Having welcomed 2015 from the agitated waters of the Mediterranean Sea, especially when looked upon from Beirut, Eye on the East wishes a Happy New Year to you and all your loved ones. May 2015 be all that you wish for and more. And may it be a much better year for those who truly deserve it, those who battle sickness, misery and indignity, who have lost loved ones or are waiting for them to come back, wherever they may be, for those who flee death and violence and for the children who suffer, for childhood should be about anything by suffering.
Looking back, it was quite a busy year on the blog. Lebanon didn’t provide much good news to talk about, but provided much to talk about nonetheless. Tunisia continued to impress, showing that it truly is the mother of the Arab revolution, although maybe the revolution should have just stopped there, without spreading the way it did. It was a year of continuous tragedies, for the Syrian people, the Iraqis, the predominantly Christian and Kurdish minorities, as well as the Palestinians in Gaza. 2014 showed that barbarism has no limits with the vicious exploits of Daesh/ISIS, the complexity of eradicating this darkest of shadows over the region and the hopelessness of Western foreign policy in finding the best ways to help do so.
Eye on the East’s most popular post dealt with the complexities of Syrian refugees in Lebanon (Syrian Refugees in Lebanon: Is Anybody Listening?). My personal favorite was April 13: How can we not forget?. A special thanks to the three guest writers featured this year from Libya, Gaza and Iraq (“I never imagined that Libya would follow Lebanon”; This is Gaza; and “The West will never understand Iraq’s complex landscape” respectively), which were a pleasure to read, albeit the tragedy in each one of them. I really enjoyed compiling a photo blog for Eye on the East’s third anniversary (Three Years and Counting: Looking Back and Looking Ahead, in Pictures), while lashing at the ‘Beirut party capital’ stereotype published by Vice.com was a great pleasure to write too (“Fighting for the Right to Party in Beirut”: Fighting for the Right to Stop this about Beirut). I hope you enjoyed these and the rest of the posts as much as I enjoyed writing them…
Looking ahead now, Eye on the East will keep focusing on the blog posts, as well as on other writing, including outside contributions. As you know, all such contributions are listed in the Featured page here, though I may occasionally feature outside contributions with a post of their own. Either way, for the best way to keep up to date with everything Eye on the East writes, you can follow @eyeontheeast on Twitter or like us on Facebook.
As always, thank you, to each and every one of you, for following, reading, liking, commenting and recommending Eye on the East. This would be a lonely journal for the eyes of its author alone, had it not been for you all…
Here’s to a new year ahead. Here we go again…
Eye on the East 