The Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center will be holding its sixth annual conference on December 7–8, 2022, covering global political and economic issues, the main purpose of which is to anticipate what will happen in 2023.

When President Joe Biden travels to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Palestinian territories in July, he should keep two names in his mind at every step: Jamal Khashoggi and Shireen Abu Akleh. Both spoke truth to power, and both were killed in the course of their work as journalists.

The panel is scheduled for Wednesday, May 25 at 16:00 Beirut time, and will feature contributions from Amer Bisat, Verena El Amil, Lama Fakih, Kim Ghattas and Ziad Majed.

From Beirut, Kim Ghattas reports on just how difficult life has become for the majority of its citizens and what this week’s election result might mean for this struggling nation and the problems it faces.

For various reasons countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE have felt like they had to hedge their bets and try to maintain a neutral stance.

But one event is missing from these analyses, an episode that combines political and emotional aspects, and helped crystallize Putin’s distrust of the West, his own sense of vulnerability, and his ultimate decision to return as Russia’s president: the 2011 NATO-led intervention in Libya that resulted in the violent death of the country’s eccentric dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Local Lebanese politicians are incapable or unwilling to come together to reform the country, to reform its institutions, to reform its politics and its economy. But I would put it in bigger terms and say that they're unwilling to do anything that would undermine their own grip on power

The Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center will be holding its fifth annual conference on Wednesday, December 8, and Thursday, December 9, 2021, to delve deeper into what to expect in 2022.

All of this regional activity is happening with the U.S. quietly coordinating in the background, encouraging some moves while discouraging or ignoring others (such as the overtures to Assad), but overall engaging in much more diplomacy across the region ahead of the nuclear talks with Iran that resumed this week after a five-month hiatus.

On days when I despair at the state of Lebanon, or the future of Hong Kong, I think of the Berlin Wall. For 40 years, those living in its shadow, on either side, could not imagine a life beyond the division it enforced, even while many strove to bring it down. Until, one day, the wall fell.