Eyad Abu Shakra

Israel this week rejected Lebanon’s request for a ceasefire during the direct negotiations now underway in Washington.

Once again, Itamar Ben-Gvir staged his extremism at the Al-Aqsa compound, surrounded by a crowd of his fascist supporters, repeating his claim of Israel’s “exclusive ownership” of the site.

Few observers were surprised by the local election results in Britain last week. Opinion polls had already shown that the ruling Labour Party was heading toward a painful defeat under its weak, opportunistic leadership that lacks substance, conviction and charisma.

Before the momentum generated by Lebanon’s breaking of the taboo by engaging in direct negotiations with Israel began to subside, there began to emerge European reverberations that complemented the projects of Benjamin Netanyahu for the future of the Middle East.

It would be fair to say that Israel’s current government is the most extreme since the country’s founding in 1948. I believe that this is indeed the case, though I was not a witness to the founding event itself.

French voters made their voices heard in the mid-March municipal elections, whose insights into the trajectory of the far-right National Rally party, led by Marine Le Pen and her protege Jordan Bardella, were closely followed.

Last week, my esteemed colleague Hiba Nasr, an Asharq News correspondent in Washington, wrote a post on X that reflected palpable anguish about the receding shadow of the Lebanese state in her village in southern Lebanon after the army’s withdrawal in the face of a new Israeli assault.