in March 2015, its stated objective was to restore internationally recognized authority and halt the Houthi advance following their takeover of Sanaa and their push toward Aden. The intervention appeared to be an attempt to prevent the collapse of a political and security arrangement that Riyadh considered essential to protecting its southern borders and preventing Yemen from becoming a base of hostile influence on the kingdom’s southern flank.

I. Executive Summary The collapse of the 2022 truce transformed the Yemeni conflict into a high-intensity conventional war. The launch of “Operation Dawn of Yemen” by the internationally recognized Yemeni government and its allied forces, backed by Riyadh, aims to break the dual threat posed by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia: to the Bab el-Mandeb–Red Sea maritime corridor, and to oil infrastructure in Yemen itself (Ma’rib) and Saudi Arabia. The conflict now revolves around three major dynamics: securing the western flank (Yemen’s Red Sea coast), strangling urban centers (Taiz), and the direct internationalization of the conflict through the activation of third-party military alliances (Turkey, Pakistan).

The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to South African jurist Navi Pillay comes at a time when international law is increasingly being called into question, weakened by the growing number of conflicts and attacks on the institutions tasked with upholding it. For several months, reports and statements from international organizations have warned in succession of the threats facing human rights and the foundations of the global legal order. Israel’s strong reaction to the award, along with the latest U.S. offensive against the International Criminal Court, illustrates the situation. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to jurist Navi Pillay, an 85-year-old South African who has devoted much of her life to defending international law. Ms. Pillay notably chaired the independent UN commission of inquiry that last year accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

On the third anniversary of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” and the tragedy in Gaza caused by Hamas, it seems legitimate to ask: Where are the Arabs? Indeed, where is Iran? And where is Israel heading? For the time being, this has become a question that cannot be answered. This is because the problems afflicting the Arab world, or rather the Arab worlds, appear unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future, for the simple reason that the key to a solution most often lies in Tehran, not in one Arab capital or another, and certainly not with the Arab League. The Arab League is experiencing a structural crisis that reflects the Arab world’s state of decay. I believe “decay” is a rather gentle word.