What has sectarianism done to societies?

Since 1948, the Arab peoples, especially the peoples of the Levant, have gone through two distinct and contradictory stages of political and moral immunity.

The first extended for half a decade, and despite the defeats, setbacks, and collapse of the Arab project, and the engagement in lame peace processes and partial normalization by the entity due to political realism or national selfishness, the peoples - specifically the peoples - fortified themselves with a firm position on the Palestinian issue and drew clear lines for themselves by which to distinguish a friend from a non-friend.

Half a century ago, education rates were lower, but people's consciences were alert and not penetrated by propaganda. In fact, peoples whose regimes engaged in secret and overt trade agreements and exchanges were more alert, cautious, aware, and resistant. The more the regime slipped toward rapprochement, the more the people's resistance increased. Even normalization was contingent on practical gains that would restore the land or curb the expansion of the entity and open future horizons for peace, even if only an illusion.

The second stage was most evident with the fall of Baghdad into the hands of the Iranian regime and the eradication of the features of the previous stage. It is the moment of the Iranian regime’s penetration and sectarianization of the Arab region, hijacking the Palestinian cause and supporting terrorist groups simply because they are Shiite, to kill and maim their people and neighbors first and last under the name of resisting the entity until the moral ceiling collapsed, the enemy was mixed with the friend, and priorities changed.

Today, there is no longer any meaning to the violation of Arab lands by the blood-stained and criminal entity. “What will happen will not be worse than what happened at the hands of Iran’s arms,” is the state of mind of those who have been burned by the fire of sectarianism in many Arab capitals.

Thanks to the curse of sectarianism and Iranian support, the entity has begun to boast that it is the least violent and that its wars are the most moral. Yes. They have zeroed out its crime counter with their crimes that no imagination can imagine.

Some people have begun to imagine that salvation will come in the form of the entity's bombs and missiles. The entity's propaganda is widespread, adopted by elites and promoted by ordinary individuals, Arabs and Muslims. As for normalization, it has become without compensation or political conditions and outside of any consideration of the Palestinian cause, but rather merely to contain the sectarian expansion and its ambitions in the rest of the Arab capitals.

Today, Arab capitals are devoid of any power, including diplomatic power, to curb this inferno. Even the opportunity to build peace through diplomatic means has been lost. The idea of establishing a Palestinian state has been erased from the political lexicon.

This is the result of decades of destroying the social fabric, igniting sectarian strife, and unleashing criminals who have an imaginary historical vendetta against fellow Muslims. All the countries of the Arab Levant have been afflicted by this plague, including Yemen, whose divided people think this way. Or if they are ashamed, they no longer care about how things will turn out.

Who would have imagined that Sana'a or Hodeidah would be bombed by the entity's aircraft without the anger extending from one end of Yemen to the other? The Houthis did it. They killed the people's rage on their land and mixed up their enemies and friends.

Today's broad banner in the Levant countries that have been cursed by the Iranian regime and the poison of its bitter sectarianism is gloating. This is the natural result of waging a national or nationalist battle with sectarian slogans and from outside the nation-state and at the expense of social peace and historical harmony.

Every sectarian expansion with blood, hatred, liquidation and displacement was the objective counterpart to the expansion of the entity and its encroachment. Here is the sectarian expansion shrinking faster than expected, spread by the tweets of the grieving women who were grieving over it, and leaving a vacuum filled by Netanyahu’s discordant voice and his boasting that there is no place in the Middle East that his entity’s hand does not reach.

(Author's Page)