Analyze

Salman Rushdie’s The Eleventh Hour is not a novel in the conventional sense, but a collection of five interconnected stories published after the assassination attempt against him in 2022. It stands among his most contemplative works, exploring old age, mortality, identity, and freedom. The “eleventh hour” is more than a moment in time. It is a sign. It evokes a civilization that senses it has reached its final test: the rise of populism, the erosion of democratic values, violence against free expression, and the identity crisis unsettling a globalized world. In this sense, the eleventh hour becomes a metaphor not merely for an individual stage of life, but for an entire civilization confronting itself.

For more than three decades, Lebanese politics has been closely associated with the name of Nabih Berri. Since assuming the speakership of Parliament in 1992, Berri has outlasted presidents, prime ministers, regional wars, international interventions, and profound geopolitical transformations. He has become far more than the head of the legislative branch. He established himself as one of the principal architects of post-Taif Lebanon and the undisputed political leader of the Amal Movement. Yet politics inevitably raises the same question whenever a leader remains in power for so long: what comes next?

The war in Ukraine continues to be at the center of a wide-ranging debate, fueled in part by near-daily bombardments targeting key nerve centers on both sides, and more specifically the Russian and Ukrainian capitals. To better understand the various dimensions of this long-standing conflict, it is necessary to revisit the background and origins of what led to this (fratricidal?) war — examining the motivations and aspirations of the various parties involved, including the West (the United States and Europe, extended to all NATO member states with the exception of Turkey) — and also to recall the early stages of the Russian offensive and the failed attempts to achieve peace, or at least negotiations, bearing in mind that responsibility in this context is shared by many.

The long and interminable conflict sparked by the Iranian mullah regime's endless transgressions will likely go down in history as a conflict defined by the verbal diarrhea that all parties engage in, throwing up a thick smokescreen that barely conceals their internal failures and, above all, a bewildering and pervasive incoherence. This incoherence manifests almost daily in actions that are completely at odds with the bellicose, deeply irrational statements made on all sides. Iran's leaders, for example, have chosen to pursue a lasting, strategic agreement with the United States. Yet at the same time, they continue to label the US an "enemy" and the "Great Satan" that must be brought down and "inevitably" avenged, sooner or later, no matter the circumstances — as stated on Saturday evening in a communiqué attributed to the new Supreme Leader, the elusive and mysterious Mojtaba Khamenei, about whom it remains unclear whether he is still alive, and if so, whether he is truly in full possession of his mental faculties, or whether, on the contrary, his virtual presence is being kept alive in people's minds by Tehran's new powerbrokers, who attribute decisions and positions to him as events unfold and the balance of power within what remains of the Islamic Republic continues to shift.

In ordinary life, we inhabit what anthropologists call a milieu : a space infused with memory and human relationships, made up of the home, the village square, the neighborhood shop, the mosque or the church, and the road to school. In wartime, place is transformed into space. It becomes an object of measurement and management: range, field of vision, supply line. The shift is from meaning to function, from dwelling to calculation and enumeration. It is as though the land were stripped of its story and rewritten in the language of war. War fractures our sense of belonging. Belonging is ordinarily built through stability and the quiet repetition of daily life: the same road, the same faces, the same habits. Once a place becomes threatened, belonging gives way to a state of anxiety. One remains attached to a place that may have to be abandoned at any moment. What emerges is a form of “provisional belonging”: you love the place, yet no longer trust that you will be able to remain there. This paradox leaves a lasting fracture within.

Can Lebanon and Syria ever enjoy calm, balanced relations founded on mutual respect? It is difficult to believe so when our relationship has so often been governed by hostility, suspicion, and threats carried through. Throughout our shared history, no humiliation has been spared us, regardless of the regime ruling in Damascus. Take, for example, what befell our small country beginning in August 1948, when Khaled al-Azem*, then Prime Minister of Syria, imposed "controls on imports and an embargo on goods destined for Lebanon." In the collective memory of our fathers' generation, his name remains forever associated with the closure of the Syrian-Lebanese border in 1949—a decision driven by political motives as well as protectionist policies. It amounted to an attempt to suffocate Lebanon economically and force it into submission. Even then, Lebanon served as Damascus's whipping boy—long before Abdel Hamid Khaddam turned it into his favorite scapegoat.

During major periods of geopolitical transformation, states are not always the driving force behind events. Yet they can find themselves in a position that allows them to redefine their role. Lebanon, which for decades has served as an arena for regional and international rivalries, may now be facing a rare opportunity to move from being a country shaped by crises to one capable of helping shape a new phase in the region. This prospect comes at a time of profound change across the Middle East, as regional and international powers reassess their priorities after years of open conflict. One of the key questions is whether the difficulties facing the US-Iran understanding process could lead to a reordering of priorities, making the strengthening of the Lebanese state part of a broader regional approach.

The visit that President Emmanuel Macron began on Monday evening in Damascus, accompanied by a large ministerial delegation and the heads of major French companies, took on particular significance in the current context — one that goes well beyond the conventional scope of routine official visits. However, it was overshadowed by a serious security incident… On the political front, Mr. Macron's talks with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa marked Syria's return to the international community in the post-Assad era. A comeback that is both political and economic in nature. The two heads of state announced the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which had been severed following the massacres carried out by the Baathist regime against its own population during the civil war that erupted in 2011.

Over the course of two and a half centuries, the United States has achieved what no other nation has accomplished in modern history. From a peripheral colony on the fringes of the British Empire, it rose to become the world’s foremost economic, military, and cultural power. From the wheat and corn fields of the American Midwest to the automobile industry, the personal computer, the Internet, Hollywood, television, jazz, rock music, contemporary art, social media, fast food, and blue jeans, an entire civilizational model gradually took shape, turning the “American Idea” into a model with which the world identified for 250 years.

Nada Hamadé Mouawad, how have you managed to become so unpopular in the circles of Naim Qassem, in Dahiyeh and beyond? Did you have any idea that the signature you affixed in Washington on June 26 would trigger demonstrations across several parts of the country? So much so that our army had to intervene overnight to restore order on the road leading to Beirut International Airport. And all this simply because you fulfilled your patriotic duty: using diplomacy to secure the withdrawal of the IDF from the southern regions it still occupies. How criminal it is to deny the obvious! It is not armed resistance that can liberate Jabal Amel, but negotiations and diplomatic talks conducted under American auspices.