Author: Gulf News Week

The new establishments popping up in the devastated Strip reveal a new genocidal reality.Social media is full of posts showing off photos and videos of fancy-looking cafes and restaurants in Gaza. Pro-Israeli accounts often use these images to claim that life is back to normal in Gaza, that people are not suffering and that no genocide ever took place.These cafes and restaurants do exist. I have seen them myself.In late March, I went on my first visit to Gaza City since the war started. I was shocked to see the destruction wrought on the city. There were piles of rubble…

Italy’s prime minister once condemned the killing of Palestinian children. Today, her government’s actions reveal a foreign policy shaped less by principle than by political calculation.In 2014, during the Israeli assault on Gaza that killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, Giorgia Meloni, then just a member of the Italian parliament, wrote on social media: “Another massacre of children in Gaza. No cause is fair when it sheds the blood of the innocent.”More than a decade on, that moral clarity is nowhere to be found.As prime minister, Meloni’s remarks on Gaza have become increasingly cautious and equivocal, marked by the kind of…

Those who enthusiastically supported Iranian women’s protests against the state are eerily silent as those same women are targeted by Israeli and American missiles.Feminist attention is not neutral. It is shaped, directed, and unevenly distributed.In 2022–2023, Western feminist institutions mobilised loudly in support of protests in Iran, celebrating women’s resistance to compulsory hijab as a defining feminist struggle. Today, as war kills women and girls and destroys their access to education, that same infrastructure has fallen conspicuously silent. This contrast is not accidental. It exposes a deeper logic of selective solidarity, one that determines which forms of gendered violence are…

Russia’s political backing of Iran and its opposition to military escalation have proved more consequential than military aid in shaping the conflict.The visit of Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, to Russia once again raises questions about Moscow’s position on the conflict between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other.This visit should not come as a surprise. Russia is a great power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Iran and Russia are also friendly states, as stipulated in the 2025 treaty signed between them. Therefore, the most viable strategy is to promote…

Adapting to a changing world, Japan deepens cooperation on security, supply chains, and sustainable development between the two regions.The world is now in the middle of the most significant structural change since the end of the second world war. Amid shifts in the balance of power and the intensification of conflicts and confrontations, the free and open international order based on the rule of law faces serious challenges across the international community, including the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, the presence of the Global South is growing, and it is playing a larger role in international affairs.Ten years ago, Prime…

The move reflects a widening confrontation with Saudi Arabia and a fundamental realignment of alliances.For decades, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) functioned as far more than an oil cartel. For its Gulf members, the organisation embodied a form of collective sovereignty over their primary resource: the capacity of Arab producing states to weigh together on the global economy, defend a shared rent and speak with a coordinated voice to Western consumers. That institutional fiction has just collapsed.When the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced its withdrawal from OPEC and the expanded coalition known as OPEC+, effective May 1,…

After leaving Opec, the UAE will continue its responsible role by gradually and thoughtfully increasing production, in line with demand and market conditions The UAE on April 28 announced its decision to exit the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec and Opec+), effective May 1, 2026. The decision, which comes after six decades of being a part of the organisation, was made after the nation’s production policy and its capacity was reviewed. The UAE is a trusted producer of some of the world’s most cost-competitive and lower-carbon barrels, which will play an important role in supporting global growth and…

NewsFeedEU-backed migrant crackdowns in Mauritania fuel fear and deportationsThousands of migrants in Mauritania who once relied on daily street work to survive have been rounded up, detained in poor conditions and deported to remote borders under an EU-backed effort to halt Atlantic migration routes to Europe. media’s Shola Lawal reports from Nouakchott where those who remain say they are too afraid to step outside.Published On 28 Apr 202628 Apr 2026SaveClick here to share on social mediashare-nodesSharefacebookxwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogleAdd media on Googleinfo

Circumvention mechanisms already exist and the conflict is encouraging more entities to work with them.For years, sociologists and political scientists have warned that sanctions do not work. They do not topple targeted governments; instead, they hurt their citizens. And yet, the use of sanctions has only expanded, with the US leading the charge. As a result, there is now increasing evidence that this over-reliance on such punitive measures has led to their growing ineffectiveness. The US-Israel war on Iran has made that all the more obvious.The conflict carries the potential to push further the process of weakening the effect of…

A sovereign Lebanon and a demilitarised Hezbollah cannot happen without a credible political transition.Lebanese leaders have gone to Washington for the first direct negotiations with Israel in over 30 years, attempting to restore sovereignty under near-impossible terms.According to the ceasefire deal agreed on April 16, Lebanon must “effectively demonstrate its ability to assert its sovereignty” as a condition for extending the fragile pause in hostilities. Israel, for its part, preserves the right to take “all necessary measures in self-defence, at any time” and to keep its forces deployed on Lebanese soil.This is the framework through which Lebanese sovereignty is to…