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Morocco welcomed the non-renewal of the mission, viewing it as a means to internationalize the dispute over Western Sahara
The Polisario Front, supported by Algeria, condemned the decision as unacceptable and criticized perceived US bias in the resolution
The UN’s long-running peacekeeping mission for the disputed Western Sahara ceased operations Sunday after 35 years, as a result of a US-Russia standoff at UN headquarters over the territory’s future.
The end of the mission raises concerns about stability in the region. Rich in minerals and fisheries, Western Sahara is a vast desert territory roughly the size of Colorado along Africa’s northwestern Atlantic coast. Once ruled by Spain, it is claimed by both Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front.
“This 1 November 2026 marks the start of the liquidation period,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary general, said in a statement. “A smaller team reporting to the United Nations’ Department of Operational Support will oversee the orderly transportation of assets belonging to troop-contributing countries to their respective nations, and the appropriate disposal of equipment belonging to the United Nations.”
The mission had been repeatedly extended since it was established in 1991. In the UN Security Council on Friday, Russia vetoed a draft US resolution that would have supported Morocco’s demand for sovereignty over Western Sahara and ended the peacekeeping mission next year.
Then a rival Russian resolution to extend the mission was voted down. The disagreement led to an abrupt end of the force’s mandate.
Morocco’s royal palace welcomed the non-renewal of the mission. It called it an “instrument to internationalize the dispute.”
The Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, called it “an unacceptable decision.” The Algerian foreign ministry said it profoundly regrets the non-renewal of the mandate and criticized what it called the ‘’excessive bias” of the US draft resolution.
Bringing Western Sahara under its full sovereignty has been a central objective of Morocco’s foreign policy for decades. Rabat, which has secured the backing of a growing number of Western capitals, including Washington, Paris and London, refers to the territory as its southern provinces.
The Polisario Front seeks independence for the territory, which it considers the homeland of the Indigenous Sahrawi people. Operating from refugee camps in the Algerian city of Tindouf, the movement aims to establish an independent Sahrawi Republic. Mainly backed by Algeria, Russia and South Africa, the Polisario has seen its international support dwindle in recent years.
The expired mission was established to monitor a referendum
A UN-brokered ceasefire took effect in 1991. The agreement also paved the way for the creation of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO.
The settlement plan provided for a referendum on self-determination, with independence among the options. But the vote never materialized. Morocco wanted the voter list to include Sahrawis living in the territory it controls, while the Polisario objected, arguing that their inclusion would tilt the outcome toward integration with Morocco. The movement insisted on using Spain’s colonial census to determine voter eligibility.
Twenty MINURSO personnel lost their lives in the mission. The UN force was authorized to have 534 personnel, and its 2026-2027 budget was more than $62 million. The top military contributors to the force were Egypt, Ghana and Pakistan.
As the mission ends, the UN secretary-general ‘’calls upon all parties to respect and promote the rights of the people of Western Sahara,” Dujarric said, and “remains concerned about the security situation throughout the Territory and the risk of escalation of hostilities. He calls on all concerned to exercise maximum restraint.”
The Polisario withdrew from the ceasefire in 2020 after clashes and the territory has since remained the scene of tensions and low-intensity hostilities, the UN said last month.
Western Sahara is the major flashpoint in the rivalry between regional heavyweights Morocco and Algeria. Algiers, which arms, funds and hosts the Polisario Front, sees full Moroccan sovereignty over the territory as a major diplomatic defeat. The two countries severed diplomatic relations in 2021, and the end of the mission risks further straining ties and fueling an arms race.
source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)
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A Sahrawi refugee boy stands in the shadow in the Boujdour refugee camp, Oct. 11, 2021. (AP/File) (AP)
The eighth Moroccan Poetry Festival opened in Marrakech on Friday under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, and His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco.
Organised by the Sharjah Department of Culture in cooperation with Morocco’s Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication, the three-day festival brings together more than 50 poets, intellectuals and artists from Morocco and abroad.
The opening ceremony, held at the “Mayadine” venue, was attended by Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Owais, Chairman of the Sharjah Department of Culture; Mohammed Ibrahim Al Qaseer, Director of the Department of Cultural Affairs in Sharjah; Mohammed Benyaacoub, Secretary-General of the Moroccan Ministry of Youth, Culture, and Communication (representing the Minister, Dr Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid); Rachid El Mostapha, Head of the Ministry’s Cooperation Division; Asmaa Lokmani, Regional Director for the Culture Sector in the Marrakech-Safi region; alongside writers and intellectuals.
In his opening address, Al Owais highlighted the festival’s role in promoting poetry and supporting emerging talent, praising the House of Poetry in Marrakech for providing a platform for young and established poets and fostering exchanges between generations.
“The House of Poetry in Marrakesh has served as a radiant beacon, providing genuine opportunities for young poets to showcase their work, alongside pioneering poets who have helped shape the Moroccan poetic memory. Thanks to this diversity, Marrakesh has become a hub for the beauty of poetic expression—a place where different experiences converge and bridge the gap between generations. The House has become a welcoming destination for poets—a true home for them—while Marrakesh itself has evolved into an expansive space that opens its doors wide to creative minds.”
He also thanked the Moroccan Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication for its continued support, saying the partnership reflected the strong cultural ties between the UAE and Morocco.
In a speech delivered on his behalf by Mohammed Benyaacoub, Dr Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid praised the House of Poetry’s achievements over the past nine years —extending from the “Red City” to various regions across Morocco—as a testament to the historic cultural initiatives of the Ruler of Sharjah, which he said had strengthened poetry’s role in promoting dialogue and cultural exchange.
He also commended the longstanding cooperation between the Moroccan ministry and the Sharjah Department of Culture, highlighting the festival’s celebration of classical Arabic, Hassani and Amazigh poetry through readings, discussions and awards.
The House of Poetry in Marrakesh honoured poets Driss El-Milyani, Khadija Yakan, and Mohamed El-Ghaith Kine, in recognition of their literary contributions and their intellectual efforts in the Moroccan poetic landscape over the years.
The festival also announced the winners of its eighth “Best Poem” and “Poetic Criticism” awards.
In the Best Poem category, Mohamed Kabdani won first place, followed by Abdelsamad Ait Mbarek in second and Khawla Dahani in third.
In the Poetic Criticism category, Abdeljalil El-Abbassi won first place, while Oussama Hamdouch and Noureddine Harhouri shared second place. Youssef Kouazghar received third place in the critical essays category.
The opening ceremony featured two documentary films. The first traced the establishment and development of the House of Poetry in Marrakech, featuring testimonials from cultural figures on its role in supporting poets and enriching the Moroccan and Arab literary scenes. The second showcased the House’s key achievements, initiatives and cultural activities over the past year, highlighting its continued efforts to promote poetry and creative expression.
The King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language (KSGAAL) opened its fifth annual international conference today in Riyadh, convening prominent researchers, linguists, and cultural scholars from Saudi Arabia and abroad for a two-day forum.
The conference highlights the pivotal role of the Arabic language in shaping cultural identity, collective memory, and intellectual discourse, while exploring its contributions to civilizational exchange, translation, and intercultural dialogue, SPA reported.
Sessions explore six key themes: language and cultural identity, language and civilizational interaction, language and intellectual and artistic creativity, language and digital culture, language and cultural policies, and language and the prospects for the cultural future.
The gathering serves as an international platform to exchange scholarly expertise, discuss emerging research in linguistic sciences, and advance initiatives that strengthen the presence of the Arabic language across global academic and cultural spheres.
source/content: english.aawsat.com /Alsharq Al Awsat (headlines edited)
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The conference highlights the pivotal role of the Arabic language in shaping cultural identity – SPA
Madani says work is ‘essentially a dialogue with the se
Discusses global events and their influence on identity
In his book “A Saudi Tale: Readings and Encounters in Search for Consciousness,” Iyad Ameen Madani, a Saudi journalist and former minister, is less concerned with recounting the milestones of his life than exploring how his consciousness was shaped and seeking the meaning of his Saudi, Arab and Islamic belonging in a world torn between identities, ideas and centers of power.
It is an intellectual biography that uses personal experience as an entry point for interrogating social, political and cultural transformations, and individual memory as a means of understanding the questions of a Saudi generation that lived through major changes in its country and the world.
The book, first published in English as “A Saudi Tale: Readings and Encounters in Search for Consciousness” and translated into Arabic by Dr. Waleed Bleyhesh Al-Amri, represents an extension of its author’s career spanning journalism and public service.
He served as editor-in-chief of Saudi Gazette, director-general of the Okaz Foundation, then as a member of the Shoura Council, and as minister of Hajj and of culture and information, culminating in his role as secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
These positions, however, do not form the book’s focus but rather the backdrop that enabled its author to test his ideas about society, the state and the world.
From biography to the question of consciousness
Madani begins with the concept of consciousness, which he does not reduce to knowledge or intellectual positions, but sees as a comprehensive formation that defines a person’s relationship with himself and his surroundings.
In his introduction, he says: “It is said that consciousness is not merely opinions, information or a system of values, but a comprehensive state, an integrated formation that shapes our perception of reality and grants us a holistic vision of the world.” He then says: “These pages are essentially a dialogue with the self, about what it means to be Saudi, and also Arab and Muslim.”
From this starting point, he poses the question that governs his project: “Can these identities be reconciled with the givens of modernity? What is modernity, really? Can there be multiple modernities? Indeed, has modernity itself become an outdated concept?”
The author does not claim to possess final answers, but describes his work as “a reflective journey through an intellectual biography, tracing the sources and courses of consciousness.”
The book is divided into five sections, beginning with Components and Frameworks, in which he addresses the formation of consciousness, his journalistic experience and the emergence of the new world order. The second section, An Ideal Societal System, discusses issues of the general will, the individual and social relations.
He then moves to The Global South, in the Footsteps of Authenticity, to questions of liberation, discrimination and identity, before examining in Close Horizons the Islamic worldview, the Arab predicament and the Saudi narrative, culminating in the section The Outcome.
Madinah: A Debate on Modernity
Among the book’s most telling passages is the author’s recollection of the atmosphere of Madinah in his youth, when intellectual and political discussions flourished among school students during the 1960s and early 1970s. He notes that such debates were neither frowned upon nor rare, but were “part of everyday intellectual activity.”
Here he recalls names such as Mohammed Hassan Awwad, Abdullah Al-Qasemi, Ahmed Al-Sibai, Hamza Shehata and Abdullah Abduljabbar as figures of that intellectual ferment. He pauses on Awwad’s book “Khawatir Musarraha” (“Outspoken Reflections”), which he sees as having helped break the stagnation and open the way for modernity. He also reflected on the intellectual transformations of Abdullah Al-Qasemi, who moved from defending tradition to critiquing inherited norms and calling for liberation from the authority of history and rigid doctrines.
The young people’s interests did not stop at Arab thought. Existentialism was present through Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir, alongside Fyodor Dostoevsky, Arthur Miller and Emily Bronte, as were the causes of nationalism, liberation from colonialism and scientific socialism, and the ideas of Mohammed Iqbal, Ali Shariati, Jamal Al-Din Al-Afghani, Mohammed Abdo and Malek Bennabi.
The author evokes a scene from cultural life in Madinah, when Umm Kulthum’s voice reached gatherings of young people under the palm trees via Egyptian radio, in a scene where music intertwined with reading and discussion.
Madani does not exaggerate the maturity of that experience, acknowledging that the discussions were not always profound, but came within “persistent attempts to create an inner sense of understanding the self, and at the same time of belonging to a wider world in which ideas and identities intersect and questions intertwine.”
This testimony offers a glimpse into the history of Saudi culture, revealing that questions of freedom, modernity and identity were present among young people decades ago.
What it means to be Saudi
Saudi identity occupies a central place in the book. Madani rejects reducing Saudis to their Arab or Islamic identity alone, calling for an understanding of the specificity of their historical and cultural experience, “not as Saudis being merely Muslims or Arabs, but as Saudis with their own unique identity and particular experience.”
He notes that Saudis were not subjected to Western colonialism, yet were not isolated from its cultural and intellectual influences. He therefore does not believe that confronting stereotypes is achieved through rejection, but through acquiring knowledge and the tools of research and development, and the ability to produce an independent vision of progress.
He says: “Saudi identity is not a mere shell bearing foreign values, as Saudis have never been subjected to colonialism or the enslavement of the white man. Yet one cannot deny the existence of a struggle, a struggle with a West that is considered superior.
“This superiority stems not only from military dominance, but from its possession of the tools of knowledge, technology and expertise, and from its ability, through research and development and cross-border mass media, to impose a normative conception of success and to have its cultural patterns adopted.”
He poses a question: “If Saudis do not understand the meaning of their ‘Saudiness,’ how can they define their sense of belonging? And how can they formulate their perception of a unique civil national identity?” Here the book shifts from critiquing how others view Saudis to interrogating the way Saudis understand themselves, and the extent of their ability to formulate their national narrative.
Identity and dominant narratives
The search for identity extends to the Islamic and Arab affiliations. In regard to the former, the author distinguishes between Islam as a faith and civilizational experience, and the use of religion to justify domination and violence.
He discusses the phenomenon of “Islamophobia,” which reduced Islam to extremism and overlooked its intellectual and civilizational contributions. As for his Arab identity, he evokes the impact of colonialism and Western narratives of Arab history, and discusses the Zionist narrative of Palestinian history as one manifestation of the struggle over memory and identity.
Identity and dominant narratives
The search for identity extends to the Islamic and Arab affiliations. In regard to the former, the author distinguishes between Islam as a faith and civilizational experience, and the use of religion to justify domination and violence.
He discusses the phenomenon of “Islamophobia,” which reduced Islam to extremism and overlooked its intellectual and civilizational contributions. As for his Arab identity, he evokes the impact of colonialism and Western narratives of Arab history, and discusses the Zionist narrative of Palestinian history as one manifestation of the struggle over memory and identity.
He also rejects isolation as a means of protecting identity, affirming that the Kingdom “cannot close its doors and be content with itself, or isolate itself from the outside world.”
The conclusion of his experience seems closer to a call for an identity conscious of itself, one that does not abandon its roots nor make them an obstacle to progress. An identity that accepts dialogue and revisits assumptions, and grants the individual the right to participate in shaping his future.
The significance of “A Saudi Tale” lies in the fact that it does not present identity as a complete answer, but rather as a question that calls for revision. It also offers a testimony of a Saudi generation that lived through major transformations and tried to understand its place within them.
From this angle, the book is not merely the story of one man, but a reading of the formation of Saudi consciousness, and of the relationship between national specificity and human belonging, between memory and modernity, and between the ideas a person inherits and what he chooses to become.
This article was first published in Asharq Al-Awsat.
Mayar Mohammed received AED 500,000 after reading more than 60 books during this year’s competition.
Egyptian student Mayar Mohammed, 11, has won this year’s Arab Reading Challenge at a ceremony in Dubai, receiving AED 500,000 after reading more than 60 books during the competition. GazaI Teem, 16, from Palestine placed second, while Saudi Arabia’s Rian Al Zakri, 11, finished third.
Mayar said she plans to use part of the prize money to build a small library at her school. She described reading as something that has shaped both her thinking and her daily routine, helping her organise her time between school and books.
Organisers said more than 40.2 million pupils from 60 countries entered this year’s edition, including 74,062 participants in the people of determination category. The competition also involved 138,426 schools and 161,507 supervisors.
Other awards included AED 300,000 for Outstanding Supervisor winner Fakhri Mayas from Jordan and AED 1 million for Best School, awarded to Seedy Amer Primary School in Tunisia. Suhaib Majd from New Zealand won the category for Arab pupils living abroad, while Mahmoud Omran from Syria received AED 200,000 as Reading Champion in the people of determination category.
Since its launch, the Arab Reading Challenge has attracted more than 203 million pupils, one million schools and 1.1 million supervisors, according to organisers.
The Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) has named Moroccan scholar Dr. Said Yaktine as Cultural Personality of the Year for the 45th Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF 2026), recognising more than four decades of contributions to Arabic narratology and literary criticism.
Yaktine has advanced the study of classical and modern Arabic narrative, examining the novel, Arab storytelling traditions and the impact of digital technology on literature. His research also explores hypertext, digital literature and the changing ways knowledge is produced and received.
Ahmed bin Rakkad Al Ameri, CEO of SBA, said, “Dr. Said Yaktine has developed an extensive body of scholarship spanning several fields. His reference works have enriched Arabic narratology and literary criticism, advanced approaches to studying the novel and Arab narrative heritage, and explored digital texts and the changing nature of literature in the age of technology.”
“His selection as Cultural Personality of SIBF 2026 recognises the value of rigorous academic research and its lasting influence on future generations of scholars, writers and readers,” he added.
Al Ameri said this honour aligns with the vision of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, who has made recognising leading Arab cultural figures and their intellectual achievements central to the emirate’s cultural project, ensuring their contributions are recognised and introduced to new generations.
“Under the guidance of H.H. Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi, Chairperson of SBA, we continue to strengthen the fair’s role in honouring these scholars and introducing audiences to their work, raising awareness of Arab cultural achievements and expanding their international reach,” he stated.
Commenting on the honour, Dr. Yaktine said, “I have participated in several editions of SIBF and witnessed its continued growth, with more publishers, a broader cultural programme, diverse creative and intellectual activities, improved workshops for children and young people, and consistently high standards of organisation and punctuality.”
He added, “The fair has also expanded its international reach, welcoming writers and researchers from around the world and featuring a different Arab or foreign country at each edition. Its growing appeal among visitors of all ages reflects its place in Sharjah’s year-round cultural activities, which have truly made the emirate a permanent capital of Arab culture.”
Born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1955, Yaktine earned a postgraduate qualification in 1988 and a State Doctorate from Mohammed V University in Rabat in 1997. He began his career teaching at secondary schools before moving to Hassan II University in Casablanca and later Mohammed V University, where he became a professor.
From 1997 to 2004, he headed the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in Rabat. He also coordinated research into Andalusian-Moroccan narrative heritage and served as a visiting professor at several Arab and European universities.
Yaktine’s critical approach emerged in the 1980s through his study of the Arabic novel, focusing on narrative time, the narrator, point of view and discourse. His early works contributed to Arab literary debates on modern critical methods and their application to literature.
He later expanded his research to Arab narrative heritage, particularly popular epics and traditional storytelling, exploring links between classical and modern narratives and approaches that account for Arabic literary traditions while engaging with international theories.
Yaktine expanded his research into digital and interactive literature, examining how hyperlinks and electronic media have changed the structure and reading of texts, and the challenges digital technology presents for literary criticism and cultural and educational institutions. In 2011, he was elected President of the Arab Internet Writers Union.
He has published more than 20 books on classical and modern Arabic narrative.
Yaktine has received several Arab literary and academic awards, including Morocco’s Grand Book Prize in 1989 and 1997, the Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Young Arab Researchers in 1992, and the Arab Internet Writers Union Award in 2008.
He won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2016 for ‘Al Fikr Al Adabi Al Arabi: Al Bunyat wa Al Ansaq’, followed by the 2022 Katara Prize for Arabic Novel in the Literary Studies category for ‘Al Sardiyat Al Tatbiqiya: Qira’at fi Sardiyat Al Riwaya Al Arabiya’, and the 2022 Kuwait Prize for the Advancement of Science in Narratology.
His selection as Cultural Personality of the Year recognises his contributions to Arabic literary criticism and his work connecting Arab narrative heritage with contemporary literary scholarship.
SIBF 2026 will bring together 2,673 publishers and exhibitors from 124 countries, with 1,500 cultural, creative and artistic events. The Sultanate of Oman will be the Guest of Honour.
We caught up with Tali Marjieh between tour stops to talk about designing her sister Elyanna’s stage looks with no fashion training, and the gold-soaked vision behind her label, MARTAL.
Originally published on August 2nd, 2026.
As someone who’s spent years reporting on the region’s music scene, I’ve known about Elyanna since she first blew up. What always fascinated me wasn’t only her voice or her meteoric rise, it was her tour wardrobe.
Each performance feels like theatre. Meticulously styled yet emotionally raw, fusing choreography, visuals and music into one huge spectacle. Few Arab artists have nailed that alchemy. Elyanna has, shaping the kind of live performance standard Western pop icons like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé perfected long ago.
Her costumes are opulent and deeply symbolic, as you can see in the delicate lace and in the keffiyeh folded into a crown. Statement pieces that look as if they’ve been plucked from a couture house as much as a grandmother’s heirloom chest.
By pure coincidence, or obsessive stalking, sue me, I discovered that these looks aren’t helmed by designer conglomerates or pulled from showrooms. They’re imagined, stitched and perfected in a cramped LA studio and a local tailor’s shop by her sister and creative co-conspirator, Tali Marjieh.
Tali isn’t only the architect behind Elyanna’s looks. She has also been brewing that on-the-road sorcery into a label of her own, MARTAL: streamlined, rave-coded, minimal fabric, a bit rebellious, almost grungy, very much giving baddie vibes.
After months of following her chaotic studio Instagram stories, where she’d share her design process on the road, I finally reached out. Partly because I needed to unpack the duality at the heart of her work, how she pieces together such intricate, whimsical designs for her sister while running a label on the opposite end of the aesthetic spectrum, all without an army of craftsmen. Partly because my inner Devil Wears Prada alter ego wanted an excuse to live out my fashion journalist fantasy. Either way, I had to try.
When we speak, Tali is between tour stops with Elyanna, still finding time to check in and share snippets of life on the road. “I’ve been having the craziest months,” she tells me.
Her aesthetic for MARTAL could read like Arab futurism. The way I see it, it’s very brat-core, something I imagine Charli XCX and her entourage would wear. It’s stripped down, conceptually and literally, serve-maxxing silhouettes in bold fabrics and cuts, embellished with gold.
“There are a lot of limitations when it comes to performance wear. With MARTAL, I wanted to create ready-to-wear breezy pieces,” Tali told SceneStyled.
“It is about spicy Arab girls living abroad, looking for designs and colours that remind them of home, like gold.”
Gold runs through everything MARTAL does, and for Tali it isn’t decorative shorthand. It’s a token of her Arab roots, the element that turns up in weddings, dowries, household talismans and trinkets, reworked for a generation who grew up between cultures.
“The Arab heritage brings me so much inspiration, and its future gives me hope and motivation. They go hand in hand,” she says
For all the elaborateness of the designs, Tali’s path doesn’t follow the glossy arc of a traditional fashion designer. She didn’t study in Paris ateliers or climb the ranks at a luxury house. She built her craft out of necessity, to fill a gap.
When Elyanna first started performing, the team struggled to find pieces or a stylist who could understand her vision and actually represent her.
“We were put in a situation where we had to create her looks ourselves. I had zero knowledge about showrooms, stylists or brands at the time, so I went to a local fabric store near me, then to the tailor next door, and it all started from there.”
On tour, she handcrafts multiple ensembles, transforming Elyanna through a set of characters. Angel, warrior, baddie, all with an effortless flair that matches the emotional arc of the music onstage, in costumes that look deceptively designer to anyone who isn’t behind the scenes.
MARTAL isn’t a vanity project or an extension of Elyanna’s world. Tali wants it to work as a launching pad for emerging and often overlooked talent from the Arab diaspora, and on tour she’s always scouting young creatives and fashion students to collaborate with.
“The whole idea behind what we do is to open doors for designers, people in music and young creatives,” she says
She’s anti-gatekeeping to a fault, bringing people into her studio chaos, sharing patterns, workspace and production know-how, building an ecosystem that pushes Arab aesthetics into contemporary wardrobes rather than museum vitrines.
She has moved from backstage hero with no cape and ad-hoc tailor to a full designer and stylist steering looks for festival stages and sold-out shows in New York and at Wembley. It’s a rapid apprenticeship of a kind the global fashion industry rarely allows.
She still frames herself as a student, though. A business student, as she puts it, “touring with my sister and building my own brand along the way.”
“With such visibility comes a huge responsibility,” she says. For Tali, representing her Palestinian roots isn’t an aesthetic choice; it’s an inherent part of her conscience.
She recalls something Elyanna said to her right before she took the stage at Coachella, which still gets her through the overwhelming days.
“If I’m the first Arab to do something, it doesn’t mean it’s enough. It means we have to work extra hard to amplify the voice of our culture and our people.”
For all the praise the sisters get, the criticism comes too. “Some outfits, especially those built as a performance extension of a song, are controversial for others,” Tali says.
The ruptures are deliberate, meant to provoke conversation as much as admiration, and she’s unromantically pragmatic about the friction. “Most of Elyanna’s looks are controversial to others. We show a different perspective that some might relate to, and some simply don’t like or accept. But we’re fine with that.”
She brushes it off so nonchalantly I found myself quietly wondering whether she’s a Capricorn. It’s a posture that understands exactly how high the stakes get when fashion becomes a language of identity.
For now MARTAL is a young and mercurial empire in the making, a distillation of everything Tali has learned on the road. She wants people to be choosing it years from now, and to let it mean whatever they need it to mean.
“I’m still new with MARTAL, so I’ll let them choose the legacy and the feeling they want to take from it. But I do want them to understand that Arabs are maximalists when it comes to clothes, and we love it.”
Qatar’s Al-Kuwari was elected to chair the Arab Parliament’s foreign affairs committee as Saudi Arabia secured the parliament’s presidency.
Qatar’s Shura Council member Mubarak bin Mohammed Al-Kuwari was elected chairman of the Arab Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Political Affairs and National Security by acclamation during a procedural session in Cairo on Saturday.
The appointment aligns with Doha’s broader foreign policy agenda, which frequently centres on regional mediation and conflict resolution. Al-Kuwari, whose legislative background includes the Qatari-Arab Parliamentary Friendship Group, stated the result reflects regional backing for Qatar’s role in joint Arab action, emphasising the need for ongoing coordination among member states.
During the same session, Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council member Saad bin Sulaib Al-Otaibi was elected president of the Arab Parliament by acclamation. He succeeds the UAE’s Mohammed bin Ahmed Al-Yamahi for a two-year term.
Four deputy presidents were also elected to complete the leadership lineup from a pool of eight candidates. Representatives from Oman (Saeed bin Hamad bin Hilal Al-Saadi), Egypt (Hisham Al-Hosari), and Jordan (Ihsan Barakat) secured seats in the first round of voting. Libyan representative Abdulsalam Nasiyah won the fourth seat following a runoff vote against Hassan Al-Taher Al-Barghouthi.
The newly elected bureau held a closed meeting in Cairo on Saturday to prepare for the upcoming term. The parliament’s standing committees, including the Qatari-led foreign affairs committee and the Palestine committee, are scheduled to meet on Sunday, ahead of the first plenary session of the new ordinary session on Monday.
Ain Sokhna Port has been officially certified by Guinness World Records for having the deepest man-made harbor basin on land, plunging to 19 meters.
Kamel El-Wazir, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Transport, received the certificate from accredited adjudicator El-Dafrawi during his visit to the Red Sea port Monday.
Such depth allows the port to accommodate the world’s largest ships, solidifying Egypt’s role as a major global trade and logistics hub.
The Minister expressed great pleasure, emphasizing that the international accomplishment reflects the significant developmental progress across Egypt, particularly in maritime transport.
Wazir also oversaw the trial operations of the Hutchison Container Terminal Ain Sokhna Port as part of a major Red Sea-Mediterranean corridor.
The terminal is the first to be completed under a major development project at Ain Sokhna Port, following the finalization of its infrastructure. The project is part of a plan to turn Egypt into a regional hub for transport, logistics, and transit trade.
Ain Sokhna Port is a critical link in the integrated Sokhna–Dekheila Logistics Corridor, connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, respectively.
source/content: egypttoday.com (headline edited)
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Kamel El-Wazir, Minister of Transport, receives Guinness certificate
