Afrasianet - Oraib al, Rantawi - Two hypotheses that every reasonable mind and conscience must abandon in the foreseeable future: first, that Israel wants peace with the Arabs, even if it is part  of the "peace for peace" equation of lies. The second is that the United States and Israel do not read from the same page, that their divergent positions and priorities can be relied upon, and that the former can be invoked to restrain the latter.

Two facts, which have been revealed by the wars and battles that have been raging in the greater region since October 7, 2023, were first enshrined in Gaza and Lebanon, before they were reaffirmed in the twelve-day war against Iran, leading to Syria's territorial conquest, air, people, and national identity. Let's start with the last Syrian chapter.

Officially, the United States has shown surprising enthusiasm in its multi-episode series of openings to the transitional regime in Damascus.

Its head in Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said what he did not say to his closest allies and friends. The sanctions on Syria and Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham were lifted, in a move that the PLO did not enjoy after Oslo, and despite Oslo and its steps.

What Trump did not say, his friend who is most aware of the secrets of the region and its history, Thomas Barak, a businessman loaded with three suitcases: (ambassador in Ankara, in charge of the Syrian and Lebanese files), said what he said in the Sykes-Picot "satire", and aroused the nostalgia of Arab nationalists and Syrian social nationalists in particular, when he recalled the time of the "Levant", and threatened to return to it, if Lebanon continued its hesitation and hesitation on the issue of disarming Hezbollah, proposing to commit it to "Syria New Directions", which he appeared to have a central place in the new US strategy for the region and the new Middle East. 

For a moment, it seemed that Washington had succeeded in reining in Tel Aviv and pushing it to adopt its approach to "Syria after December 8"... Gideon Sa'ar's talk about the "Minorities Alliance" subsided, the threats to the new regime, which is called "terrorist" by Israel, and Israeli delegations began to meet with their Syrian counterparts in several capitals, secretly and publicly, directly or indirectly, leading to speculation and speculation about the nature and contents of the agreement that would lead to this path.

All this controversy and the assumptions that were internalized collapsed all at once, and in a horrific way, and it was proven that Israel is still on its strategy of fragmenting Syria and distributing it among tribes, sects, sects and nations, and that its desire to seize more lands, strategic peaks and water bodies has not been affected or retracted in the face of promises of peace and normalization, and that incidents that can remain within its narrow local borders are being taken as an opportunity to get all these black plans out of the drawers, as happened in Suwayda.

We thought that Israel, which had previously rejected the "land for peace" formula agreed upon by "Arabs, non-Arabs, Berbers and their contemporaries with greater power," was still adhering to a formula that Netanyahu himself had developed and repeatedly defended: "peace for peace."

The new Syrian leadership asked for nothing more than to enforce this equation, sent enough "goodwill"  messages and accepted a "harder" formula to restore the 1974 agreement, all of which did not work, with the fascist right-wing government.

All these promises, intentions, and messages of reassurance did not work for the nerds in the ghetto, the walls, and the "hatred of foreigners", so they suddenly revealed a new equation regulating their relations, not only with Syria, but also with the Arabs and their regional neighbors: "peace in exchange for surrender." "Peace for submission" unconditionally.

At this point in the development of the Israeli-Syrian scene, observers have turned their attention to Washington – its president and its envoy in particular – to monitor the effects of "divergent views" and measure "divergent priorities." Their disappointment was great, and even very great. Israel is destroying dozens of sovereign sites in the heart of Damascus, meters away from the offices of the president, in which Trump said that he is "young, kind, brave and strong", and threatens to turn Syria into an unbearable hell, and seeks to create the appropriate ground for Syrians to turn against each other and incite them against their new rule, in preparation for the creation of destruction, fragmentation and division, and the inauguration of the "Hundred Years' War" between the sects, sects and nations that make up the region.

No condemnation or condemnation, even at the verbal level that is devoid of any content, no blame on Israel of any kind, no warnings to stop its aggression against the new Syria, which the president has pledged to help it to help itself.. All there is to it is "misunderstanding and understanding", and statements expressing "optimism" that a ceasefire is imminent, just as they did in Gaza, during two full years of war of encirclement, starvation, intimidation, cleansing, and extermination. Thomas Barrack's statements on Sykes-Picot and the Levant remained vague. His recent statements underscored this approach, saying that the Syrian government must take responsibility and must be held accountable and that America has no influence over Israel'  s decisions.

He is fed up with the post-World War I maps and  the "industrialized" nation-states that emerged as a result of it, but of course, he is not a supporter of the "One Nation with an Eternal Message", nor is he a follower of Anton Saadeh's "Fertile Crescent and its Cypriot Star", he is reproducing the maps of his predecessors from the most extreme neoconservatives, who supported the idea of redrawing the maps of the region and demarcating its borders on the blood lines between sects, nations and sects.

In this sense, the man seems "right" in his satire of Sykes-Picot, which produced national and ethnic "mosaic states," evoking the "Levant," and giving Syria a central place in it.

But the question that did not concern us much: Which Syria is the man talking about? We now know that the man's eyes are fixed on a Sunni Syrian state, which will be the center of Sunni cities extending from the Mesopotamian basin to the eastern Mediterranean, while the rest of the regions and sects will punch objects that revolve in this orbit, or separate from it, depending on the developments in politics and the field.

The "centrality of the new Syria" in the perception of Barak and his companions stems from its ability to be a  buffer state between two large regional powers that have an "imperial legacy," ambitious and interventionist, and do not maintain an apparent affection for Israel.

The centralization of the Sunni state, which transcends borders, serves another goal: to push the rest of the sects and nations to look for their alternative futures, and to form belts of states and emirates that have no function other than to protect and strengthen Israel.

Barak did not develop his theory, or adopt the theories of others, in a vacuum. Ideologically and strategically, the man draws from a long legacy of a school of American right-wing conservative thinking.

In practice, he sees a deep movement that has been going on in the region for years, redefining the concepts of loyalty and belonging, replacing what is "vertical" such as loyalty to the state, for example, to what is "horizontal", transcending the borders of states, and bringing together members of races, religions and sects, even when they are distributed in several countries, to each other.

Such a thing is at the heart of the Zionist dream and occupies a strategic position in Tel Aviv, but Washington will not mind if the "neighborhood of the neighborhood" works to accelerate the birth of these distorted creatures, and if it disagrees with Tel Aviv, the dispute may be related to "rates and speeds."

Netanyahu, who understands only the option of "force" and "bullying," is in a hurry to give birth, racing against time to record gains in his personal credit, and has no political horizon or "soft tools" besides the option of force. Washington wants to reach the same goal, but more gradually, using diplomacy and the weapon of sanctions, to maintain some of its ties with its Arab and Turkish allies.

Washington, in a blatant division of roles with Tel Aviv, whether agreed upon or in order to "get the result," is striving to reap the fruits of Israeli bullying, after providing protection and all the elements of power and capability, and after a little "reproach" and "reproach."

Washington, in its subconscious and apparent mind, is fully aware that Israel is doing the job of bulldozing the D-9, which became famous in Gaza, in paving the roads for its strategic dreams, so that no one is deceived by the story of the differences between Netanyahu and Trump, or between Tel Aviv and Washington.

From Washington's perspective, and to a lesser extent Tel Aviv, the formation of the new Middle East is a continuous series of truces and compromises that separate one round of war and confrontation with opponents, all adversaries, and the road to it is paved with a series of wars and battles between wars, and in this sense, it is okay for Washington to engage in mediation and negotiations, and its leaders and messengers will continue to express their optimism about the imminence of reaching a truce here or a ceasefire agreement there, and the ropes of anesthesia and deception may extend for weeks and months, and for years if As long as the outcome is in Israel's favor, and as long as the gains increase with each advance made by the Merkava tank. 

In this context, agreements have been concluded in Gaza and Lebanon, with active American mediation: Whitkoff in Gaza, Hochstein in Lebanon, agreements that are designed to be violated, exclusively by Israel, with the support and commitment of Washington, and with the full adoption of the Israeli narrative and vision.

The ceasefire with Iran could be broken at any moment, and Washington will defend Israel and its right to defend itself, and it will conclude other agreements, on the same fronts or on other fronts, and all of them will be violated, and Washington will continue to justify the Israeli narrative, and its mediators will remain optimistic about the imminence of reaching new agreements and understandings.