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Sabah el kheir. Lebanon's prime minister walked into Washington and basically said: we've done our part — now what are you going to do about it? That's the energy today, alongside a sharp question about whether Hezbollah can even say yes to a deal without asking Tehran first, and $200 million headed toward the farms that kept feeding the country while the banks were busy collapsing.
Your commute allowance just got a formula, a US Senate report named Hezbollah's crypto lifeline, and an investigative newsroom that helped put a central bank governor behind bars is celebrating ten years — and selling gum to stay alive. Bonjourein. Tuesday has entered the chat with a full plate.
Kifkon. South Lebanon's villages are being emptied one explosion at a time, UNIFIL is officially packing up with no replacement in sight, and Walid Jumblatt has written a memoir that somehow manages to critique the system he spent five decades running — it's a Monday that asks big questions and offers very few answers.
Five prisoners dead, a two-year anniversary, and an army quietly swapping brigades — Marhaba, and no, Sunday isn't giving us a day off. Lebanon's amnesty law is on ice while its prisons keep claiming lives, Hezbollah marks two years of figuring out who it is without Nasrallah, and Israel is calling a troop reduction in the south something other than a withdrawal. Let's get into it.
Bonjourein. Welcome to your Sunday edition of Sobhiye — a look back at the week's biggest Lebanon stories. It was a week of big stages and unresolved questions. Lebanon's prime minister took the UN General Assembly floor to declare that only Lebanon's constitutional institutions speak for Lebanon — a pointed message directed at Iran and Hezbollah. Meanwhile, UNIFIL formally entered wind-down mode after 48 years, with the same thorny issues that created the mission still very much unsettled. On the home front, 256,000 students remained displaced as the school year opened, and prefab homes began trickling into the devastated south. A lot to unpack — let's get into it.
Ahla w sahla. Lebanon's prime minister stood at the UN podium this morning and said, flatly, that no one else gets to speak for Lebanon — not Iran, not its proxies, not anyone with a different agenda. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes continued in the south and a new essay asks an uncomfortable question: what does it say about Lebanese politics that its biggest debates still revolve around men who've been dead for decades?
Lebanese exports to Saudi Arabia just grew more than 26 times over last year's total — in a single month. Shou el akhbar, it's Friday, and today's briefing goes from that rare good-news trade story to a spy network now smuggling drones inside humanitarian aid boxes, plus a British admiral who flew into Beirut this week with a checkbook and a message about the south.
Yalla — Lebanon woke up this morning to a strike clock ticking, a foiled papal assassination, and an IMF warning that the 2027 budget doesn't quite add up. Three stories, three flavors of Lebanese dysfunction and resilience, and none of them small. Buckle up.
Bonjourein. Lebanon's central bank just froze the accounts of the man who used to run it — and that's before we even get to transport unions threatening to shut the country down or Hezbollah drawing its clearest red lines yet on weapons. Three stories, one very Lebanese morning.