Instead of empowering Syrian civil society and helping it to build its capacity, the aid community is rendering us more fragile.
Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, Anti-Syrian sentiment in Lebanon.
Lebanese nationalism has historically been exclusionary - as are all nationalisms - and isolationist, in that it accentuates differences between the Lebanese and other Levantines or other Arabs while downplaying shared attributes and characteristics.
US strikes against Islamic State fighters heading towards Erbil will not make a significant impact against a group that can fight across multiple fronts in multiple countries.
Behind the Arab rhetoric of unity over Gaza - and Syria or Iraq - lie deep and dangerous fractures.
Kanafani can make you dream of a free Palestine in a multitude of ways. A Palestine freed through writing, through song, through poetry, through art, or through a rifle.
Why is the Syrian Army, against all predictions, winning the war in Syria? One has to delve into the history of the Syrian state since independence to understand how the military shaped the state and learned to divide its opponents.
The depiction of Lebanon as the most brittle and even artificial nation in its region is based more on myth than reality, says Hazem Saghieh.
The plight of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon is not just a legal issue that can be solved by reforming the exploitative kafala or sponsorship law. It reflects deeper race and gender prejucides and must be addressed as a social and moral problem.
The more the Gulf states pay a reputational cost in the west for maintaining this system of exploitation, the harder it will be for them to resist demands for serious reform.
Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, Contempt and humiliation greet the Pope's visit to the Holy Land.
The issue of what sovereignty means, and how it can be enforced, should not be confined to the defensive sphere alone. Increasing resentment against Syrians in the domestic sphere, and offhand statements about the army versus the law, do not augur well.
