Alhurra

Israel’s assassination of senior Hezbollah commander Haitham al-Tabtabai in an airstrike on a residential building in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday has raised questions about whether or not the group will retaliate, what options it might have, and what will be the nature of its response, if it did retaliate. The killing of al-Tabtabai, both in…

Adhering to the proverb “decapitating heads is a lesser evil than cutting off livelihoods”, Lebanon’s Hezbollah is confronting U.S. demands that the Lebanese state curb the financial loopholes that allow the group to fund and arm itself. Hezbollah places the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association — its de facto private banking system — on the same level…

Every morning, Huda checks her phone before making coffee. Urgent notifications from WhatsApp news groups flood the screen: statements, analyses, videos, and reports of bombings and assassinations. She sighs and whispers, “We can’t live a single day normally anymore. Every notification could be the start of a war.” Last Thursday morning was no different–albeit the…

Hezbollah is infamous for building a vast military arsenal and financial network. But right now it is the group’s schools that are inspiring particular controversy, both inside Lebanon and beyond. These institutions, which are supposed to be educational, are drawing renewed scrutiny for enforcing ideological loyalty, deepening sectarian identity, and normalizing a culture of violence…

As the bombing subsides in Gaza, anxiety is rising in Lebanon, along with questions about how the new peace agreement will affect it.   Nearly two years ago, Hezbollah opened what it called the “front to support Gaza,” launching rocket and drone attacks on Israel under “rules of engagement” that held briefly before spiraling out of…

Lebanon is testing its fragile stability with a government-backed army plan to disarm Hezbollah, the country’s most powerful militia operating outside state control. Supporters call it a long-overdue step toward asserting state sovereignty. Opponents warn it risks plunging the country into confrontation with Hezbollah, and possibly with Israel.  The debate crystallized in September, when the…

In Lebanon, words can be as combustible as rockets. Six of them: “ideology is more dangerous than weapons,” were enough to ignite a political firestorm. They came from Member of Parliament Paula Yacoubian, one of the country’s most outspoken reformist voices, and within hours she was accused of attacking the entire community. She insists her…

 Ain al-Hilwe, Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, is not simply a tightly packed cluster of buildings: it’s a city within a city, or, as some have called it, “a state outside the state.” On this narrow patch of land in southern Lebanon, lack of space causes houses to be piled on top of one another,…