Analyze

Nearly a year after assuming the Apostolic See at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV met with American Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the first meeting between him and a senior official of President Donald Trump's administration, amid an atmosphere of mounting tensions fuelled by mutual declarations on the war against Iran and immigration policies. The first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church demonstrated firm and classical positions of the Church in promoting the values of peace and dialogue, and had to face the criticism of President Trump, who claimed that he "exposed the Church, Catholics and peoples to danger", holding that the Pope's positions suggested he "saw no objection to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons". Leo hastened to deny these accusations, reaffirming the Church's rejection of nuclear weapons and dismissing Trump's statements as "inaccurate".

When I used to travel to Canada, I was always provoked by Israeli propaganda that claimed falafel, tabbouleh and hummus as part of traditional Jewish-Israeli heritage. It was an appropriation of culinary traditions that have belonged to the Levant for centuries, and not merely the theft of a patrimony: it was the confiscation of an identity and a memory. No people in history has invested in memory as the Jews did in the aftermath of the Holocaust. They built one of the most powerful systems of memorial preservation the world has ever seen, turning memory into a total apparatus: material, pedagogical and legal, designed to be indelible. They catalogued personal belongings in museums, gathering thousands of objects that had belonged to the victims: shoes, bags bearing the names of their owners, eyeglasses, hair shorn from prisoners, clothing and small personal items (combs, watches, rings); all in order to attest that the victims were real individuals, and not merely numbers.

Traditional analyses of Lebanon consistently utilize the "sectarian paradigm," viewing the state as a delicate equilibrium of religious factions. However, this lens fails to account for the current systemic disintegration that transcends communal boundaries. By applying Émile Durkheim’s paradigm of Anomie, this document argues that the Lebanese crisis is characterized not by sectarian friction, but by a profound state of "normlessness" and the deregulation of social life. In this view, sectarianism is not the primary cause of collapse, but a residual survival mechanism appearing in the vacuum left by a shattered social contract.

The constitutional law enacted on 21 September 1990 enriched the preamble of the Lebanese Constitution with fundamental provisions stipulating that Lebanon is a free and independent homeland, the definitive homeland of all its sons, united within its internationally recognised borders in its land, its people and its institutions, and that its identity and belonging are Arab. Paragraph (c) further provides that Lebanon is a democratic parliamentary republic. It is from this precise point that one must illuminate the effectiveness of the parliamentary regime established after the Taif Agreement, a regime that has nonetheless demonstrated its inability to build the State and its institutions, and whose faithfulness to the people that elected it on several occasions is legitimately open to question. This domain is acquiring growing importance and is now imposing itself as a vital, intensive and long-term mission, in the wake of a succession of tragic developments made up of wars and political crises confirmed on many occasions. The concept of parliamentarism has never been deemed incompatible with diplomacy, which is by nature a sovereign function devoted to addressing political, economic and social crises without the Lebanese situation improving in the process.

Mali has been traversing a multidimensional crisis since 2012, one whose roots plunge into the Libyan collapse, which flooded the Sahel with weapons and fighters, durably transforming the entire region’s security balance. That year, Tuareg rebels had proclaimed the independence of the country’s north before being rapidly supplanted by their Islamist allies linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. France then intervened militarily in 2013 to contain the jihadist advance, without ever managing to eradicate it. The following decade was, for Mali, one of continuous deterioration. The 2015 Algiers peace accords between Bamako and the northern armed movements were never fully implemented. Terrorism spread into the centre and south of the country, and intercommunal violence intensified. In 2020 and again in 2021, two successive coups brought Colonel Assimi Goïta to power, whose military junta named itself the “Transition” — pending a return to constitutional order — yet this supposedly provisional arrangement has now persisted for five years without any credible electoral horizon in sight.

The victory of Peter Magyar and his party “Tisza” marks a historic turning point in the Hungarian political landscape, ending sixteen years of Viktor Orbán's rule and his Fidesz party. The elections were described as the most important in decades, not only because of the record popular turnout, but also because their outcome granted the opposition a two-thirds majority in parliament, enabling it to amend the constitution and roll back the illiberal policies Orbán had entrenched during his years in power. The new president Magyar pledged to restore press freedom and reform state media, in a move aimed at dismantling the system of information control on which the previous regime had relied. The great surprise was Orbán's acknowledgment of defeat immediately after the results, without attempting to cling to power by force, which spared the country a political crisis or violent protests.

The yellow line drawn across southern Lebanese soil is not merely a military demarcation. It is a warning from history. Israel has established a military zone stretching roughly ten kilometers north of the border inside southern Lebanon. Israel through its Prime Minister has made its position unambiguous: "This is a security strip ten kilometers deep, which is much stronger, more intense, more continuous and more solid than what we had previously. That is where we are and we are not leaving." [1] The vocabulary is familiar. Analysts have described what is unfolding as the " Gazafication " of southern Lebanon — Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz having instructed the army to demolish Lebanese border villages based on the Beit Hanoun and Rafah models. [2] We know what those models look like. Nothing remains.

Access to the state in Lebanon no longer follows the direct path it ought to follow in any modern political system. A relationship that should rest on clearly defined rights and mutually acknowledged obligations has gradually transformed into a complex web of informal channels, in which the citizen no longer deals with the state directly, but with whoever 'grants access' to it. Yet the mutation has not stopped there, for intermediation has ceased to be a mere bridge between citizen and state and has become, in many cases, an outright substitute for it — through the construction of parallel structures that reproduce the state outside its own boundaries.

Delivered at a critical moment, following the entry into force of the ceasefire with Israel, the speech by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun stands out as one of the clearest in tone and most ambitious in its political aspirations. Neither an ordinary speech of appeasement nor a ceremonial statement of thanks, it amounted rather to a sweeping declaration of intent: to redefine Lebanon’s position, recover the State’s decision-making authority, and engage in a negotiation process supposedly different from everything that has come before. But between the force of the speech and the reality of the balance of power, the real questions arise: are we witnessing a genuine turning point, or a speech that runs ahead of the State’s actual capabilities?

Ruling Hungary with unchallenged authority since 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has now been defeated at the polls, swept from office by public fatigue over corruption and perceived assaults on the rule of law. Now 62, he asserted himself on the international stage through repeated clashes with Brussels and his overt ties with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Orbán also shocked with his indulgence toward far-right ecosystem and the broader autocratic network in Europe and around the world. Viktor Orbán received by Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street in January 2002, a year before the ill-fated invasion of Iraq built on spurious claims. According to Voltaire, “Politics is the art of lying at the right time.” (Gerry Penny/AFP)