A ‘draft’ cabinet document suggests the idea that refugees are a potential source of terrorism and radicalisation will soon shape Australia’s humanitarian resettlement policy.
Syria’s demographics are markedly different to Lebanon’s. A power-sharing arrangement would be more difficult to design.
In Egypt, the Great Pyramid was illuminated with the French, Russian and Lebanese flags in solidarity with victims of terrorist attacks, but most of the focus in the West has been on the victims in Paris.
EPA/Khaled Elfiqi
Selective sympathy raises troubling questions. If you neglect suffering in other places, it is much more difficult to mobilise political actors to take it seriously.
It’s been assumed that most Arab countries are adamantly opposed to Iran’s regional rise and therefore not in favor of a nuclear deal. But is that really the case?
Syrian refugees cross the border into Turkey, one of several states that are already vulnerable to ethnic and demographic tensions.
EPA
The flows of refugees from the conflicts in Iraq and Syria are yet another driver of demographic changes that are threatening to destabilise other states long regarded as strong and democratic.
Lebanon has always been a complicated jigsaw, but despite years of war, regional conflict, and meddling in its affairs, it has displayed a tremendous ability to absorb tension. But the threads that hold…
Lebanese troops enter the border town of Arsal to fight off ISIS.
EPA/Stringer
The Islamic State’s campaign across Northern Iraq and Syria has entered Lebanese territory for the first time. Long affected by the spillover of refugees fleeing its war torn neighbours, the brief battle…
Sophisticated and terrifying: Israeli firepower.
EPA/Atef Safadi
In the 1982 Lebanon war I served as an Israeli artillery forward observer, my task to pinpoint the PLO’s positions and call in fire from our artillery units. We stayed in the evacuated Al Jamous School…
Muslim and Christian Lebanese join with other communities to rally against racism. The Lebanese in Australia story is the subject of a new SBS documentary series, Once Upon a Time in Punchbowl.
Andrew Jakubowicz
Mediterranean societies have been described as communities of honour and shame. The fundamental currency of their social order is respect. When the Lebanese civil war drove thousands of its citizens to…
Piecing together a crumbling cultural history.
AP/Hussein Malla
On January 4, Tripoli’s historic Al Sa’eh Library, one of Lebanon’s largest, burnt down. Two-thirds of its 80,000 books and manuscripts were lost in a fire that consumed the building. This is no anomaly…
Martin E Dempsey warns the fallout of the Arab Spring will take a long time to clear.
Glenn Fawcett
At a meeting at the Wall Street Journal this week, Martin E Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted that the United States’ ability to exercise influence in the Middle East had significantly…
Lebanon is bearing the brunt of the protracted refugee crisis that has emerged as a result of the Syrian civil war.
EPA/Wael Hamzeh
The recent sinking of a refugee boat bound for Australia off Java, which had 68 Lebanese on board, highlights the complexity, magnitude and reach of the Syrian civil war. The effect of the ongoing war…