To say that our history moves slowly is not a great discovery. We have seen, and continue to see, generation after generation living on "causes" that revert back to square one every time a solution that ends the struggle seems possible. This is particularly true of the Palestinian cause and the "vicious attack" on it and us, but it is also true of the Kurdish cause and sectarianism in the Levant and even applies to the conflict in the Western Sahara that dates back to 1975. Just a few days ago, as the Lebanese recalled their civil war, which also broke out that year, they noticed that our current affairs bear an uncanny resemblance to those of that time.
A sign of our history’s sluggishness is that political Islam, whose early foundations date back to the later years of Abdul Hamid II’s rule and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, continues to promise us a state siphoned from the stomach of the past with which we can respond to the states of the present and the questions of the future. As for the military and security regimes that claimed they would accelerate history, they almost brought it to a complete halt. Thus, Muammar Gaddafi ruled Libya from 1969 to 2011, and Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr/Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq from 1968 to 2003. Meanwhile, the Assads, the father and son, broke every record, ruling from 1970 till late 2024 and turning history into "eternity." On top of that, these rulers are not succeeded by a different regime after they are toppled or die, as was the case in countries like Spain, Portugal, and Greece, where the fall of dictatorial regimes gave rise to democratic regimes in the mid-1970s. In our case, civil war, whether manifest or latent, has emerged as the most prominent, if not the only, heir to those who die or are overthrown. One domestic development, with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, seemed like it could become the first to accelerate history after drawing millions of people who were said to be shaping their own lives into the streets. But the new authorities swiftly sent those same people back to their homes and used its divine mandate to shackle the empowerment of the people.
This semi-essentialist quality that is almost inherent to our causes, which is also found in the repetitive cycles of our lives, has led many- and not all of them are racists- to see us as essentialist beings who inherently “do not change as the world changes,” per a poet enamored of “authenticity” and “fundamental constants” put it.
Those who claim the moments that have accelerated our modern history all came from outside are not wrong. The French campaign in the region is broadly considered the first of these moments, while the second is split into the student mission, headed by Tahtawi, that Muhammad Ali sent to France, and the Ottoman reforms implemented as a result of the European challenges and pressure exerted on the Sultanate. Our extensive connection to the contemporary world came with the mandates in the Levant, when, for the first time in modern history, we became part of it.
The role of the outside world subsequently became more problematic, and its repercussions became more ambivalent, aggravating the interior’s inclination to stick to its sluggishness and stagnation.
Israel’s founding in 1948 was colored by its settler dimension and the displacement it wrought, as well as the bitter animosity between the Israelis and the Arabs that followed. That is how we- with our fragmented states and societies- failed to notice the emergence of a state with a parliamentary system whose society is a melting pot of countless cultures, languages, backgrounds, and national experiences. Later, after the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David Accords were signed in the late 1970s, old forces of all kinds managed to besiege the potential new horizon and prevent it from spreading. Although the Arab-Israeli peace agreements have expanded since then, their trajectory remained one of oscillation between cool extraneity and heated accusations of treachery.
As the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, there seemed to be a chance for a fresh start that would break with the corrosive past. However, it was not long before it became clear that the invader and the invaded were both colluding, each in their own way, in squandering that opportunity. In turn, Iran and Assad’s Syria were vigilantly standing by, fully prepared to invest in this deal to squander the opportunity.
Little by little, we were faced with two iterations of historical acceleration, particularly in the Levant, that do not meet previous definitions of the term. These two were born of failure and frustration- that is, of chronic domestic stagnation’s putridity and the impulsiveness of nascent foreign acceleration efforts. As such, it always seemed unlikely that they would lead to anything but a form of political annihilation. Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” and the Israeli war that followed thereby became the point at which these two catastrophic currents met. Hamas and its allies pushed in the direction of an acceleration that would eventually culminate in their own suicide and immolation of the societies neighboring the Jewish state. As for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal war, it ended up having no real objective beyond its own perpetuation. Once a flimsy claim, the theory that Netanyahu had been prolonging this war to save himself now seems increasingly credible and sound. And, despite the Israeli public’s idle indifference to the tragedy in Gaza and its victims, opposition to the war is now broadening and has come to include a substantial number of paratroopers and soldiers in the infantry and armored brigades...
Thus, the sluggishness paralyzing and upending the region continues- interrupted only by bursts of acceleration that are seemingly fueled by unhinged reckless impulses that threaten to do away with everything that sluggishness had failed to root out.
