Catch up on past editions of Sobhiye. Every story, every insight, always available.
Kifkon. Six years ago today, Beirut's port became a crater — and the quest for justice is still, somehow, ongoing; satellite data is now putting hard numbers on what's left of South Lebanon's villages; and up at Bkerke, Lebanon's most powerful church is having a very quiet, very consequential identity crisis. It's a heavy Tuesday, but you're not reading it alone.
It's August in Lebanon, which means the pools are packed, the heat is punishing, and apparently the water might also be trying to kill you — Marhaba, and welcome to Monday. Overnight, we've also got Israel quietly building what looks like a permanent footprint in southern Lebanon, and the Ministry of Economy taking a hammer to an insurance law older than the Apollo program. Big week already.
Shou el akhbar — a banker's dinner photo, a deep dive into Lebanon's murky treason laws, and army engineers defusing the south one weapons cache at a time. The Sehnaoui-Netanyahu story just got a century's worth of uncomfortable context, the legal question of whether meeting an Israeli is actually a crime turns out to have no clean answer, and Lebanon's army is quietly doing both peacekeeper and road crew in the Tyre district. Pull up a chair.
Bonjourein. Welcome to your Sunday edition of Sobhiye — a look back at a week that Lebanon will not forget quickly. The biggest story: former central bank governor Riad Salameh was finally detained, found hiding inside a hospital after a dramatic manhunt. Meanwhile, a UN flash update confirmed 375,000 people remain displaced by the war, with full Israeli withdrawal still far off — and a separate study found that even those who did return south came home to damaged houses, absent services, and packed bags sitting by the door. A heavy week. Let's walk through it.
Some people came back to the south with packed bags still by the door — just in case. Ahla w sahla, and welcome to a Saturday that's asking hard questions: about what 'return' actually means, about a weapons cache built for a cell that's still out there, and about a marble obelisk on Ziad Rahbani Avenue that nobody wants to talk about but nobody will touch.
Bonjourein — it's a Friday that feels like a history book is cracking open. Lebanon is on the verge of abolishing the death penalty, Macron is on the phone with Berri, and the banking reform law that could unlock an IMF deal is one session away from done — with a catch, naturally. Big week, bigger questions. Let's get into it.
A Lebanese banker broke bread with Benjamin Netanyahu, and overnight the courts broke out the handcuffs — or at least the paperwork for them. Sabah el kheir. While that drama unfolds, President Aoun is in Ankara asking Turkey to put its diplomatic weight behind Lebanon's ceasefire framework, and UNIFIL just revealed it quietly neutralized 4,000 kilograms of ammonium nitrate in the south — days before the Beirut blast anniversary.
Kifkon. Lebanon topped a global ranking nobody wanted — fastest-rising cancer rates on earth — while a photo from a Washington dinner is breaking the internet, and new numbers show 352 schools in the south damaged or destroyed. Heavy morning, but you need to know this.
Your fingerprints are worth more than you think — and Lebanon just made them mandatory. Marhaba: this morning we're asking who actually controls your biometric data, whether Hezbollah will ever say sorry (spoiler: Daraj says no), and reckoning with 375,000 people still waiting to go home to places that may no longer exist.