'Devastating' Arab stalemate over what 'to do' about Gaza – Responsible Statecraft

Irreconcilable visions among Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf States, plus Israel and the US, condemn the Strip and its people to ruins
The latest round of Gaza ceasefire negotiations in Cairo encapsulates the agonizing paradox gripping the devastated enclave.
Even as Egyptian security sources signaled a "significant breakthrough" towards a long-term truce on April 28, and a Hamas delegation departed after "intensive talks," the familiar impasse quickly reasserted itself. Israeli officials promptly denied any progress, Qatari mediators confirmed advances but no agreement on ending the 18-month-old war, and Hamas reiterated its refusal to disarm – a non-negotiable point for Israel.

The flurry of diplomatic activity masks fundamentally irreconcilable visions for Gaza's future, not only between Israel and the Palestinians but, critically, among the key Arab states themselves. While mediators shuttle between capitals, Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pursues indefinite military control, buoyed by a seemingly permissive Trump administration.
Israel's position, articulated clearly by Netanyahu and his government, forms one pole of this impasse. The official war aims – destroying Hamas and freeing hostages – remain operationally contradictory, yet Israel's actions prioritize the former. Netanyahu explicitly rules out Palestinian Authority (PA) governance in Gaza and insists that Israel must maintain overarching security control "over the entire area west of the Jordan River," rendering any Palestinian state less than sovereign.
This stance is reinforced by far-right coalition partners pushing for mass displacement and the dissolution of the PA.
Against this hardline Israeli stance, the Arab world presents a fractured landscape of competing visions over Hamas and Gaza’s political future.

At the diplomatic nexus lies Egypt, performing a precarious balancing act. Driven by the existential fear of inheriting millions of displaced Palestinians – a nightmare scenario given historical traumas and the ongoing Sudanese refugee crisis – Cairo’s primary goal is stability and preventing demographic shifts. Its policy is thus pragmatic: despite President Sisi’s own history of crushing political Islam domestically, it maintains communication channels with Hamas, the de facto power it must deal with as mediator.

Egypt prioritizes reopening the Rafah crossing under Palestinian control to manage aid and facilitate the return of Gazans currently stranded in Egypt, where their legal status is precarious and they receive only limited support. Cairo’s ambitious $53 billion Gaza reconstruction plan, envisaging an interim technocratic committee excluding Hamas before a potential PA return, aimed to counter Trump's displacement scheme and preserve a path to Palestinian statehood. Yet, this plan floundered against Israeli rejection and U.S. indifference.
Egypt neverthless persists in mediation, seeking an elusive intra-Palestinian deal, but its leverage is constrained by regional rivalries and its own economic fragility.
In sharp contrast stands the United Arab Emirates (UAE), whose approach is shaped by an ideological commitment to eradicating political Islam and advancing its regional influence through the Abraham Accords framework. The UAE views Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, as an entity to be eliminated, not engaged. The UAE’s stance towards Hamas manifests primarily through stringent pre-conditions for reconstruction aid — which demand the group's exclusion from power, a position revealed more through diplomatic channels than public overtures.

Reports indicate the UAE actively lobbied the Trump administration to torpedo Egypt's reconstruction plan, deeming it too accommodating of Hamas. Central to the Emirati vision is Mohammed Dahlan, the former Fatah security chief in Gaza and Abbas rival exiled in Abu Dhabi. With a history of antagonism towards Hamas and close ties to the Emirati president, Mohammed bin Zayed, Dahlan represents the strongman figure the UAE hopes will govern a post-Hamas Gaza, potentially in coordination with Israel.
Despite Dahlan's minimal popularity among Palestinians, the UAE promotes him as a viable option, leveraging its financial muscle and Washington connections.
Jordan, bordering the West Bank and home to a large Palestinian population, views the crisis as an existential threat. The specter of mass displacement, the "alternative homeland" scenario long feared in Amman, is a red line uniting the monarchy, the opposition, and the public. King Abdullah II emphatically rejected Trump's resettlement proposals, despite facing the awkward pressure of a publicly televised White House meeting where Trump linked U.S. aid (already partially frozen) to Jordan's compliance.
Jordan navigates a treacherous path: upholding its U.S. alliance and its peace treaty with Israel while facing intense domestic anger over perceived complicity in Israeli actions and U.S. policy.

This pressure intensified after the opposition Islamic Action Front (IAF), the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, made significant gains in the 2024 elections. However, in April, potentially under pressure from Saudi Arabia and the UAE or seeking favour with Israel and the Trump administration, Jordan banned the Muslim Brotherhood, accusing it of plotting instability and raiding IAF headquarters. This crackdown aligns with Jordan’s own proposal to exile thousands of Hamas members and disarm the group to facilitate a PA return, combining its anti-displacement stance with a clear anti-Hamas position.

Qatar, meanwhile, plays a uniquely complex game. As Hamas's long-term host (since 2012, with U.S. acquiescence) and a key financial supporter of Gaza (often with past Israeli consent), Doha insists engagement with Hamas is indispensable for mediation and eventual peace. It leverages its position as host of the vital U.S. Al Udeid air base and Major Non-NATO Ally status to maintain influence in D.C. while simultaneously engaging Hamas – which Washington formally designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 1997 – and other U.S. adversaries, notably Iran, creating a delicate, high-stakes balancing act.

Its state-funded Al Jazeera network provides critical, albeit controversial, coverage of Gaza, drawing accusations from Israel of collusion with Hamas and leading to the outlet’s ban by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. While more open to Hamas's inclusion in the broader Palestinian political landscape compared to the UAE or Jordan, Qatar’s primary role remains that of a facilitator constrained by the conflicting demands it mediates.
Saudi Arabia firmly links any normalization with Israel to the establishment of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, vehemently rejecting Netanyahu’s inflammatory suggestion of creating a Palestinian state within Saudi territory. Its opposition to Iranian-backed militias like Hamas and Hezbollah aligns with its broader regional strategy favoring state institutions.

Saudi-owned media initially labeled Hamas leaders as "terrorists," but subsequently softened its tone, particularly after provocative remarks from Netanyahu and Trump regarding displacement.
This media shift, while not a formal policy change, suggests tactical flexibility. The Kingdom endorsed the Egyptian-led Arab League plan as a counter to Trump's proposals and maintains that lasting peace requires a two-state solution. Its position remains pragmatic: recognizing Hamas's spoiling power while insisting on its eventual disarmament and PA governance as part of a comprehensive settlement tied to Palestinian statehood.
Caught within this maelstrom are the Palestinians themselves. Hamas, though battered, demonstrates resilience, reportedly regrouping and prepared to continue fighting. Its leadership signals openness to ceding governance but maintains disarmament as a red line, which is unacceptable to Israel, the UAE, and Jordan. The PA under Mahmoud Abbas remains weak, plagued by internal divisions, perceived corruption, and a lack of legitimacy, exacerbated by Abbas's own vitriolic denunciations of Hamas, whom he recently called “sons of dogs.”
This deep Fatah-Hamas schism prevents the emergence of a unified leadership capable of commanding broad support, further complicating any "day after" scenario.
The endgame in Gaza is thus gridlocked by these competing, often contradictory, agendas. Egypt and Qatar mediate within tight constraints. Jordan defends its red line against displacement while now cracking down on Islamists at home, signaling disapproval of a future role for Hamas in Gaza. The UAE pursues a Dahlan-led, Hamas-free outcome aligned with its anti-Islamist drive.

Meanwhile, Israel, under a leadership perhaps politically invested in perpetual conflict, pursues military dominance and indefinite control. The United States under Trump offers inconsistent signals while failing to impose a coherent path forward. The result is a devastating stalemate, where irreconcilable visions condemn Gaza to ruins and its people to a future trapped between destruction and despair.

The photographs, television images and newspaper stories make it perfectly clear: there was an urgency, a frenzy even, as the U.S. Embassy in Saigon shuttered and its diplomats and staff were evacuated, along with other military, journalists, and foreigners, as well as thousands of Vietnamese civilians, who all wanted out of the country as the North Vietnamese victors rolled into the city center.
It was April 30, 1975 — 50 years ago today — yet the nightmare left behind that day only accentuated the failure of the United States, along with the South Vietnamese army, to resist a takeover by the communists under the leadership of the North. It was not only an extraordinarily bloody chapter for Vietnam (well over 1.5 million military and civilian deaths, depending on estimates, from 1965 to 1975), but a dark episode for America, too.
Beyond the failure of Washington’s Cold War policy — that intervening in Vietnam’s post-Colonial struggles for independence was necessary to prevent the “dominoes” of communism from tumbling across Southeast Asia — more than 55,000 Americans were killed. An untold number who returned suffered lifelong injuries, impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and illnesses and other symptoms due to Agent Orange and other toxic exposures.
The nation had been ruptured politically and socially over the war, a divide that one could say has never really healed.
Yet ironically, Washington’s proclivity to intervene in other countries’ affairs and to use military power as the first resort has only grown. It would seem the true lessons of Vietnam were left on that iconic rooftop from which the last helicopter left Saigon 50 years ago.
Some say after WWII, U.S. power and intervention has always maintained the global liberal order and that Vietnam was a “mistake” — a one-off. Others say it was a sign that the pretense of America as the "indispensable nation” was folly from the beginning, that the Cold War had blinded us to the realities of the world and the limits of military intervention.
So we asked experts, both in geopolitics and history, what they think:
Was the failure of Vietnam a feature or a bug of U.S. foreign policy after WWII?
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Andrew Bacevich; Greg Daddis; Carolyn Eisenberg; Morton H. Halperin; Steve Kinzer; Noah Kulwin; Robert Levering; Anatol Lieven; Daniel McCarthy; Robert Merry; Paul Pillar; Tim Shorrock; Monica Duffy Toft; Stephen Walt; Cora Weiss
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Andrew Bacevich, co-founder and Emeritus Board Chair of the Quincy Institute
The United States has yet to reckon fully with the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War. Why? Because American foreign policy elites have spent the last 50 years engaged in a concerted effort to evade their responsibility for that disaster. Their success in doing so helps explain the dubious record of U.S. policy since. Yesterday's mistakes become the basis for tomorrow's actions.
Greg Daddis, director of the Center of War and Society at San Diego State University, and board member at the Quincy Institute
Americans came home from World War II with a faith in their power — and, increasingly, in their responsibility — to maintain a stable international order in the wake of such a catastrophic global conflict. That faith was coupled with fears of a growing communist threat, a threat seemingly existential to policymakers and ordinary citizens alike. These universalizing fears, coupled with a faith in military power’s transformative capacities overseas, ultimately would lead the United States to embark upon its misguided Southeast Asian crusade. Yet this wasn’t a “one-off.” Throughout the Cold War, the American policy elite committed the nation to conflicts that, far from furthering U.S. national security interests, only brought death and misery to peoples abroad. They feared the potentially toxic mixture of self-determination and communism as emerging nations grappled with new identities in the postcolonial era. And they held faith, even in the face of contrary evidence, that war created a safer global environment in its destructive aftermath.
Carolyn Eisenberg, author of “Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia”
Lessons not learned. Absent a “truth commission” or some recognized official proceeding, the most egregious American attitudes and behaviors associated with the Vietnam War were never properly addressed. The conviction that the U.S. has a right to violently shape the internal life of foreign nations, that our “national security” depends on military dominance, and that lying to the public is a necessary feature of governance, never disappeared. Left intact was a governmental apparatus oriented to war, and procedures which anesthetized officials to the human costs of their decisions. Under the rubric of “complexity,” the sacrifice of millions of Asians and tens of thousands of American soldiers, became clouded for subsequent generations. And while adjustments were made, the habit of military intervention remained — from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere. We currently see its precipitate, from Democratic and Republican administrations, as the U.S. bombs Yemen, and enables Israel’s massacre of Palestinian children.
Morton H. Halperin is an American expert on foreign policy and civil liberties
The American military intervention in Vietnam and its failure was a bug and not a feature of U.S. foreign policy after WWII. In deciding whether to intervene in armed conflicts abroad in the period after World War II, the United States was guided by the Truman Doctrine which said that we would “support free peoples resisting subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure.”
This was a commitment to support local efforts not to replace them or to intervene in all conflicts. The United States stayed out of the Chinese civil war and ceded Soviet control of Eastern Europe while supporting the Greek and Korean resistance to communist control.
The disastrous American intervention in Vietnam should have taught us that we should only consider intervention when we are supporting people struggling for their freedom. This principle is key to understanding why the American intervention in Afghanistan was such a disaster and why we must help defend Ukraine.
Steve Kinzer, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs, Brown University
America’s war in Vietnam was not an aberration. It reflected a key fact of American history: domestic politics shapes our foreign policy. The United States refused to accept the 1954 Geneva accord that would have settled the Vietnam question peacefully. President Eisenhower feared that doing so would, as his press secretary James Hagerty put it, “give the Democrats a chance to say that we sat idly by and let Indochina be sold down the river to the Communists.” A decade later, Lyndon Johnson concluded that Congress would never approve his Great Society programs if he pulled troops out of Vietnam: “They won’t be talking about my civil rights bill or education or beautification. No, sir. They’ll be pushing Vietnam up my ass every time.”
Washington helped create the Cold War narrative that Americans came to accept. That narrative wound up limiting presidents’ ability to make difficult foreign policy decisions.
Noah Kulwin, writer and co-host of “Blowback” podcast
The U.S. war on Vietnam could not have ended in any way other than failure. The collapse of our South Vietnamese client; the strategic pointlessness of our air campaign; the breakdown of order among infantry, airmen and sailors; the arms industry gravy train; the list of causes is endless. But the striking resemblance between how that war failed and how wars since have failed must be observed. In Iraq, but most of all in Afghanistan. That the U.S. has lost wars in the same way for a half-century suggests a pattern — not an aberration.
Robert Levering, Executive Producer of “The Movement and the ‘Madman’”
I was of draft age during the Vietnam war. So, U.S. foreign policy was an intensely personal matter for me. I gradually became clear that I could not fight in an unjust and immoral war and decided to resist the draft and become a fulltime antiwar organizer. At the time, I thought the Vietnam war was just a horrible mistake. The Iraq and Afghan wars and the constant American involvement in conflicts throughout the world since then have convinced me otherwise. I now see the Vietnam war as only a symptom of America's systemic commitment to global military domination since World War II.
By chance, I've spent the last two weeks in Vietnam. I've been seeing the real-world implications. Among other things, I've seen the site of the My Lai massacre and a rehab center for children of the fourth generation of Agent Orange victims.
Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute
Tragically, the failures of the U.S. in Vietnam were due to persistent features of U.S. policymaking culture that contributed heavily to the disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and will, if not addressed, recur in future. The first is a failure to seriously study other countries. This led for many years to a disastrous blindness to the power of Vietnamese nationalism. Instead, you have ideological stereotyping, leading to a division of the world into giant blocs of friends and enemies, from the “Communist Bloc” through the “Axis of Evil” to today’s supposed “Alliance of Autocrats.” Finally, there is the unlovely combination of humanitarian rhetoric with brutal indifference to the lives of the real people on the ground that are the objects of U.S. strategy. Vietnamese, Cambodians, Central Americans, Africans, Kurds, Afghans and Iraqis have all been used in this way. Today, it is the Ukrainians’ turn.
Daniel McCarthy, vice president for the Collegiate Network at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Vietnam conflict was over as a war by the time I was born in the late 1970s, but during my lifetime the Vietnam era has never really ended. Neither the superficial success of the 1991 Persian Gulf War nor the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America’s own soil erased the Vietnam experience as the defining narrative of what it means for our country to go to war under modern conditions. All our wars are still Vietnams. Our Indochinese quagmire began with threat inflation — “domino theory” — and a refusal to acknowledge that we didn’t have enough support among the people we were trying to “save” to win a war against native opponents. Threat inflation, domino theories — the latest says that if Putin takes the Donbas, he’ll surely take Tallinn then Paris then London — and ignorance of local attitudes remain the hallmarks of U.S. interventionism today, as does the use of overwhelming firepower as a substitute for rather than a plausible means to victory. Vietnam syndrome has never been cured because our leaders persist in the same behaviors that brought it on half a century ago, and they reap the same results. With every war they renew the lessons of Vietnam.
Robert Merry, author of “Where they Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians”
America’s Vietnam misadventure was not a policy aberration but a natural and probably inevitable product of the country’s Cold War mentality. By January 1949 the West had won the war’s first phase, the struggle for Europe. The continent was now fortified against a Russian invasion. But a new era quickly emerged, characterized by East Bloc efforts to probe and drive against the vulnerable colonial flanks and strategic assets of the West, in China, Southeast Asia, Korea, Egypt, and wherever Western weakness was discerned. America took the bait, but not because its leaders were fools. They were being consistent with the country’s perception of the protracted struggle they faced. In many ways, though, it was a mug’s game, forcing upon America multiple challenges at once, of Soviet choosing. But in a bipolar world on the edge of conflict, such challenges had to be confronted. That leaves execution as the big question.
Paul Pillar, non-resident fellow of the Quincy Institute and non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University
The military tragedy in Vietnam grew directly out of attitudes central to the Cold War, the dominant framework of U.S. foreign policy in the half century following World War II. The Viet Minh/Viet Cong campaign was seen not for what it really was — the continuation of a nationalist, anti-colonial struggle — but instead as part of a worldwide communist advance led by Moscow and Beijing. That perception led to the erroneous assumptions underlying the U.S. military intervention, including that a communist victory would cause other countries to fall like dominoes and that a U.S. failure to show resolve in Vietnam would lead to other setbacks elsewhere in the world. The mistakes cannot be blamed on excessive optimism, since even those policymakers who held gloomy views about the intervention thought the U.S. had to make the effort. Nor can they be blamed on any shortcuts in the policymaking process.
Tim Shorrock, Washington-based journalist
The "failure of Vietnam," or what I would call the "liberation of Vietnam," was most definitely a feature of U.S. foreign policy that grew out of the aggressive Cold War tactics carried out by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations soon after World War II. This was especially true in Asia. To defeat anti-colonial, independence movements and ensure pro-American, anticommunist regimes, U.S. leaders allied themselves with a motley crew of fascists and collaborators with Japanese colonialism, starting with the far-right in Southern Korea and then Japan itself. That created the conditions for the Korean War against North Korea and Revolutionary China, which inspired Truman to block the Taiwan straits, send the first U.S. military aid to the French in Vietnam, and unleash the CIA as the cops of the world. Vietnam did not want to be part of a French or American empire. We were on the wrong side; they won.
Monica Duffy Toft, non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and Professor of International Politics at Tufts University
The failure in Vietnam was a feature — not a bug. American leaders have repeatedly failed to internalize history. In Vietnam — again in Afghanistan — they underestimated the power of nationalism and the resilience of guerrilla warfare. Since the rise of modern nationalism, strong states have increasingly struggled to defeat weaker opponents fighting for their homeland. These adversaries are often defending existential interests, while the United States tends to fight in peripheral theaters with few vital interests at stake. In Afghanistan, the U.S. achieved its core military objectives by December 2001 — destroying al-Qaida’s sanctuary and removing the Taliban from power. Yet rather than recognize success, the mission creeped into nation-building, committing the U.S. to 20 years of costly engagement. Vietnam and Afghanistan thus reflect a persistent flaw in U.S. strategy: conflating military victory with political transformation and the mistaken belief that foreign societies can be remade through prolonged and externally driven intervention.
Stephen Walt, board member at the Quincy Institute, Robert and Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School
Vietnam exemplifies most of the pathologies that have undermined U.S. foreign policy for decades. It was justified by threat-inflation and dubious ideas like the domino theory. U.S. policymakers were trying to use massive amounts of military force to remake a society whose history, culture, and national sentiments that they did not understand. They relied on corrupt and incompetent local clients, concealed basic truths about the war from the American people, and refused to raise taxes to pay for the war. The leaders who mismanaged this debacle were never held accountable and remained leading players in the establishment for the rest of their lives. Finally, the country learned little from this bitter experience, and repeated these same errors in Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other places.”
Cora Weiss, peace activist, organizer of the November 15, 1969 anti-war march on the National Mall
The U.S. government took on the mantle of political and military interventions after World War II. The decade long Vietnam War was one of many — not an aberration.
To diminish the likelihood and horrors of U.S. interventions, civil society must know and utilize its power. During the Vietnam War, in addition to marches to end the war, civil society provided some measure of direct relief to POWs. The anti-war movement sent me and two other women to work with the Vietnam Women’s Union to establish a channel for mail and packages to POWs. This resulted in an accurate list of prisoners, confirmed their treatment, and eventually allowed us to bring three prisoners home.
To constrain and eventually overturn America’s impulse to rule the world by force, we must put peace education into our curriculum, teach diplomacy, and embrace UNSC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security.
Soon after Syria experienced its Arab Spring uprising in 2011 and slid into a gruesome civil war, the country became a battleground for Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah supporting the former regime on one side, and Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey backing rebel groups on the other.
Since Bashar al-Assad’s ouster late last year, however, dynamics have shifted, transforming Syria into an arena of Turkish-Israeli competition. A major source of tension between Turkey and Israel stems from the former’s desire to see Syria emerge as a strong, unitary state with a Turkey-oriented government in Damascus while the latter wants Syria permanently weak and divided along ethno-sectarian lines.
The Israeli government’s perspective is that Turkey’s growing clout in post-Ba’ath Syria poses a grave threat to the Jewish state. At the start of this year, an Israeli government committee that assesses regional security issues put out a report warning that Syria’s new Sunni Islamist authorities might pose a graver threat to Israeli security than Syria did under Assad. The committee considered the possibility of the new Damascus government becoming a "proxy" of Ankara, citing “Turkey’s ambition to restore the Ottoman Empire to its former glory.”

Israel began bombarding Damascus and other parts of Syria, while also illegally usurping more Syrian land past the Golan Heights, in the immediate aftermath of the former regime’s collapse nearly five months ago.
Then late last month and at the start of this month, Israeli military operations struck Syrian bases in which Ankara had indicated interest following much talk about Turkey formalizing a military alliance with post-Ba’ath Syria. Ultimately, Israel wants to prevent a future in Syria where Ankara acts as Syria’s security guarantor and can effectively deter the Israelis from carrying out bombing or ground attacks on Syrian territory at will, which has been happening since Assad’s ouster, and was also taking place to a significant degree during Assad’s final years in power.
The Israelis have gone as far as lobbying Washington to support a Russian military presence in the country to serve as a bulwark against Turkish influence.
“Israel saw an opportunity and a power vacuum in Syria after Assad, launching numerous airstrikes and even attempting ground incursions. It also tried to stir up minority groups like the Druze and Kurds to keep Syria fragmented and weak,” explained Dr. Mustafa Caner, an assistant professor at Sakarya University Middle East Institute, in an RS interview.
“In this context, Israel views Turkey as a threat, because Turkey has made it clear that it will not accept a divided and weakened Syria. In this picture, Turkey acts as a balancing force against Israel.” Despite there being a possibility of the tensions between Turkey and Israel playing out on Syrian soil escalating into a direct state-to-state confrontation, many experts see that as unlikely.
On April 9, Turkish and Israeli officials met in Azerbaijan for talks aimed at bringing Turkey and Israel to a common understanding on Syria’s security landscape. The discussions centered on the establishment of a “deconfliction channel” to reduce the risks of the two powers entering a direct confrontation on or over Syrian territory.
“At this stage, I absolutely do not expect a conflict [between Turkey and Israel],” Dr. Pinar Dost, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and an associate researcher with the French Institute for Anatolian Studies, told RS.
"During the nearly 14-year-long civil war, similar mechanisms were established between many countries that supported opposing groups, such as Turkey-Russia, Turkey-U.S., and Russia-Israel. A similar mechanism is likely to be established between Israel and Turkey.”
Dr. Karim Emile Bitar, a lecturer in Middle East Studies at Sciences Po Paris, shares this assessment that a direct military confrontation will probably not erupt. However, he stressed that “the proxy wars in Syria are not over yet” and that the combination of “Israeli overreach” and a “growing Turkish appetite” increases the risk of “growing fragmentation” of an already weak Syria as its more powerful neighbors compete for influence on its soil.
"As the old African proverb says, ‘When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.’ Lebanon historically was always the grass. Now Syria is becoming the grass," said Bitar.
While tensions between these two U.S. allies over the “New Syria” remain hot, Washington is a center of gravity. The Trump administration has signaled its determination to pull Turkey and Israel back from their hostilities.
"When we consider that the U.S. plans to withdraw its troops by the end of the year [and] is imposing an agreement between the [Syrian Democratic Forces] and Damascus, and Turkey’s efforts to form an anti-ISIS coalition with Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, the picture becomes quite clear," Dost said.
"As it withdraws from Syria, the U.S. government would like to leave behind an environment where its allies can reach an understanding. It will also want to ensure normalization between Israel and Syria before leaving," she added.
During the Trump-Netanyahu Oval Office meeting on April 7, Trump praised Turkey for its role in the Assad regime’s collapse and spoke of his “very, very good relationship” with Erdogan.
"I happen to like [Erdogan], and he likes me … and we've never had a problem," said Trump, who signaled to Netanyahu his belief that Israel’s problems with Turkey will remain under control and even offered to mediate between the two. Trump told the Israeli prime minister that he must be “reasonable” in Syria when it comes to issues with Ankara.
“In my view, when Trump spoke positively about Turkey’s strong role in Syria and told Netanyahu to ‘be reasonable,’ it was a warning to Israel that it had gone too far in its actions there. This amounted to an acknowledgment of Turkey as a balancing power. Netanyahu was not pleased but had no choice but to accept it,” Caner said.
“Trump essentially told Netanyahu to respect Turkey’s priorities and positions. It's hardly necessary to state how much Israel relies on U.S. backing, so Trump’s warning was intended to put the brakes on Israel’s activities in Syria — and I believe it will,” he added.
Recognizing Trump as a “leader who speaks the language of power,” Dost noted his respect for Erdogan’s “success in bringing about change in Syria” but she does not believe that issues concerning Ankara’s role in post-Assad Syria will fuel much tension between the White House and Netanyahu’s government. In Dost’s opinion, the real issue is Washington’s diplomatic engagement with Iran on the nuclear file with ongoing talks set to continue in May.
“In his meeting with Netanyahu, Trump effectively scored two goals against him: first, by announcing plans to negotiate with Iran, and second, by praising Turkey and President Erdogan for more than two minutes. These were major blows, and Netanyahu will have a hard time overcoming them. As a result, I don't think Israel can act as recklessly as before, and it certainly cannot afford a direct confrontation with Turkey,” Caner said.
The people of South Sudan are once again forced to flee their homes and endure severe hunger as the country is on the brink of civil war. The escalating violence and skyrocketing tensions between leaders in South Sudan threaten the country's stability and regional security and risk worsening the humanitarian crisis.
President Salva Kiir’s recent detention of the country’s main opposition leader, Vice President Riek Machar, and his aides is raising fears of military clashes and violence across the country between the national force (SSPDF) and the military wing of Machar's party (SPLM/A-IO).
On March 18, in response to the detention of its officials and the deployment of Ugandan forces, the SPLM/A-IO announced the immediate suspension of its participation in key security mechanisms established under the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS). Conversely, the government accused Machar of plotting a rebellion to disrupt peace and upcoming elections. The United Nations issued multiple warnings that South Sudan is on the verge of civil war and urged all sides to uphold the peace agreement.
Tensions have been building between the factions for months, with Kiir dismissing several officials from SPLM/A–IO without consultation. Furthermore, Kiir’s move to appoint businessman Benjamin Bol Mel as his successor, sidelining allies and the opposition, has further escalated tensions. Bol Mel has been on the U.S. sanctions list since 2017 for his role in government corruption.
The most recent outbreak of violence erupted on March 4, when the White Army, a youth militia loyal to Machar, seized control of Nasir, a town in oil-rich Upper Nile State, following intense fighting with government forces. The White Army militia also attacked a U.N. helicopter, which resulted in the killing of 28 SSPDF soldiers and one U.N. crew member.
In response, government forces launched air strikes on civilian areas with barrel bombs. The U.N. says the attacks killed 180 people, injured over 250, and caused at least 125,000 people to flee the area. The deployment of the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) to support Kiir and the government further worsened the security situation as it violated the U.N. arms embargo, while the opposition charges that it is taking part in airstrikes and attacks in Upper Nile State.
The current situation carries similarities to early warning signs seen before the 2013-2018 conflict, such as accusations of attempted coups, violent clashes, a rise in misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech, both sides mobilizing people for confrontation, and the involvement of foreign forces.

Political strife between Kiir and Machar dates back to pre-South Sudan independence in 2011 and comes from two main conflicting tribes in South Sudan, Kiir from the Dinka and Machar from the Nuer. Both were key figures in the Sudan People Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), a rebel movement founded and initially led by John Garang (Dinka), which fought with Khartoum for independence.
However, leadership styles and differences in movement visions caused tension between Garang and Nuer colleagues, resulting in the infamous “1991 split” and the formation of the Nuer-dominated SPLM-Nasir faction. Machar ascended to vice president after his 1997 peace deal with the Sudanese government, which deepened tensions with Kiir and his allies. Both groups are accused of committing grave human rights violations in South Sudan.
Furthermore, lack of effective governance, corruption, unaddressed grievances and the ongoing competition for control over South Sudan’s resources and military forces are reasons for political deadlock that fuels violence.
A democratic election, as agreed in the 2018 peace deal, has been postponed multiple times. And given the ongoing political crisis, it’s unlikely there will be one any time soon.
Meanwhile, the war in Sudan between the Sudanese military under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti” has significantly impacted South Sudan.
The conflict led to the destruction of key oil infrastructure in Khartoum, cutting off South Sudan’s primary source of income. Initially, President Kiir aligned himself with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). However, as the RSF gained control over major oil facilities, Kiir realigned his support toward the RSF and its key sponsor, the UAE, to restore the flow of oil and gold crucial to South Sudan’s economy. This strained his relations with Al-Burhan and SAF.
Conversely, SAF might have reactivatedits ties with Machar and SPLA-IO after Kiir and RSF grew closer. This suspicion is strengthened by reports indicating that the SPLA-IO has received weapons and other forms of support from SAF. Moreover, the recent fightingbetween SPLA-IO and RSF in Upper Nile and Blue Nile states signals a move by SAF to prevent RSF/SPLA-N movements in the border area and to squeeze them out of areas on the border with South Sudan.
The proxy war between South Sudan and Sudan, fueled by each government's support for opposing militias threatens to destabilize both nations and the Horn of Africa further, undermining already fragile peace processes. It could risk a full-scale conflict that could drag both countries into a direct war. In addition to Sudan, other neighboring countries like Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya face the prospect of increased refugee flows, cross-border insecurity, and economic disruption.
The U.N., the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the African Union, regional leaders, the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway, as well as the European Union, have all called the South Sudanese leaders to de-escalate the crisis, release detained officials, recommit to peace, and resolve issues through dialogue.
Meanwhile, the recent U.S. aid cut will likely have severe impacts on the humanitarian crisis, weaken peacebuilding efforts, and diminish American influence and commitment. Instead of scaling back, Washington should combine diplomatic pressure on political leaders with consistent support for civilian protection and long-term peacebuilding initiatives. At the same time, it must ensure that aid is used appropriately and not diverted toward corrupt activities.
Furthermore, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) must take all necessary actions to increase its protection of civilians in Juba, Bentui, and Malakal and establish temporary operating bases in conflict and high-risk areas in Western Bahr-el-Ghazal state, Western Equatoria state, Unity state, Jonglei state and in Upper Nile state, particularly in, Akobo, Nasir, Ulaang, and Longochuk. In addition, the U.N. Security Council and African Union should urge warring parties to immediately end unlawful attacks on civilians and to recommit to the peace agreement.

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