Orientul Mijlociu

Syria seems to be inching back towards fracturing. On November 23, unknown individuals killed a husband and wife from a Sunni Arab Bedouin tribe in Homs Province. Authorities found slogans written at the scene that are commonly associated with Alawite and Shiite communities, such as “Ya Ali, Ya Hussein.”

Despite the fact that “initial investigations confirmed that the phrases written at the crime scene were placed with the aim of misleading and do not have a sectarian character,” according to the Syrian Ministry of Interior, more violence ensued. Bedouin tribesmen targeted mixed Bedouin-Alawite neighborhoods in Homs and destroyed several properties. Despite government forces eventually restoring control, the incident has put Syria’s internal fragility on display.

Hamas leaders and mediators from Egypt, the US, Qatar and Turkey are engaged in wide-ranging discussions in Cairo to iron out potential hurdles in the next phase of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, sources told The National on Tuesday.

Introduction

Qatar is a big winner in the Syrian revolution, having supported the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and its leader Abu Muhammad Al-Joulani (formerly ISIS and Al-Qaeda and now Muslim Brotherhood) who has a $10 million bounty on his head.[1] This is Qatar’s classic game: support the Islamist terrorists and then present itself as a mediator, liaison, and even peacemaker – the arsonist playing firefighter. As in Afghanistan, as in Egypt in 2010, and as in every Muslim country.

The world is watching a famine develop in Gaza that could kill many times more than the 24,000 Palestinians who have already perished in Israel’s merciless blitzkrieg.

Last month, more than 90 percent of Gaza’s population was estimated to be facing high levels of acute food insecurity, categorised as Phase 3 or crisis levels. Of those, more than 40 percent were in a state of emergency (Phase 4), and more than 15 percent in a catastrophic situation, the fifth and final phase.

Mazlum Abdi, commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has said he is ready to travel to Turkey and meet with jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) founder Abdullah Öcalan, as Turkish lawmakers plan to make the first parliamentary visit to his island prison under a new peace initiative.

Under a golden autumn sun, Abdallah Ibrahim harvests fistfuls of hard, green olives with evident delight.

“We were denied this pleasure for the last 14 years,” he sighs.

Barrel bombs and constant shelling caused his family and most of the residents of his village, Al Ghassaniyeh, to flee during the second year of the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. Some stayed, even as Sunni Islamist rebel groups moved in — but they too left after the priest in this historically Christian village was killed.

Iraq’s parliamentary election on 11 November went smoothly from a procedural perspective but left a fragmented political landscape in its wake.

While incumbent Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani topped the poll on the back of a populist campaign of public sector spending, no one party is close to securing a majority.

Al Jazeera’s leadership shake-up has been in the headlines. Will its new executives direct the Qatari state-funded media arm to cease its cozy relationship with Hamas? Allegations have been swirling that the royal family’s soft power news outlet is not merely reporting what Hamas says but is actively collaborating with the terrorist organization.

Sudani did very well at the ballot box, but the peculiarities of Iraq’s long government formation process and the final distribution of parliamentary seats may leave the main Iran-backed coalition in the driver’s seat.

At first blush, the results of Iraq’s November 11 parliamentary election were encouraging, including for U.S. relations. Despite a boycott by Muqtada al-Sadr’s influential movement, participation rose to 55%, up 12 points from 2021’s low of 43%. Still, the faction that came in first—the Reconstruction and Development Coalition led by incumbent Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani—received only 15% of the seats in parliament (46 out of 329). As such, Iraq will likely experience a long, tedious period of political wrangling before a new government is seated, similar to previous post-election delays (eight months in 2010, eleven months in 2021–22).