Like Explaining Water with Water
"The gravest danger facing nations is not that they are deceived once, but that deception becomes a method of governance, lies become public policy, and politics becomes the art of reproducing lies."
The Middle East no longer needs more analysts to explain what is happening, nor more conferences that conclude with communiqués whose length exceeds the lifespan of their results, nor new maps drawn on paper only to be erased on the ground. Reality has become so unmistakably clear that much of what is said resembles the old Arabic proverb: "like explaining water, after great effort, with water." Endless words, relentless noise, and conclusions that ordinary people already know before the speakers proclaim them from their podiums.
The Middle East goes to bed under the shadow of an agreement and wakes up to a massacre.
Memoranda of understanding are signed, only for cities to be bombed the following morning. Hands are shaken before television cameras while children's hands tremble beneath the rubble. Slogans of peace are raised in air-conditioned conference halls, while the very architects of those slogans rush outside to purchase more weapons. The problem is no longer the absence of political language, but its excessive use to conceal reality.
Lying has become a full-fledged industry in this region, complete with its own experts, institutions, and markets. Nor is it monopolized by any single actor.
When Donald Trump returned to the White House, he returned with nearly the same promise: ending wars, restoring stability, and putting an end to "endless wars." The rhetoric was simple, appealing, and well suited to an American public weary of prolonged military spending. But the Middle East does not judge slogans; it tests them against realities on the ground.
Within a short time, the world found itself confronting a Middle East that was more turbulent, not less. Gaza remained an open wound. Lebanon continued to live atop a powder keg. Syria had yet to recover. Iraq remained an arena of competing balances of power. Meanwhile, the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf continued to serve as theaters where escalation remained a constant possibility.
This is not to suggest that a single president alone creates all these crises. The region's complexities are older and deeper than any American administration. Yet the gulf between promises and outcomes proved wide enough to prompt many to ask: Where is the peace the world was promised? Where are the deals that were supposed to end these wars?
Some find it convenient to blame Benjamin Netanyahu for drawing Trump into Middle Eastern conflicts according to his own agenda, as though the President of the United States and America's institutions had become an open stage for Netanyahu alone. The reality, however, is that the political forces that brought Trump back to power are scarcely less hawkish than Netanyahu himself. It is enough to listen to the late Lindsey Graham or to Ambassador Mike Huckabee to understand the nature of this political current. This is not to underestimate Netanyahu's considerable ability to exploit opportunities within the corridors of American politics, which have long provided fertile ground for such influence, even if that space has narrowed under the dramatic changes brought about by repeated failures to decisively resolve the regional crises that continue to drain America's domestic political and strategic resources.
On the other side stands Iran, which has built its political discourse for nearly five decades upon the twin pillars of resistance and independence.
Tehran succeeded in constructing an extensive network of allies and regional influence, becoming an indispensable player in Middle Eastern affairs. Yet this strategy has also imposed heavy costs, both upon Iran itself, where society has borne immense economic and social burdens, and upon neighboring countries that have increasingly become arenas of prolonged confrontation.
With every new crisis, the rhetoric remained unchanged even as realities on the ground continued to shift. Maps were redrawn. Some powers declined while others emerged. Yet the language remained frozen in time, as though history itself had stopped decades ago.
Political Islamist movements likewise promised their supporters that a new project would usher in a different renaissance; that identity alone was sufficient to build a state; and that possessing religious truth would naturally translate into political success.
But statecraft is one thing; slogans are another.
Politics is not a sermon. Economics is not a slogan. Governing societies is far more complex than mobilizing crowds.
In more than one experience, citizens found themselves returning to the same fundamental questions: Where is the state? Where are the institutions? Where is security? Where is the future?
When slogans fail to answer those questions, it is ordinary people who pay the price.
Nowhere is this reality more painfully visible than in Gaza.
There, humanitarian catastrophe merges with military conflict, while local calculations intertwine with regional and international agendas until civilians become the first to suffer and the last to be consulted.
Every side has its own narrative.
Every side declares victory.
But ruined cities speak no language of triumph.
And cemeteries do not distinguish between the statements of victors and those of the defeated.
Lebanon is not far removed from this picture.
For years, its political discourse revolved around deterrence, strategic balance, and sovereignty while the economy collapsed, institutions weakened, and emigration became a collective dream.
Every time politicians are asked about the future, the same answers are repeated, as though time itself were trapped within a closed circle.
It is as though the entire region has become a factory for recycling political narratives.
The Middle East's greatest challenge today is therefore not a shortage of initiatives.
It is an excess of them.
An excess of agreements.
An excess of committees.
An excess of mediators.
An excess of communiqués.
People have become more inclined to greet every new announcement with suspicion than with hope.
Words have lost their value because they have been consumed far more than they have been used.
Politics, at its core, is the art of minimizing losses.
When it instead becomes the art of manufacturing losses, it forfeits its very meaning.
The people of this region no longer seek grand speeches.
They seek an ordinary day without air-raid sirens.
They no longer dream of historic victories.
They dream of a school that is not bombed, a hospital that does not collapse, and a home that does not become another headline in the evening news.
Experience has taught them that many agreements do not resolve conflicts; they merely postpone them.
Many ceasefires are not peace, but brief intermissions between two rounds of violence.
Many diplomatic memoranda are written not to end crises, but to manage their timing.
Thus, the Middle East goes to sleep under agreements and awakens to massacres.
It signs understandings, only to wake up to new fronts of conflict.
The real problem is no longer merely the differences between competing political projects.
It is the striking similarity of their methods.
Everyone speaks in the name of the future.
Everyone promises victory.
Everyone blames others for failure.
Yet almost no one begins by examining themselves.
It is as though the region has become trapped within a single equation: everyone wins in speeches... and everyone loses on the ground.
Conclusion
The Middle East is not poor in resources, nor in history, nor in intellectual talent. What it lacks is the courage to acknowledge its own mistakes before searching for the mistakes of others.
Politics built upon marketing illusions cannot produce stability. Nor can lies, however long they endure, ever construct a lasting peace.
Perhaps the old Arabic proverb remains the most accurate description of our present condition: "Like explaining water, after great effort, with water."
After decades of conferences, summits, agreements, and promises, the ordinary person in this region continues to ask the very same question that was being asked half a century ago: When will security become a right rather than an exception, and peace a reality rather than a slogan?
When the question remains unchanged while the names of presidents, regimes, alliances, and political parties continue to change, then the problem no longer lies in individuals alone. It lies in a political culture accustomed to explaining water... with water—substituting the difficult task of confronting reality with the endless recycling of rhetoric, leaving the Middle East to revolve within the same cycle, generation after generation.
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