Readers may not know that the author of this column comes from academia. I am a political scientist specialising in international crisis management. I have written extensively on what has long been described as the Arabs’ “central cause”: the Arab-Israeli conflict. The term sums up decades of political struggle, warfare, regional and international crises, and intermittent peace-making efforts. During this period, the term “confidence-building measures” gained currency as a strategy for propelling negotiations forward. Most frequently, it applied to the negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Today, however, it appears that this concept needs to be applied among the Arabs themselves, and even more urgently between Palestinian factions.
The name Francis Fukuyama is widely associated with his book The End of History; in fact, his most important work is Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. It argues that this quality – trust – is the fundamental bond underpinning progress in the modern world. Although societies are shaped by a common narrative that is encapsulated in the term “identity”, they cannot endure without shared interests, common challenges and perhaps threats. Such things bind them together and form the seed of “nationalism” – the cornerstone of the “nation-state” within which the ruling authority possesses a monopoly on legitimate use of force.
However, according to Fukuyama, the real glue that gives rise to a prosperous society is trust, whether between individuals or groups, from the family outwards. All societies are governed by customs and traditions, laws and constitutions, and governing authorities with teeth – i.e., backed by law and the means of coercion. Yet these are insufficient to sustain a society in which suspicion, mistrust, and fear of the other prevail. Moreover, trust is needed not only between individuals or groups, but also between society and the changing technological environment. Many people are still wary of using ATMs to withdraw their salary or pension, fearing that the strange device will swallow the credit card or fail to dispense the cash after entering their PIN. It took some time before people began to trust these machines instead of familiar humans – trustworthy or not – they were used to dealing with, such as bank tellers, no matter how long the queues.
At the current moment in the Palestinian-Israeli (or Hamas-Israel) conflict, we face a situation in which peace is demanded of two parties that both want to continue with war. Netanyahu’s Israel and his fellow extremists need to sustain the conflict to pursue their ongoing land thefts, settlement expansion, and eventual annexation of the West Bank, as well as the complete subjugation of Gaza – and perhaps other parts of the region, to incorporate into a “Greater Israel” and their envisioned reconfigured Middle East. Hamas, for its part, embarked on its operation of 7 October 2023 without knowing what 8 October would bring, apart from the main result it experienced in four previous wars: further entrenchment within a mini-state and a widening gulf between Gaza and the Palestinian National Authority (PA), the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
The campaign to oust the PA in Gaza long preceded the current catastrophe. Israel helped by transferring money to Hamas, permitting fishing in the Mediterranean, and supplying gas and electricity. This is what the war is really about: resolving internal conflicts on each side so as to fulfil Israel’s expansionist imperial ambitions and, simultaneously, the creation of a mini-state preparatory to Palestinian independence cloaked in “legitimacy.” This is what brought us to the current ceasefire in Gaza, which has ground to a halt before proceeding to the second in President Trump’s list of twenty points, which are at the centre of talks no one is willing to engage in.
In the absence of the trust that Fukuyama urged, the Arab states now involved in the new peace process – which is qualitatively different due to the shock and magnitude of the massacres in this war – are faced with bitter truths about the Arab nation-state and its Palestinian project. The inescapable fact is that the question of an independent and internationally recognised Palestinian state cannot be resolved as long as Hamas insists it will only surrender its weapons after the state is established, since the state itself would lose its legitimacy were armed militias to remain. This same dilemma afflicts Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Sudan, where militias cling to their weapons – not to defend the state but to prevent its emergence.
Today, there are 12 Arab states that are free of such militias and of civil wars or attempts to instigate them. These states have a stated vision for development, stability and prosperity, some with their timeframe aimed at 2030, positioning them to join the ranks of the advanced world. These nation-states have a duty to assert their legitimacy across the Arab region, where reform, peace, and development are inseparable. They must not allow armed groups to monopolise decisions of war and peace.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 6 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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