Just over a year ago in this space, I published an article entitled “The Road to the Arab Project.” It followed through on an article appearing two weeks earlier, at the start of 2025, called “In Search of the Arab Project.” Both pieces addressed projects set into motion by non-Arab actors targeting the Arab region in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring. They were simultaneously a response to events triggered by the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on 7 October 2023.
Between these two watershed events, certain international and non-Arab regional powers – especially the US, Israel, and Iran – engaged in projects to politically engineer the Middle East in ways conducive to their own long-term objectives. Both articles preceded Trump’s return to the White House and the inauguration of his grand project – a project not just for this region but for the entire world.
In the intervening year, Gaza has been the focus of ceasefire efforts, a 20-point peace initiative, and a reconstruction project called the “Gaza Riviera,” which called for the transfer of Palestinians to Sinai with no guarantees of their return. During this period, the population transfer project was quietly shelved thanks to Arab – and particularly Egyptian and Saudi Arabian – efforts. Now the task of organising the administration and reconstruction of Gaza has been subsumed under the framework of a “Peace Council” established and led by President Trump.
The foregoing necessitates serious thinking about a regional Arab project that takes into account the interests of Arab countries both individually and collectively. Contemporary history has consistently shown that projects originating outside the region invariably lead to magnitudes of violence in the form of war, civil strife, and terrorism. It is therefore the duty of mature Arab states, committed to the concept of the nation-state, to formulate an Arab project to rescue the region and place it securely on the path to reform, stability, and peace, these being the prerequisites to these states’ joining the ranks of the developed world.
The Arab region is currently caught in a vice with the states on the Arab periphery pushing from one side and the West, increasingly under the sway of the extreme right, from the other. Israel’s victory over the militias of the so-called Axis of Resistance and Rejection, coupled with Iran’s withdrawal from Syria, has created new circumstances no less troubling than those that existed before.
Israel’s expansionism has intensified; its settlement activity and use of force to annex Arab lands are totally unrestrained. At the same time, amid the ubiquitous fog enveloping the region, we cannot ignore the detrimental impact a decade of upheaval has had on the Arab geopolitical and geostrategic environment.
That said, the Arab world has changed considerably since the Arab Spring over a decade ago. It is important to acknowledge that the conditions that had prevailed until the 2010s are no longer suited to the demands of the current era. Although the “spring” generated upheaval across several Arab states, a significant group of Arab countries summoned the resolve to grapple with the deterioration, initiating bold initiatives to reform outmoded and distorted ideologies that were unsuited to the modern age.
The emerging Arab reform project is grounded on several key principles. The first is the need for a national identity that reinforces the concept of a state for all its citizens, as opposed to a state in the service of a ruthless minority or a tyrannical majority. Secondly, the state must monopolise legitimate recourse to force along with certain sovereign spheres. Thirdly, it must be committed to modernity, which entails expanding the reach of development across its entire territory through nationwide infrastructure projects in communications, transport, and urban development, and through the mobilisation of the country’s untapped resources.
The Arab reform project has so far brought together 12 Arab states: the six Gulf states, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Iraq. This assembly is committed to the prioritisation of state affiliation over all other sociopolitical groupings and organisations. It is also committed to the principle that the political authority must be endowed with the legitimacy to build, develop, and achieve according to the standards of the 21st century.
That said, modern history informs us that no project in this part of the world can fully succeed until it resolves two issues: the Palestinian question and the Israeli question. No Arab state can accomplish this on its own under the current regional and international conditions. In the aftermath of World War II, six European countries embarked on a journey to build a European regional system based on reintegrating Germany, at first divided and then reunited. This system evolved from a coal and steel community into a European Union comprising 27 states. Asia offers another encouraging model. The period following the Vietnam War saw the rise of one of the fastest-growing economic regions in the world in the framework of a multinational organisation: ASEAN.
The Arab project will likewise come in the aftermath of a fierce war, one that initially unfolded in Gaza and then quickly spread to Iran, extending its violence across a vast area that includes the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. This matter, therefore, requires considerable, concerted Arab thinking. This should take place in the framework of an Arab, not an American, board of peace, development, and regional security.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 March, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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