Even as Israel continues, albeit at a lower rate than before, to commit crimes in Gaza, and Syrian territory is being subjected to Israeli strikes, while the Lebanese are waiting for the occupation of their territory in the south to end, interest in this subject has declined dramatically. It is not the “Arab masses” who are always called upon to take action who have become less concerned with Israel, nor the regimes that radicals typically slander for avoiding war. Rather, this decline is concentrated within the communities that directly bear the costs of Israel’s actions.
Of course, this shift is not the result of sympathy for the Israeli state or its actions, nor pathological insensitivity to our own suffering. One more plausible reason is a sentiment that the recent war has reinforced on many occasions: this struggle with Israel is not merely closed in on itself but has become a dead issue, and the delay in announcing its death is the reason for most of its costs. We are well aware that the so-called resistance forces, for their own reasons that have nothing to do with Palestinians’ suffering, have sought to breathe life into this conflict by standing in the way of peace, any peace.
In this sense, people’s desire to intervene, propose solutions, and influence outcomes was rebuffed, especially after the various radical forces made the Palestinian-Israeli struggle into a religious question that is above politics. It might not be wrong to expect increasing disengagement among those who believe that wars, including the most recent one, cannot change anything in how this issue is perceived or addressed. Despite their diminished capacities, declining credibility, and current silence, those who had traditionally appointed themselves guardians of this conflict and cause have not been compelled to reconsider their militant hallucinations and allow some fresh air to blow near its coffin.
It thus becomes evident that this struggle inherently repels: it is part of a system of life that keeps people outside of politics, prevents them from becoming involved, and nullifies the effectiveness of any and every engagement. At the same time, it is being reduced to closed-off military operations isolated from everything else. Day by day, it becomes increasingly apparent that one side only is responsible for these operations and shaping their course.
However, the other reason that could help explain the decline in interest is the developments in Syria. Regardless of the varying opinions about the likelihood of success or failure and where the transitional phase ultimately leads, the current moment in Syria remains wide open to an endless array of actions, positions, and opinions on public affairs. Although one could say that major shifts often spark tremendous repressed dynamism only to put it out and silence it later on, this dynamic nevertheless represents a political moment of a deep engagement with the conditions of the country, its people, and their relationships and differences. When the Arab revolutions erupted in 2011, we saw something very similar: interest in the conflict with Israel dramatically receded as the political and social questions of the “Arab Spring” countries took center stage.
These major developments, in both the things they affirmed and showed to be false, have led many to conclude what the resistance forces had effectively done was this: preoccupy peoples who had nothing to keep them busy, with the conflict- or more precisely, who were denied anything to preoccupy themselves, that is, who were denied political life. It is telling that the Lebanese, who had been prevented from holding a presidential election for over two years, found an opportunity to elect a president in the Syrian regime and the cause associated with it fell.
Further, being honest now demands abandoning obstinate denial that has given rise to broad insistence on attaching new realities to old rhetoric. Accordingly, it is no longer tenable to see the collapse of the Assad regime (an unquestionably positive development) through the same malevolent lens that Israel adopted in response to the “Al-Aqsa Flood.” Contrary to a secularized religious view of politics that sees all forms of virtue standing together against all forms of evil, and that good emerges from good just as evil comes from evil, life demonstrates that this approach is not true. Reality is too complex and rich to be governed by simplistic expectations or predetermined conclusions. The diversity of nations, and the diversity- sometimes outright contradictions- of contexts, causes, interests, and experiences- must be reconsidered in the complexity of their networks. Palestinian rights must be approached as a political issue that is open to debate, interpretation, and differing opinions. It should not be addressed as a matter of sanctity and unanimous agreement where everyone stands equal as the teeth of a comb, with wars becoming the only means for engaging with it.
However, a mix of questions, challenges, and perhaps even an ancient Greek curse, remain with us: What can be done to manage the domestic civic conflicts, which are escalating, within each country in the Levant, now that the capacity of “the conflict” and “the cause” to fuel these divisions has diminished?
