From Other Angles

These columns address Lebanon's post-2005 political paralysis — the standoff between the March 14 coalition (Future Movement, Lebanese Forces, Kataeb) and the March 8 opposition (Hezbollah, Free Patriotic Movement, Amal). Traboulsi analyses the constitutional crisis with characteristic precision, dissecting the "blocking third" mechanism, the dual legitimacy of parliamentary majority and consensual democracy, and the structural impossibility of a system where every actor can obstruct but none can govern. His column on the Ta'if Agreement argues that all constitutional debates — whether for revision or defence — revolve around a single face of the accord (power-sharing between sects) while systematically ignoring its other face: the constitutional commitment to abolish sectarianism. The columns on Lebanese-Syrian relations — including his defence of the Beirut-Damascus Declaration, which he co-signed — are among the most politically courageous in the collection.

Traboulsi's columns on the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon combine military analysis with political critique. He documents how Israel emerged as the primary beneficiary of the war — the Winograd Commission led to the resignation of the chief of staff and defence minister, a strategic review of the army, and a rehabilitation of ground forces. On the Lebanese side: no accountability, no review, no follow-up. The column on conspiracy theories is one of the collection's most intellectually ambitious — using the Oedipus myth to analyse how Arab conspiracy thinking functions as a mechanism for evading self-criticism, blaming external enemies for domestic failures, and reproducing political paralysis.

The Iraq columns demonstrate Traboulsi's ability to hold multiple critiques simultaneously. He condemns the American occupation while refusing to romanticise either the Saddam regime or the sectarian militias that replaced it. His analysis of the execution of Saddam Hussein is devastating: a trial that prosecuted two crimes (Dujail and Anfal) while ignoring three wars, the destruction of the Iraqi state, and policies that killed more Iraqis than the occupation itself. The column on Bush and Iraq — structured as a comparison between "the project" and "the results" — is a masterclass in political satire, documenting point by point how every American objective in Iraq produced its exact opposite.

Traboulsi's Palestine columns refuse the binary between Hamas and Fatah, analysing the Hamas takeover of Gaza as two simultaneous coups — one by Hamas against the national unity government, another by the Palestinian Authority (backed by the US and EU) against democratic election results. His column welcoming Obama's presidency is characteristically contrarian: instead of celebrating, he calls on Arab states to "outbid" — to declare publicly that there is no Israeli partner for peace, suspend all normalisation agreements, and use whatever leverage they possess. The columns on Gaza during the 2008-2009 Israeli assault are among the most politically charged in the collection, calling for an Arab popular strike and arguing that the Arab-Israeli conflict has been systematically hollowed out of its national liberation content.

These columns range across the Arab world and beyond, united by Traboulsi's insistence that domestic authoritarianism and external dependence are structurally connected. His critique of Arab "moderation" — the American-approved label for regimes that submit to US and Israeli demands — is withering: "moderation" means, in practice, that American imperial democracy will never produce democracy, "not now and not ever." The Yemen column — in which Traboulsi admits his own misjudgement about Ali Abdullah Saleh's announced resignation — is a rare moment of political self-criticism. The columns on Lebanese-Syrian relations call for a historic settlement based on mutual recognition, diplomatic exchange, and border demarcation — proposals that were politically explosive at the time.