Middle East Press On: Turkey Politics, Palestinian, Pakistan, Lebanon, Trump’s Iran Deal, Hezbollah, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza, New Age Islam's Selection, 10 June 2026
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
10 June 2026
Women at the helm: Redefining Türkiye’s export story
CHP and the future of Turkish politics
“May your problems always be so small”: Palestinian pain, Pakistani silence
Lebanon proxy conflict is derailing Trump’s Iran deal
Can Hezbollah join the Lebanese consensus?
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu: The Odd Couple
Why Gaza Matters: From ‘Never Again’ to Ecocide, A Liberated Palestine Benefits Us All
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Women at the helm: Redefining Türkiye’s export story
BY FILIZ BAĞCI
JUN 10, 2026
For many years, Türkiye’s export performance was evaluated primarily through production volumes, market expansion and foreign currency inflows. Today, however, understanding the transformation behind exports requires looking beyond the numbers and focusing on the human capital driving this growth. At the center of this transformation are women.
In recent years, the role of women in exports has not only become more visible but has also evolved into a strategic force. According to data from the Ministry of Trade and the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM), the number of export companies managed or co-owned by women has increased significantly. As of 2025, the number of women-led or women-partnered exporting companies exceeded 18,000, while women’s share in total exports has continued to rise steadily.
The growth of female entrepreneurs in exports has become particularly evident over the past three years. In 2023, the number of export companies managed or co-owned by women was around 15,000. In 2026, this figure has surpassed 18,000, highlighting the accelerating growth of women in the entrepreneur ecosystem. The increasing visibility of female entrepreneurs in e-export, service exports, technology and value-added production also signals a major transformation in Türkiye’s next-generation export structure.
While female employees contributed approximately $60.1 billion to exports in 2024, this figure rose further in 2025, approaching the $65 billion level. The share of female employees within exporting companies also climbed to nearly 29.5%, demonstrating that women are no longer active only in selected industries but are becoming a permanent and influential force across Türkiye’s broader export ecosystem. As Türkiye moves closer to its 2026 export target of $280 billion, women’s contribution to exports is expected to grow even further. The rising influence of women entrepreneurs in technology, automotive, manufacturing and e-export sectors stands out as one of the key drivers behind this momentum.
What makes this rise particularly significant is that it reflects not only quantitative growth but also qualitative transformation. In the past, women’s employment was largely concentrated in labor-intensive sectors. Today, however, women are increasingly visible in technology, manufacturing, automotive and value-added industries. Female employees contribute more than $8 billion to Türkiye’s ready-to-wear exports, while their contribution in the food sector exceeds $7 billion. Even more striking is the automotive industry, where women’s contribution to exports is approaching $7 billion, demonstrating their growing role in highly competitive and production-intensive sectors.
The growing influence of women is no longer limited to merchandise exports. In service exports, female entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly visible in software, consultancy, health tourism, creative industries and e-commerce. Türkiye’s rapid growth in service exports is creating new opportunities for women entrepreneurs as well. According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data, the rate of female entrepreneurs in Türkiye has exceeded 18%, while the total number of female entrepreneurs has surpassed 1.2 million. This reflects how women are becoming more active not only in production, but also in the service economy, digitalization and global trade networks.
Similarly, the increasing role of women in management and decision-making processes represents another important dimension of this transformation. Companies led by women often demonstrate more structured, sustainable and long-term export strategies. The contribution of women as executives or shareholders to exports has now approached $30 billion, showing that women are not only shaping production processes but also influencing companies’ long-term growth visions.
Having worked in export incentives consultancy for nearly 15 years, I have personally observed this transformation in the field. In recent years, the growing confidence of female entrepreneurs in international markets has become especially striking. Many female entrepreneurs who once acted more cautiously are now taking bolder steps toward entering new markets, building brands and focusing on high-value-added production. This transformation is reshaping not only corporate growth strategies but also Türkiye’s overall export vision.
At the same time, there are still important steps needed to sustain and strengthen this positive momentum. Facilitating female entrepreneurs’ access to finance, increasing their integration into international business networks and supporting their participation in digital transformation processes remain critical priorities. In particular, e-export platforms and digital trade channels offer female entrepreneurs faster and more cost-effective access to global markets.
Today, Türkiye is writing a new export story. What makes this story different is not only the growth figures themselves, but the fact that this growth is becoming more inclusive, more balanced and more sustainable. The role women play in this transformation is now too significant to ignore.
In the years ahead, the influence of women in exports is expected to grow even further. Because the challenge today is no longer simply to export more, but to build a more strategic, innovative and value-added production model. And women are increasingly at the center of that transformation.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/women-at-the-helm-redefining-turkiyes-export-story
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CHP and the future of Turkish politics
BY MUHITTIN ATAMAN
JUN 10, 2026
The internal conflict within the Republican People's Party (CHP) has lingered since the court’s ruling declaring it an absolute nullity. The division within the party is expected to continue. On the one hand, following the court decision, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu officially took over the party's leadership and is trying to consolidate it. On the other hand, former Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu’s team, represented by former Chair Özgür Özel, insists on not leaving the party to Kılıçdaroğlu.
It is quite clear that upcoming developments within the CHP will have profound consequences not only for the party but for the entire political system in Türkiye. Since the early days of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, the CHP has been serving as the main opposition party in the country. Due to voter fatigue among CHP constituents and growing distrust toward the party, the divisions within the CHP could lead to its decline from its status as the main opposition party.
Let’s not forget that the CHP had, until very recently, consolidated and motivated its voters mainly through negative partisanship. Its primary commitment to its voters has been to overthrow the Erdoğan government. Developing well-founded and concrete solutions to the country’s fundamental issues has never been its primary priority.
Furthermore, the CHP has recently lost much of its influence over the bureaucracy, including the military, the judiciary and academia. As the tutelage system weakened, the crises within the CHP also grew. Because even if the CHP didn’t come out on top in general elections, it was generally able to control the government through the bureaucracy. As of today, this is hardly possible anymore. Therefore, for the first time in its history, the CHP is experiencing the growing pains of being a true opposition party.
Third, the political system and social structure in Türkiye cannot simultaneously sustain two major left-wing political parties. Given that even the CHP alone has struggled to come to power, it is unlikely that two left-wing parties could both emerge as mainstream political forces and viable contenders for government. Therefore, the opposition will try to become a government candidate under the leadership of a single left-wing party. It is clear that they cannot come to power by splitting. Furthermore, apart from the CHP, there is no other left-wing party in Türkiye that can effectively represent the left and be a strong opposition force.
Another point is that Imamoğlu’s team will want to continue with a populist political party. However, a populist political party has no chance of coming to power, mainly for two reasons. First, there is no political vacuum in the country. Despite various economic and political challenges, the vast majority of the Turkish people still trust Erdoğan's leadership. Second, the biggest handicap for the CHP, or any other political party, is the presence of a charismatic leader like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the political scene. The CHP, or any other party, cannot produce a leader who could be an alternative or rival to Erdoğan.
Imamoğlu’s side, without abandoning legal avenues, is trying to eliminate Kılıçdaroğlu and his team largely through illegitimate political means. Because Imamoğlu’s project suffered a major blow, the Imamoğlu side is waging a lynching campaign against Kılıçdaroğlu’s team that goes beyond mere criticism. Ultimately, those they want to eliminate are their own party members and the previous presidential candidate. Naturally, this will be noted by the CHP's real or potential voters.
Furthermore, the CHP’s victory in local elections was a huge test, but the CHP’s elected mayors and local administrations widely disappointed the party's voters, failing this test. Instead of service-oriented politics, the mayors became associated more with immorality, theft and bribery. Even though Imamoğlu’s team doesn’t care about these claims or take them into account, the public and other political parties are waiting for a response to Kılıçdaroğlu’s allegations. Otherwise, Özel’s silence would mean acceptance of these claims.
All in all, the CHP still lacks the tradition of taking into account the identities, demands, priorities and psychology of the broad masses of the Turkish people. Moreover, the CHP has never pursued a service-oriented policy, nor has it felt the need to. In fact, the bureaucracy acted on behalf of the CHP for decades. The party does not have a tradition of producing services. Therefore, it will take time for the CHP to learn to become a real opposition party, and Türkiye will continue to have a serious opposition problem.
When we examine the ruling party in question, we see that the AK Party has prioritized service-oriented policies since its inception. The party continues to engage with and shape political, social and economic life across a wide range of areas. While it is socially conservative and politically reformist, its foreign policy is both pragmatic and humanitarian, maintaining close relations with the West while simultaneously expanding its engagement with non-Western regions.
Last weekend, elections held in six new towns indicated that the Turkish people still do not trust the CHP to govern the country. Out of these six towns, the AK Party won four mayorships, while the CHP has only one. The midterm election results show the Turkish people’s distrust of the CHP. Therefore, the CHP needs to think about the results and take the required measures. Otherwise, the country will continue to experience the opposition problem.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/chp-and-the-future-of-turkish-politics
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“May your problems always be so small”: Palestinian pain, Pakistani silence
June 9, 2026
by Junaid S. Ahmad
At a recent gathering of social scientists in Washington, DC, a Pakistani-American academic spoke movingly about Palestine. The vocabulary was polished, the grief sincere, the analysis appropriately grave. Then a Palestinian academic asked the question that should stalk every Pakistani and South Asian intellectual in the West: why are you so eloquent about Palestine and so silent about Pakistan? Why can you name Zionism but not Imran Khan? Why can you speak of genocide but not General Asim Munir, Trump’s favorite field marshal, presiding over Pakistan’s quasi-dictatorial order? Why does Pakistan — the country you analyze, inherit, visit, romanticize, and perform — become unspeakable precisely when it most needs speech?
To her credit, the Pakistani-American academic did not disappear into theoretical fog. She confessed the truth. It is easier now for Pakistani academics to speak about Palestine than Pakistan. Palestine may bring applause. Pakistan may bring consequences: intelligence harassment, family pressure, airport unpleasantness, poisoned trips home, calls to relatives. These are the real borders of courage. We keep quiet, she admitted in substance, because we want to travel comfortably.
The Palestinian academic smiled and offered a sentence that belongs in the museum of moral humiliation: “May your problems always be so small.”
He said this as someone whose extended family had been shattered by Gaza’s slaughter. It was not cruelty. It was diagnosis. In one sentence, he exposed an entire class: highly educated, politically fluent, morally theatrical, and terrified of inconvenience.
This is the scandal of the Pakistani and South Asian intellectual world in the West. It is not ignorance. They know. They know Khan is imprisoned. They know PTI supporters have been hounded, arrested, intimidated, erased from legitimacy, and treated as civic contamination. They know Pakistan’s public sphere has been suffocated, dissent criminalized, journalism disciplined, parliament reduced to furniture, and courts bent under pressure.
They know all of this.
And yet the silence sits there, fat and well-fed.
South Asian progressive organizations in the West have mastered the grammar of anti-fascism. Hindutva? Fluent. Trumpism? Naturally. Zionism? Increasingly. White supremacy? Of course. But when the Pakistani state persecutes the country’s most popular political leader and turns millions of mobilized citizens into suspect bodies, the language becomes suddenly delicate. We hear of “the establishment,” “polarization,” “civil-military tensions” — phrases designed by people describing arson without offending the arsonist.
This is where Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) must be named. DRUM has done serious work on immigrant justice, policing, racial capitalism, deportations, and state violence. Precisely for that reason, its silence on Pakistan is not a minor omission. It is a political failure. Many of its Pakistani members and supporters are enthusiastic Khan supporters, furious at US support for dictatorship and repression in Pakistan. They are not confused. They do not need a reading group to discover that a military-backed order crushing civilian political agency is a problem. Yet the leadership appears unwilling to say Khan’s name or confront US complicity.
This is not strategy. It is constituency management without courage.
The contrast with CAGE International is instructive. CAGE has understood what many Western Muslim and South Asian organizations still evade: the War on Terror was never only a Western project imposed on Muslim societies. It was also a regime project, eagerly implemented by Muslim states that sold their own people into surveillance, torture, rendition, disappearance, and imperial approval. CAGE names this collaboration when others find safer uses for their microphones. Its politics matters because it refuses the childish fiction that Islamophobia disappears when the torturer speaks Urdu, Arabic, Turkish, or Farsi.
Pakistani and South Asian organizations should have learned this from Aafia Siddiqui alone. Aafia is not only a story of American injustice. She is a permanent indictment of Pakistan’s security state and its obscene role in the ‘War on Terror.’ Her name should haunt every general, minister, liberal apologist, and respectable analyst who pretends Pakistan’s ruling elite guards Muslim dignity.
Now the same habits return around Imran Khan. The Pakistani intellectual class wants every struggle to be universal except the one that implicates its passports, families, invitations, and summer travel. It speaks of Kashmir, Palestine, caste, racism, Hindutva, Islamophobia, empire, and coloniality. Good. It should. But when Pakistan descends into coercive rule, when Khan is isolated, when supporters are crushed, when diaspora critics fear transnational repression, the moral weather suddenly changes. The sun of justice disappears behind a cloud called “it’s complicated.”
It is not complicated. It is costly. That is different.
The defenders of silence ask: why personalize the struggle around Khan? This sounds principled only until one remembers Lula, Anwar Ibrahim, Morsi, Mandela. Political prisoners become symbols not because they are flawless, but because power condenses an entire conflict into their bodies. Khan’s cell is not merely a cell. It is a message to every Pakistani who believed political agency could exceed the permission of Rawalpindi and Washington.
The irony is that Palestinians understand this better than many Pakistanis. So do South Africans. That is why voices such as Allan Boesak, Ronnie Kasrils, Susan Abulhawa, Ilan Pappé, John Esposito, Tamara Sonn, Tariq Ali, Medea Benjamin, Jeremy Corbyn, Yanis Varoufakis, Steven Friedman, Roger Waters, Noura Erakat, Katie Halper, Patrick Bond, Vijay Prashad, Omid Safi, Riffat Hassan, Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui, Norman Finkelstein, Fatima Bhutto, Yasir Qadhi, Sami Hamdi, Mushtaq Ahmad Khan, Ammar Ali Jan, Hassaan Bokhari, Taimur Rahman, Hamza Ahmad Khan, Sana Saeed, Maria Kari, Charles Amjad-Ali, and Rashied Omar matter. Courage needs names. Young people require examples, not abstractions.
And what of the United States? Here the silence becomes still more damning. These organizations live under the government whose foreign policy sustains the authoritarian arrangements they refuse to confront. If Pakistani-American activists cannot challenge US support for coercive rule in Pakistan, what exactly is their anti-imperialism? A branding exercise? A domestic policy aesthetic? An Instagram template with borders?
The Palestinian academic’s sentence should become the test. If the price of speech is an uncomfortable airport, a nervous relative, a lost invitation, or a complicated trip home, perhaps one should hesitate before using Palestine as a moral stage on which Pakistani cowardice dresses itself as courage.
The choice is simple. Continue speaking beautifully about every injustice except the one that threatens access. Or finally say the names: Imran Khan. Asim Munir. US-backed authoritarianism. Transnational repression. Political prisoners. Pakistan’s suffocated democracy.
History is not asking for poetry. It is asking for witnesses.
And if even that is too much, silence should at least have the decency to stop calling itself strategy.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260609-may-your-problems-always-be-so-small-palestinian-pain-pakistani-silence/
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Lebanon proxy conflict is derailing Trump’s Iran deal
OSAMA AL-SHARIF
June 09, 2026
This week’s collapse of the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, which had held for nearly 60 days and was part of a broader US-Iran truce, is a blow to President Donald Trump’s efforts to conclude a permanent agreement with Tehran that would initially reopen the Strait of Hormuz and later lead to a full deal to resolve Iran’s nuclear threat. The two sides exchanged blows, with Iran raining missiles on Israel on Sunday night in retaliation for an Israeli strike that hit Beirut’s southern district earlier that day.
Despite Trump’s attempt to dissuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from responding, Israel carried out a number of airstrikes deep into Iranian territory on Monday. Iran did not waver and struck what it said were military bases in Israel. By early morning Washington time, Trump posted on social media that both sides were seeking an immediate ceasefire and that final peace negotiations were proceeding, adding that things should move quickly.
Soon after, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced they had ended strikes against Israel. Later that day, Israel too said it had heeded Trump’s call to end its attacks on Iran. But senior Iranian officials made it clear: not only was Beirut off-limits but so was southern Lebanon. Israel doubled down, saying that the ceasefire with Iran had nothing to do with its military operations in southern Lebanon and that even Beirut’s southern district — Hezbollah’s main stronghold — would be struck whenever Tel Aviv deemed necessary. Netanyahu later announced that Israel’s mission to defeat the pro-Iran Lebanese militia was not over.
By Monday afternoon, the two sides were at it again. Hezbollah attacked the Israeli military presence in occupied southern Lebanon, while Israel resumed its bombardment of Lebanese targets in the south, including the city of Tyre. Iran made verbal threats but held its ground.
Since Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire on April 16, the Lebanese government has documented nearly 3,500 Israeli violations of the truce. Hezbollah responded by attacking Israeli military positions in southern Lebanon and firing rockets and drones into northern Israel. The White House did not intervene to stop the Israeli encroachment on Lebanese territory or the widespread demolition of Lebanese towns and villages, even as Washington hosted historic direct negotiations between the Lebanese government and Israel — talks that Hezbollah had rejected.
An agreement between Beirut and Tel Aviv to observe a ceasefire, without mentioning an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, was also rebuffed by Hezbollah and never went into effect.
Yet, when Israel threatened to carry out strikes on Beirut last week, Trump claimed to have told Netanyahu to back down — only to be quoted shortly after as saying he supported Israel’s surgical strikes against Hezbollah.
Lebanon has become a bargaining chip in the US-Iran standoff. Netanyahu was more than happy to carry out the systematic destruction of southern Lebanon as long as Washington looked away, using the card as leverage over Tehran’s new leaders. Hezbollah — Iran’s most valuable regional proxy — was losing territory and grassroots support. It had become Iran’s soft underbelly as Tehran attempted to strengthen its negotiating position with Trump.
Iran had to respond for several reasons. It wanted to emphasize that the April 8 ceasefire agreement with the US covered all fronts, including Lebanon. It also sought to break the diplomatic stalemate with Washington by stirring the pot at a moment when Trump is facing domestic pressure to resolve the Gulf crisis — one largely of his own making. And it wanted to demonstrate that it still held full command over its proxies: Hezbollah in Lebanon, pro-Shiite militant groups in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. On Monday, the Houthis fired two long-range ballistic missiles toward Israel and vowed to close the Bab Al-Mandab Strait to all Israel-bound vessels.
For Netanyahu, Tehran’s attempt to link any US-Iran agreement to its ongoing military campaign in Lebanon is a red line. The concept of “the unity of the arenas” — Iran’s insistence on treating all regional fronts as interconnected — is anathema to Israel.
The one-day showdown between Iran and Israel has laid bare the structural weakness of Trump’s regional policy. More than 100 days have passed since he launched his war of choice against Iran — one that observers believe has failed on all counts. He has yet to negotiate a deal with Tehran that could be seen as an improvement on former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement.
Trump is facing a backlash at home and among his regional and foreign allies. His “no more foreign wars” election mantra has become a political liability. Questions are also mounting over Netanyahu’s toxic influence on the Trump White House and the Republican Party. Whether Trump asked Netanyahu not to retaliate against Iran’s Sunday night attacks or quietly gave him the green light for limited strikes, the question of who is really in charge — and who holds leverage over whom — is now reverberating through Washington.
Iran’s attacks and Israel’s reprisals have pushed the crisis to a new level. Israel continues to strike southern Lebanon and Hezbollah is hitting back. Netanyahu has admitted this will not be the last round of fighting with Iran. Trump’s promises of an imminent deal have been tested and found wanting. The region and the wider world continue to pay the price of the Gulf stalemate.
The Lebanese crisis, meanwhile, could quickly spiral into a broader regional war. Iran has made clear that Lebanon and its proxy represent new red lines. Israel, for its part, cannot afford to be seen as defeated in Lebanon, with Hezbollah posing what it regards as an existential threat.
Conspicuously absent from this dangerous equation are America’s regional allies, which continue to bear the cost of a shortsighted US policy that places Israel’s expansionist interests above all others. Trump may soon lose interest and walk away from the wreckage his war of choice has left across the region. What would remain would be a series of festering, unresolved conflicts.
If there is one lesson to be drawn from the past few months, it is this: a clear separation between US and Israeli policy in the region is not optional — it is essential if America is to balance its alliances and protect its long-term interests. Netanyahu’s regional agenda has proven disruptive, self-serving and deeply damaging to sustainable ties between Washington and its regional partners.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2646538
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Can Hezbollah join the Lebanese consensus?
NADIM SHEHADI
June 09, 2026
An essential yet difficult point to understand and explain is the relationship between Lebanon as a state and a society and Hezbollah. The answer is in the political system and its weakness, which is at the same time its strength. Its weakness is that it leads to foreign intervention, breakdowns and violence, while its strength is that it has the ability to reset and grow stronger after every crisis.
Lebanon skipped the 20th century; it never became a sovereign, homogeneous, secular nationalist state with a unified national identity and strong state institutions. It remains a collection of communities, each with its own historical roots and regional as well as international connections. It is not really that complicated, all it means is that the Lebanese acknowledge and recognize each other’s identities and accept the idea that they may have extraterritorial affinities.
This is not new. The system is based on a centuries-old practice that dates to Mamluk and Ottoman times. The millet system not only allowed religious communities to have their own personal status and religious laws, but they also accepted that they have foreign protection and interests. Thus, in Mount Lebanon, the Maronites as a community were under French protection, the Druze under British, the Orthodox Christians under Russian and the Melkites under Austrian. They coexisted by agreement, compromise and recognition of their differences.
The system occasionally broke down and resulted in violence but it found balance again through slogans like “let bygones be bygones,” “no victor, no vanquished,” and “one Lebanon, not two,” as well as agreements between the communities that they have to live together despite their differences.
This explains how the Palestine Liberation Organization took hold in the country in the late 1960s and 70s and how Hezbollah emerged with allegiance to Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Both were in response to strong regional developments that carried with them one community or another.
In the 1950s, a wave of Arab nationalism, led by the charismatic Gamal Abdel Nasser, was impossible to resist. Lebanon managed to avoid its ripple effects in 1952 and 1956 and broke down in crisis in 1958, but it kept out of the six-day war in 1967 and ended up with the Cairo Agreement in 1969, giving the PLO freedom of action on its border with Israel. This was a compromise between Lebanese communities as much as it was a regionally sponsored agreement with Yasser Arafat.
The PLO effectively took over Sunni representation and established itself as a state within a state with the support of a significant part of the population. It developed its institutions, achieved international recognition and Arafat went to the UN under Lebanese sponsorship. The PLO could not have flourished anywhere else in the region — it was effectively kicked out of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Kuwait, but Lebanon provided freedom and support.
However, it all ended in tears, triggering a civil war, a Syrian intervention and an Israeli invasion, leading to what was described as turning Beirut into the Stalingrad of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Did Lebanon have a choice? Could the state have suppressed support and prevented the rise of the PLO? Maybe, but it would not be Lebanon if it did that.
Arafat was escorted out of the country and, 10 years later, we saw the communities that supported him and their leaders become part of the Taif Agreement, fully integrating them into a new Lebanon. In the Lebanese model, the weakness is that it allows you to opt out; the strength is that you can get back in and all is forgiven and forgotten.
Hezbollah is a similar phenomenon. The Shiite revival of the 1950s and 1960s, which started in Iran, was a strong movement that swept the region. Imam Musa Al-Sadr was its representative in Lebanon. His charisma earned him respect from all communities in the country. He was eventually joined by his comrades from the liberation movement of Iran and the result was the creation of the Amal Movement, in which Al-Sadr’s friend from Iran, Mostafa Chamran, played a significant role.
The Iran-Iraq war further increased tensions and radicalized the movement out of which Hezbollah was born as the vanguard of Ayatollah Khomeini’s export of the revolution. The result was that we rejected the compromise of Israel’s withdrawal in 1983 and Hezbollah gradually took over the representation of the Shiite community through a series of assassinations of Shiite opponents in the 1980s and a war of brothers with the Amal Movement. It also monopolized the resistance to Israeli occupation before negotiating a withdrawal in 2000, launching another war in 2006 and gradually capturing the state, launching war after war on behalf of Iran until we reached where we are now.
In an old legend, a scorpion that cannot swim asks a frog to give him a ride across a river, promising not to sting him. The frog hesitates at first and then is reassured. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog and the dying frog asks the scorpion why it did what it did, even though it means they will both die. The drowning scorpion answers that he could not help it, as it is in his nature. It is in the nature of the frog to help the scorpion cross the river and it is in the nature of the scorpion to sting the frog, even though it dooms them both.
Likewise, it is in the nature of Lebanon to allow movements like the PLO and Hezbollah to flourish and it is in these groups’ nature to take over the country. In any other state in the region, they would have been suppressed along with their supporters. The Lebanese solution is always possible and here is how.
Before he was assassinated in 2013, economist and diplomat Mohammed Chatah was in dialogue with Hezbollah. His proposal was to acknowledge that their disagreements were related to regional divisions that could not be solved in Lebanon. Neither side had a real say in the standoff with Iran or the nuclear issues between the US and Tehran. His solution was that, while the Lebanese can disagree on these issues, they can respect each other’s opinion and agree on two things: First, that Lebanon should not be the battleground where these regional issues are fought; and, second, that they could still resolve things like water, electricity and refuse collection and make people’s lives better.
This is what every Lebanese hopes for: that the Shiite community will get over the Iranian phase, just like the Sunnis and the Druze did with Nasserism and the PLO, and that it will join the Taif consensus and work toward rebuilding the country. In the story of nations, the first 100 years are always difficult and, for Lebanon, it is time to move forward.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2646543
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Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu: The Odd Couple
June 9, 2026
By Jamal Kanj
“He’ll do whatever I want him to do,” Donald Trump declared recently about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This may be one of the most revealing statements Trump has ever made—not for what it says about Netanyahu, but for what it reveals about Trump’s psychology. It was intended as a display of strength. Instead, it exposed the opposite.
Trump has built a political persona around hyperbole, self-aggrandizement, and declarations of superiority to cover up for an oversized inferiority complex; he only knows its extent. When he insists that Netanyahu is acting at his command, he is projecting an authority he does not possess. The louder the boast, the more apparent the insecurity beneath it.
If there is one lesson since the election of Trump, it is that Netanyahu, not Trump, has consistently dictated the pace of America’s wars in the Middle East. Trump may occupy the White House, issue ultimatums, and proclaim himself the master negotiator, but the facts on the ground tell a different story. Again and again, Netanyahu acts, and Trump adjusts.
For years, Netanyahu worked relentlessly to pull the US into another made-for-Israel war, this time against Iran. Successive administrations, despite their deference to Israel, stopped short of falling for the scheme. Trump, however, proved far more susceptible to the influence of his Israel-first donors and to Netanyahu’s chicanery. Yet he continues to portray himself as the one calling the shots.
Last week, Trump proudly recounted a phone call in which he supposedly instructed Netanyahu to halt a planned Israeli attack on Beirut. It took little time after Trump’s statement for Israel’s defense minister to announce that military operations “will continue under all circumstances.” True to that pledge, Israel launched fresh attacks on hospitals and villages in southern Lebanon, killing and wounding civilians despite the so-called Trump’s war cessation.
Two days later, on Wednesday, June 3, Lebanese and Israeli delegations meeting in Washington announced another ceasefire. The third such extension since last April. One day after reaching the agreement, Israel resumed strikes on South Lebanon and said it would neither withdraw nor allow Lebanese civilians back to their homes in the south. Instead, it ordered residents in five Lebanese villages to evacuate their homes, expanding its occupation deeper into south Lebanon.
On Sunday, June 7, Israel attacked Beirut, less than a week after Trump’s much-publicized, theatrical angry call to Netanyahu, against attacking the Lebanese capital. Iran retaliated against the Israeli attack on Beirut, as it had threatened last week. Iran carried out measured retaliation attacks against Israeli military bases in the north, as it had warned last week. Brushing aside Trump’s request, Israel struck Tehran and other locations in a deliberate move to torpedo any potential US-Iran agreement.
This is the predictable endpoint of Netanyahu’s strategy of creeping war expansion, dragging America back to fight his war against Iran. As of this writing, the world braces for Iranian retaliation, most likely targeting major cities, including Tel Aviv.
It is almost certain that after the Lebanese resistance finally countered those repeated Israeli violations, Trump will condemn the retaliation rather than the provocation. To save face and avoid appearing weak before Netanyahu, he will once again blame the Lebanese side while ignoring the Israeli occupation and military aggression that triggered it.
The same pattern is evident in the negotiations with Iran. For months, Trump’s stated objective was to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon—a framework which aligns with Tehran’s declared position. But nuclear-armed Israel, which never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty that Iran did, has different goals entirely. Netanyahu’s government will not be satisfied with anything short of the destruction of knowledge and the reduction of Iran to a failed state, precisely the fate that befell Iraq and Libya after both countries agreed to surrender their nuclear ambitions.
For Israel, a negotiated agreement between the U.S. and Iran, may be far less desirable than the continuation of regional turmoil. For its objective is the preservation of a strategic environment that sustains military and geopolitical dominance. Zionism has long viewed the emergence of democratic, technologically advanced, and self-reliant neighboring states as a threat. Fragmentation and disorder in surrounding countries serve that objective by limiting the rise of independent regional powers that could one day, potentially challenge Israeli primacy. In this case, Israel may be unique among nations: it derives strategic advantage not from a stable and prosperous region, but from entropy, and has built a regional doctrine whose success depends on propagating chaos.
The cost to ordinary Americans is tangible and personal. They feel it every time they fuel their cars, pay inflated prices for goods, or watch Congress cut healthcare or financial student aid for Americans in order to finance another military aid package for Israel. Americans are not only financing Israel’s wars through tax dollars and weapons transfers. They are also paying what amounts to an Israeli surcharge tax at the pump. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been trying for weeks to assure consumers that gas will hover around $3 a gallon between June and September, as if it is acceptable for Americans to pay elevated prices until Netanyahu deigns to approve a ceasefire, especially when Trump boasts that America is a net oil exporter.
Gaza is another front in Israel’s endless wars. Trump personally signed the ceasefire agreement in Sharm el-Sheikh in October 2025, chirping, “we have peace in the Middle East.” He had since watched in silence as Israel systematically dismantled every commitment it had made. During the “ceasefire,” it maintained a starvation diet blockade, murdered 961, and wounded thousands.
Under Phase One, Israeli forces were required to withdraw to approximately 53 percent of Gaza. Phase two stipulated further withdrawal. Instead, Netanyahu ordered the seizure of an additional 32 percent, increasing total Israeli military occupation to 70 percent of the besieged territory, confining 2.3 million Palestinians to 30 percent, or roughly 50,000 human beings per square mile of rubble.
On all fronts, Trump did not merely follow Netanyahu’s lead. He enabled it, funded it, armed it, and defended it diplomatically. Then, standing before television cameras, he attempted to compensate for this reality by insisting that he was the one in control.
To that end, and following recent Republican primary elections, lame-duck Republican members of Congress have already begun treating the Trump administration as a lame-duck presidency, long before the midterm elections. The recent congressional vote to limit presidential war powers is a telling sign that Trump’s political capital is eroding far sooner than expected.
Nevertheless, Americans may be witnessing a historic inflection point in the decades-long power of Israel-first Zionist influence over American political life. It is clear the political landscape is shifting, and the assumptions that long governed Washington’s relationship with Israel no longer appear as immutable as they once did. From growing dissent within the Democratic Party—and among Republican influencers—to deepening unease across the Washington Beltway, genuine cracks are appearing in a system that for generations treated Israel as a sacred cow. Eight decades of unquestioned Zionist manipulation and political leverage over American leaders are now facing resistance from constituencies that were once among its most reliable friends.
Hence, no amount of presidential bravado or social-media posturing can obscure what has become undeniable: under Donald Trump, American foreign policy has served Netanyahu’s Israel-first agenda, not America’s. And when the history of this era is written, this odd couple may be remembered for ushering in the sunset of Israel-first Zionist dominance over the US government.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/donald-trump-and-benjamin-netanyahu-the-odd-couple/
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Why Gaza Matters: From ‘Never Again’ to Ecocide, A Liberated Palestine Benefits Us All
June 9, 2026
By Benay Blend
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center shows that many countries around the world are recognizing that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is unacceptable in a world that values human life. According to the survey, a median of 67 percent across 36 countries disapprove of Israel’s actions, a shift that has become particularly pronounced since the bombing of Iran.
These findings reinforce Gallup reports that 41 percent of Americans recently said that they sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis, marking a shift from the numbers found in earlier polls. Gallup found favorability towards Palestinians highest among younger Americans, Democrats, and political independents.
Despite these encouraging numbers, there are still pockets of the US population who say that they never watch the news because they believe it is too depressing. Many also believe that current problems in this country are so overwhelming that there is little room left to feel empathy for other people.
Nevertheless, it has long been impossible to separate foreign policy from domestic concerns as both are inextricably linked by several factors. In order to promote violence abroad—as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, and the Middle East—there must be an effort on the part of corporate media and public officials to promote xenophobia at home.
Complicity on the part of recent administrations in both funding and promoting Israel’s genocide is obvious. From disparaging remarks about individuals from those regions to providing weapons used across Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon, politicians within both the Biden and Trump regimes have enabled mass murder in those countries.
To the unskilled eye, media collusion is less apparent, perhaps because of long-held myths that surround the founding of the “Israeli” state as a bastion of democracy and rightful homeland for the Jewish people in the Middle East.
Yet, as Iqbal Jassat notes, “the pattern of framing [by corporate media] is evident in the choice of soft language as well as the omission of critical context.” After October 7, such reports described Israel’s siege on Gaza as a “just war,” calling it a response to “terrorism” by Hamas, thus omitting years of the entity’s illegal occupation followed by a 17-year blockade, all of which have contributed to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza today.
As far as “soft language,” Jassat writes, journalists have been instructed to avoid terms like genocide, ethnic cleansing, and occupied territories. When referring to Palestinian actions, the term “resistance” is never used, but instead words like massacre and slaughter are substituted to describe what is in reality Palestinians’ legal right to resist the occupiers of their country.
According to the Press on Palestine Series, an initiative by Palestine Square, the blog of the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA, these practices, long common in US reporting, have escalated since October 7th.
For example, when the Washington Post covered the assassination of poet/teacher Refaat Alareer, Farah Hamouda explains that the reporter “perpetuates harmful stereotypes by associating Palestinians with violence,” thus holding the victims responsible for their own deaths. By “escalat[ing] his criticism of Israel,” the Post alludes, Alareer deserved the “Israeli” airstrike that murdered him along with his brother, sister, and her four children.
Indeed, the dissemination of such images by the press has consequences far beyond the page. For instance, on May 18, 2026, a shooting at the Islamic Center in San Diego, California, left three worshipers dead along with a traumatized Muslim community.
Reporting on the incident, Anisah Bagasra writes that “negative portrayals of Muslims shape public opinion towards them,” a trend that she says has escalated since the US bombing of Iran. Thus, foreign policy impacts what happens on the domestic scene, in this case leading to increased discrimination and hate crimes such as the recent shooting in San Diego.
Closer to my home, a proposed mosque and Islamic community center in Albuquerque, New Mexico’s North Valley, has drawn considerable controversy during a recent Planning Commission meeting about the site.
Though the outward objection seems to be increased traffic, comments on social media, along with those in public meetings, tell a different story. As one person wrote, “Islam is not compatible with American and Western ideals,” thus repeating stereotypes perpetuated by Western media
Also complicit are Republican politicians who recently held a hearing titled “Sharia-free America,” an anti-Muslim trope that Bagasra contends “portrays Muslims as invaders who want to impose Sharia–Islamic religious law–on all Americans.”
Albuquerque activist Selinda Guerrero, who also attended the meeting, had a different take. “It’s the same people who support genocide and support othering and dehumanizing,” she said, thus linking Israel’s genocide in Gaza with such instances of hate at home.
Given the location of Sandia and Los Alamos labs, along with Kirtland Air Force Base, there are other reasons that New Mexicans are living within the belly of the beast. All of these examples point to why Gaza matters far beyond its borders, thereby linking what is happening in Palestine to concerns closer to our homes.
Climate change has also made its way around the world, thereby causing massive floods in some areas while serious droughts plague others, particularly in the desert Southwest, where we have had far below the average rainfall/snow pack for at least the past year. In my area, there is a choice between letting our trees die or paying massive water bills, neither of which is a viable option.
On the one hand, Israel describes itself as a champion of green technologies, leading many in drought-stricken areas to collaborate with the entity for help. In 2021, “Israeli” company Watergen installed apparatus in the Hard Rock Community in Arizona that brought clean drinking water to 10,000 families across the Navajo Nation who had previously lacked access to running water.
On the other, Israel has used destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure as “another weapon of war,” according to Doctors Without Borders. By destroying desalination plants and cutting off electricity, the entity has blocked the population’s access to water, thus adding more misery to those who have endured bombing, displacement, and loss of family and close friends.
In “Israel’s Obliteration Ecocide from Gaza to Lebanon and Beyond,” Dan Steinbock traces how the entity has carried out what he calls The Obliteration Doctrine in both Gaza and Lebanon, then describes how these “these environmental consequences of such conflict patterns are not geographically contained.”
Defined as the consequence of “scorched earth policy, collective punishment, and civilian victimization, coupled with massive indiscriminate bombardment and systemic use of artificial intelligence [AI],” this doctrine should be of interest to all those interested in climate change.
Accordingly, Steinbock discusses “spillover trajectories” that cross borders, thereby causing environmental degradation that contributes to the current global crisis.
“What happens in Gaza won’t stay in Gaza,” he concludes. “What happens in Lebanon won’t stay in Lebanon. The stage is being set for obliteration ecocides wherever they are seen as effective necessities.”
In this way, Steinbock’s analysis underscores the thesis of this article: What happens in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon should concern us all.
Finally, as segments of the US population confront rising healthcare costs combined with steep cuts to healthcare programs included in the recently released White House budget, it should be remembered that massive amounts of tax money has gone to Israel to support its wars.
As of October 7, 2025, the United States has enabled the “Israeli” genocide by sending approximately 21 billion dollars to the Zionist war chest. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, without these funds Israel would not have been able to sustain its genocide on Gaza, start a war with Iran, or repeatedly bomb Yemen.
All of this should matter. After World War II, the mantra “Never Again” arose in reference to the Holocaust of Jewish people and others deemed undesirable by the German government. There, too, genocide was allowed to happen by onlookers who felt it in their best interest to look away.
As history continues to repeat itself, it is important to understand that what happens in Gaza matters beyond its borders, not only for material and environmental reasons but also for humanitarian ones.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/why-gaza-matters-from-never-again-to-ecocide-a-liberated-palestine-benefits-us-all/
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