لحظة ادراك

 Like One Seeking Refuge from the Scorching Heat in the Fire

Arabs and Muslims pin grand hopes on Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington at the end of this month—at the close of a year that has carried more than human beings can bear. Four files, meticulously arranged according to Netanyahu’s own timetable: Iran and its ballistic arsenal; Lebanon and Hezbollah’s weapons; Syria and the signing of a peace agreement with its new rulers; and finally Gaza, and the transition from a first phase to a second. He will arrive there fully aware that on Donald Trump’s table lies a crowded agenda with very different priorities—beginning with the naval blockade of Venezuela to bring down the Maduro regime and seize control of its oil; the Russian–Ukrainian war; China’s expansion in the vicinity of American spheres of influence; and only then the four Middle Eastern files Netanyahu carries in his briefcase.

This will not be an ordinary diplomatic visit or event. Rather, it is a harsh test of a recurring Arab–Islamic illusion, of Arab incapacity for independent action, and of the illusion that fire can be extinguished by those who see the Middle East as an arena for uncontested Israeli strategic supremacy—a constant of U.S. foreign policy. Some Arab and Islamic imaginations believe the moment is ripe to carve out space for Arab and Islamic repositioning amid contradictions in U.S.–Israeli interests, repeatedly attempting to leap over the ABCs and facts of history: that Israeli interests are a component of U.S. national security. They may intersect here or diverge there in detail, but in absolute terms they will always take priority—in favor of Israel’s status and qualitative superiority. What, then, should one expect when we are in the era of Donald Trump?

Lindsey Graham, a member of the U.S. Senate, arrived in Israel in anticipation of Netanyahu’s visit to Florida. For those unfamiliar with Graham, he is the metronome of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, and the closest among senators to Israel’s right-wing policies. The statements he made in all his meetings in Israel do not differ in the slightest from Netanyahu’s positions across his four files. There will be no surprises in what we will hear about the outcomes of the anticipated meeting beyond those statements: Hamas’s system and weapons must be dismantled; Hezbollah and its arms fall into the same category of danger, at the very least; dealing with Iran’s ballistic weapons is a matter of American interest and priority above all else; and any peace agreement with the Syrians is preconditioned on a return to security arrangements—without a full restoration of the 1974 agreements.

If we speak of Donald Trump’s plan—through whose phases Arabs and Muslims are hastening to move—it has been cast upon them only after guaranteeing two fundamental matters. First, the consolidation of the reality of Israel’s victory on all fronts, extending beyond Gaza to encompass the entire axis. Second, ensuring Israel a wide margin of maneuver and an exclusive right of objection. Anyone who does not see it this way must first answer for the facts embedded in every detail of the plan, and in UN Security Council Resolution 2803 that followed it. Added to all this are operational developments and impasses, over which Israel—holding the land in the language of reality and power—possesses all exclusive opportunities to respond or not respond, without question.

As for those rushing the transition from a first phase to a second and third—phases that do not exist in the plan to begin with—do they have answers to what those supposed phases entail: the withdrawal and dismantling of Hamas’s system and weapons? Is Hamas even prepared to engage with such logic? Do Arabs and Muslims have ideas that might align with Netanyahu’s logic and his view of one of his most intractable dilemmas—views that align perfectly with Donald Trump’s, without dispute—unless some are betting on Khaled Meshaal’s flights of fancy and his call on Trump to grant them an opportunity like that given to Ahmad al-Sharaa; or on the current stammering around weapons and the establishment of a Palestinian state—ideas that Netanyahu, and before him Trump, will not buy at any price—unless the bet is on time and whatever changes the coming days may bring, which will certainly bring nothing new.

The meeting may, in form, yield some wordplay: talk of forming a Peace Council, an International Stabilization Force, and a Gaza Administration Committee—claims that these are imminent, and that Trump has pressured Netanyahu to begin their work on the ground. But when and how? Certainly only after ensuring that Hamas is heading, beyond any doubt, toward voluntary disarmament—or else through Israeli tanks and aircraft, in a final round Netanyahu longs for. All indicators point in that direction, without the slightest doubt.

In conclusion:

Arabs and Muslims like to deal with Donald Trump as if he were new, detached from everything connected to his previous term—forgetting that he handed Netanyahu Jerusalem and the Golan Heights on a silver platter, trampling all international conventions; that he opened Arab and Muslim capitals to him at no real cost; that he indulged in crumbs of solutions and notions that paved the way to what happened on October 7. They also like to forget that the political money in America aligned with Israel’s right wing is what returned him to power for a second term, and that the mutual servicing between the two knows no bounds. Despite what may appear superficially through orchestrated leaks from both sides about a widening rift between them, this is nothing but throwing dust in the eyes of those unwilling to see reality as it is: there is no rupture whatsoever between them. The United States has never, in its entire history, witnessed a case of organic linkage—interest-based and strategic—like the one embodied by these two, in all its ramifications.