Negotiations on the Tips of Spears
Its daily script is written by those who never accepted it in the first place. It is gelatinous, elastic, fluid—call it whatever you wish, or don’t, it’s all the same. A habituation to screaming into a barren valley where no one listens, hearing only the echo of a hoarse voice you mistake, from repetition, for someone answering back. All the demons of the earth gather in every detail of it. Deadlines shrink or stretch according to need and priority. There is no law for the contracting parties—only new victims adorning numerical graveyards.
Why, when, how, where… etc.—these have become, in the eyes of the warring sides, worthless, tiresome questions unworthy of an answer. And should the tongue be stretched further, the dictionaries of labels and linguistic molds are ready for use. And if one exceeds that, then the earth’s belly—or the stray dogs of the streets—are more fitting. And if one dares add the question: “Until when?” then you—may God preserve you—have reached a temporal zone on another planet, defined only as “…until God decrees a matter already destined.”
The second-phase negotiations of Donald Trump’s plan have begun—and not begun. Negotiations by fire, meant to impose the conditions that would end a century-old tragedy. They are framed as “violations” tossed back and forth by the warring parties—when, where, and how they happened is not of great importance; only that they did. The one who decides their occurrence is the party that holds absolute power across the land, armed with an international mandate from the highest authorities of global legitimacy.
Several states hesitate to fall into the trap of the “weapons-withdrawal symphony,” for their participation would place them as security guarantors between the warring sides. Bilateral, trilateral, and in-between meetings—delayed or effectively canceled—signal only one thing: let the one who planted the thorns pull them out with his own hands. In other words, Benjamin Netanyahu must press forward with what he began in Gaza as well as in Lebanon. How this will be done? His preferred method remains the recycling of his military machine and the roar of his aircraft.
We ask, as many around the world do: what weapon are they talking about? The weapon that went out of service months ago? Or is there another one the texts did not mention? In the language of logic: any weapon that cannot protect people or create deterrence and balance belongs in the scrap-metal recycling yards. It no longer has the value marketed to the world. The silence of graves in the face of all these assassinations in the heart of Beirut—and deep into Gaza in broad daylight, despite ceasefire agreements—says only one thing: the required weapon is the weapon of survival for a project that is already dying, needing nothing but the mercy shot. Its defenders cling to it for domestic calculations before external ones.
Hezbollah will not hand it over, nor will Hamas. They know well that the heavy price paid would be the collapse of a project more than three decades old—one that filled the world with noise about the Galilee and beyond, about al-Majdal and beyond—yet ends up achieving little more than re-occupation of Gaza, the strategic hills of southern Lebanon, and the Shebaa mountain heights overlooking Syria’s presidential palace.
Mousa Abu Marzouk expressed an uncomfortable truth when he said: “If Hamas hands over its weapons, it will be exposed to settling scores with all its rivals inside Palestine, due to the consequences of its eighteen-year rule over Gaza.” And to whet the appetite of Americans and Israelis, he added: “Hamas is the only party capable of securing the borders with Israel.” In other words—though he did not say it—the function of the weapons will change under the new doctrine: protecting Israel’s borders, and protecting Hamas. And we doubt he is unaware of Trump’s peace proposal or the text of UNSC Resolution 2803. Nor do we think he fails to realize that this entire axis, in all its components, has become a relic of the past in every geostrategic analysis of the global order.
To add one more verse to the poem: the broader Muslim Brotherhood ecosystem that nurtured this axis is now on the brink of obsolescence. And if he does not know, the next round with Iran will not be solely about nuclear and missile programs. It will be about the fate of a regime now in the worst condition it has experienced in fifty years. Will any of these international shifts be read by the remaining leaders of this axis—or have they not yet had the chance?
The Russians and Chinese did not block the American draft resolution in the Security Council arbitrarily. They are acutely aware of the major international shifts that have occurred in the region, and they desperately need settlements on issues of utmost importance to them. The Russia-Ukraine war will certainly take precedence over all other files. The bargaining that took place in the Security Council produced an American initiative of twenty-eight clauses—all decisively in Russia’s favor. The Chinese will not stray from this path either: compromises in their trade wars with the United States, access to advanced semiconductors—these will definitely take priority.
Nor have the Saudis strayed far from this logic: more Saudi investment in the United States guarantees an F-35 deal with specifications comparable to Israel’s, access to cutting-edge technology, and influence in shaping solutions or approaches to the Palestinian-Israeli file—as well as the Sudanese, Syrian, and Lebanese dossiers. The U.S. President was not received in the White House without a price; the Americans did not enter the Sudan file accidentally; the pressure on Hezbollah’s weapons is not accidental; the discussions about designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization did not appear out of nowhere.
In conclusion:
It is critically important to read global and regional shifts with extreme precision. Any miscalculation now will carry a heavy price in the near future—not the medium or long term. The issue of weapons that have lost their real value in Gaza and Lebanon—and become Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Shirt of Uthman”—requires Arab, Islamic, and international approaches to resolve it. The Saudis, French, and Turks are more than capable of crafting such settlements to spare the region further destruction and bloodshed. If they do not act today—before tomorrow—and step out from the cloak of Iran’s clerical regime, they will find themselves and their people trapped in a war cycle that will last for years, with an outcome already visible and needing no further analysis.
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