Although nearly half a century has passed since the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the memory of that great man has remained alive and vivid in the hearts and minds of millions, including today's generation of youth who, while never having experienced (...)
Here is the 44th president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, getting ready to pack and leave the White House, making room for Donald Trump, a newcomer chosen by the American people to become the 45th president of the United States. And (...)
Evidently the Arabs have grown addicted to the taste of defeat, which has haunted them for years. They also still insist that the cause is always a grand conspiracy to tear them apart. They are so in the thralls of this theory that they are longer (...)
I had never ruled out the possibility that Donald Trump could win the presidential elections in the US. I expressed this in published press interviews, the last being with a reporter from Al-Sharq Al-Awsat only hours before the polls opened. There (...)
Finally, after an almost two-and-a-half-year long vacuum in the presidency, presidential elections were held in Lebanon and Michel Aoun emerged the winner. He had long aspired to this post for which he fought with an unshakable resolve. However, his (...)
Egypt's vote in favour of the French and Russian draft Security Council resolutions on the situation in Aleppo triggered fury in Riyadh. Immediately after that session, the Saudi ambassador to the UN held a press conference in which he lashed out at (...)
All Arab regimes celebrate national or Arab national days and religious holidays, but each has its own way of utilising such occasions to serve their particular interests. This is evident in the way that the Egyptian regime celebrates the 1973 (...)
Today (28 September) marks the 46th anniversary of Gamal Abdel-Nasser's death. Although nearly half a century has passed since then, the memory of that great man has remained alive and vivid in the hearts and minds of millions, including today's (...)
Most observers agree that the Arab world has reached a pitiful state of fragmentation and loss. The most telling phenomenon in this regard is that the Arab League, in spite of being one of the oldest —if not the oldest —regional organisations in the (...)
The overwhelming state of chaos in this region threatens repercussions that will not only endanger the peoples of this region but also the security and stability of the entire international order. The causes and symptoms of this state are numerous. (...)
Since its establishment in 1945, the Arab League has held more than 40 summit meetings. Of these, 27 have been ordinary and the rest emergency or extraordinary summits. In the latter category fall the conferences held before the first Arab summit of (...)
During their recent meeting in St Petersburg, Putin, the Tsar of the “new Russia”, and Erdogan, the sultan of the “new Turkey”, may not have managed to fundamentally change the nature of the relationship between their two countries, given acute (...)
Considerable evidence suggests that relations between Egypt and Israel have steadily developed during the past two years and that they may be in the process of shifting from conventional cooperation to the level of strategic alliance. Foremost (...)
When the Arab League was established on 22 March 1945, the drafters of its charter did not include a provision stipulating at what level member states should represent themselves in the league's council, the highest body in the hierarchy of that (...)
It is difficult to perceive the Egyptian foreign minister's recent visit to Israel as routine or conventional. It was anything but. A major indication of this is the outpouring of anger among the public and broad segments of political elites in (...)
The attempted military coup that played out in Turkey late Friday night and into the morning hours of the following day (16 July 2016) comes as a reminder that the Turkish state has not securely settled in the democratic circuit. It also reminds us (...)
The EU is not just an economic bloc like ASEAN or Mercosur. Nor is it a mere regional umbrella organisation that seeks to promote cooperation in various fields between member states along the lines of the African Union or the Arab League. But (...)
A majority of the British people have just voted to sever their country's bond with the EU. While every decision taken by majority vote is fundamentally democratic, at least in form, and must be respected and implemented, the majority is not always (...)
Israel is universally reputed as the country that has shown the UN the greatest amount of contempt and that has most frequently and persistently flouted the provisions of its charter and its resolutions. Not that this has prevented it from taking (...)
In the official Arab discourse, the Palestine cause is still the “Arab's first cause” and the “crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict”. Translated into practical terms, this means, firstly, that the Palestinian cause is not just the responsibility of the (...)
With every new crisis that the Egyptian government encounters voices clamour that our country is the target of an international conspiracy. Recently, the “conspiracy” din has been growing remarkably loud. It reached a new pitch in the wake of the (...)
The middle of May occasioned the anniversary of two events that determined the fate of the Arab region for decades to come, the repercussions of which continue to assert their dangerous effects on the future of all Arab peoples. The first is the (...)
Like many others, I was delighted when a Muslim British citizen of Pakistani origin won a major British municipal election and was officially invested as mayor of one of the largest and most important European cities.
To me, this is proof of the (...)
It is only natural that Egyptians should want to commemorate the liberation of Sinai on 25 April every year. But for that national day to turn into a day to demonstrate against the government for allegedly having squandered our national territory is (...)
Two events, occurring only a few days apart, reflect the magnitude of contradictions at diverse levels in the regional interplay. The first was King Salman's announcement, during his visit to Egypt in early April, of the Egyptian-Saudi agreement to (...)