Al Majalla’s cover story last week was on the latest developments in Sudan. Titled Cracks in the RSF front: Sudan between peace and fragmentation, our writers cover what the recent Rapid Support Forces defections mean for the war-torn country. Amgad Fareid Eltayeb argues it could tip the balance in the Sudan war stalemate in favour of government forces, while Shawgi Abdelazim and Areig Elhag give their takes. Read the cover story to get their takes.

As for the ongoing “peace” talks between Lebanon and Israel, Michael Horowitz explains why resolving grievances between the two countries is not cut-and-dry. “Beyond Israel’s immediate security aims lies a much larger struggle over Lebanon’s future—one that will unfold over years, in multiple stages, and cannot be reduced to a simple question of force.” Expanding on that same thread, Michael Harari characterises Israel’s strategy in Lebanon—and more generally—as “incoherent”. “Israel's actions, post-October 7, have largely been reactionary, aimless, and counterproductive,” he writes.

Meanwhile, Shadi Alaa Aldin explains how Israel’s war on Gaza pushed Israel out of Europe’s moral order. “Football star Lamine Yamal's hoisting of Palestine's flag, and the Eurovision audience's booing of Israel's contestant, show how Israel’s multi-million-dollar PR machine has been largely unsuccessful at whitewashing Israel’s image. Meanwhile, in the US, Tarek Rashed explains how public opinion finally soured on Israel, laying out the reasons in painstaking detail. Meanwhile, Ibrahim Hamidi turns our attention to Israel’s destabilising actions in southern Syria, writing that “Israel appears to view the ‘new Syria” through a strictly security lens and seeks to keep it weakened.” And Caroline Rose looks at Jordan’s renewed war on drugs in Syria, explaining the political undertones that accompany it.

Switching gears, Bryn Haworth pens a piece titled The philosopher king of Palantir: Alex Karp says the quiet part out loud on X. In it, he says, “The tech CEO's manifesto, where he champions US military dominance and the use of AI weapons, has been described by some as the ‘ramblings of a supervillain’.” For his part, Abdulfattah Khattab explains how the Latest drones drive down the cost of warfare. “Cheap unmanned aerial vehicles cost only a few thousand dollars to make, but are costing millions to defend against, turning the economics of war on its head,” he says.

And amid the ongoing gas supply shortage due to the US war on Iran and the subsequent disruption of maritime shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Rabia Abdul Salam explains how Europe is looking to Algeria to fill the gap. Meanwhile, Abdul Rahman Mazhar Halloush interviews renowned Bosnian playwright Almir Bašović, who discusses the relationship between art and memory, as well as the role of the intellectual in the public sphere. 

And last but not least, on the heels of a whirlwind week of diplomacy that saw China host US President Donald Trump, followed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Charbel Barakat profiles the man at the helm of this rising global superpower in his piece titled Xi Jinping: the man remaking China in his own image. “The Chinese president may have grown up in a secure compound for the elite, but he forged his values in the fields of rural Shaanxi province,” he explains