Benjamin Netanyahu spreads a map of the Middle East out over a table dripping blood, dividing countries, drawing borders and distributing populations as he pleases. He has always been obsessed with a vision of himself as "King of Israel", which in his view, designates him as the rightful heir to the whole region - an inheritance bestowed by mountains of historical lies, steeped in the delusions and myths of religious Zionism.
Netanyahu doesn't just control the Middle East geographically and demographically; he is now also in charge of allocating the rich natural resources of the region; bestowing gas deals onto those he is pleased with and deems worthy of receiving his patronage, while dishing out administrative roles to those he see as suitable to manage the lands he intends to occupy.
He confidently announces that he will liberate Gaza from Hamas, and that its administration will be entrusted to those Arab states who pose no threat to Israel. Then comes the announcement of the biggest gas export deal in Israel's history ($35 billion), signed between Tel Aviv and Cairo. Immediately upon its signing, Egyptian official media pundits busy themselves berating and attacking the Palestinian resistance, declaring it responsible for the destruction of Gaza, the mass murder of its people and their ethnic cleansing.
Then, the crazed ceiling of Arab-Zionist madness rises even further, with the resistance factions suddenly depicted as foreign and alien entities to both Palestine and the region. This demented frenzy of pro-Israeli propaganda coincides with raucous celebrations hailing the Egyptian government's success in securing the gas deal, which will apparently bring wellbeing, prosperity and growth to Egypt.
The Arab regimes seem to have submitted to Netanyahu's delusions, falsehoods and myths, and it is as though he has been recast as the "true and authentic master" of the Middle East, while all others are newfangled creations and imitations; incomers to the region.
If this isn't the case, then what is the rational explanation for Egypt's carnival of joy at the deepening of collaboration with the Occupation in the field of energy?
Moreover, what is the logic that pushes Lebanese officialdom to place its neck, smilingly and willingly, while lauding its own success, in the hands of the US administration, whose orientation and goals appear to be even more Zionist than Israel's own?
What is it that compelled that land of resistance, that used to be called "Lebanon – the Land of Dignity", receive the American proposal as though it were sacred scripture freshly descended from heaven, and to declare that resistance is a vice and a sin, and that raising a weapon in the face of the enemy will bring ruin on the country, and that there is no choice other than to carry out every one of Netanyahu's orders and wishes in order for Lebanon to be able to live under the wing of an Israeli Middle East?
What could justify Syria's silence in the face of Israel's daily violations against its sovereignty, as well as the annexation of more of its land alongside the occupied Golan Heights, alongside its claims to be the guardian and protector of Suweida and its people?
Furthermore, what explains the Gulf states' lavish outpouring of massive investments into Trump's administration - which is connected to the Zionist occupation by an umbilical cord which renders the two entities indivisible - whilst the people of Gaza are being deliberately starved to death?
What is it that makes Egypt's official and media circles see dropping aid from the air - on Netanyahu's orders and with his permission - to crash down on Palestinian heads, as a military and political victory which confirms its leading position in the struggle for the Palestinian cause? And what calculation is it that deems the passage of a few lorries through the Karem Abu Salem crossing - which Israel controls absolutely - a heroic act, while the Egyptian-Palestinian Rafah crossing has been effectively barred to the Egyptian authorities, by Israel?
It is evident that there has been a total Arab surrender in the face of the phase we are entering. I would call this the phase of "ripping up the maps, erasing the borders and dissolving the boundaries", in the manner dreamt up by Shimon Peres over a quarter of a century ago, when he drew up a map of the New Middle East, in the wake of Camp David (1978), then Oslo (1993).
This was the vision he outlined in his most famous book, The New Middle East, in which he mused on the inevitability of one shared project which would be participated in by Israel and the Arab states, calling on the region to liberate themselves from the chains of history and geography, and to join in the Zionist vision for the region.
Who could have imagined that Peres' dreams of old would not suffice to quench the hunger of the new Israel after a quarter of a century - and that what Netanyahu would achieve on the ground would surpass the worst nightmares of the Arab peoples and go beyond the first Zionists' dreams?
We have reached a moment in which Mustafa Al-Fiqi (former secretary to Hosni Mubarak and current associate of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi) can say, without batting an eyelid, in the first months of the Zionist aggression on Gaza: "We don't want anything to disturb the calm of the region and coexistence with Israel," and then add in a television interview: "Taboos take generations [to disappear], and God-willing, your grandchildren will deal with Israeli grandchildren in love and harmony in a different Middle East… God-willing".
Wael Kandil is an Egyptian author and journalist, and former editor-in-chief of Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
Follow him on Twitter @waiel65
This is an edited article from our Arabic edition. To read the original article click here.
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