The cooling crisis approach that has been followed for the last several years cannot achieve stability in the Middle East, and the outbreak of a new phase of confrontation between the Palestinians and Israel confirms the danger of this approach. Because many of the region's crises have been stagnant for a few years, the re-outbreak of one crisis in the region reactivates many intertwined crises.
Reconciliation processes and cross-regional security arrangements offer no real solutions to the Middle East's intractable crises, ignoring these crises and believing that creating an economic-security-technological interconnection capable of forming a new environment supportive of sustainable peace is an illusion, which adds to the region's crises' complexity.
When the region's countries insist on ignoring the peoples' grievances, it creates a strategic vacuum that other countries fill by exploiting these tragedies and grievances to serve their projects. Ignoring the region's crises turns them into tools in the hands of regional and international powers competing in the Middle East.
Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan are all hotbeds with unrest that will last for decades if their crises are not addressed. In such conditions, any cross-region project will be jeopardized.
Ignoring these grievances also fosters the emergence of extremist groups and separatist movements, which fuel anti-government sentiment and anti-government projects.
To reach the "Zero" stage, which is the point at which a sustainable future can begin to be established, we must first provide a safe environment for the people of the region by supporting peaceful political change (immediately) and enabling the process of political participate for citizens, which is considered the basis for disarming non-state groups. Providing a basic level of political and social justice is essential and vital.
Although it will be difficult, the region's countries must stop using people as tools to achieve their competing interests in order to reach the "Zero" stage.
What is going on now are attempts to overcome crises, but they are far greater than the possibility of crossing them, which means drowning in them later.
Dr. ABD ALQADER NANAA
Prepared for the Consulting Office for the Middle East
Risks and Solutions