“The future of the Middle East – and indeed international relations as a whole – seems bleak.”

Dramatic cover for the current English edition of Le Monde Diplomatique. (1)

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The period since 7 October 2023 marks the worst chapter yet in the Palestinian people’s long ordeal. Worse even than the Nakba – ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic – of 1948, referring to events which have subsequently been called ‘ethnic cleansing’. The current catastrophe is characterised, among other things, by genocide. Thus, a stronger Arabic term is necessary to describe the misery being visited upon Palestine: karitha. Israel is slaughtering a part of the Gazan population without giving up ethnic cleansing, both in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. ‘Gaza will be totally destroyed,’ Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich announced at a conference on 6 May this year in the West Bank settlement of Ofra. Civilians will be ‘concentrated’ in the south, from where they ‘will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places’.

Donald Trump sensed an opportunity in the threat. He may seek to win his Arab allies over to an updated version of the ‘deal of the century’, which they roundly rejected in 2020. The plan proposed a rump ‘state of Palestine’ and, compared with the prospect of ethnic cleansing, now looks like the lesser of two evils. Saudi Arabia would join the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco – and before them Egypt and Jordan – in normalising relations with Israel. Trump and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu would be handed a victory they could boast about, but fundamentally very little would be resolved. The future of the Middle East – and indeed international relations as a whole – seems bleak. [my emphasis]

That is a reminder that, however phony Trump 2.0’s public diplomacy on this may be, we still have to hope that somehow this ghastly war in Gaza will be stopped in a way that allows most of the Palestinians who will otherwise be killed in the horror over the next few months to survive.

But with all the diplomatic and political fog out there, it’s important to remember that the only practical and effective way to stop the Netanyahu’s government current war on Gaza civilians is to cut off US arms supplies and other military aid to Israel until it stops the war and commits itself in a real way to a substantive process of ending the occupation.

Today’s international order has been integral to the global projection of Western engagement and power for decades. Military interventions, such as in Iraq in 2003, or more recently defending Ukraine against Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, were driven by realpolitik calculations but legitimized through a defence of human rights, democracy and international law.

After the attacks on 11 September 2001, at the peak of US unipolarity, President George W Bush infamously said ‘either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.’ The world was thus divided into ‘good’ and ‘evil’ revealing the ideological edifice through which US military and economic prowess and expansion were justified. [my emphasis] (2)

In looking at foreign policy, I find it often to be an effort to remember that just because an idea or structure or political arrangement is made because of some hardheaded geopolitical consideration doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea in itself. A structure of international law, or a “rules-based international order” is an important concept, goal, and practice. But, as Über-Realist John Mearsheimer would presumably say here, the current world system is in fact anarchic, i.e., there is no central deciding world structure that can impose a particular kind of order comparable to that of a nation-state. The UN is a step in the right direction but not a real world government.

This is a report from the British Channel 4 on the present state of things: (3)

Notes:

(1) Achcar, Gilbert (2025): History’s crossroads: Gaza or the failure of the West. Le Monde Diplomatique English June 2025. <https://mondediplo.com/2025/06/02gaza> (Accessed : 2025-28-05).

(2) Mansour, Renad (2025): Will the war in Gaza become a breaking point for the rules-based international order? Chatham House 01/26/2024. <https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/01/will-war-gaza-become-breaking-point-rules-based-international-order> (Accessed : 2025-28-05).

(3) Is Trump turning on Netanyahu - what it means for Gaza war. Channel 4 News YouTube channel 05/28/2025. <https://youtu.be/beO-K4Ouu-0?si=YM-hy_ZzuKwed-V3> (Accessed : 2025-28-05).