Articles

In Iran, the fate of the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is in question, and a highly strategic Iranian island has been targeted by US aviation. On the Lebanese front, Israel continues its ground offensive despite some diplomatic breakthroughs in recent days around the idea of direct negotiations with Israel, launched by the Lebanese government; a proposal that remains dependent on the situation on the ground. For the second consecutive week, the Middle East is living as if in fast forward. The attack on Iran by the Israeli and American armies continues, with intensive bombings reaching, on March 14, the highly strategic Iranian island of Kharg, north of the Persian Gulf. This island houses large oil infrastructures that were intentionally spared by the Americans, while President Donald Trump indicated that military installations had been reduced to nothing. The attack on this island constitutes a fundamental development as it poses a potential threat to Iran's oil exports. For their part, the Iranians, especially through the voice of the Revolutionary Guards, have sought to demonstrate their dominance over the Strait of Hormuz, through which no less than 20% of the world's oil transits. They declared that they would prevent the passage of any oil tanker belonging to their “enemies,” in this case the United States and Israel and their allies, sparing the ships of countries like India, for example. The Iranians also threatened to mine the strait, which led to an American response that largely destroyed their naval capabilities. On March 14, Donald Trump called on countries affected by the dangers to their ships to send military vessels to escort oil tankers during their passage through this strait. What the Iranians will have succeeded in provoking is a global rise in oil prices, particularly detrimental to President Trump, a few months before the mid-term elections in the United States. But their own attacks against the Arab states of the Gulf and American interests in the region, as well as against Israel, have largely decreased in intensity. Could this be an exhaustion of their military capabilities in the face of the scale of the offensive (which, according to their enemies, destroyed a large part of their military production), or a tactical reduction in the use of their missiles and drones to hold on longer, with a visible intention to wear out their enemies and allow the mullahs' regime to survive? The other question that has preoccupied observers this week is the health of the new Iranian Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. Rumours about his health intensified during the week, and he progressively appeared, notably in reports from Israeli and American intelligence services cited in official statements, as having been seriously wounded during the strike that killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several members of his direct family, by an Israeli strike in Tehran on February 28, 2026, at the launch of the war. And what reinforced the rumors was the first message addressed to the Iranian nation by Mojtaba Khamenei on March 12, which was read by a presenter and in which the person concerned did not appear. A speech that largely echoes the messages of the very radical head of Iranian security, Ali Larijani. In any event, the wildest rumors circulate about him: he is said to be disfigured and/or to have had both legs amputated, he is said to be in a coma, he is even said to have died, he is said to have been transported to Russia for hospitalization… To be continued. Meanwhile in Lebanon The Lebanese front, meanwhile, has known no respite this week, quite the contrary. Coordinated attacks were noted between Hezbollah, whose fighters have largely returned to south of the Litani, and to the borders with Israel (if indeed they ever left) and attacks coming directly from Tehran. The party, whose activity was deemed illegal by the Lebanese government as early as March 2 without any effective action on the ground, even intensified its operations from Wednesday, March 11, launching a hundred rockets in a single attack that day. The big absentee from the conflict remains the Lebanese army. The other development on the ground is the increasingly marked ground incursion of Israeli soldiers into Lebanese territory. Fighting is taking place with Hezbollah militiamen in more than one sector, particularly around the highly strategic village of Khiam, in South Lebanon, with the possibility of an Israeli ground offensive becoming increasingly clear, notably in view of military reinforcements at the border. The most serious aspect for the Lebanese front is that it could last even beyond the war in Iran, as appeared in Israeli statements this week. Despite all of Hezbollah's propaganda efforts to justify its entry into the war, the balance of power remains more unequal than ever, as the pro-Iranian party's attacks have so far killed only two Israeli soldiers (according to Israeli army sources), and have caused no population movement in northern Israel. In contrast, in Lebanon, the civilian death toll is spiraling (over 800 already according to the Ministry of Health), and more than 800,000 displaced people have already sought refuge in areas deemed safer. The Lebanese government is trying to contain the movement with varying degrees of success, and international aid is starting to flow, but at a pace that remains limited so far. In this regard, it is worth noting the visit of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Beirut this week, to express his “solidarity” with the Lebanese people. His calls for de-escalation are unlikely to be heeded by the belligerents. On the political level, the proposal for “direct negotiations” with Israel put forward by President Joseph Aoun remains embryonic, although it gained ground at the end of the week. Having faced American and Israeli silence in the first few days, this proposal received the support of French President Emmanuel Macron at the end of the week, and there is already talk of a possibility that such negotiations could be held in the future in Cyprus or Paris. The Quai d’Orsay, however, denied on Saturday having drawn up a peace plan between Lebanon and Israel. On the Lebanese side, there is already talk of forming the committee that will be in charge of negotiations, with names circulating, such as that of researcher Paul Salem for example. However, an important unknown remains, that of a possible Shiite name, a point that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berry refuses to decide for the moment, especially as he seeks to impose the condition of a ceasefire before the talks. Hezbollah itself, through its Secretary General Naim Kassem, in a speech on Friday, asked the Lebanese government “not to make gratuitous concessions” to Israel. On the Israeli side, the main development is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has entrusted former minister Ron Dermer with the Lebanese dossier. Until further notice, however, the final word will depend on the results of developments on the ground.

People often spoke, especially before the war, of the « Lebanese miracle », of Lebanon compared to the phoenix rising from its ashes. A beautiful image… Except that by constantly rising from its ashes for more than half a century, the Land of the Cedar is today out of breath… Especially since it is undermined from within by a party that in no way cares about « the interest of Lebanon and the survival of its people », as President Joseph Aoun aptly emphasized in his online intervention addressing the leaders of the European Union. The head of state did not hesitate to put his finger on the wound by openly accusing Hezbollah of having reactivated the South Lebanon front to « serve Iranian interests », stating that the objective of the group allied with the Pasdaran is to provoke « the fall of the Lebanese state » to subsequently claim that it alone is capable of confronting Israel. Such is therefore the true existential problem, in the full sense of the term, that Lebanon faces. This is a truism for sovereignist parties and spheres of influence. But when the President of the Republic – whom some circles accuse of being too complacent towards Hezbollah – comes to stigmatize the pro-Iranian party's deviations before international bodies, it means that the danger in this regard has reached a particularly critical threshold. And for good reason: the Hezb's irrational, even « irresponsible » behavior – as the French ambassador to the UN emphasized on Wednesday – has gone beyond all understanding. It is precisely this danger that the army commander, General Rodolphe Haykal, obscured when addressing the officers of the Great Mute a few days ago. Seeking to justify the troops' passivity in the face of the pro-Iranian group's militia surge, in flagrant violation of the Council of Ministers' resolutions on the matter, he stressed that the army « must remain equidistant from the Lebanese people ». Clearly, Yarzé must, according to him, refrain from applying government decisions so as not to enter into confrontation with a part of the population. But this is a false problem, or a way of posing the problem in a completely distorted manner. What is required is by no means to confront a part of the Lebanese people. What is asked is to face a political project whose ideological, theocratic, transnational foundation is the negation of the very idea of Lebanon , of a pluralist, liberal Lebanon, open to the world, respectful of the specificities of each of its social components. The Khomeinist project (since that is what it is about) is ideologically diametrically opposed to the raison d'être of the Lebanese entity, whose existence it does not even recognize, perceiving it solely and exclusively as a mere battleground with the Western world and a front line of « defense » against Israel. Is not the reopening of the Southern front on March 2nd, to avenge the death of the Iranian Supreme Leader, with all its consequences for Lebanon, the most striking proof of the total contempt that the Pasdaran, and in their wake Hezbollah, have for Lebanese legality, the most elementary interests of Lebanon, and the will of its population to survive? Some might retort that a confrontation between the army and the pro-Iranian militia would be very costly in terms of human lives and internal stability. Are the inhumane consequences of this fifth war against Israel in the South, triggered on March 2nd by Hezbollah at the request of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, less costly? More than eight hundred dead in two weeks, no less than 600,000 residents of the South and suburbs forced into exodus, new villages razed by the Israeli army, hundreds of targeted air raids with their share of destruction and victims, and, above all, a new occupation that seems to be looming... And this time, in all likelihood, the Hebrew State will not agree to withdraw before imposing an agreement that will make Hezbollah and others regret the May 17th agreement or the terms of the November 2024 ceasefire. But what does it matter, isn't the survival of the Pasdaran and the tyrannical and bloodthirsty regime of the mullahs in Tehran the important thing? In light of such tangible realities, it would be nothing less than a violation of the Constitution and a treacherous blow to Lebanon to show complacency and laxity towards a party whose theocratic ideology, militia action, regional role, and very existence are the antithesis and negation of the foundations of the Land of the Cedar.

Gaza Is the Future The AI-generated image for the “Gaza Riviera” project captures, in all its seductive beauty, the real-estate imagination of President Trump and his son-in-law Kushner. It stretches across 365 square kilometres of golden sands lapped by the warm waves of the Mediterranean, under a climate that the wealthy of colder countries can only dream of. From this image, only the landowners are missing — people who have no place in the scene to come, not even as cleaning staff or construction workers, much like the recently freed dark-skinned slaves who built and maintained Washington with their muscles and sweat at the time of its founding, and who make up the majority of its population to this day. The people of Gaza, however, were not merely erased from the image: they were also denied a ceasefire, with the dead and wounded now averaging dozens daily — a rate deemed acceptable by the standards of a war of extermination!!! The war is therefore considered over in President Trump’s view, and what the Netanyahu government is doing is simply what circumstances demand — nothing more, nothing less. It warrants no classification, no name, save that of “clean-up operations”?!! The founders of Washington deserve some recognition, then: emancipators of slaves and employers of the poor in building the world’s seat of decision-making. They were, it must be said, considerably more humane and civilised than their contemporary heirs. But if we leave Washington for “Jerusalem-Al-Quds”, we may find a different image, generated this time from the texts of the Torah. A broad swathe of politicians and ministers — with hardline rabbis at their forefront — is demanding that the Netanyahu government expel the population of Gaza to wherever they can be sent, tolerating the presence of no more than a hundred thousand “elect” carefully screened for their service value. Not as dark-skinned slaves, but as “beasts of burden” — in the terminology of the Torah — creatures the Lord assigned to serve the Children of Israel returning from their wandering to the Promised Land. In truth I say unto you: as Palestinians, we did not know that God had created us for this purpose, or that our mission on earth was to serve them!! Had we known… we would have refused His will. The story of “Gaza Is the Future” is not new. It was born during Trump’s first term, when his son-in-law Kushner — by his own account — read every plan that had failed to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the ones that had been sleeping in the drawers of the White House. He concluded that he could distill a workable plan, which he duly announced under the name of the “deal of the century” — an economic approach designed to bring prosperity to the Palestinians, far from the headache of politics… He proposed that the Gaza Strip serve as the geographic foundation of the solution, to which all West Bank cities would be linked, with the exception of East Jerusalem, which Trump had annexed to Israel — a move that delighted Netanyahu and his circle. The aim was to spare the settlers their daily friction with the non-Jews — the “goyim” — and to grant them two-thirds of the West Bank as a reward for their patience with the indigenous population. But the matter had another dimension, which Kushner found in the plans of Obama’s second term: the project had previously been called the “Islamic State of Palestine” and had been the subject of negotiations with the international leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, with Hamas, and with Egypt’s elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi. Hamas, which has governed the Gaza Strip since its coup against Palestinian legitimacy in 2007, was to be tasked with promoting this “Islamic State of Palestine” — one that would recognise the “Jewish character” of the State of Israel, Netanyahu’s cherished slogan at the time — enabling him to contemplate expelling all non-Jewish holders of Israeli nationality. The Achilles’ heel of the plan, however, lay in the proposal to expand the Strip’s territory at the expense of the Sinai desert, in compensation for the annexation of two-thirds of the West Bank. This set the Egyptian deep state in motion in its struggle against the elected president, until he was brought down. It was likely against this backdrop that Kushner set about stripping his proposal of any ideological dimension, settling for purely economic content and renaming the project the “deal of the century” — promising prosperity for all in the Middle East!!? There are questions that seem simple, almost naive, that nonetheless demand an answer. How can one override the right to private property and strip it of protection — the very cornerstone of the United States Constitution?!! How can one dismiss the right to political self-determination of a people that numbers fifteen million souls this year, half living in their homeland and half in the diaspora?!! What remains of America’s founding legacy at the moment the United Nations was established?!! — especially when its Secretary-General and his teams find themselves in the daily crosshairs of Trump and Netanyahu!!? And who deserves the peace prize, Donald Trump or António Guterres!!? The Peace Council This body was established under Security Council Resolution 2803, with the aim of ending the war of extermination in Gaza and administering the Strip during a transitional period of undefined duration — one whose length depends entirely on the understanding between Washington and Tel Aviv. The Council had announced its tasks: monitoring the ceasefire agreement, supporting peace and security in the Strip through a provisional international force, and mobilising financial commitments for reconstruction and humanitarian aid. Since the Council included no Palestinian figure whatsoever, the compromises reached to break this deadlock called for the formation of an administrative committee of Palestinian technocrats, endowed with executive powers under the Council’s authority, so that a link could be established with the Gazan population — the legitimate Palestinian Authority having been sidelined from its natural role under the Israeli veto. When the American president sought to expand the Peace Council’s mandate beyond the terms of the UN resolution, intending to make it a broader mechanism for peace in the region and the world — a mechanism that would transcend the framework of the United Nations, its rules and its laws — the European Union and a number of Arab and Islamic states voiced their objection, insisting on the imperative of respecting international law, Palestinian representation, and the need to anchor any plan to a comprehensive political solution aimed at establishing the Palestinian state. In the same vein, Beijing expressed its reservations, while Moscow emphasised the need for balance, the preservation of UN legitimacy, and the securing of an active Palestinian role in managing the transitional period. All of this led to a renewed role for the Palestinian Authority in managing the Rafah crossing, under the partnership agreement concluded with the European Union in 2005. The Peace Council also found no solution for providing an internal police force in the Strip other than returning to the internationally recognised Palestinian police apparatus. It was within this context — which the Netanyahu government acknowledged only under duress from American, Arab, and international pressure — that the Peace Council was able to hold its first meeting in Washington in mid-February. The outcome included the mobilisation of approximately seventeen billion dollars, the preparation of a reconstruction plan for the Strip, confirmation of the Palestinian administrative committee’s role in the recovery plan, consolidation of the ceasefire, and the initiation of the transition to the second phase of Trump’s plan — a plan divided into twenty stages. But where do things stand today? Amid the din of the war with Iran, no one is paying much attention to what is happening in the Gaza Strip, where Netanyahu managed to block the transition to the second phase of the peace plan on the pretext that Hamas must first surrender its weapons — without disclosing the agreement reached in Doha and announced by President Trump, according to which Hamas had been permitted to continue governing Gaza and to retain its weapons until the international force arrived?!! Meanwhile, the occupation army is expanding its presence in the yellow buffer zone, which now covers more than half the Strip’s area, and conducting daily military operations that push Palestinians toward the sea, dividing the Strip vertically from north to south along the axis of Salah al-Din Street — with a lower population density east of the road and a considerably higher one to the west. As long as the international peacekeeping force continues to face legal difficulties in terms of its definition and mandate — and its formation remains delayed at the time of writing — the Israeli government is maintaining the pace of its military operations to reshape the Gaza Strip’s landscape in a way that suits its long-term security interests. This situation has reduced the members of the Palestinian administrative committee to doing nothing but sitting in their offices, thinking of resignation: the committee’s provisional headquarters is in the Egyptian city of El-Arish, and Israel has barred its members — as well as its lead official, engineer Ali Shaath — from entering the Gaza Strip. Israel has likewise conditioned the entry of aid trucks on a reduction in their numbers and a restriction on their contents, through unrelenting pressure that results in a scarcity of free food supplies and a ban on new tents — even as 90% of those currently in use are worn to shreds. This is compounded by the prohibition on heavy machinery needed to clear rubble from the streets — a deliberate effort to obstruct the search for the bodies of more than ten thousand people missing beneath the ruins. To date, no announcement has been made regarding an Israeli withdrawal schedule from the Strip. What is happening instead is that the occupation army is systematically severing every link between the administrative committee and the Gazan population — as a number of those involved in the process have publicly stated. What is happening on the ground is the transformation of the Gaza Strip into an Israeli buffer zone, where life for Gazans in “peacetime” proves harsher and more humiliating than it was under the war of extermination. All the while, Hamas is being domesticated and an agreement reached with its leaders over their role in the coming phase — allowing its military-security-administrative apparatus to continue governing the western part of the Strip, which houses three-quarters of Gazans — pending settlements to come whose nature no one can predict if the matter is left to Washington and Tel Aviv. At the same time, the Netanyahu government reaffirms its demand to expel Gazans to the Sinai desert and its refusal to allow the Strip to recover its population density — treating the Palestinian as a human mass with no identity, no will, and no right to self-determination. The very fact that the Palestinian remains in their land has become an existential obsession for the State of Israel. Thus, the operation of 7 October detonated the deepest of fears — those that call for the elimination of the other, rather than the search for peace with the other. The hatred between the two peoples has never reached the intensity it has today. It has taken on a pathological dimension that is difficult to treat or overcome in any foreseeable future.

Israel sets as a precondition the disarmament of Hezbollah before any negotiations — a demand it knows in advance to be beyond the reach of the Lebanese state, since the decision of war and peace remains, to a very large extent, outside the framework of that state's institutions. Israel has nonetheless taken a notable step by appointing Ron Dermer as head of its delegation to negotiations with Lebanon — a senior official close to decision-making circles, and particularly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This appointment lends the Israeli move undeniable political substance and sends an unambiguous signal to the international community: Israel is ready to engage in a high-level negotiation process. By contrast, the Lebanese state is attempting to form a negotiating delegation that reflects the internal sectarian balances underpinning the political system. But this attempt quickly ran up against the complexities of Lebanese reality: Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri refused to name the Shia member of the delegation, conditioning his participation on a full ceasefire before any negotiating session. This comes at the very moment when Hezbollah has declared its rejection of any ceasefire before the end of the war against Iran, stating that it has committed all its capabilities to this conflict and will fight to the end or until victory is achieved. Such positions effectively close the door to any ceasefire in the near term and narrow the room for maneuver of any political initiative or negotiating process. They also lay bare the clear divergence between the logic of the Lebanese state — which seeks to contain the crisis through diplomatic channels — and that of the armed forces, which tie their decisions to a broader regional context that transcends Lebanon's borders. In light of these facts, Israel appears to have succeeded in scoring an additional point with international public opinion: it will come across as the party that demonstrated its willingness to negotiate by sending a high-level envoy, while Lebanon will appear as a state unable to unify its internal decision-making or meet the prerequisites for a transition to a political settlement. This perception, whether accurate or overstated, weakens Lebanon's negotiating position and makes it harder to defend its interests in international forums. In the final analysis, these developments reveal once again the depth of the predicament in which Lebanon finds itself, where a state of limited capacity collides with a military and political force that makes its decisions outside state institutions. In this context, any negotiating process or political settlement becomes hostage to regional balances over which Lebanon has no control. While the state strives to consolidate its place at the negotiating table, the real challenge lies in restoring the decision of war and peace to its constitutional institutions — for without that, Lebanon will remain a theater for the liquidation of regional conflicts rather than a state capable of defending its national interests.

It is no easy task to compress, within a few lines and paragraphs, the trajectory of a great historian who lived nearly a century and who remained, until his final days, immersed in research, writing, and reflection — his mind never ceasing to follow what unfolded in his homeland. His cause was always singular: Palestine. Walid Khalidi, who left us just days ago, gathered throughout his long life many remarkable qualities, the most defining of which — attested repeatedly by those who knew him and borne out by his research and books — was that he served as the guardian of the Nakba's narrative and the very man who dismantled the Zionist account of Palestine. Since his passing, obituaries have appeared in the world's leading newspapers, Arab and international alike, focusing on his substantial scholarly achievements, the many roles he played in political affairs, and the varied activities he pursued in different capacities. Two essential qualities, it may be said, defined Khalidi's character — this Arab Palestinian scholar recognized equally by Western and Arab academic communities for his encyclopedic knowledge and intellectual authority, particularly on the Palestinian question. The first of these was his strict adherence to the standards of scientific research, without ever yielding on this point; it earned him a widely recognized authority among academics in Western and Arab universities alike. In all his published books, lectures, and articles, Khalidi never deviated by a fraction from this standard, and he extended it to all who worked with him, thereby establishing a decisive and authoritative historiographical tradition. The second was his institutional mind, which he translated into the founding of the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut in 1963, conceived as a specialized scholarly reference on the Palestinian question and the Arab-Israeli conflict. This fully independent Arab research institution, affiliated with no political party and pursuing no commercial purpose, published during the period of his tenure as secretary general more than eight hundred reference works on the Palestinian cause in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish, with some titles also rendered into other languages. One can imagine the scale of challenges facing a research institution of this kind, and the pressures from all directions that could compromise its work — pressures that make its independence particularly difficult to uphold, especially given that it is dedicated to the study of a complex question, the Palestinian cause, whose conflict predates the Nakba of 1948. To this is added the fact that the institution relies — in its pursuit of academic independence — on unconditional donations, so as to avoid becoming beholden to any particular faction or sponsor. In this regard, the Institute's director general, Khalid Farraj, has said: "Khalidi worked to embed within the institution a set of collective values and concepts that set it apart from other organizations and workplaces. The substance of these values lies in the fusion of those who serve within the institution with the shared ethos he established, and with the core of the cause for which the institution was created: to vindicate the rights of those to whom they belong, through rigorous scholarly research." [1] The mere survival of an Arab research institution — in a region that rarely prioritizes scholarly inquiry — for more than six decades, without ever surrendering to the embrace of any political, financial, or partisan entity, does credit to the institution and to those who have led it. It is the course that Walid Khalidi charted, and which he steadfastly upheld over many long years. * * *`` Walid Khalidi was a man of principle. He resigned from Oxford University in 1956, in protest against Britain's participation in the tripartite aggression against Egypt, and moved to the American University of Beirut to continue his research and teaching. One can measure the difficulty of such a choice for a scholar in his thirties holding a post at one of the most prestigious Western universities: Khalidi chose to place his national convictions above personal interests, foremost among them his academic career, interrupted at Oxford before being resumed in Beirut — a city then pulsing with intellectual vitality —, which allowed him, some years later, to found the Institute for Palestine Studies, whose headquarters remain in Beirut to this day. The renowned Israeli anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé has written of him: "In an informal conversation we had (...), I learned that there was another reason for his dissatisfaction with Oxford: as an academic, he had sought even then to lecture and write on the Nakba of 1948, but it became clear to him that Oxford at that time did not recognize the Nakba as a subject worthy of academic study." [2] Walid Khalidi left many lasting scholarly marks on his field. Among the most significant was his exposure of the contents of 'Plan Dalet,' drawn up by Zionist paramilitary organizations to seize control of Palestinian territory, particularly in 1947 and 1948 — a plan that dismantles the claim that Palestinian lands were uninhabited, or that their inhabitants departed of their own volition. Khalidi dwelt at length on the United Nations partition resolution, stating in terms that remain arresting today: "The partition resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947 became so central to the victors' narrative that a collective historical amnesia erased all that preceded it — in the distant, the intermediate, and the immediately prior past — as if the partition resolution were the very origin of the Palestinian question, rather than the tragic culmination (for the Palestinians) of everything that preceded it since the beginnings of political Zionism." [3]` Because scholarly inquiry cannot be severed from the course of politics and its transformations, Walid Khalidi participated — without ever engaging in ways that compromised his academic independence — in numerous spheres of political activity, contributing where he could to the formulation of a Palestinian position and vision anchored in legitimate national rights. He "was part of the inner circle of the Arab Nationalists' Movement and enjoyed the confidence of many of its leaders (...), and he built close relations with the founders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Fatah movement, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (...). In the early 1970s, Khalidi was engaged in private communications with the United States on behalf of the PLO." [4] For those who may not be aware, he played a central role in drafting the celebrated speech that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat delivered at the United Nations in 1974. A further landmark was his participation in the joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation at the Madrid peace talks in 1991, which rested on the principle of "land for peace" — a decisive juncture in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, even if it was gradually emptied of its substance and superseded by the Oslo negotiations, conducted in secrecy and culminating in the well-known agreement of 1993. On the Nakba, on Palestinian villages, and on the systematic displacement of the Palestinian people, Walid Khalidi published two landmark reference works: All That Remains and Before Their Diaspora — their examination alone is sufficient to dismantle the Israeli narrative that the State of Israel was built on a land without a people. Khalidi's books and writings will remain a reference for researchers and students for years to come; he was a devoted mentor to hundreds of scholars who trained under his guidance, in universities as well as at the Institute for Palestine Studies. In the wake of this great historian's passing, the Palestinian cause must remain an obligation borne by all free people across the world — for it is a moral and human cause as much as it is a political one. [1] Farraj, Khalid, “On the Centenary of Walid Khalidi: The Mission That Became a Working Method, Special supplement on the occasion of Walid Khalidi's centenary”, Journal of Palestine Studies, no. 143 , Beirut ( Summer 2025): 123. [2] Pappé, Ilan. "Walid Khalidi and the Genesis of Palestine Studies, 1963–2025," ibid.:57. [3] Journal of Palestine Studies , vol. 9, no. 33 (Winter 1998): 3. [4] Khalidi, Rashid, "Walid Khalidi: Pioneer and Innovator." Journal of Palestine Studies, special supplement, op. cit.:18–19.

The war between the Iranian Islamic Republic, on the one hand, and the American-Israeli axis, indirectly including Europe and the Gulf countries as well as Turkey, on the other hand, concludes its second week this Saturday, March 14. This first phase of the conflict focused essentially, on the Western side, on the elimination, from the first hours of the offensive on February 28, of some forty members of the Iranian military and political high command, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, followed by a massive and continuous aerial bombardment aimed at destroying the regime's military and administrative infrastructures. On the Iranian side, military operations consisted of ballistic missile and drone strikes directed against Israeli territory, but also against Gulf countries, alongside the reactivation, at dawn on March 2, of the South Lebanon front. The end of this second week of war was marked by a major development of great strategic significance: the bombing by American aviation of military and civilian installations and the air defense structure of the Iranian island of Kharg, located north of the Persian Gulf, about twenty kilometers from the Iranian coast. Often referred to as the 'jewel in the crown' of the Iranian oil industry or also Iran's 'energy Achilles' heel', Kharg Island has always represented Iran's true economic lung. And for good reason: nearly 90 percent of Iran's oil exports pass through this island, easily accessible by large supertankers due to its deep waters, unlike other ports. The island also offers an infrastructure that allows it to accommodate several supertankers simultaneously and store no less than 35 million barrels of oil. The highly strategic importance of Kharg Island allowed President Donald Trump to acquire a trump card in the standoff that emerged a few days ago around the Strait of Hormuz and the Pasdaran's attempts to block free maritime navigation on this vital transport route. The White House chief thus clearly emphasized on Saturday that American aviation had indeed destroyed the island's military, air, and maritime installations but refrained from attacking the oil infrastructure. For President Trump, the equation is clear: if the Iranian regime attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz, US aviation will destroy Kharg's oil facilities, which will lead to the economic and financial asphyxiation of the Islamic Republic. Oil exports are indeed Iran's main source of revenue. To match words with action, the American army decided to dispatch 2500 Marines as reinforcements to the Middle East and Gulf region, which fueled rumors circulating on Saturday about a possible US landing in Kharg to resolve the Strait of Hormuz issue. It seems evident in this context that the outcome of this delicate standoff will have a certain impact on the global oil price and consequently on the price of gasoline at the pump and consumer goods. This impact is already being felt as Iran continues its missile strikes against Gulf oil-producing countries, notably the United Arab Emirates where activity at the port of Fujairah was interrupted on Saturday due to a fire caused by a missile strike. The other 'hot spots' Regarding the other 'hot spots' of the conflict, Friday night and Saturday were marked by the now traditional air raids and missile strikes, targeting the southern suburbs and several villages in South Lebanon, as well as northern Israel and Galilee. In parallel, the Israeli army continued its slow advance in certain sectors of the country's southern region. The Israeli Minister of Defense emphasized in this regard that 'the conflict has entered a new phase', which lends credence to the theory of a possible prolonged Israeli occupation of the South Lebanon area located south of the Litani. Regionally, the US embassy in Baghdad was targeted by a missile strike which caused minor material damage, while the Iraqi government announced the adoption of special measures aimed at preventing any new aggression against French interests in Iraq, as was the case two days ago.