Laya Hess-Skinner

On March 5, 2015, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Central Council opted to end a security cooperation agreement with Israel. As reported by The...

The graffiti artist Banksy visited Gaza recently, receiving mixed reviews from both Western media and Palestinians. No stranger to the current situation in...

Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil signed a diplomatic cooperation agreement with Cuba last Friday, February 20, in the first official visit by a Lebanese...

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) have announced plans to boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. The speech,...

The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) received a shipment of U.S. weapons this past Sunday, in a move that marks America’s renewed commitment to help Lebanon...

Due to competing pressures in the wake of regional emergencies in Iraq, Syria, and Gaza, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) anticipates a challenging...

Although politics within the Greek Orthodox community in Palestine is rarely discussed, gradually increasing dissent is hinting at a potential schism. The...

On January 3, 2015, Israel froze approximately $127 million in tax revenue owed to the Palestinian Authority. Under the terms of the Oslo Accords, Israel is...

Smartphones are ubiquitous in the West Bank. From Ramallah to Tulkarm, people swipe at their screens amid the noise of the streets. But, in a place where...

Walid Jumblatt, the current leader of the mostly-Druze Progressive Socialist Party, advocated for the legalization of marijuana commenting on his Twitter,...

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, and the Russian Ambassador to Lebanon, Alexander Zasypkin, met with Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hasan Nasrallah...

In 2011, The New York Times nominated the city of Erbil, located in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, as one of the “41 Places to Go” that year. In a 2013...

The Bank of Lebanon (also known as the Central Bank) hosted the Accelerate 2014 Conference at Forum de Beyrouth last Friday. The two-day conference, which...

A mosque in the Palestinian village of al Mugheir was damaged in a suspected arson attack last Wednesday. Residents claim the incident was part of a larger...

Following the fatal shooting of Kheir al-Din Hamdan, a Palestinian man from the town of Kafr Kanna in Israel, riots spread across the northern part of the...

A serious (but rarely deadly) strain of hepatitis is impacting the Lebanese town of Arsal.  Approximately 250 people from the town have been infected with...

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider el Abadi visited Jordan this past weekend. While there, he met separately with His Majesty King Abdullah II and the Jordanian Prime...

On Saturday, October 18, 2014, Rashid Derbas, Lebanon's Social Affairs Minister, said, “Lebanon is no longer officially receiving any Syrian refugees.”...

Walid Yassin, a Fatah official, was laid to rest on Friday, October 10. Yassin was assassinated on October 08, 2014 in the Ain al Hilweh refugee camp, the...

Muftah is putting together a Special Collection of articles regarding art and Muslim women. We are seeking well-written, interesting submissions of 1500 to...

In September 2014, Israel gave its final approval for 2,600 new housing units to be built in the Givat HaMatos settlement in East Jerusalem. Peace Now, an...

As the armed conflict between the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS) and the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing" continues, some have taken to social...

For the past two months, workers at Lebanon’s state-run Electricite du Liban (EDL) have been protesting the company's decision not to offer full-time...

The beheading of a Lebanese Shiite soldier, Abbas Medlej, by the Sunni militants has aggravated sectarian tensions in Lebanon. Tensions hit an apex last month...

All 28 member countries were represented at NATO’s summit last week, with some 4,000 delegates attending the conference. Ukraine, Afghanistan, and recent...

On August 26, 2014, Hamas and Israel reached a long-term ceasefire (brokered by Egypt) after a conflict that lasted over fifty days and displaced hundreds of...

Since the start of the Syrian conflict, the Lebanese town of Arsal has become increasingly unstable. As a result of these circumstances, the town's agrarian...

Almost immediately after Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion in military aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the United States began expediting another round...

As ISIS continues its deadly march through the Levant, a tentative and tempestuous alliance is forming between Hezbollah, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), and...

According to a July 2014 Gallup Poll, approximately 42% of U.S. citizens sympathize more with Israelis than with Palestinians. A growing number of celebrities...

The Western media has shown the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in predominantly one way: Palestinian Muslim extremists against civilized Israelis. In doing so,...

Germany won the World Cup tournament on Sunday, July 13. From July 10 to July 13, Foreign Policy magazine ran four different articles about Argentina, Germany,...

“Endgame: Syria,” a video game that attempts to cover the ongoing conflict, launched in 2012 and was soon rejected by Apple’s App Store for violating...

Since ISIS’s rise in Iraq and Syria, Western media, on both sides of the political spectrum, has engaged in a fervent argument over the reason for Iraq’s...

In 1999, Syria was formally declared free of polio. Since then, however, the vaccination rate dropped to approximately 91% in 2010, and 68% in 2012. Given the...