• Minister of Education Rima Karami officially canceled the intermediate certificate (brevet) exams nationwide, replacing them with school-administered final exams covering the official curriculum, set to begin Jun⁠e 15 depending on each school's situation.
• 42,000 general secondary students are affected; the ministry classified schools into those directly hit by war and those in less-affected areas, with more than 90% of students having continued lessons in-person or remotely.
• Secondary exams will run across 3 consecutive sessions, with each student eligible for 2 sessions, and an electronic mechanism allowing displaced students to sit exams near where they're sheltering.
• History, geography, and national education curricula will see the deepest cuts; no optional subjects will remain, and sample questions will be distributed before the first session begins.

Why it matters: With tens of thousands of students displaced and schooling badly disrupted by the ongoing conflict, how Lebanon grades this generation will shape their academic futures and the credibility of its official certificates for years to come.

• A Carnegie Endowment analysis finds that Israel's Apr⁠il 17 ceasefire effectively established a "yellow line" inside Lebanon, occupying 608 square kilometers—roughly 6% of Lebanese territory—and turning dozens of villages into militarized buffer zones.
• Israel reissued evacuation orders on Apr⁠il 17 for the entire area south of the Litani River (approximately 1,000 square kilometers), already severed from the rest of the country by destroyed bridges; orders have since expanded to towns north of the Litani and parts of the Beqaa.
• Beyond the geography, the analysis documents a second, invisible reconfiguration: sectarian social barriers hardening across Lebanon as displaced Shiite families relocated to mixed areas and communities quietly began calculating risk along communal lines.
• On May⁠ 14, Lebanese and Israeli representatives met in Washington for another round of negotiations; the shape of any potential deal remains unclear, with Hezbollah continuing to fire and Israel continuing to strike.

Zooming out: The combination of physical territorial loss and the entrenchment of communal avoidance patterns represents a dual transformation—geographic and social—whose effects on Lebanon's long-term cohesion may outlast the conflict itself.

• Minister of Social Affairs Haneen Sayed announced from Marjayoun that more than 6,000 families in the districts of Hasbaya and Marjayoun will receive cash support "to strengthen their steadfastness" in place.
• The aid falls within a broader government program that has already extended cash support to more than 140,000 displaced families outside shelters from various southern regions, and to 6,000 steadfast families in villages of Bint Jbeil.
• Sayed framed keeping families on their land as the "first line of defense against displacement projects," arguing that residents who stay make it more likely that displaced neighbors will eventually return.

What to watch: Whether cash transfers are sustained and scaled will determine how many southern families can hold out—and how many ultimately join the many families already displaced across Lebanon.

• Dozens of couples whose marriages had been delayed by war and displacement gathered in a Gaza City square for a mass wedding organized and funded by Turkish humanitarian organization IHH, with thousands turning out to watch.
• 50 grooms were selected to participate; attendees performed the dabke folk dance as women's ululations echoed through a crowd surrounded by buildings gutted by two years of war.
• For many couples, the high cost of weddings had been a separate obstacle on top of the war; groom Ali Mosbeh said he and his bride would now share a tent while he searched for work in an economy where employment has become "near impossible."
• "We are trying, despite everything, to find joy and carry on living," said bride Fayqa Abu Zeid, noting that most buildings around the venue had been destroyed, "with the martyrs buried beneath them."

The bigger picture: Mass weddings organized by humanitarian groups have become one of the few collective expressions of normalcy for Gaza's population, the majority of whom remain displaced in tents or makeshift shelters since the war began.

• The Palestinian political faction Fatah convened its first major general conference in nearly 10 years in Ramallah, with more than 2,500 members attending in person and via video link from Beirut, Cairo, and Gaza.
• President Mahmoud Abbas, 90, was re-elected as head of Fatah and promised the first presidential and parliamentary elections in 20 years—without providing a timeline for when they would take place.
• Palestinian opinion polls show deep public dissatisfaction, with 80% of respondents in a survey late last⁠ year saying they wanted Abbas to resign; at the party level, Hamas polled as more popular than Fatah.
• Adding to public skepticism, Abbas's eldest son Yasser—a businessman—appeared on the ballot for the first time for a senior party position, prompting questions about nepotism from both analysts and ordinary Palestinians in Ramallah.

What to watch: Whether the newly elected central committee moves toward the promised elections—or whether the conference produces the same cycle of pledged reform and political stasis that has defined the PA for two decades—will shape Palestinian political legitimacy in the months ahead.

• New polling compiled across Europe's three largest economies shows French President Emmanuel Macron at 18% approval, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at 19%, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer at 27%—all trailing US President Donald Trump's 38% approval rating, according to The Guardian, citing Statista and YouGov data.
• Only 11% of Britons believe Starmer has been a good or great prime minister; nearly 60% rate him as poor or terrible, with a significant number of his own parliamentary colleagues reportedly seeking to remove him after less than two years in power.
• Analysts point to structural headwinds—Europe's share of global economic output fell from roughly 33% to 23% between 2005 and 2024, with France, the UK, and Germany each projected to grow below 1% this⁠ year, compared to 2.4% for the US.

Zooming out: The simultaneous collapse in approval ratings across Europe's major democracies reflects a broader pattern in which incumbents are struggling to translate policy responses into public confidence during a period of compounding economic and geopolitical pressures.