Al Majalla interviewed the former CIA director last week. Speaking to Ahmed Maher, David Petraeus explains why he believes US President Donald Trump’s Middle East approach is working and how President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s vision for Syria aligns with his own. He also says that Gaza should be “sliced up into gated communities” and backs a civil and military counterinsurgency against Hamas. For his part, Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, describes the Gaza partition plan as “Palestinian peril dressed up as pramatism”. In his piece, he says: “Presented as post-war stabilisation, an experiment in controlled fragmentation appears to be underway, with diplomacy, security, and commerce converging to cement a new geopolitical order.” 

Meanwhile, Bryn Haworth profiles Ireland’s new president-elect, Catherine Connolly, whose vocal criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza and European complicity in selling Israel arms has proved to be hugely popular in her country, as evidenced by her landslide victory. And Maher Chmaytelli covers the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh, which he says comes at a pivotal moment in the region. In his piece, he interviews, Naji Abi Aad, a Vienna-based energy expert, who says: "The reconstruction and rehabilitation momentum is taking over, in Gaza, in Syria, in Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia is a key actor, thanks to its financial muscle and to its clout with the global political and economic powers, and mainly the US, which is vastly represented in the FII,'' he said.

Al Majalla also covered several key developments in Africa, including the horrific developments in Sudan. In his piece, From siege to slaughter: the fall of el-Fasher, Amgad Fareid ElTayeb describes how, after over 500 days of a crippling blockade, the city finally fell to the Rapid Support Forces, cementing their control of the giant Darfur state and giving them full access to key supply routes. Meanwhile, Rabia Abdul Salam examines what’s behind Trump’s Morocco-Algeria peace push amid doubts over America’s ability to serve as an honest broker. For his part, Sergey Eledinov points out The flaw in America’s Africa policy. He says, “The US seeks influence without investing or assuming responsibility. It is a convenient surrogate for strategy, allowing it to remain 'in the game' without committing.”  And in Culture, Ibrahim Tutunji visits the recently renovated Grand Egyptian Museum, where he says gives visitors ancient answers to contemporary questions.

Onto China, and Con Coughlin covered US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping in South Korea, where the two leaders appeared to have cooled trade tensions between their respective countries…for now at least. And Ibrahim Hamidi takes readers on a colourful tour of Japan, which he says is quietly preparing itself amid China’s rise. 

Switching gears, Kamal Alam pens a piece titled Türkiye's intelligence prowess turns Trump's head. In it, he lays out Ankara’s long history of successful espionage and the development of the ‘derin devlet’  (deep state) and how the modern inheritors of this legacy have played a pivotal role in shifting how the US perceives Ankara. And last but not least, Abdul Rahman Mazhar Halloush interviews prominent Saudi researcher Saad AlBazei, who shares his nuanced view of Orientalism—the controversial study of Eastern cultures through the lens of Western intellectuals. He explains why reducing the scholarship to a mere colonial tool is wrong because it detracts from its remarkable intellectual contributions.