Lebanon, Palestine, Israel: Is the Middle East doomed to a major earthquake?
From Beirut to Amman passing by Ramallah or Tel Aviv, a collective fear resurfaces with each new earthquake. Natural laws ignore geopolitical issues, borders and conflicts: in the Middle East, millions of people live along the Dead Sea Fault, a major seismic hazard zone.
Rooted in the eastern Mediterranean Basin, the rift is located at the junction of the African and Arabian plates, perforating the region from south to north over 1,200 kilometres, from the Gulf of Aqaba to Turkey, via Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
And if in recent decades, several low-intensity earthquakes have shaken the region, including as recently as last July, the shock wave of the quake that plunged Turkey and Syria into mourning on 6 February 2023 awakened old demons, buried in the collective unconscious, but not forgotten.
Since then, haunting questions have been going round and round: is the Middle East doomed to experience a huge disaster one day? Is the region prepared?