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Dr. Saleh El Machnouk is a lecturer in comparative politics at Lebanon’s Université Saint-Joseph (USJ). Prior to joining USJ, he was a visiting academic at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. His research focuses mainly on state-building, power-sharing agreements, constitutional design, third-party intervention, and electoral laws in ethnically-divided democracies. His articles have appeared in academic journals such as Ethnopolitics. He is currently completing his first book, tentatively titled “War after War,” in which he compares the postwar state-building experiences of Lebanon, Iraq, Bosnia, and Northern Ireland under foreign supervision. In addition to his academic writing, he writes a weekly opinion column for the Lebanese daily Annahar.
على اليونيفيل إعادة ضبط نفسها أو العودة إلى ديارها
في نهاية شهر أغسطس، سيتم النظر في مستقبل قوة الأمم المتحدة المؤقتة في لبنان (يونيفيل)، التي أنشئت منذ ما يقرب من 50 عامًا، في نيويورك، حيث سيناقش مجلس الأمن تجديد ولايتها. بعد ما يقرب من عقدين من الزمن على تحولها بموجب قرار مجلس الأمن الدولي رقم 1701، أصبحت يونيفيل الآن جزءًا من المشكلة التي أنشئت لحلها. فقد فشل عشرة آلاف من جنود القبعات الزرقاء من حوالي 50 دولة، بما في ذلك الدول الأعضاء الرئيسية في منظمة حلف شمال الأطلسي (الناتو)، في وقف الصراع الأخير بين إسرائيل وحزب الله، وإذا استمرت الأمور على ما هي عليه، فسوف يفشلون في منع الصراع التالي.
Washington must make sure this is the last war between Israel and Lebanon
The assassination of Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, marks an inflection point that will redefine the security landscape of the Middle East. His deputy, Naim Qassem, has pledged “continued resistance,” claiming Hezbollah was steadfast and will not retreat, while Israel has pressed ahead with a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. The United States must act decisively to ensure this is the last war between Israel and Lebanon.
Robust diplomacy is Washington’s only chance to stop a Lebanon-Israel war
In navigating the thickening fog of war, ongoing US-led mediation must actively take two critical steps to pull Lebanon and Israel back from the brink and avoid a direct US-Iran confrontation: secure credible guarantees on compliance and endorse local efforts to elect an independent president.
The Beirut blast three years on: The case for international accountability
Three years on from the Beirut port blast, Hezbollah, with the support of Lebanon’s political elite, has managed to obstruct and even quash the domestic judicial process for holding those responsible for the explosion accountable and delivering justice to both victims and a battered nation. The international community must uphold its responsibility toward the Lebanese people by enabling a U.N. fact-finding mission to investigate the blast, sanctioning those responsible for obstructing justice, and making ending impunity the centerpiece of international mediation on the Lebanese crisis.
Lebanon is on the verge of complete collapse, and if Washington is serious about preventing not just another failed state but a growing normalization of unchecked authoritarianism in the Middle East, it must stop outsourcing leadership on Lebanon to France.
Paris failed. Washington must lead in breaking the mafia-militia’s chokehold on Lebanon
In response to Lebanon’s seemingly imminent transition into a failed state, this article introduces a new framework to explain the country’s protracted crisis. In turn, we unpack what the past four years of international responses to Lebanon got wrong and make the case for a new assertive approach for Washington to take — one that empowers local stakeholders working to recapture the state and reform the country’s political economy.
