On the impossible - Roger Cohen in NYT:

‘From the rubble and the ruin, the torture and the terror, the dust and the debris, something is stirring in the Middle East, a spirit that says no to endless cycles of violence and values a future for the region’s children above past feuds.
This sentiment is tenuous, contested and vulnerable. But with more than a half-million killed in Syria’s 13-year civil war and 70,000 Palestinians killed in the two-year Gaza war, alongside close to 2,000 Israelis, exhaustion is widespread. Shun retribution, murmur the war-weary, and think again.
“There is no other solution but finding a solution,” said Hassan Smadi, 48, a hospital worker in the battered southern Syrian town of Busra. He lost a younger brother, killed in the relentless bombing by Bashar al-Assad, the dictator ousted last year; his family fled to Jordan. “We are tired of war and bored of war, and want only to live peacefully.”’

(…)

‘The United States responded to the killing of two U.S. soldiers and an American interpreter this month by hitting the Islamic State in Syria with punishing airstrikes that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called “a declaration of vengeance.”’

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‘For now, the regime in Iran is not looking much beyond its own survival. Its relative inaction may offer some breathing space for those looking to turn away from endless rounds of conflict, even if the Iranian nuclear program is diminished but not dead, and may one day again be the target of Israeli and American military action.’

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‘“The biggest change in mind-set is probably needed in Israel,” said Anne-Claire Legendre, the top Middle East adviser to President Emmanuel Macron of France. “During two years of violence, the Egyptian peace deal held. The Jordanian peace deal held. The Abraham Accords with the Emirates held. It’s striking! So why would Israel not consider other deals and adopt an approach of greater confidence?” Just this past week, Israel agreed to a $35 billion deal with Egypt under which it will provide natural gas, boosting economic ties in a relationship that came under extreme strain during the Gaza war.’

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‘For the first time in more than a half-century, Syria is not part of a bloc — Soviet, Russian or Iranian — that makes it inherently hostile to the West. This is a Middle Eastern sea change.
Over 10 days in Syria in November, I traveled through dozens of checkpoints once used by the Assad regime to collect prisoners or bribes. Not once was I stopped.
The joyous celebrations this month of the toppling of the Assad regime a year ago were a measure of a nation’s liberation and of wide support for the new leader.’

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‘Bishara Bahbah, a Palestinian American businessman who has helped mediate between the Trump administration and the Palestinian leadership, said there was a “push” from the United States and Europe for the release of Marwan Barghouti, the revered Palestinian leader serving life sentences in Israel for murder and membership in a terrorist organization.
Mr. Barghouti is consistently identified in the West Bank and Gaza as someone with a unique capacity to unite the Palestinian movement for a state. For this reason, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel seems certain to resist his release.
The Trump administration has offered strong support to Mr. Netanyahu, but it is tempered.
Mr. Trump, who will meet Mr. Netanyahu in the coming days in Florida, has never, as president, been clear on whether he supports a two-state outcome. Still, Article 19 of his 20-point Gaza peace plan speaks of one day attaining “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.” These are cautious words. But they mention a Palestinian state and reflect the fact that Mr. Trump’s support of Israel is offset by particular closeness to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf States. If Mr. Trump wants his deal to hold, he will find it hard to ignore his Arab friends’ demands.
“There is no security or stability for the Middle East without a Palestinian state,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, said this month.’

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‘our years after the Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli war of 1973, the unthinkable happened: Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, addressed the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem. A right-wing Israeli leader, Menachem Begin, who had vowed to retire to a settlement in the Sinai Peninsula, ceded that land in exchange for peace with Egypt. The agreement was signed in 1979.
Mr. Gorenberg, the Israeli author, recalls sitting in a Jerusalem cafe and hearing the announcement of Mr. Sadat’s impending visit. “If Orson Welles had repeated his famous broadcast in 1938 announcing that the Martians had landed, it would have been more credible,” he said.
Given the great well of hatred that persists across the region, any rational argument would probably conclude that Mr. Trump’s “historic dawn” of peace across the region will be stillborn, like so many attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian and other conflicts. Nobody can any more imagine Mr. Barghouti addressing the Knesset than they could Mr. Sadat.
Yet, among the ruins of Syria, the words of the great Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi are often repeated: “If the people have the will to live, then fate must obey.” It was another poet, Victor Hugo, who wrote: “Nothing is more imminent than the impossible.”’

Read the article here.

Who knows, the impossible is imminent, and the impossible for a change is not another war with the newest weapons.

In the meantime, the empire preaches peace and the doctrine of vengeance, what else can an empire do?

Maybe the believers in messianism will give up their messianism in return for peace (and a Palestinian state, what kind of state, where exactly?) – but we should follow Victor Hugo. The impossible is imminent. If not this year, next year.