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One year after Oct. 7, it is now definite that the Middle East will never return to the way it once was.
As the voice of a changing region, we try on this day to document and analyze what these groundbreaking events mean within our special coverage marking this horrific year.
The first observation to note is that Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies in the Middle East may have been painted way taller than they actually are, as renowned political commentator and CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria told Arab News in an exclusive interview on our talk show: “Frankly Speaking.”
“It’s really extraordinary, first, just to note how well Israeli intelligence was able to penetrate Hezbollah,” Zakaria said, commenting on the exploding pagers, the locations of the weapons caches and the locations of the leadership, including that of its elusive Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
“I think that what we are seeing both with Hezbollah and with Iran is that perhaps we have painted them to be 10 feet tall when they were really, you know, more like 5 feet tall.”
It is unimaginable that, in 2024, a UN member state can have such impunity so as to kill more than 43,000 people, injure nearly 200,000 and displace 3 million across Lebanon and Palestine.
Faisal J. Abbas | Editor-in-Chief
In his own recent interview with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on CNN, Zakaria even noted that the newcomer implied that Iran “did not have the capacity” to engage in an all-out war with Israel and that “this was up to Hezbollah.”
“He said, essentially, we should call a meeting of Islamic countries to condemn what Israel is doing. That’s not a particularly lethal response that you’d imagine, and very different from his predecessors,” Zakaria said.
That being said, perhaps Hamas and Hezbollah themselves did not realize this when they waged an attack that ended up causing unimaginable damage, destruction and death across Lebanon and Palestine.
The second observation is the obscene failure of the UN. As we point out in our story, the unconditional military and diplomatic support from many Western countries exacerbated internal divisions within the Security Council and severely impacted its ability to act.
Even the body’s Secretary-General Antonio Guterres — who has been declared a persona non grata in Israel — confessed to us in an interview on the sidelines of the General Assembly that “we (the UN) have no real power, let’s be honest. The body of the UN that holds some power is the Security Council, and that body is paralyzed.”
You have the Saudi vision for a more integrated region versus the havoc of continuing to allow extremists to continue doing the same thing while the world expects a different result.
Faisal J. Abbas | Editor-in-Chief
It is unimaginable that, in 2024, a UN member state can have such impunity so as to kill more than 43,000 people, injure nearly 200,000 and displace 3 million across Lebanon and Palestine, while a ceasefire continues to be vetoed and some Western allies, who have long preached to us about human rights, continue to arm them.
The third observation, which has become more and more apparent, is that you can win much more with an open palm than a closed fist. This is what Saudi Arabia has demonstrated with its marathon of diplomatic efforts, which managed to win recognition for Palestine, as our story elaborates, with its leading of the effort, notably securing more than 140 of the UN’s 193 member states’ recognition of the state of Palestine.
Fourth, and this has been repeated time and time again, the longer this continues, the wider it becomes — as highlighted in our story of Lebanon’s struggles as the world holds its breath and braces for a widely expected Israeli retaliation on Iran.
To conclude, violence begets violence and the blame game will never end.
As reiterated in a recent Financial Times column by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the only guarantee for Israeli security is a two-state solution. However, there needs to be an appetite to push for it within Israel and on the agenda of the next US president, whoever it may be. The rationale cannot be any clearer: you have the Saudi vision for a more integrated, more prosperous and more peaceful region versus the havoc of continuing to allow extremists, be they in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government or militant groups, to continue doing the same thing while the world expects a different result.
- Faisal J. Abbas is the editor-in-chief of Arab News. X: @FaisalJAbbas