The Arab world has always convened, spoken, and shouted almost 50 summits echoing with promises, resolutions, and lofty declarations. But when the dust settles, it becomes clear: no plan, no execution, no consequence. Palestine remains colonized. Gaza bleeds. And the Arab world, broken yet not defeated, stares at its reflection with fogged clarity.
For decades, the Palestinian cause has been the emotional compass of the Arab street. But strategy, realism, and action have long been absent. We march for Gaza, chant for Al-Aqsa, but do not act. Not because we cannot but because we have outsourced Palestine, made it everyone’s cause and no one’s responsibility. The Arab Maghreb, from Morocco to Tunis, sits far from the beating heart of the conflict. And yet its silence is not geographical, it is political, strategic, and historical. When was the last time a Western delegation landed in Tunis, Rabat, or Algiers to consult on Palestine? The answer is: never. No one even pretends the Maghreb matters geopolitically.
We speak of victories, yet Gaza is ruins. For over a year, it has stood as the epicenter of global attention not because of its size, but because of its stubbornness. Gaza is not just land; it is geography and history fused into defiance. Crusaders ended at Gaza’s gates. The Mongols, too, stopped near Sinai. Today, Israel finds itself strangled not by armies, but by a sliver of land it cannot conquer nor coexist with.
The two-state solution is the grand diplomatic illusion of our time. For thirty years it’s been offered as a dream, floated in Western capitals and Arab parliaments. Yet geography rejects it. Gaza in the west, the West Bank in the east separated by the body of Israel. The situation mirrors a forgotten moment in South Asian history when Pakistan existed as East and West, split by India, Bangladesh emerged. Today, Gaza is alone, and the West Bank is alone. And Israel, very aware of the Pakistani precedent, plays its game patiently.
Look at history. The Algerians were defeated militarily, but they won in Switzerland. They turned their loss into leverage, into peace talks, into independence. The Vietnamese followed a similar path through Paris. Gaza and the West Bank, by contrast, have no guaranteed peace track, no negotiations waiting. The Palestinian people dense in number, cornered by borders are left without a door to open or an enemy to face on equal terms.
Egypt and Jordan, once the bordering nations of Palestine, now stand at peace with Israel. Treaties that could have been revoked have not been. And will not be. Meanwhile, the official Arab regime led by the Gulf states and Egypt sees a different kind of victory. The collapse of Hezbollah, the fall of Hamas, the destruction of a sectarian Shiite Syria; these were not unwelcome. They were liberating. Because had Hamas emerged with a divine victory, seated itself across from Israel at the table of power, the Arab monarchies would have trembled at the prospect of the Muslim Brotherhood ascending across the region.
Instead, today they sleep in peace. And ask those who’ve commanded wars—how does the first night after a ceasefire feel? More sacred than a wedding night. It is silence with meaning.
So perhaps, yes, the Arabs are winners but broken. Fog and loss cloud the road ahead. Entering the Palestinian war decades ago without strategy, only zeal. It brought the Western world crashing against Arabs. That mistake still echoes. Palestinians must liberate themselves. No outside nation can, or will. Hezbollah is not a state. The Houthis are not a nation. Iran’s arms are just that—tools for leverage, not liberation. It may sound out of line, but realism is mandatory.
Iran’s influence, once expansive since the fall of Iraq in 2003, is now receding. It has lost Syria. It has lost Lebanon. It is disconnected from Hamas. And its remaining footholds in Iraq and Yemen grow increasingly brittle. Its expansion was never destined to reach North Africa, and its grip on the eastern Arab world now faces exhaustion.
With Syria’s fall, the map has changed. Syria was not merely a regime, it was a gate. Whoever rules Damascus controls a corridor: to Lebanon, to Gaza, to the Palestinian front. That corridor is now gone. The resistance it once enabled is no longer operational. Geography has once again spoken louder than rhetoric.
Jordan stands at the edge of the same precipice. With Iran weakened, Syria fallen, and Hezbollah retreating, the vacuum opens dangerous possibilities. Jordan’s demography predominantly Palestinian makes it vulnerable to any scenario that sees it as an “alternative homeland.” A long-standing idea in Israeli strategic thought. If instability grows, if Iran stretches back through Iraq, or if Gaza is emptied, Jordan could become the next arena of forced political change. Israel could justify new expulsions by reviving the notion of “Jordan is Palestine.” A dangerous thought, still alive in deep strategic circles. To make it easier to understand, Trump’s message to King Abdullah was simple, we can remove you, we can change the entire playground in Jordan, so listen to what we say.
And what of the Arab Maghreb? North Africa, from Morocco to Tunis. A vast space, two steps away from Europe, but utterly disconnected from the core Arab issues. For centuries, the Arabs of North Africa have not ruled their own destiny. Always welcoming foreign rulers from Istanbul, Paris, or Cairo. Europe stood just 15 kilometers away, across the Strait of Gibraltar, but what did the North Africans learn? Where are the scientists? The technocrats? The philosophers?
They studied in Europe. But what did they bring back? What ideas rooted themselves?
None were consulted on Palestine. No delegations. No relevance. The Mediterranean is not just a sea it is a mirror. And in that mirror, Europe rose while North Africa remained motionless. A freeze in thought and strategy. Needless to forget a large yet unimaginably strategic land that is Sudan the forgotten land. A nation torn by war, yet absent from every summit, every strategy.
In all this, we must remember: ideology is art. It is crafted in the mind. But it is not reality. The Arab world today is trapped between the slogans of its past and the silence of its present.
And so we ask not with despair, but with depth what remains of the Arab cause? What next for a people who have won neither war nor peace?
