لحظة ادراك

 

Hypothetical Chaos and a Merciless Reality

Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib once said: “Beware of ‘if,’ for it is the key to the devil’s work.” The word “if” feeds regret and helplessness instead of action and reform. Linguistically, “if” is a conditional particle implying the impossibility of a result due to the impossibility of its condition — a lament, a wish, a struggle between rational assumption and metaphorical illusion. It is an intellectual protest to reveal outcomes, suspended between reality and possibility, between awareness and disappointment.

It only enters into verbs of the past — knocking with deceptive politeness — a mental indulgence in what can no longer be repaired. It is an elegant illusion the mind wears when it cannot face the truth. Nostalgia disguised as wisdom for a path that no longer exists. A betrayal of collective reason, as if history were a chessboard that could be reset at will. “If” is the recycling of pain, pretending the catastrophe could have been avoided — a refuge from the anguish of reality when we fail to change it. It is the rewriting of events in blood that never dries — the most treacherous of all letters, in life as in politics.

Two years of devastation, and yet we continue to orbit the same infernal circle — between “I knew” and “If only I had known.” Between these two illusions, we march, willingly or unwillingly, into a labyrinth of mutual blame. Facts now stand before us — visible, undeniable — yet we twist language to justify our paralysis, dressing disaster in comforting phrases like “a blessing in disguise” or “perhaps you dislike something which is good for you.” Thus, we build new narratives while the blood is still warm, refusing to retract any of our own missteps. The “ifs” of occupation, betrayal, and unconditional support for the enemy remain ever-present — convenient hooks on which to hang our collective failure.

At the heart of today’s political scene lies Trump’s Peace Plan for the Middle East — the last operative tool still on the table. Its grim success lies in halting mass death only to replace it with death in installments. Between its blue and yellow lines lie a few remaining corpses — bargaining chips neither side is ready to release.

For the “People of the Flood” (a reference to Gaza’s militants), they are leverage — a ticket into the second division of global politics with their last fragments of strength. For Israel’s “Government of Legends,” they are a shield against descending to that same level. The higher objectives of the war remain undefined — left deliberately ambiguous. Mediators rush to push the process forward, but no one has answered the real question: are either of the warring sides even ready to pay the price of joining this “second division” to begin with?

Breaches upon breaches begin to emerge. As people struggle to recover from the shock of endless destruction, public statements grow increasingly contradictory — between what is possible and what is not. The man whose name crowns the initiative (Donald Trump) stumbles between statements and their opposites, adding fog to fog, making the “constructive ambiguity” of the plan collapse into chaos. Its designers may wish to call it a framework, but it is rapidly transforming — whether they like it or not — into a contest between hypothetical politics and a merciless reality that recognizes no pretense.

Both Palestinians and Israelis now find themselves unwilling participants under international guardianship. After years of a conflict between justice and force, the American sponsor — keeper of countless keys — no longer knows which key fits which lock, except for the key of international law, which it was the first to violate by recognizing Jerusalem and the Golan Heights as Israeli territory. The doors of interpretation are wide open, and every new “solution” spawns more complications. The situation can be summed up by a series of questions no one has been able to answer:

• How will all sides interpret the transition from the phase of exchanging prisoners and bodies to the next? Israel refuses to move forward until every body is returned, while Hamas insists some may never be found. Mediators propose blending the phases — but how?

• Who will form the proposed international force? What authority will it answer to? Israel wants it limited to disarming Hamas and supervising reconstruction under its control, while Palestinians demand it act as a UN peacekeeping mission separating both sides.

• What about Hamas’s weapons? Israel demands full disarmament by an international force; Hamas insists they are legitimate resistance arms that can only be surrendered once a sovereign Palestinian state exists. Mediators suggest handing them temporarily to an Arab-international authority — but defining and implementing this remains elusive.

• Who will govern Gaza? Israel wants a limited civil administration with no link to Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, under Israeli oversight. Hamas and other factions demand a fully empowered local body formed through consensus. Mediators hover between both positions.

• And reconstruction — the most complex issue of all — lies buried under rubble and politics. Israel insists on total supervision of materials entering Gaza, while Palestinians demand open borders. Mediators offer variations, none yet workable.

Palestinian factions recently met in Cairo — separately, and without the officially recognized representative of the Palestinian people. Their statement revealed a stunning detachment from reality, as if no initiative even existed. Hamas’s leaders appeared on television echoing the same disconnect, while Netanyahu issued a new round of defiant declarations, and Trump fired off another string of posts on Truth Social. The result: a Byzantine debate among actors who seem to inhabit three different worlds, speaking in wishful tones detached from the hard political ground forged by two years of war.

In conclusion:

The world spins in a vicious circle around one undeniable truth — this initiative serves only as a ceasefire and prisoner-exchange mechanism. It cannot resolve a century-old conflict. The international consensus (excluding Israel and the U.S.) now leans toward a comprehensive solution — one long articulated by Saudi Arabia, from the Fez Summit in 1981 to the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and the current Saudi-French plan of 2025.

Riyadh has deliberately distanced itself from the ongoing chaos, knowing it will yield nothing but prolonged suffering and yet another cycle of bloodshed. Israel is unready for meaningful peace; Palestinians, after such immense sacrifice, are unwilling to concede; and no global power seems capable of imposing a just and lasting solution. The only absent actor remains international legitimacy itself.

Until it returns, one word will continue to dominate the scene — “If.” The most treacherous letter of all.