Middle Orient

Residents tell The National they have gone days without food, as Damascus and SDF trade blame over security vacuum at ISIS-linked site Thick black smoke billowed from Al Hol camp in north-east Syria, the country’s largest centre housing families with alleged links to ISIS, as unrest spread among residents who …

US Central Command (CENTCOM) launched a new mission today, Wednesday 21 January, to transfer Islamic State detainees from northeastern Syria to Iraq. CENTCOM said the move aims to help ensure the “terrorists” remain in secure detention facilities, adding that the operation began when US forces successfully transferred 150 Islamic State …

Washington Institute experts assess the immediate fallout of the Syrian government’s advance into SDF-held parts of the northeast, including mutual disinformation campaigns, implications for the Islamic State threat, the terms of new agreements with the Kurds, and the calculus of outside actors like the United States, Israel, and Turkey. As …

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country will not accept the establishment of any separatist entity that threatens its security along the southern border, and it will not allow its interests to be harmed. Speaking during a parliamentary bloc meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara …

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US President Donald Trump has named former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as members of his so-called “Board of Peace”, a body which he says will oversee the governance and reconstruction of Gaza after two years of Israeli genocide. With Trump serving as …

It is not the story of a farm or the story of a settler who loves agriculture in “Judea and Samaria”, but a focus that is cultivated in the heart of the West Bank to transform a weapon, a road and a dominance, under the cover of “holiness.” Thus began …

One of the unifying themes of the Sunni jihadi movement as it has developed over the past half-century has been the view that Western-style democracy is an affront to Islam. Even worse, it is a religion fundamentally incompatible with the faith, a version of polytheism (shirk) in which authority is …

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich lauds approvals as part of a ‘clear strategic move to strengthen settlement’ Israel has approved the construction of 764 houses in three Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Wednesday. The decision is likely to stoke tensions in the …

Toplines Syrian President Ahmed al Shara likely decided to temporarily halt the Syrian government offensive on Syrian Democratic Forces-held (SDF) territory in northeastern Syria after a phone call with US President Donald Trump on January 19.[1] Shara and SDF Commander Mazloum Abdi failed on January 19 to finalize a ceasefire …