Commentaries

Digital sovereignty is one phrase hiding two different things. Few who invoke it say which one they mean. The first kind is declared. A state passes a law, forms a committee, issues a directive, and announces that its digital space is “governed.” This kind of sovereignty is available to everyone. Any state can have it. The second kind is built.…

The latest World Cup was not simply another major sporting event, nor merely an occasion on which Arabs celebrated the qualification of an unprecedented number of their national teams or the remarkable performances some of them delivered. More than that, it revealed a deeper shift in the Arab public mood. The scale of popular engagement in streets, cafés, homes, and…

After several years of political, economic, and administrative modernization initiatives, the most important question today may be less about the laws enacted or institutions established, and more about how ordinary citizens-particularly young people-actually perceive these reforms. The success of any reform project is measured neither by the number of legislative measures adopted nor by the scale of the official discourse…

The newly constituted Syrian People’s Assembly enters public life as one of the defining milestones of the country’s transitional period. It marks a moment in which the new authorities are testing the contours of political representation, while Syria itself is testing its capacity to move from the legacy of the revolution toward the project of state-building. The announcement by the…

Today, Hamas announced the dissolution of the governmental body that has administered the Gaza Strip, represented by the Government Emergency Committee headed by Mohammad al-Farra, in preparation for transferring administrative authority to the Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, chaired by Eng. Ali Shaath. While this decision can be understood within the immediate context of Gaza or Palestinian…

In the winter of 1950, Ankara dispatched a force of approximately 5,000 soldiers to the Korean Peninsula-a war that was not its own-for one reason alone: to convince a newly emerging Western alliance that Türkiye deserved membership. The price was steep. Nearly 700 Turkish soldiers lost their lives in exchange for an admission ticket that would not be granted until…

The funeral of Iran’s former Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, served as an important opportunity for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the conservative establishment to convey a series of carefully calibrated symbolic and political messages. Each participating delegation carried its own significance, while the ceremony also projected messages to both domestic and international audiences. Notably, the event witnessed broad…

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran was accompanied by political expectations that went far beyond degrading Tehran’s nuclear program or weakening its military capabilities. In Washington and Tel Aviv, many believed the conflict would become a founding moment for a different Iran—either by producing a political order more closely aligned with the West and less committed to its anti-Western ideology, or…

Colonialism had a clear method. Take the land. Extract the raw material. Send the value home. Govern just enough to keep that value-extraction pipeline open. The data economy works the same way: Take something from people before they understand they are giving it away. Turn it into power. Sell it back to them as a “service.” The raw material used…

The central question is not merely whether Israel’s opposition can unseat Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition in the next election. More importantly, if such a political shift occurs, would it produce a substantive change in Israel’s policies toward the core Palestinian issues—particularly annexation, Palestinian statehood, and the E1 settlement project? This article begins with the hypothesis that an electoral…