In moments of great turmoil, politics tends to reduce the world to sharp binaries:
one camp versus another, one axis against a counter-axis, and peoples are asked to choose their place between them.
But history teaches us that the most dangerous thing that can happen to nations is not that they face conflict between great powers, but that they are led to believe that this conflict is their only destiny, and that their role is limited to choosing one of its sides.
Today, our Arab region once again seems to stand before such a scene.
Escalating tension between the United States and Iran, the continuing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, and now against Iran and Lebanon, along with increasing talk about redrawing maps of influence in the Middle East.
Amid all this, the traditional question is repeated:
Which camp should we stand with?
But perhaps the right question is entirely different.
Nations that think with a civilizational mind do not begin by asking:
Whom do we stand with?
They begin with a deeper question:
What do we want to become?
War as Evidence of the Failure of Politics
Wars, at their core, are not victories of power, but admissions of the failure of politics.
Whenever we reflect on what has happened in our region over the past decades — from Iraq to Afghanistan, to Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and Sudan — we realize that wars managed from outside do not produce a new order as much as they produce a political and security vacuum that may last for many years.
From this perspective, rejecting any new war in the region is not an emotional stance, but a rational reading of experience.
Yet rejecting war does not necessarily mean accepting every policy of influence or regional expansion taking place.
Confusing the two is one of the most common forms of political blackmail in our modern world:
Either you support the war, or you remain silent about domination.
The truth is that a balanced political mind can reject both at the same time.
If we look objectively at the regional scene, we find that the Arab region has become an arena where several major political projects intersect.
There is the Israeli project, which we categorically reject, a project that from its beginning was founded as a settler-expansionist project, from the Nile to the Euphrates, and which still today relies on military superiority and international alliances to impose new political realities in the region.
There is also the Iranian project, which we also reject, a project that has developed over recent decades into a wide regional influence, relying largely on building political and military networks across borders within a number of Arab countries.
It is not a religious project as some believe between Shiites and Sunnis, but rather a political and power-driven project that exploits religious identity to mobilize supporters.
The real problem is not the existence of these projects; history is full of struggles of influence between states.
The deeper problem is that the Arab region itself has not succeeded in formulating its own project capable of protecting its interests over time.
At one time, the idea of Arab nationalism, and attempts at unity between Egypt and Syria, between Libya and Egypt, and historically between Egypt and Sudan, carried positive seeds.
But they failed for many reasons, most notably factional interests, the pursuit of personal leadership, external interventions, and the opposing project that was and still is at the heart of division — the Zionist project seeking dominance over the region.
I once believed that the existence of a federal Arab state, including all Arab countries within a framework similar to the United States, was a possible model that could preserve independence for each state within a unified and integrated system.
Unfortunately, what happened was the fragmentation of states instead of their unification, and division instead of a framework that allows development for all.
