Eyad Abu Shakra

What does it feel like to constantly wake up to news that makes you feel like you belong to a bygone era and that the principles you had lived by and believed in for decades have become obsolete?

Lebanese citizens start and end their days with questions of what the future will bring amid political paralysis and economic hardship … and with justified anxiety about the future.

The Fertile Crescent, the cradle of Middle Eastern and global civilization, is currently undergoing structural shifts whose repercussions are difficult to gauge in a world where everything moves in several directions at breakneck speed.

I am not one to make definitive, unequivocal claims about any matter, even when I feel I have enough information to take a position. But I will make an exception: I am confident that, on this very day next year, the world will be in a very different place.

US envoy Tom Barrack and his colleague Morgan Ortagus on Tuesday visited Lebanon on the heels of some significant developments on both the Syrian and Lebanese fronts. Their trip also came in the wake of the UN’s announcement that the Gaza Strip is now experiencing a famine.

The talk of a new Middle Eastern “deal” we have been hearing over the past few days is jarring. The agreement reportedly being cooked up sees Syria cede the Golan Heights to Israel in return for the Lebanese city of Tripoli.

Listening to the speeches of US President Donald Trump leaves one with the impression that the man is convinced he can change realities he does not like.