At five in the afternoon, Cairo time (55).. Arab National Security (10 – Final Episode)

Files Not Yet Closed…

How Israel Invested the Arab Vacuum… and Repositioned Itself Without War

The transformations that the Middle East has witnessed over the past decade were not the product of extraordinary Israeli power, nor the result of sudden military superiority.
Rather, they were the fruit of a prolonged Arab vacuum, skillfully exploited in quiet fashion, without the need for comprehensive wars or costly adventures.

In politics, victory does not always belong to the one who attacks,
but to the one who knows how to wait.

From the Logic of Conflict to Managing the Surrounding Environment

Israel realized early on that the balance of conflict had shifted,
and that direct military confrontation was no longer the optimal path to consolidating influence.

The alternative was clearer and less costly:
• Letting adversaries exhaust themselves,
• Observing the fragmentation of Arab priorities,
• Acting as a “normal” actor in a troubled region.

Israel no longer needed to impose its presence by force.
It sufficed to manage its image as a “stable party” amid a surrounding environment marked by division and chaos.

Normalization as a Result… Not a Cause

One common mistake is to read the path of normalization as a conspiracy detached from its context,
when in essence it is the product of a prior regional imbalance.

When a shared Arab vision is absent,
when threat assessments diverge,
and when each state becomes preoccupied with its individual security, the search for external guarantees becomes an option—even if painful or controversial (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, India, Qatar, and America… clear examples).

Thus, Israel was not presented as a strategic ally,
but as a “balancing tool” in a moment of confusion—
a description that in itself reveals the magnitude of the imbalance,
not the strength of the other party.

From Central Enemy to a Party in the Equation

The most dangerous development was not in the form of relations,
but in the transformation of position.

When Israel was no longer the “primary threat” in the discourse of certain capitals,
this was not the result of a change in its nature or policies,
but rather the inflation of other threats
and the mismanagement of priorities.

Here, Israel moved:
from a central enemy, to a party in a balancing equation,
then to a silent beneficiary of the region’s reordering.

Managing the Conflict Rather Than Resolving It

Israel did not seek to resolve the Palestinian conflict,
nor to escalate it comprehensively,
but rather to manage it at a low level—
preventing major explosion without imposing a just settlement.

This model aligns perfectly with the logic of international crisis management,
and with the state of Arab fragmentation,
rendering the Palestinian issue a postponed file,
not an urgent priority.

Who Is the Real Beneficiary?

In such a scene,
Israel is not the sole winner,
but it was the most capable of:
• Reading the transformations,
• Regulating their tempo,
• Avoiding the cost of direct engagement.

The Arab vacuum did not grant it new legitimacy,
but removed old obstacles and opened spaces of maneuver that had not previously been available.

The Painful Lesson

Israel did not prevail solely because it is strong,
but because its adversaries dispersed, disagreed, miscalculated—
and some of them threw themselves into its embrace without any necessity that required it.

Politics does not recognize intentions,
but results.

When a shared vision is absent,
the one who possesses a vision advances,
even if at the expense of all.

Thus… after deconstructing the paths of misunderstanding:
internally,
with organizations,
with regional powers,
with the international role,
and with the vacuum from which Israel benefited…

The decisive question remains:
How can we move from diagnosis to reconstruction?
What is the realistic minimum required to restore the balance of Arab power?

After this long path of deconstruction and analysis,
the question is no longer:
Who erred?
Nor who was right?

The real question is:
How can we exit the circle of strategic misunderstanding and reach a genuine moment of rebuilding Arab balances of power?

Diagnosis, no matter how precise,
has no value if it does not transform into a new method of thinking and into working principles governing the coming phase.

What Must We Learn First?

The first lesson—and perhaps the most important, in my view—
is that balances of power are not built on slogans,
nor managed through reactions,
nor preserved through temporary alliances.

Power in its modern meaning is:
• Clarity in defining the threat,
• Consistency in priorities,
• The ability to coordinate without dissolving sovereignty.

Any attempt at reconstruction
without agreement on these foundations
will merely reproduce the same crisis.

From Crisis Management to Interest Management

What Arab states need today
is not a comprehensive unity project,
nor the invocation of historical models that are no longer viable,
but the rational management of shared interests.

A management that acknowledges differences but sets limits to them,
preventing their transformation into conflict that opens doors for others.

The minimum required is not uniformity,
but the absence of contradiction—especially in existential issues.

From Emotional Alliances to Calculated Partnerships

One of the most dangerous features of the previous phase
was reliance on alliances built under the pressure of the moment, not by the logic of sustainability.

Rebuilding balance means:
• Flexible yet clear alliances,
• Declared understandings rather than ambiguous deals,
• Partnerships based on interests, not fears.

An alliance born of fear
does not endure.
An alliance born of recognized interest
alone is sustainable.

Regaining Initiative… Not Reaction

Arab power declined
not necessarily because it is weak,
but because it lost initiative.

It responded instead of initiating,
reacted instead of planning,
became absorbed in crisis management
at the expense of building balances.

Reconstruction begins when major Arab states move from:
a policy of temporary containment
to
a policy of calculated initiative.

Is Balance Possible?

The honest answer: yes… but under conditions.

Balance is possible if:
• Sources of danger are redefined away from political instrumentalization,
• Shared red lines are established that may not be crossed,
• Differences are managed within the Arab house, not outside it.

Balance also becomes impossible if:
• Misunderstanding persists,
• Differences turn into external wagers,
• The Arab decision remains fragmented and discordant.

Final Word

The Conclusion of Strategic Misunderstanding
Beyond Misunderstanding: On the Meaning of Power and the Limits of the Arab Possible

What has been written in this series of articles
is not an attempt to condemn the past,
nor an effort to retroactively distribute responsibility,
but an endeavor to understand how a complex Arab moment was formed—how error accumulated quietly
until it appeared as fate.

The past years have taught us that the gravest threat facing states
is not military defeat,
but failure in understanding—
understanding the nature of conflict,
the limits of alliance,
the delicate difference between maneuver and dependency,
between partnership and subordination.

At one moment, the Arabs did not lose a single major battle, yet they lost the ability to grasp the full picture.
Vision fragmented,
priorities diverged,
differences shifted from tools of political management
into strategic gaps in which others settled.

Ideological organizations were not stronger than states, yet miscalculation granted them more than they deserved.
Regional powers were not smarter than all,
but the Arab vacuum allowed them to expand.
Major powers were not eager for regional stability, but the absence of an Arab project made managing chaos less costly than crafting a solution.

Thus, the imbalance was not created in one stroke,
but through a series of incomplete readings,
temporary wagers,
and decisions taken under the pressure of the moment
rather than the logic of trajectory.

Yet the most dangerous conclusion would be to believe that what happened was inevitable.
Politics, however harsh it may seem,
remains a space of choice.

Rebuilding Arab balances of power
does not mean restoring a bygone era,
nor resurrecting grand projects no longer viable,
but means—at its deepest level—
regaining the ability to understand before acting.

Understanding that:
• Power is not noise, but coherence.
• Alliance is not refuge, but mutual commitment.
• Stability is not borrowed from abroad,
but built from within, even gradually.

What is required is neither comprehensive Arab consensus
nor complete political unity,
but a minimum of shared strategic rationality—
that minimum which prevents disagreement from becoming rupture, prevents diversity from becoming conflict, and closes the doors to those who always wait to enter through our cracks.

Experience has proven that states that manage their differences well
are stronger than those that pretend harmony.
True balance
is not built on fear,
but on awareness of interests,
clarity of lines,
and respect for each party’s relative weight.

It may no longer be possible today
to redraw the map as we wish,
but it is possible—and necessary—
to prevent it from being redrawn without our presence and with force.

Here, these pages stand not to close the debate,
but to open it wide:
a debate about the meaning of power in an age of fluidity,
the meaning of the state in an era of transnational organizations,
and the meaning of national security
as awareness before it is weapon.

Between strategic misunderstanding
and rebuilding Arab balances of power
lies a distance not short,
but not impossible.

Only nations that review themselves honestly
deserve another chance in history.

We know that rebuilding Arab balances of power
is not the task of a single generation,
nor the project of one government,
but a long path
that begins with awareness,
continues through policy,
and is tested by the capacity to endure.

The first—and most courageous—step
is to acknowledge that what happened
was not inevitable,
and that what is to come
remains open to shaping.

Either we learn to understand better this time…
or we leave others
to redraw the maps once again.