There is only one precedent in US history of a president coming to power twice with an interval in between, as Donald Trump has just done, becoming the 47th president after serving as the 45th. That precedent was president Grover Cleveland who served as the 22nd and 24th president (1885-1889 and 1893-1897, respectively). Interestingly, while Trump is a Republican, Cleveland was the first Democrat to win the presidency since the American Civil War (1860-1865). It is also worth noting that Cleveland was economically conservative and morally respectable, opposed to high customs duties and willing to work together with the other party. Trump, by contrast, returns to power with an isolationist view of the world, including the US’ traditional allies. Domestically, he eyes the Democrats with mistrust and aversion and has a fondness for slapping tariffs on goods from countries that outperform the US economically.

Be that as it may, the American people chose Trump over Kamala Harris, despite knowing that he was found guilty of 34 misdemeanours and faced a number of other charges. Attorney General Bill Barr has now asked for those charges to be dismissed “as long as the people have spoken.” The judiciary cannot prevent the executive elected by the masses from entering the White House because of the separation of powers.

I am not sure about the constitutional details behind that. It is something that might matter to Americans. As for us here in the Arab region, we have plenty of burdens we must shoulder, and they are complex and heavy. For over a year, this region has been trapped in a state of crisis that erupted in hostilities that have since escalated into a full-fledged regional war.

However, as history has taught us, major wars, for all the death, destruction and misery they wreak, also present opportunities for reconstruction, building new institutions and initiatives to prevent their recurrence. The aftermath of World War I saw the creation of the League of Nations and major developments in international laws of war and humanitarian law. The aftermath of World War II paved the way for the United Nations and its affiliates: UNESCO, the IMF, and the World Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The end of the Vietnam War and its offshoots in Laos and Cambodia eventually gave rise to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which led Southeast Asian countries to an era of economic, industrial, and technological progress, turning them into some of the most competitive economies in the world.

Against this backdrop, I can only reiterate two calls: First, we must rely only on ourselves since the leaders of other countries, especially world powers, will always pursue their own national interests and those of the allies that matter most to them culturally and strategically.

Second, the US cannot play a constructive role in the Middle East until Arab regional powers get their act together and forge an initiative that opens horizons for peaceful political and diplomatic processes. We saw such an initiative towards the end of World War II when the Arab League was established as a home for Arab states recently liberated from colonial rule. The effectiveness of that body has always been contingent on the collective Arab will, although its members often preferred to keep their levels of mutual solidarity and cooperation below the demands and aspirations of the Arab people. Another famous instance was president Sadat’s peace initiative after paving the way for the liberation of occupied territories with the October 1973 War. Later, in the 1990s, after the liberation of Kuwait thanks to an Arab-American alliance, the Madrid Peace Conference opened the doors to Jordan’s recovery of its occupied territories and the Oslo Accords, which granted Palestinians the first ever Palestinian National Authority on Palestinian land.

Today we are dealing with a regional war whose epicentre is in Gaza, though its flames stretch from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Gulf. The hostilities will continue for at least the next two months during the lame-duck period of the current administration in the White House. Therefore, Saudi Arabia’s call for an Arab-Islamic summit should be used not just as an additional demonstration of support for the Palestinian people but also as an opportunity to create an inter-Arab mechanism to forge a strategy for handling a complex and difficult situation. The most immediate problem is that Israel sees Trump’s victory as its own, since Trump will do whatever Israel wishes, as he did before when he recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Netanyahu also saw Trump’s victory as an occasion to dismiss Yoav Gallant as defence minister, thereby freeing himself of all remaining restraints.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 November, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly