Rania Abouzeid

Middle East

Journalist and Writer at Freelance

Journalist. Words @NewYorker @NatGeo. Ex @TIME.Fellow @Newamerica @DartCenter @ecfr @niemanfdn. Author x3: No Turning Back.Sisters of the War.The Cave🇱🇧🇦🇺

Articles

60th Annual Competition Fellowship Winners for 2025 - APF Staff

Jan 9, 2025 | aliciapatterson.org | Rania Abouzeid |Carrie Arnold |Josh Fine |Andrew Green

The Alicia Patterson Foundation 2025 Fellowship Winners “The Past is Always Present: From the Killing Fields of Iraq to the Search for Solutions to Climate Change in Europe” “When Public Health Crises Collide: Kidney Disease, Dialysis and the Coming Climate Disaster” “How Gulf Money is Transforming Sports” “As the U.S. Retreats from Global HIV Aid, Does It Owe Life-Long Medicines to Those It Saved?” “The Challenges of Delivering Quality Early Education: One Center’s Odyssey” “Migrant Abuses...
The Fall of Assad’s Syria

Dec 8, 2024 | newyorker.com | Rania Abouzeid

For fifty-four years, generations of Syrians lived and died in a country that was colloquially known as Assad’s Syria. It was a place where children were taught that the walls had ears and that a misplaced word could lead to being disappeared. The regime had multiple branches of secret police, collectively called the Mukhabarat, which helped underpin its one-party, one-family, one-man rule.
The First Hours of an Uncertain Israel-Hezbollah Ceasefire

Nov 27, 2024 | newyorker.com | Rania Abouzeid

In today’s newsletter, a dispatch from Lebanon, as displaced residents begin returning to their homes. And then:• A portrait of the artist as an Amazon reviewer• What is Google without Chrome? Hours after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect, at 4 A.M. on Wednesday, an Israeli drone was still buzzing over the Lebanese capital of Beirut, flying higher than usual, before finally disappearing.
The Price Lebanon Is Paying for the Hezbollah-Israel War

Nov 21, 2024 | newyorker.com | Rania Abouzeid

The Lebanese town of Al-Nabi Chit, in the eastern Bekaa Valley, is considered a possible burial place of the prophet Seth, Adam and Eve’s lesser-known third son. The prophet’s remains are believed to be entombed in an elegant mosque with sandstone arches. Elsewhere in town, there is another, more elaborate dome-topped mausoleum, which houses the remains of Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi, one of the founders of Hezbollah, who was born here.
War Comes to Beirut

Oct 11, 2024 | newyorker.com | Rania Abouzeid

Wisps of gray smoke were still rising from the depths of smoldering craters in Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs. Days earlier, Israeli air strikes had obliterated six adjacent residential towers there. What remained was a flattened wasteland of scattered cinder blocks, twisted rebar, and slabs of concrete jutting out of debris at awkward angles.
Are Israel and Hezbollah Headed Toward an “Open-Ended Battle”?

Sep 23, 2024 | newyorker.com | Rania Abouzeid

On Monday, any doubts in Lebanon as to whether Israel was escalating its war not just with Hezbollah but with the entirety of the country were dispelled after Israeli strikes killed almost five hundred people and wounded more than sixteen hundred in less than twenty-four hours. Hezbollah also continued its attacks on Israel, launching rockets that reached as far as sixty miles south of the Lebanese border.
Explosions Across Lebanon

Sep 18, 2024 | newyorker.com | Rania Abouzeid

In today’s newsletter, an update from Lebanon after the pager attacks, and then:• Trump again claims divine intervention• Bikes that reject the trend cycle• Power, seduction, and Pamela HarrimanEarlier this summer, I met with a Hezbollah military strategist in a small village in southern Lebanon, a few kilometres from the Israeli border. At one point during our off-the-record conversation, his pager beeped. He decrypted the message using a neatly folded piece of laminated paper.
The Occupied Will Also Write History

Jul 30, 2024 | thenation.com | Rania Abouzeid

Can we count on you? In the coming election, the fate of our democracy and fundamental civil rights are on the ballot. The conservative architects of Project 2025 are scheming to institutionalize Donald Trump’s authoritarian vision across all levels of government if he should win. We’ve already seen events that fill us with both dread and cautious optimism—throughout it all, The Nation has been a bulwark against misinformation and an advocate for bold, principled perspectives.
The Other Side of the River

May 13, 2024 | rsn.org | Rania Abouzeid

Millions of Palestinians live in Jordan, where rage about the suffering in Gaza has reached a boiling point. Can the country’s leaders, who have a long-standing peace agreement with Israel, keep things under control? Four men stood precariously, supported by outstretched hands, on a rickety metal barricade. All around them, a sea of protesters squeezed shoulder to shoulder. They were gathered near al-Kalouty Mosque, in Amman.
The Other Side of the River

May 12, 2024 | newyorker.com | Rania Abouzeid

Four men stood precariously, supported by outstretched hands, on a rickety metal barricade. All around them, a sea of protesters squeezed shoulder to shoulder. They were gathered near al-Kalouty Mosque, in Amman. It was the closest that Jordanian security forces would allow demonstrators to get to the Israeli Embassy, which was about a kilometre away. The four took turns using a megaphone to lead the evening’s chants:“They said Hamas were terrorists.