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Russia’s Northern Sea Route (NSR) along its Arctic coastline has, for centuries, been as much a dream as a reality. The coastal corridor is a chance to cement Russia’s place as a polar energy superpower, and the presence of unexploited reserves of resources, the keeper of a possibly vital global artery. Yet the NSR’s story in the 21st century is not simply about ambition. It is about a paradox; two forces pushing in opposite directions. One force is geopolitical. A tightening of Western sanctions has cut Russia off from Western capital, technology, and partners that once underpinned its Arctic rise. The other is environmental: climate change. The melting of the sea ice at unprecedented rates is lengthening the navigable season and giving Russia a window of opportunity in the high north. Together they create a strange, almost theatrical tension – a stage where climate change is opening new Arctic pathways even as geopolitics seems to be closing them. This article traces how Moscow has adapted awkwardly at times and creatively at others to this paradox. The question is not whether Moscow still wants to realise the NSR’s promise. It does. The question is whether it can, and if so, at what cost. The answer lies in how Russia has substituted partners, improvised workarounds, looked inwards for domestic substitutions and leaned on risky logistics to keep its Arctic ambitions alive. The years after 2007 (to capture the pre-sanctions baseline and the waves of sanctions that followed), when Russia planted a titanium flag on the seabed at the North Pole, tell a story of Russia’s NSR adaptation, dependency, and resilience under constraint. The NSR’s economy runs on the same plumbing that moves everything from coffee to crude: finance, insurance, classification societies, maritime services, and high-end technology. When Western governments began sanctioning Russia over Crimea in 2014, the sanctions did not simply target individuals or issue symbolic bans. They went for the “nodes” in the global economy that Russia’s Arctic projects depended upon. This is a textbook case of weaponised interdependence. The theory explains how states that control critical financial and technological chokepoints in an interconnected global order can turn global connectivity into leverage. The effect was immediate. U.S. export controls banned Arctic offshore oil exploration technology, freezing ventures like ExxonMobil’s Kara Sea project. European and American banks withdrew. Insurers cancelled coverage for Russian vessels, and the International Association of Classification Societies expelled Russia’s maritime register. Without classification, many Russian-controlled ships lost their safety certificates and lost access to ports and insurance altogether. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine supercharged this process. Energy giants such as Exxon,  and Halliburton left Russia’s Arctic. Sanctions extended to almost every aspect of maritime trade. International Protection & Indemnity (P&I) clubs refused Russian risks, and the exodus of foreign expertise left Russia’s Arctic sector without many of the specialised tools it had once imported. In essence, sanctions acted as a structural stress test on Russia’s Arctic political economy, which raised financing costs, choking technology transfer, and narrowing partnership options for both upstream oil and gas exploration and midstream shipping and processing. Yet, the sanctions did not halt Arctic operations altogether. By 2023, the NSR cargo carried record volumes along the route. The moved cargo was roughly around 38 million tonnes of goods in 2024. This cargo was almost entirely Russian oil, gas, and minerals headed to Asia. The international shipping firms that had once dreamed of using the NSR as a global transit lane were seemingly gone. What remained was a “Russified” corridor: an export pipeline to friendly markets, sealed off from most of the world. Sanctions forced Russia to find replacements for Western finance, expertise, equipment, and markets. The most obvious substitute was China. The two countries already had growing energy ties, and after 2014, Beijing stepped in where the West stepped out. Chinese state banks provided roughly $12 billion in loans after Western financing dried up for Yamal LNG, the Arctic’s first LNG megaproject. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) took a 20% stake in the project in 2013, and the Silk Road Fund took another 9.9% in 2016. Chinese shipyards supplied modular components, and by late 2017, the project was completed on schedule despite the constraints. This model, to replace Western inputs with Chinese ones, was carried over to Arctic LNG 2 on the Gydan Peninsula. CNPC and CNOOC each took 10% stakes by 2019, and Chinese yards again won construction contracts. A secondary interdependence formed: Chinese capital, shipbuilding, and market demand for LNG in exchange for Russian resources and Arctic access. But this substitution came with a catch. The relationship was asymmetric interdependence. Russia now relies far more on China than China does on Russia. For Moscow, the NSR and Arctic LNG capacity are strategic lifelines and Russia, under sanction, cannot so easily diversify its partners. But Beijing has other suppliers; the NSR is optional for Chinese trade. Beijing has used that leverage with a light but unmistakable touch by pressing for sanctions carve-outs and pausing when penalties threaten its global financial and commercial interests. When Washington sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 in late 2023, Chinese firms froze participation. CNPC and CNOOC invoked force majeure, and Wison (a Chinese manufacturer of LNG modules) recalled shipments and stopped work altogether. By 2023, roughly 95% of NSR transit cargo was bilateral Russia–China trade, mostly Russian oil moving east. When China pulled back, Moscow protested mildly; when Western firms did the same, the rhetoric was far harsher. The imbalance was clear. The NSR had become a lifeline for Russia, but only one option among many for China. Alongside external partnerships, Moscow sought to fill the gaps domestically. The flagship is the Zvezda shipyard in the Russian Far East, which was meant to deliver a homegrown fleet of Arctic-class tankers and LNG carriers. Initially a joint venture with South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries, Zvezda lost access to many suppliers after 2022. Building the specialised Arc7 LNG tankers proved harder than planned, and delays created a shipping shortfall. So, Moscow improvised at sea. The workaround was a fleet few had anticipated: the so-called “shadow fleet.” These are ageing, often 20-year-old tankers. Reflagged under flags of convenience to Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands, they sail without reputable insurance or up-to-date safety certification. After the EU banned Russian oil imports and the G7 imposed a price cap, Russia’s traders bought up and reactivated such ships. Some sail with AIS trackers off, earning them the nickname “floating time bombs” from former NATO commander James Stavridis. Regulators noticed. NATO began monitoring the dark fleet in 2023. The UK and Denmark tightened port inspections earlier; by mid-2025, Norway ordered inspections of all foreign tankers using its ports that had been involved in Russian Arctic trade. The cat-and-mouse is literal: AIS “spoofing,” loitering near transhipment points like Murmansk, and identity-masking tactics have all proliferated. The objective is simple – keep exports moving despite Western control over finance and insurance chokepoints. The method is naturally costly and risky. The environmental risks are also obvious, especially in Arctic waters. Yet by 2023, this shadow fleet had helped Russia stage a dramatic comeback on the NSR. Transit cargo, which had collapsed to around 41,000 tonnes in 2022,  hit a record 2.1 million tonnes in 2023, much of it oil to China. Of the 75 transit voyages (the most ever in a season) that year, 59 were in ships over 10 years old, and nearly 40% in vessels over 20. Three voyages were made by ships with no ice classification at all, possible only during the mildest late-summer window. This is resilience under constraint in action: maintaining volumes, but through seemingly riskier, costlier, and less sustainable logistics. The paradox deepens when nature itself becomes a player. The Arctic is warming roughly four times faster than the global average, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. This is thinning and shrinking its sea ice. Late-summer ice extent has declined by about 12% per decade, and the September ice volume is almost half of what it was in 1980. In a warm year like 2020, the NSR can see up to 88 ice-free days, extending the season well into October. The distance savings are tempting. After the 2021 Suez blockage, Moscow pitched the NSR as the more sustainable and safer,  with President Vladimir Putin setting targets of 80 million tonnes of cargo by 2024 and 130 million by 2035. Russia invested in infrastructure to shape the Arctic in its favour.  Chief among those investments is the series of nuclear icebreakers in the LK-60Ya class, intended to widen and lengthen the navigable seasonal window. Variability is the Arctic’s constant. In 2021, an early freeze trapped more than 20 ships in the Laptev Sea. A single harsh season or geopolitical flare-up could, according to one modelling study, cost up to $10 billion by closing the route for a year. Wind and currents can push ice into chokepoints, while storms and fog add further hazards. The message: averages entice; outliers punish. Major shipping companies remain unconvinced. The IMO’s Polar Code demands expensive safety upgrades, and giants like CMA CGM have sworn off the NSR, citing environmental and reliability concerns. Arctic shipping is feasible but rarely profitable for time-sensitive cargo under current conditions. In effect, climate change is lengthening the season but not guaranteeing it. Warm years can soften the impact of sanctions by enabling marginal ships to sail; cold years can erase those gains overnight. Moscow treats most of the route as water where it can write its rules with Russian regulations. The legal scaffolding rests on UNCLOS Article 234. The clause gives coastal states extra authority over ice-covered waters to protect the environment and, in places, on claims of historic usage through narrow straits. That interpretation has teeth. In 2019, Russia demanded advance notice from foreign warships before NSR transits. In 2023, Russia proposed stretching that notice to 90 days. The counter-view in Western capitals is blunt: key passages function as international straits with transit rights. Call it legal geopolitics. The idea that in contested spaces, law becomes an instrument of statecraft. With Western commercial presence all but gone since 2022, there have been few real-world tests of those competing claims. The ambiguity persists. So does the risk of friction if NATO navies decide to test freedom-of-navigation in the high north. The Arctic Council was built to keep geopolitics off the ice. War changed that. In early 2022, seven of eight members (everyone but Russia) paused participation, sidelining Russia’s chairmanship. Work resumed later that year without Russia; when Norway took the chair in 2023, that format stuck. The result: a governance gap where the Council once supplied common ground on search-and-rescue, spill response, and scientific cooperation. Into that gap have flowed unilateral and minilateral moves: EU sanctions to enforce oil price caps, national inspections of suspect tankers, NATO’s higher Arctic profile, and Russian military investments through the Northern Fleet. Moscow has doubled down on bilateralism, notably with China under a “Polar Silk Road” banner. Remove a pan-Arctic consensus, and states start to read the NSR less as a shared commercial asset and more as a strategic corridor. As long as the Council stays divided and the law stays fuzzy, the NSR looks less like a future global lane and more like a national project under duress. One under-appreciated dynamic is how weather and policy interact. A warm, low-ice year can partially offset sanctions by letting Russia move more cargo with sub-optimal ships and fewer partners. A harsh ice year can erase those workarounds; no amount of reflagging gets a thin hull through new ice without icebreakers. 2023 offered mild late-summer conditions and newly assembled logistics. Hence, the record season. 2021 offered an early freeze that embarrassed seasoned operators. Climate acts as the swing variable in Russia’s resilience equation. Targets mirror the tension. 80 million tonnes by 2024 proved aspirational as sanctions deepened and ice conditions fluctuated. The reset to 130 million by 2035 admits the need for a longer runway. More LK-60Ya icebreakers, more Arc7 hulls, more trans-shipment capacity, and, crucially, more reliable partners. The Zvezda bet may pay off, but replacing the full Western stack in the form of financing, kit, and specialised metallurgy takes time that geopolitics rarely grants. The shadow fleet moves oil, but at a cost. Older hulls, opaque ownership, weak insurance, and AIS dark zones each raise the chance of an incident. The high north does not forgive. A significant spill by an unclassed or uninsured vessel could slam shut political windows that the climate has opened. Every accident, real or narrowly avoided, argues for more scrutiny. For non-Russian shippers, reputational and compliance risk is decisive. The safety problem is moral, ecological and financial. Insurance premiums, capital costs, and compliance burdens spike when standards look variable and enforcement is vigilant. If the NSR is to attract rather than deter global carriers, four shifts stand out. The first is stable multilateralism. A thaw in Arctic Council politics that restores full eight-member cooperation on search-and-rescue, spill response, and scientific collaboration would reduce risk premiums. Without it, patchwork national rules and military signalling will continue to overshadow commercial priorities. The second is legal clarity. Narrowing the gap between Russia’s interpretation of Article 234 and Western views on straits rights, whether through litigation, negotiated guidelines, or pragmatic practice, would help calm the concerns of navies and insurers. Ambiguity, in this case, is costly. The third is infrastructure at scale. Expanding the fleet of LK-60Ya icebreakers, deepening the Arc7 fleet, ensuring reliable trans-shipment hubs from Murmansk outward, and building robust rescue and response capabilities would turn the Arctic’s volatile weather from a crippling hazard into a manageable variable. The fourth is safer logistics. Replacing dark fleet tonnage with transparent, classed, and adequately insured ships is unlikely under current sanctions, but any easing or targeted carve-outs could logically be traded for higher operational and environmental standards. Absent these shifts, the NSR will likely remain a niche corridor – reliable enough for Russia’s exports to a handful of partners – but not predictable or de-risked enough to attract the world’s container giants. In the end, the Route looks less like a global artery in waiting than a bespoke lane kept open by improvisation and political will. Russia has shown it can move volumes east without Western scaffolding. Still, the price is exposure: to China’s cautious leverage, to legal and governance ambiguity, to safety and insurance risk, and to a climate that can widen or snap shut the seasonal window with little warning. What emerges is resilience under constraint, capability sustained by workarounds rather than durable rules and partners. If geopolitics softens, the Arctic Council reactivates in full, and industrial bets from Zvezda to new icebreakers mature, the arc could still bend toward normalisation. Until then, this remains a sturdy yet narrow corridor; strategically vital to Moscow, serviceable for a few, and unlikely to host the time-sensitive traffic that defines a truly global route.

As the two-year mark of Israel’s invasion of Gaza approaches, many wonder why Arab countries are not pressuring Israel. The answer is often simple: they are prioritizing their strategic and economic interests. Since the beginning of Israel’s ruthless offensive in Gaza on October 7, 2023, images have repeatedly shown Palestinian civilians crying out desperately to the cameras for help: “Where are the Arabs? Why isn’t anyone stopping this?” Almost two years later, despite the fact that fewer voices doubt that what began as a war has turned into a genocide that has taken the lives of more than 60,000 Palestinians, Arab states have not shifted even an inch from their initial stance: harmless statements of condemnation, without any action to pressure Israel. “Where are the Arabs? Taking a nap… By Arabs, I mean their rulers, with their heads buried in the sand,” declared Fawaz Gerges, professor at the London School of Economics, in a recent interview with the U.S. network NBC. In fact, it has often been non-Arab countries, thousands of kilometers away from Gaza, that have tried to stand up. Such is the case of South Africa, the country that denounced the existence of genocide in the enclave before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. “In general, Arab regimes have not taken concrete measures in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The main reason is the prioritization of their strategic and economic interests over popular sentiments of support for Palestinians in the face of the horror they are experiencing. This is not surprising given that most [of the regimes] rule based on growing authoritarianism,” asserts Yara Hawari, co-director of the Palestinian think tank Al Shabaka. The gap between the street and the palace This gap between the opinion of the so-called “Arab street” and its rulers is evident in every new survey. In one of the most comprehensive, conducted by the Doha Institute with the participation of around 8,000 people from 16 different Arab countries, 92% of respondents believe that the Palestinian cause concerns all Arabs and not only Palestinians. A similar percentage, 89%, opposes normalizing relations with Israel. For an overwhelming majority, 84%, the genocide in Gaza represents a source of “great psychological stress,” and for another 13% it also constitutes a source of stress, though to a lesser degree. “Although they are not democratic, Arab regimes cannot entirely ignore their respective public opinions, which are horrified by what is happening in Gaza. That is why they must strike a delicate balance. They fear that discontent over their positions on Gaza could converge with other grievances — of which there are many — and potentially trigger social unrest,” explains Haizam Amirah Fernández, executive director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CEARC). So far, this has translated into statements condemning the massacres of civilians perpetrated by Israel, others in support of creating a Palestinian state, and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gazans when approved by Tel Aviv. Of the 22 states that make up the Arab League, a total of six have signed an agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. The first to do so was Egypt (1979), followed by Jordan (1994), and then Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan joined under the so-called Abraham Accords sponsored by Trump in 2020 — although Sudan, currently in civil war, has not implemented it. In addition, other states maintain varying degrees of economic relations or security cooperation with Israel, such as Saudi Arabia. Among all these countries, none has broken diplomatic relations with the Israeli state over Gaza, and only Jordan has withdrawn its ambassador. On the other side, among Arab countries with a more hostile stance toward Israel, are Algeria, Tunisia, and Houthi-controlled Yemen, the only one that has applied military pressure on Israel by launching missiles and harassing maritime traffic in the Suez Canal. Lebanon and Iraq represent particular cases, as both are highly fragmented politically and home to pro-Iranian militias that consider Israel an enemy, such as Hezbollah — an opinion not shared by the entire political class. The reasons behind the indifference of so many Arab states toward Gaza are varied. First, some leaders — especially those of the Gulf petro-monarchies — perceive Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization linked to Hamas, as a greater threat than Israel. Faced with this sense of insecurity, also shared by President el-Sisi in Cairo, many look toward the West. “The permanence in power of these leaders does not depend on the choice of their citizens or subjects, but on external support from the United States, and this shapes their position on Palestine,” asserts Amirah Fernández, who lists several actions these countries could have taken to pressure Israel: from breaking or suspending bilateral agreements, such as the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, to applying serious pressure to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza and thus allow humanitarian aid to reach the enclave, whether by land or by sea. Egypt, for example, has dedicated itself to repressing activists who attempted to carry out such actions near the Gaza border. The “realpolitik” of the new generation of leaders Beyond their deference to the West, the positions of Arab states in some cases respond to a stark calculation of “realpolitik”: the benefits they can gain from their relationship with Israel — a technological and military power — outweigh what an occupied people like the Palestinians can offer. [...]  In an interview with El Salto, journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of the book “The Palestine Laboratory”, explained how the sale of weapons and cyber-espionage tools has become a kind of insurance policy for Israel against possible retaliatory actions. “Almost a quarter of Israel’s [arms] exports went to Arab dictatorships, such as the United Arab Emirates […]. No Arab state has cut ties with Israel, and they won’t,” Loewenstein said. Against this backdrop, for decades the only common denominator among Arab states regarding the Palestinian issue has been the mere signing of joint declarations in support of the “two-state solution” to resolve the conflict with Israel. At the end of July, within the framework of a United Nations-sponsored summit to promote that solution, the “Arab consensus” unexpectedly expanded with all Arab League countries signing a declaration urging Hamas to disarm and hand over control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. Thus, the only bold — and unprecedented — action taken during nearly two years of genocide in Gaza has been to pressure Hamas and not Israel. A very bleak record for pan-Arab solidarity. 

Bolivia’s elections marked the collapse of MAS and the rise of Rodrigo Paz with a moderate and inclusive economic discourse, signaling a shift away from extremes toward the political center. Last Sunday, Bolivia went to the polls to elect a president, vice president, and 130 legislators, including senators and deputies. The results were surprising: Rodrigo Paz of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) won with 32.1% of the vote, despite not being ranked as the frontrunner in any of the more than 18 polls conducted. The favorites, Tuto Quiroga and Samuel Doria Medina, received 26.8% and 19.8% of the vote, respectively. Meanwhile, although somewhat expected yet still shocking, the Movement for Socialism (MAS) suffered its most humiliating defeat: after nearly 20 years as a dominant party, it garnered just 3.2% of the vote and secured only one seat in the legislature. What happened? How did Rodrigo Paz manage to win the election? And how did the right-wing opposition end up losing? Throughout the campaign, Samuel Doria Medina of National Unity and Tuto Quiroga of LIBRE consistently led the polls as the main alternatives to MAS. Early this year, there was growing anticipation around a possible opposition alliance to “stand up to MAS.” That effort collapsed, however, and the public’s perception of both candidates deteriorated as their personal ambitions clashed—ironically creating an opening for MAS to potentially cling to power. Once the campaign was underway, Quiroga and Doria Medina, convinced by the polls that they would make it to a runoff, turned against each other. On social media, a smear war erupted with false news and mutual slander. While these two candidates weakened each other, Rodrigo Paz stayed above the fray, managing to deliver his message with little turbulence. Paz offered a platform he described as “capitalism for everyone,” or platita para todos (“money for all”), promising more subsidies, as well as lower taxes and tariffs. This placed him closer to the statist left than to the liberal market-oriented stance of Tuto and Samuel. Amid an ongoing economic crisis, many Bolivians felt that policies were needed to reactivate the economy and stabilize the exchange rate. A significant portion of the middle and lower classes feared that the proposed economic shock measures would worsen their already precarious situation. Both Quiroga and Doria Medina openly embraced the radical proposals of Argentina’s president Javier Milei as their model. Paz, by contrast, offered a more moderate alternative, attracting much of the electorate. Another key dimension of this election was the projection of political renewal. On the left, figures such as Eduardo del Castillo and Andrónico Rodríguez—both under 40 and emerging from the MAS ranks—sought to embody generational change. But del Castillo was weighed down by his association with Arce’s unpopular government, while Rodríguez faced criticism from the right for his ties to Morales, even as Morales himself accused him of betrayal. On the right, renewal was nonexistent: both Quiroga and Doria Medina were veterans of the pre-Evo Morales party system, recycling old formulas such as privatization and free-market economics. In this context, the PDC ticket of Rodrigo Paz and Edman Lara was well positioned. While Paz is a seasoned politician with 26 years of experience, mostly as a subnational leader, Lara—a former police captain—was a classic outsider. With an active presence on social media, he had built a reputation as a crusader against corruption, after denouncing fellow police officers for misconduct. In August 2024, he was permanently dismissed from the Bolivian police force. Looking at the results by region reveals the territorial fault lines in Bolivian politics. The PDC, like MAS before it, secured victories in departments such as Oruro, Potosí, and La Paz, along with the populous city of El Alto, where it won over 45% of the vote. By contrast, Quiroga and Doria Medina performed strongly in Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija—the so-called media luna—a region traditionally resistant to candidates from western Bolivia. Rodrigo Paz and Tuto Quiroga will now face each other in a runoff on October 19. Paz’s challenge will be to expand his support in Santa Cruz and wealthier urban areas, while Quiroga must convince middle- and lower-income sectors that market-oriented reforms can serve as a viable alternative to MAS without undermining the poor. After nearly two decades, Bolivians have chosen to close the MAS chapter in power and begin a new one—not defined by extremes, but by a turn toward the political center. This is a positive sign at a moment of deep national crisis. *Machine translation, proofread by Ricardo Aceves at Latinoamérica21 (L21)

As Xi Jinping tightens his grip on power amid economic headwinds and political uncertainty, questions of succession loom large. The path beyond Xi, marked by purges, rivalries, and competing visions for China’s future, remains shrouded in secrecy but carries global consequences. In October, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is scheduled to hold its annual plenary session where the Central Committee will meet to determine policy and the country’s general direction, including leadership. In China, the CCP and the leader hold immense, omnipotent power. The single-party state controls its population through SkyNet, a real-time urban surveillance system enforcing compliance; through the Great Firewall and Great Canon, which restrict information, encourage self-censorship, and spread disinformation; and through brutal oppression, particularly in remote regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang. At the top of the Party, the General Secretary imposes a narrative—leadership thought—often expressed as an aphorism. The leader’s thought guides behaviour and justifies sacrifices made for socialism. Mao Zedong’s anti-imperialist rhetoric and recasting of Marxism-Leninism devolved into a leadership cult, which ultimately resulted in the chaos of disrupted education and the madness of the Cultural Revolution. Subsequently, the Party attempted to limit the power of leaders by setting two-term limits. As leader, Deng Xiaoping prioritised economic reforms, famously asserting that the colour of a cat—its ideology—was irrelevant, so long as it could catch mice and function effectively in economic terms. While urging caution abroad under his “Hide and Bide” strategy (hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead), he promoted bravery in domestic reform. His approach, expressed through the Chinese metaphor, “Cross the river by feeling for the stones,” was pragmatic, experimental, and gradualist. Jiang Zemin added his “Theory of Three Represents” to expand the Party’s base, while Hu Jintao emphasised a “Scientific Outlook for Development,” which aimed to reduce the widening inequalities within China to build a “Harmonious Socialist Society,” thereby lessening the chance for social conflicts to emerge. Within the leadership pantheon, the most consequential since Mao is Xi Jinping. Now 72 years old, Xi has enshrined his leadership role by removing the two-term limit and embedding his own thought— “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”—into the constitution. Xi’s thought is expansive and multifaceted, earning him the nickname “Chairman-of-Everything.” It is reinforced by the promise of fulfilling the “China Dream” of national rejuvenation: a long-held desire that China would reemerge as the global leader under a Sino-centric world order. Xi also side-stepped Deng’s “hide and bide” strategy, adopting a more assertive and aggressive foreign policy, believing China’s time had arrived. China’s economy is increasingly unstable, particularly in the property sector. Youth unemployment remains high, the Zero-Covid policy ended in failure, and the country is facing a demographic decline earlier than expected. More significantly, the leadership has retreated from consumption-led growth—a path that poses political risks Xi Jinping appears unwilling to confront. This shift has forced bankrupt provincial governments to sustain both real and superficial growth through the shadow economy and opaque financial instruments that merely circulate debt. These economic pressures are not just technical—they reflect deeper leadership challenges, raising questions about the resilience of Xi’s governance model, the fraying social contract between the Party and the people, and the viability of a fourth term for Xi amid growing internal and external scrutiny. At some point, China will have a new leader, but the path to that inevitable change is obscured and speculative. While Xi has not appointed a clear successor, discussions of potential replacements typically include Ding Xuexiang, Li Qiang, Cai Qi, Liu Jie, and, more recently, Wang Yang. Wang was Party Secretary of Guangdong and served as a member of the Politburo Standing Committee between 2017 and 2022. At 70 years old, he isn’t a young leader but has a reputation as a liberal reformer. Succession and the path to leadership in China can be difficult, if not horrific. Liu Shaoqi, who headed the PRC from 1959, was purged in 1968, publicly denounced, and beaten by Mao’s Red Guards before dying alone on a concrete floor. Xi was a member of the sent-down youth, experiencing the hardships of that time, and Deng was purged many times before his final rehabilitation, before becoming leader. Purge and renewal remain a Party tool for self-purification. For example, Bo Xilai was put on trial in 2011 shortly before his rival for power, Xi, took the leadership. Xi’s decades-long anti-corruption campaigns are widely viewed as purges of his political rivals, allowing him to cement his power. Of the more than 100 recently, Wang Renhua, Secretary of the Central Military Commission, Wang Chunning, Commander of the People’s Armed Police, and Zhang Jianchun, from the Central Propaganda Department, were caught up in Xi’s military purges. However, Xi’s Stalinist approach to purging, targeting allies and appointees alike, now leaves him in a precarious position. While the CCP leadership succession process has several negative elements, it does enable abrupt change and has built a leadership group with useful skill sets. China altered immensely from Mao to Deng and, subsequently, the world around it. Forty percent of new Politburo members since 2022 have a military-industrial background. These engineering skills and CCP dominance have shaped the Chinese domestic market, leading to global development prowess as the lead supplier of electric cars (70 percent of global production) and solar panels (exceeding 80 percent of global production). In comparison, most Ministers and Cabinet Members in the US and Australia have Law and Arts degrees. The question of what comes after Xi will have wide ranging implications. Given the trade war with the US, economic de-linking, and domestic turmoil, a Xi successor would attempt to quell and consolidate. The Party may seek short-term stability to consolidate Xi’s gains in the US conflict, awaiting the next US president, and focus on regional influence through soft power initiatives and structural power around the Nine-Dash Line and Taiwan. The new leader might echo the aphorism 固守阵地 (gù shǒu zhèn dì): “hold the fort” or “defend the position” as a basis for policy positions. Wang appears as likely a candidate as any. He holds a master’s in engineering, attended the Central Party School, and isn’t seen as a “rising star” but more of a seasoned politician.This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

Dr. Mohmmad Yunus, the Chief Advisor (CA) of Bangladesh’s interim government revealed the “July Declaration” on August 5th, 2025, to commemorate the 1-year anniversary of the student-led revolution that toppled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year Awami League (AL) regime. The essence of the July Declaration is to reflect the ambitions and goals of the Bangladeshi citizens for its future. The July Declaration highlights Bangladesh’s political struggles since its independence in 1971 and emphasizes how that struggle has culminated in the July Revolution and its vision for the future. More specifically, the Declaration outlines the suppression of Bangladeshi people’s political and human rights by Hasina’s regime, after 3 rigged elections, implicating the loss of the people’s mandate. The past year encapsulates a critical period in Bangladesh’s history and a stress-test of the Yunus administration. Although the July Declaration expresses the aspiration to build a country based on rule-of law, upholding human rights, and erasing corruption, the one-year tenure of Dr. Yunus reveals mixed levels of achievements. Since taking power, the interim government faced four crucial goals: to establish domestic security and stability, bring justice for the injured and deceased of the July Revolution, hold the corrupt members of the AL regime accountable, and to create a different economic and political vision for Bangladesh in the 21st century, especially for the young population. It is important to recall that the students, facing bleak job prospects, protested against the Hasina’s regime’s policy that allotted a disproportionate number of coveted government jobs to the descendants of freedom fighters of the 1971 war for independence. After more than a decade of corruption, mismanagement of government funds and bank reserves, Bangladesh was facing a dollar reserve crisis during the last years of the Hasina administration. From the beginning, the interim government’s challenge was to reverse the downward economic trajectory as part of new economic vision for Bangladesh. After Hasina’s fall, the former Governor of Bangladesh Bank also fled the country. The current governor’s policies, combined with increased remittance, have improved dollar reserves. External debts decreased in the fourth quarter of December 2024, compared to the third quarter as a result of the interim government’s cautious approach to foreign loans. The revival of the Chittagong Port and leasing part of the Port to a UAE-based company is intended to make Chittagong the economic heart of a new Bangladesh. The interim government’s initiatives to expand Bangladesh’s semiconductor industry also indicate an economic vision that is technology and youth centric. The underlying theme of the July Revolution was to reinvent the country and its engagement with global partners. There have been significant changes Bangladesh’s foreign policy since the 2024 revolution. One notable change is relationship with Western countries. The Biden administration , the European Union (EU), China, Pakistan, and India were prompt to congratulate Dr. Yunus. Such messages gave legitimacy to the interim government, the student’s revolution, while recognizing Hasina’s removal from power. UN Secretary General António Guterres’s visit during March 2025, brought renewed focus on the Rohingya refugee crisis, giving Bangladesh more agency on the issue. However, the UN (and therefore the U.S.) backed plan to establish a “humanitarian corridor” require tactful balancing between Chinese, American and Indian interests in the region. Admittedly, disagreements within the interim government, among the major political parties, and with the Bangladesh armed forces poses questions on whether the Yunus team can effectively carry out such a plan. Dr. Yunus’s engagement with Western and Asian partners centers on establishing Bangladesh’s autonomy. Meeting with 19 EU delegates, he pushed for moving the visa centers from New Delhi to Dhaka or another neighboring country. Signing a Memorandum of Understanding with China on the Teesta River crisis (after a 13-year stalemate with India) and creating medical facilities in China to treat Bangladeshi patients (after India curtailed medical visas) point to a deepening ties with China and to showcase a more assertive engagement with global partners. The previous examples also signal Bangladesh’s pivot away from India. The flood in August 2024 immediately after the revolution reinvigorated anti-India rhetoric and resurfaced frustration with perceived longstanding asymmetric hydro-diplomacy with India.  But, most importantly, Hasina’s continued presence in India remains a point of contention. Even after one year, India declines requests for Hasina’s extradition citing  safety concerns and whether she will receive a fair trial in Bangladesh. The current India-Bangladesh relationship presents a strategic challenge for India. Over the last few decades, India’s diplomatic relationship with Bangladesh has been limited to cooperative relationship with AL, neglecting maintaining diplomatic overtures with other political parties in Bangladesh. Consequently, significant portion of the Bangladeshi public perceived the AL party being overly friendly with India. Naturally, people’s dissatisfaction with Hasina’s policies were also transferred to grievances against India. The geographic reality implies that to address the persisting security concerns in the northeast Indian states (which includes Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, and Sikkim), the Indian government should pursue cooperative relationship with Bangladesh. In fact, Dr. Yunus connected the revival of the Chittagong Port and its significance for Indian northeastern states. Sheikh Hasina’s pro-India stance had allowed India to address security challenges in the northeastern states, without facing obstacles from Bangladesh. Political changes in Bangladesh necessitates the Indian government to realign its foreign policy and strive to form partnership with the people, instead of a singular political party. Domestic politics is one of the areas where the Yunus administration has shown weak progress. Since the onset, the administration faced frequent protests from garment workers, bureaucrats, and security forces. Even politically, reaching consensus on pressing issues is also becoming increasingly challenging. On the question of elections and electoral reforms, the divergence among the political parties and even splinters within the parties is becoming more visible. Pressure from leaders of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for earlier election raises doubts whether the interim government could accomplish its reform goals before the February 2026 general elections. Fifteen years of AL’s one-party rule has left BNP organizationally weak and divided. The newly created National Citizens Party (NCP) by the student leaders of the revolution is still consolidating its political base. Disagreements between the Chief of Army Staff General Waker-Uz-Zaman and the interim government point to a lack of partnership. General Waker’s insistence of the role of the Bangladesh Riffles (BDR) in the 2009 Pilkhana Massacre stands at odds with the families of the victims who demand justice and answering lingering questions about Awami League regime’s role. Such sentiments from families erode faith in the justice system. The interim government has taken steps to provide financial and medical support for the survivors of the July Revolution suffering from various injuries and permanent disabilities. Unfortunately, the July Declaration does not mention the continuing suffering of the survivors. The role of female students in the July Revolution is also not mentioned in the Declaration, despite being on the frontlines of the revolution. Such omissions do weaken the position of the domestic political reform agenda of the interim government and prevent it from giving these groups of people a sense of justice and inclusion in the new Bangladesh. Ensuring a safe and stable environment, while establishing the rule of law is the biggest shortcoming of the Yunus administration. Awami League has not expressed any remorse in its role in the violence of the revolution despite mounting evidence. The activities of Awami League and its student wing have been banned. Nonetheless, the disgraced political party continues to cast a large shadow. Hasina continues to make inflammatory statements from her exile in India that fuels new violence in Bangladesh. The arrest of Major Sadikul’s wife over allegations of plans to train AL ‘activists’ to destabilize the capital creates bleak prospects of the country’s security and the realization of the July Declaration. Furthermore, the alleged involvement of the spouse of an army major in such nefarious plans creates more questions about whether the armed forces are reliable partners to fulfill the promise of the 2024 revolution. At the one-year anniversary, the dream of the July Revolution remains unrealized. Dr. Yunus and his interim government have shown competence in addressing the economic challenges. Furthermore, changed engagement with Western and regional powers points to the desire to gain more agency over global and regional matters. Nonetheless, on the domestic political and security fronts, the interim government has shown problems with internal coordination and with other political stakeholders. Dr. Yunus has not proven himself to be a savvy politician. The utter corrosion of all institutions after 15-year corruption of Hasina’s regime requires mini revolutions within all political stakeholders. Political rhetoric must go beyond political disagreements for its own sake and making abstract ideological statements to rile up supporters. The political parties must discuss tangible problems faced by the people and offer feasible solutions. Otherwise, the promise of the July Revolution will remain unfulfilled.

Abstract This article examines that the shift in Israeli society and political economy from ethnic socialism to individualistic capitalism was accompanied by a shift from a strategic and collectivist liberal Zionism to a nonstrategic individualistic right-wing populism. It is a shift that made the State of Israel vulnerable to shock and crisis, and turned it “from a startup nation to a shutdown nation.” Unlike the crisis caused by the 1973 war, Israel lacks the tools to cope with the crisis of October 7 and embarks on a path of self-destruction.Keywordssettler colonialism, right-wing populism, Middle East economies 1. Introduction: Zionism’s Transition From Collectivist to Individualistic Settler Colonialism The State of Israel is a settler-colonial project (Robinson 2013), and as such has never been self-sufficient. Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion cultivated Israel’s alliance with Western imperialism as part of a strategy to keep the Israeli military supplied with modern weapons and trading partners. Meanwhile, some neighboring Arab states cultivated an alliance with the Soviet Union. The bane of colonial societies is always the same: arrogance, and in Israel’s arrogance the seeds of its downfall were planted. Israeli society, very much like the white population of apartheid South Africa, developed a culture on racist foundations, and the disdain of the Indigenous Palestinian population spread to a patronizing and racist attitude towards Israel’s non-white Jewish population (Mizrahim and black Jews; Ben-Eliezer 2007). The history of Israel’s political economy can be traced along the trajectory of this arrogant approach and the events that confirm, or undermine, Israel’s arrogance. I briefly mention two such seminal events before proceeding to the more contemporary developments. The first was the war of 1967, which has given rise to Israel’s messianic religious right wing, certain that God is on Israel’s side. Israel’s “miraculous” victory against three Arab armies in just six days, commemorated in Israel’s name for the war “The Six Day War,” confirmed every racist stereotype in Israel’s colonialist culture. Popular songs celebrating Israel’s victory hit the radios, and the project of building illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land, deporting prominent Palestinian leaders, and using collective punishment, such as home demolitions, have put a strain on Israel’s alliance with the imperialist West. Israel’s military industry was transformed by these events. After France, Israel’s biggest arms supplier at the time, imposed a military embargo on Israel because of the occupation, a new school of thought emerged in Israel’s security elite, arguing that Israel does not need to rely on foreign suppliers and could potentially produce all of its weapons and ammunition locally. The victory also gave rise to what Israelis have later retroactively called “the Conception”—the arrogant belief that Arab states will never try to defeat Israel on the battlefield again—having been overwhelmed by Israel’s superiority. The second event worthy of note occurred just over six years later, the war of 1973, also known as the October War. On October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack that shattered Israel’s “Conception.” Israeli forces suffered heavy casualties, lost battles, and were forced to withdraw until the United States intervened with large-scale arms shipments. Israel’s dependency on Western support became undeniable. Even though Israeli forces, with the help of US weapons, eventually pushed back the Syrian and Egyptian armies, Israel was bloodied and traumatized. Israeli economists referred to the following decade as the “lost decade”—in which public resources were diverted to the arms industry and a large section of the workforce was recruited for extended military service with the reserves. The generation who fought in the 1973 war became wary of the danger of colonial arrogance (Bar-Joseph 2003). It was the generation that called for moderation in politics, for strategic thinking. The self-sufficiency illusion was nixed. Instead, Israel worked hard to position itself within global politics as a “bastion” against communism (just like South Africa did), and after the fall of the Soviet Union as a bastion against Islamic terrorism. The Oslo Peace Process was supposed to be Israel’s alibi, a show of willingness to compromise over territory in exchange for Western political legitimacy and normalization with Arab neighbors. Instead of a self-sustaining economy, Israel developed its political economy as a niche economy, becoming the world capital of the homeland security sector, with hundreds of companies exporting Israel’s “security expertise” in the form of surveillance technology, culminating in the export of spyware (Loewenstein 2023: 207). 2. Rise of the Right-Wing Populism in Israel The liberal Zionist project to rationalize colonialism has gradually failed, because of arrogance. In his article in Hebrew “A factory for blind spots” Ran Heilbronn explained the collapse of Israel’s security “expertise” through the reliance on technology and the belief that reality exists in the data, rather than the data being a tool to describe reality (Heilbronn 2024). The Israeli security industry conceived of the occupation as a laboratory for developing tools of oppression and marketing them as “field-tested” (Loewenstein 2023: 49). It has failed to reflect that the identity of the self-appointed security experts as colonizers makes them predictable. This is especially the case in their tendency to repeatedly underestimate Palestinians, because respecting the ability of Palestinians to develop creative methods of resistance and outwit Israeli oppressive measures undermines the racist arrogance that is necessary to justify apartheid (Shlaim 2015: 133–180). The rise of the populist right wing in Israel can be explained through the intergenerational discourse among Jewish Israeli society. The generation that fought in the militias to expel the Indigenous Palestinian population and establish the State of Israel, as well as its children, were raised on the collectivist values and glorifying sacrifice (Feige 2002: v–xiv). As a popular 1948 song by Haim Gouri played on official state ceremonies states, “love consecrated in blood will blossom amongst us once again.” Subsequent generations, those born since 1967, the “euphoria” period (including the baby-boom generation after the 1973 war; Ozacky-Lazar 2018: 18–24) and their children, have been raised on the sense of entitlement to the spoils of war for which their parents and grandparents made great sacrifices. Calls for further expanding the borders, acquiring more land, and building more settlements, which were consistently made by the settler movement, have been perceived by the older elites as an ungrateful disrespect to their own sacrifices, and that Israel is at a risk of overextending itself and losing everything. This has become the main narrative of liberal Zionism (Ayyash 2023). The intergenerational shift from strategic, “rational” Zionism based on calculated sacrifice for the purpose of colonizing Palestine while maintaining both a Jewish majority and good relations with the West, toward a religious populist Zionism built on a sense of entitlement, dismissing threats and obstacles to the Zionist Project, is a shift dialectically inherent to the colonial process and inseparable from it (Sabbagh-Khoury 2022). Every colonial society has a “founders” generation that is honored for its commitment to the collective national project at great personal costs, which is followed by increasingly entitled generations who are born with privileges and do not feel the need to earn or defend them. The colonial mythology exaggerates the significance of the founders’ efforts who “gave their lives to ensure that this land will be ours for posterity.” The demand from younger generations to make efforts to secure the land and the privileges of the colonizers diminishes from the mythology and is therefore rejected. The younger generations simply expect to inherit their privileges (Veracini 2010: 40). The right-wing advocates of collectivist nationalism and sacrifice (following the path of Jabotinsky, who in his Iron Wall manifesto warned that Palestinians will never give up their struggle against colonial domination, and Zionism must engage in an eternal battle (Jabotinsky 1923), have all but disappeared, being replaced by the right-wing populists, led most prominently by Benjamin Netanyahu. The main attraction of the right-wing populism is the idea of impunity: Israel can have its cake and eat it too. Disregard international law and international pressure, underestimate the potential of Palestinian resistance, and not make any sacrifices (Shad 2015: 167–178). As the rate of conscription to the Israeli military plummeted since the 1990s (Arlosoroff 2019; Shalev 2004: 88–101), Israelis became accustomed to justifying military aggression against Palestinians from the comfort of their armchairs. While refusal to serve remains a marginal phenomenon, draft dodging had become the norm, rather than the exception (Perez 2018). Yagil Levy referred to this shift as a capital-intensive warfare, using technology and expensive weaponry to multiply the impact of a smaller number of soldiers, thereby also increasing the negotiating power of those soldiers who were able to make demands for material and nonmaterial rewards in exchange for their military service, which conscripts would normally not be able to make (Levy 2003: 222). The populist right wing conflates the State of Israel with the Jewish people, ignoring both the existence of non-Jewish Israelis and the existence of non-Israeli Jews. Instead of addressing criticism and planning strategic responses, populists use ad-hominem attacks to delegitimize criticism. Netanyahu dismisses critique against Israel’s apartheid and war crimes as “antisemitic” whether it’s the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions; Black 2014), legal action from the International Court of Justice or from the International Criminal Court (Heller 2019), or even recognition of the State of Palestine (Landale 2024). Eventually this populist argument has become mainstream so that even opposition leaders from the liberal Zionist factions adopted it (TOI Staff 2022). The liberal Zionist forces found themselves at a disadvantage after the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, which was seen as a military failure, and was exploited by the far right to accuse the government of weakness (Erlanger 2006). The Israeli attack against Gaza just before the February 2009 elections claimed the lives of over 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians. The leader of the liberal-Zionist camp at the time, Tzipi Livni, served as minister of foreign affairs. Her position was (and remains) that the liberal Zionist camp is more strategic and has more tools to secure Jewish control over Palestine than the populist right wing (Livni 2018). This argument backfired because the populist right wing grew domestically stronger in the face of threats of international restrictions. The same process occurred in 2022 with the publication of four reports about Israeli apartheid (Abofoul 2022), leading to the collapse of the last liberal Zionist government, which could not come up with a strategy to defend Israel from the accusation of apartheid. Just like the brutal attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008, the government of liberal Zionist parties tried to demonstrate its brutality toward Palestinians accusing six Palestinian civil society organizations of terrorism without showing evidence (OHCHR 2022) and by granting impunity to the soldier who murdered Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, 2022, in the course of the military campaign in the Jenin refugee camp (Al Jazeera 2022). This tactic failed in the elections of November 2022 just as it failed in the February 2009 elections. In early 2023, with the most far-right government in Israel’s history embarking on the judicial overhaul project, the people who protested the government’s antiliberal policy were the very same who maintain and profit from Israel’s security sector (Goodfriend 2023). Protestors in Tel-Aviv have adopted the slogan of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions) “from startup nation to shutdown nation” and printed it on a huge banner that they carried through the streets (Ben-David 2023), warning that Israel’s economy will shut down because of the policies of the far-right government. The demonstrators holding the sign were likely unaware of the fact that the slogan was coined by BDS, which is another example of blind spots caused by an unsustainable colonial situation. The prediction was prophetic, but interestingly the very same people who argued that Israel’s military strength is directly connected to the economic strength of its security sector, who warned against the economic collapse, did not predict the simultaneous collapse of Israel’s military strength. The rise of right-wing populism in Israel is fueled by elements that are inherent to the Israeli case: the settler-colonial intergenerational conflict, the economic transformation of the social contract, and the shift in the military structure and the role of militarism in society. Nevertheless, a fourth factor cannot be ignored, which is the rise of the populist right wing in the whole world, with the polarization of politics after the dashed expectations following the nineties (Greven 2016). The model of the right-wing populist leader—racist, hedonist, and corrupt—was only known in two countries in the nineties: in Israel with Netanyahu’s first term and in Italy with Silvio Berlusconi, before becoming widespread in the rest of the world starting in 2016. 3. The Systemic Vulnerability A key difference between the crisis of the 1973 war, and the crisis that Israel is experiencing since October 7, 2023, is the change in the economic structure of Israel. In its first three and a half decades of existence, Israel had a corporatist economic structure (Shalev 1986: 362–386), in which the government, unions, and the private sector cooperated to bolster and maintain the apartheid economic system, until the neoliberal reforms of 1985 (Ben Basat 2002: 1–22). Israel’s federation of labor unions—the Histadrut—played a central role in keeping Palestinian workers from the occupied West Bank and Gaza as a cheap and exploited labor force both before and after the reforms (Hiltermann 1989: 83–91). The reforms, however, changed the social contract at the base of the settler-colonial state. From a nationalist project in which the privileges of the Jewish population are collectively protected and collectively enjoyed by the Jewish population at the expense of the Indigenous Palestinian population, the neoliberal reforms turned Israel into an individualistic society in which privileges are enjoyed individually and reproduced by market forces for profit (Shalev 1986). In parallel to the way that a neoliberal order restructures the social contract between state and citizen, it also restructures the contract between state and soldier. As Yagil Levy argues, the Israeli tech sector serves as a reward mechanism to attract recruits into prestigious units, such as the notorious unit 8200, for the prospect of future lucrative employment in the private sector. This “negotiation,” to borrow Levy’s term, creates a military vulnerability. The collapse of Israel’s tech sector impacts the motivation of soldiers to serve in Israel’s technological units (Levy 2012: 47). The capitalist structure is more vulnerable. In the absence of a strong social safety net, individuals are expected to make their own risk assessment (Swirski et al. 2020: 5). Modern finances are a system of management expectation. Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler have shown that the depths of crisis in capital can be measured in a time perspective. Cyclical crisis is marked by short-term expectations coupled with a long-term expectation for recovery. Investors attempt to build predictive models based on their assessment of future developments. In a systemic crisis, however—what Kliman, Bichler, and Nitzan call “systemic fear”—the predictive models are built on historical data, and investors are making fewer references to the future (Kliman et al. 2011: 61–118). One of the first voices to herald that the State of Israel has reached a dead-end was Marwan Bishara, who focused on the aspect of Israel’s regional integration into the Middle East, which remains an essential strategic element in Israel’s sustainable existence, but which could not continue after Israel embarked on the onslaught against the Gaza Strip, intentionally targeting civilians (Bishara 2023). The oppressive structure of the State of Israel is vulnerable to the external pressure that is applied by Palestinian resistance, which takes the form of both armed and unarmed resistance. The armed resistance is much less relevant to the discussion here, because the capitalist vulnerability is suspended in times of “security crisis,” framed as a temporary time in which collective mobilization and sacrifice are necessary. The unarmed forms of Palestinian resistance such as BDS expose the vulnerability of Israel’s apartheid and challenge the sustainability of the oppressive structures (Awad 1984). The slogan “they oppress, we BDS” leaves Israelis with no choice but to consider whether the same methods used to crush the Palestinian resistance are in the end self-defeating (Barghouti 2020). Palestinian resistance has developed through stages, searching for means to overcome Israeli oppression. Collective leadership replaced individualistic leadership in order to survive assassinations (Baylouny 2009). Intersectional and progressive alliance building proved effective in creating solidarity in the heart of Israel’s Western support bases, especially North America and Western Europe (Salih et al. 2020). While liberal Zionism excelled in infiltrating Palestinian society and sabotaging its resistance (Cohen 2009), the populist right adopts the dehumanization of Palestinians as a fact, rather than a tool, and is therefore unable to infiltrate Palestinian society effectively. As Major General Amos Gilad said in 2011 “we don’t do Gandhi very well” (Dana 2011)—Palestinians found the weak point in Israel’s oppressive regime. Israel’s closest allies begin to contemplate the unthinkable—the end of the Zionist state. For Germany, whose unconditional support for Israel turned into a quasi-state religion due to an intentional conflation of Judaism and the State of Israel (Moses 2021), the notion that the State of Israel will cease to exist is more controversial than the speculations about the imminent demise of the GDR (German Democratic Republic, which was dismantled in 1990). Nevertheless, even German mainstream media cannot silence the shutdown nation voices when they come from Israeli Jews or former Israeli Jews (Tschemerinsky 2024). Two prominent Israeli economists, Eugene Kandel and Ron Tzur, wrote a scathing report in which they come to the conclusion that Israel will not survive to its 100th year and kept the document a secret, worried that it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Faced with lack of interest from the government, however, they gave interviews about the report (Arlosoroff 2024). Israeli billionaire Gil Schwed compared Israel to Afghanistan—a state that collapsed under an Indigenous insurgency and abandoned by its US ally, and which does not attract foreign investments (Cohen 2024). The Haaretz newspaper published its editorial on Israel’s Independence Day with the headline that Israel will not survive to celebrate its 100th Independence Day. In the English version of the newspaper, the headline was qualified with the extra text “unless we are rid of Netanyahu” (Haaretz 2024). The expected delayed collapse is meaningless in a capitalist economy. Investors who believe that the State of Israel is a time bomb with a twenty-year timer will not buy Israeli bonds, nor invest in the economy. Parents will not want to raise children into (what they perceive as) an inevitable catastrophe and will exhaust all available options for leaving with their family (Silverstein 2024). Three Israeli historians have also addressed the events of October 7 and their aftermath as the end of the Zionist projects. Moshe Zimmermann, a Zionist scholar of German history and German-Israeli relations, commented in an extended interview that the Zionist project set up to create a secure haven for Jews, but that the State of Israel, the result of the Zionist project, has failed to protect its Jewish citizens on October 7, to take responsibility for the failure, or to develop a strategy to create more security in the future (Aderet 2023). From the opposite perspective, Ilan Pappe, an anti-Zionist scholar of the history of Palestine, published an essay listing six indicators to the demise of the Zionist project (Pappé 2024). Although the State of Israel does not by definition share the same fate of the Zionist project, and can conceivably exist without a Zionist government, Israeli institutions have, nevertheless, in the moment of crisis after October 7, published statements attesting to the centrality of Zionism to Israel’s existence as a state. The strongest example of these statements is the letter written by the Hebrew University to Knesset member Saran Haskel justifying the suspension of Prof. Nadera Shalhouv Kevorkian over her criticism against Zionism, by stressing that the Hebrew University is a Zionist institution (rather than an academic institution in which a plurality of opinions is encouraged) (Odeh 2024). Such unanimous agreement among Zionists and anti-Zionists about the fate of the Zionist project and its significance to the future of the State of Israel is an unprecedented consensus. Six months into the war, a third Israeli historian, Yuval Noah Harari, wrote that Israel is entering an unsustainable phase of global isolation and military defeat, and that only a quick ceasefire and structural change of policy (i.e., a break from Zionism) could save the State of Israel from demise (Noah-Harari 2024). 4. Conclusion It is this vulnerability, a society built on individualism and privilege, which made the October 7 attack a much bigger trauma for Israelis than other disasters that claimed the lives of hundreds, or even thousands, such as the 1973 war. The Israeli discourse cannot imagine a scenario in which the State of Israel and the Zionist project will recover from the crisis. Despite obsessive discussions about recovery (Bachar 2024), the need for national unity (Shwartz 2024), waging war until the “total victory” (Tharoor 2024)—the public discourse is full of Cassandrian predictions of doom—and every failure of the public institutions, whether in education, housing, electricity production, or health care, is seen as the tip of a much bigger iceberg (Motsky 2024). A state, its political economy, and its political culture require more than just institutions de jure to function. It requires a collective belief in a sustainable political project with a perspective into the future. The future of the people living in historical Palestine, between the river and the sea, whether Palestinians or Israelis, is very uncertain, but one thing seems almost certain—the current political system will not stay in place for long—and the process of its collapse carries a tremendous economic significance. It is too early to say how exactly the political changes effect the economic changes. The threat of economic crisis is tremendous, just as economic efforts are needed to recover from the war, rebuild the Gaza Strip, and treat the physical and mental injuries suffered. It can lead to default on the debt, hyperinflation, and pauperization of thousands. But the potential for ending Palestine’s isolation in the Middle East and opening trade, the resources diverted from security and the military to civilian purposes, and a recovery of the tourism sector can paint a positive scenario as well. Liberal Zionism developed an effective, albeit highly immoral, strategy of settler colonialism. It cultivated a strong Jewish collective around a myth of individual sacrifices for the sake of the nation. This strategy contributed to Israel’s ability in its first decades to expand its territory through illegal occupations while maintaining good relations with the West. But in the long run, it contained the dialectic seeds of its own destruction. Younger generations were taught to accept the achievements of liberal Zionism as permanent, so why should they sacrifice anything? For decades, liberal Zionists warned that the populist right wing undermines the foundations of the Zionist project itself. But even though these warnings were accurate, liberal Zionists failed to acknowledge how the system of Jewish supremacy and apartheid that they have established eventually and unavoidably led to the takeover of the Zionist project by an entitled and unstrategic generation. An important caveat must accompany this article. The weakness of Israeli institutions is in their ability and their willingness to perceive reality. All three historians quoted here for their texts about the imminent end of the Zionist project share a common blind spot: they do not acknowledge the role of the Palestinian resistance in bringing down the Zionist project, and speak in terms of tragedy (the tragic hero bears responsibility for his own downfall). The caveat here is that I too, the author, may not necessarily be in a better position to perceive reality. Speaking the same mother tongue, coming from the same cultural background and education system as Pappé, Zimmermann, and Harari, I cannot help but wonder what is the missing element of the puzzle that I am unable to see in its entirety. Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingThe author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.ReferencesAbofoul Ahmed. 2022. Sound but insufficient: The mainstream discussion on the question of applicability of apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Opinio Juris March. Accessed at: https://opiniojuris.org/2022/03/21/sound-but-insufficient-the-mainstream-discussion-on-the-question-of-the-applicability-of-apartheid-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory/.Aderet Ofer. 2023. 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AbstractThis article seeks to examine the behavior patterns of the Arab society in Israel since the Israel-Hamas War began in October 2023. The uniqueness of this population is the ethnic-national and religious differences between it and the Jewish majority and their identification with the Palestinians. Theoretically, the behavior patterns will be analyzed using a model of three variables: religion, citizenship, and nationality. This qualitative study, based on interviews, media clips, and public statements by Arab public leaders, identifies several opposing trends: an increase in the scope of terrorism, protests on a limited scale, and the lack of a uniform response by the Arab leadership to the Hamas attack and the war that followed it.KeywordsArab society in Israel, terror, protest, leadership, Hamas, citizenship, identity Introduction On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing more than 1,100 Israelis, including at least 20 Arab citizens. The Israeli response was a declaration of war on Hamas, which led to mass destruction within the Gaza Strip. As of December 2024, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces (AP, 2025). This is the highest number of victims on the Palestinian side since 1948. This figure raises a question regarding the reaction of Arab society in Israel, whose ethnic-national identity is the same as that of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Scholars dealing with majority–minority relations, as in the case of Jews and non-Jews in Israel, tend to agree that 1948 was a turning point that affected the mutual relations between the parties. Israel became a sovereign state for Jews, which obliged it to establish a policy toward the non-Jewish minority, also called the Arabs in Israel. The established policy was based on two pillars: First, Israel sought to be a democracy, and hence, basic rights, such as citizenship, were given to the Arab minority. Second, Israel saw the Arab minority as a security threat due to its ethnic and religious affinity with the larger Arab world. This concern led to the imposition of a military administration (1948–1966) on the Arabs in Israel, which led to the creation of, on the ground, the following reality: a Jewish majority lives alongside an Arab minority. Both sides held common citizenship but differed in two characteristics, religion and nationality. This is how majority–minority relations revolve around a fixed triangle that serves as a basis for analyzing mutual relations both in routine and in cases of tension between the parties (Boimel, 2007). Historically, the Arabic society in Israel has recorded many incidents of protests on national, religious, or civil grounds. Protest events that degenerated into violence included 1958 events in Nazareth; on Land Day in 1976; in 1982 after the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon (Sabra and Shatila); in the case of Umm el-Fahem lands in 1998; in the events of October 2000, and in May 2021 (Hitman, 2023). The ongoing war between Hamas and Israel since October 2023 is another case study that makes it possible to analyze the behavior of Arab society in Israel. Theoretical Framework The interaction between the state (or regime) and the people, namely, civilians, residents, illegal immigrants, and foreigners, is among the prominent topics that have been studied in recent decades (Coutin, 2011; Nyers, 2018). The existing sociological, political, anthropological, and legal literature delineates and analyzes case studies of confrontations between these parties worldwide. When case studies of mass protest or collective violence are discussed, the relevant questions are why, when, or what led to the clash between the state and the people and what led to an escalation. Every group of people has six potential methods to use when it is forced to respond to a regime’s policy or when it strives to achieve its goals through self-initiative: dialogue, separatism, indifference, identification, protest, and violence (Hitman, 2020). Israel is a multicultural country with a heterogeneous population consisting of Jews and non-Jews. Within these two categories are cultural subcategories: among the Jews, there are ultra-Orthodox, religious, traditional, and secular communities. Among the non-Jews, there are Arabs (Muslims and Christians), Druze, and other religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities who have cultural freedom. As far as this study is concerned, the analysis distinguishes between the Jewish majority and the non-Jewish or Arab minority, whose religious and national identity is not that of the Jews. The cultural, religious, ethnic, and national diversity in such diverse societies raises questions about minority rights and how to achieve them. The differences between the Jewish majority and the non-Jewish minority are religious and national. The common denominator is that they are all citizens of Israel. The differences between the groups within Israel and the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not yet come to a solution create a basis for friction between the parties on religious, national, or civil grounds. The last outbreak in May 2021 came after more than two decades of peaceful relations between the Arab minority and the Jewish majority following the events of October 2000 (Barnea, 2024). During these decades, Israeli Arab citizens, most of whom define themselves as Palestinians, had several opportunities to escalate the security situation within the state and challenge the regime: Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin (2002), the Second Lebanon War (2006), Operation Cast Lead (2008), the Marmara Flotilla (2010), Operation Pillar of Clouds (2012), Operation Protective Edge (2014), and the Nation-State Bill (2018) passed by Knesset. In all these cases, the Arab Israeli citizens’ response was to protest within the framework of the law (Frisch, 2017). The conceptual framework and the brief historical overview allow a discussion of the action patterns of Arab society in Israel following the war that began in October 2023. Even if the end date of the war is still unclear, it seems that after more than a year of ongoing hostilities, certain trends within this population can be pointed out. This article seeks to assert two preliminary claims. First, the scale of protest by Arab society in Israel in response to the war in Gaza is low and offers several explanations for this. Second, there has been a moderate increase in the scope of terrorism by individuals within Arab society, apparently due to the influence of the war. The article also aims to analyze the public statements of the Arab leadership in Israel and examine whether there is a consensus or differences in approaches that originate from different ideologies. Based on the triangle model of citizenship, nationalism, and religion, the study hypotheses are: 1) The increasing number of terrorist attacks, as noted below, carried out by Israeli Arabs since October 2023 indicates identification with the Palestinians in Gaza on a national basis. 2) The limited number of protests within the framework of the law reflects a tendency of most of the Arab public to prefer Israeli citizenship over national or religious identification with the Palestinians and with Hamas. 3) The public positions of the Arab leadership reflect ideological differences: Mansour Abbas adheres to a civil partnership, while his political opponents from the Joint List cling to their Palestinian national identity. Methodology This study adopts a combined qualitative and quantitative methodology based on the three hypotheses it seeks to confirm or refute. In the quantitative aspect, it maps the cases where there was a possibility of protest or violence on the part of the Arab society in Israel following the outbreak of the war in October 2023. Such events could be protests against the delivery of the law, clashes with the security system, or terrorist acts against Jews. Qualitative research aims to examine feelings, ideas, and experiences that are often impossible to translate into quantitative numerical data. The religious, national, or civil narrative is the most common tool to examine feelings and thoughts in qualitative studies because it allows researchers to analyze testimonies from their statements and activities. Thus, qualitative methodologies are likely to be used when seeking perceptions, opinions, and approaches, as in this specific study (Ugwu & Eze Val, 2023).In the qualitative aspect, statements were collected from the Arab society on social networks, leading Israeli and global news websites, and statements from public figures at the national level. It was then analyzed according to keywords relevant to this study, such as Israeli occupation, jihad, condemnation of Hamas terrorism, support for Palestinian terrorism, and identification with the victims in Israel and Gaza. Incidents of Terrorism In general, the number of Israeli Arabs involved in terrorism since 1948 is low (Abu Mookh, 2023; Kobowitz, 2019). Despite ethnic-national and religious diversity, which creates significant potential for sparking violence, various reasons have led to a trend of low-volume terrorism. An analysis of the data in the decade preceding October 2023 reveals the following picture: 1) According to the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), in 2013, the involvement of Israeli Arabs in terrorist attacks continued to be minor. The characteristics of terrorism in this case were twofold: going to Syria and joining ISIS or connecting to terrorist infrastructures of Palestinians in the West Bank (Shabak, 2013). 2) Most terrorist incidents involving Israeli Arabs in 2014 (a total of 10 cases) were related to outbreaks of protest and disorder, which included the use of Molotov cocktails attacks against Jewish drivers and setting fire to their cars. One case of the murder of a young Jewish woman by a Bedouin taxi driver stands out (Shabak, 2014). 3) In 2015, there was an increase (a total of 41 Israeli Arabs joined ISIS; a total of 15 terror attacks) in the scope of terrorism committed by Israeli Arabs: shooting and stabbing attacks in which 2 Israelis were killed and 13 wounded. This was also a year in which ISIS was at its peak, and this affected dozens of Israeli Arabs who joined its ranks. ISIS terrorist cells were exposed in several Arab communities, and Israel’s security forces arrested 41 Israeli Arabs (Shabak, 2015). It was likely due to the influence of propaganda by ISIS, which included calls to harm infidels. Between 2018 and 2022, the trend of terrorism by Israeli Arabs continued on a low scale (Abu Mookh, 2023; Kobowitz, 2019). An exception was the month of May 2021, in which violent clashes occurred between Arabs and Jews and security forces (Wall Guard incidents). These attacks resulted in the deaths of 14 Israelis, the vast majority of them members of the security system, such as soldiers and police (Nassar, 2022; Schlesinger, 2018). Regardless, the average number of attacks carried out by Israeli Arabs was four per year, significantly lower compared to the number since the war in Gaza began in October 2023. This indicates that the majority of Arab society has chosen to uphold the law and not risk punishment on criminal or security grounds that have the potential to harm the chances of integration into Israeli society. In this case, the civil element prevailed over the other elements in the relationship triangle. Based on media reports, since October 7, 2023, there has been a real increase in terror attempts and attacks by Israeli Arabs against Jews (mainly security forces). Based on various media and newspaper sources, one can identify that at least 13 cases were registered since October 7, of which Israeli Arabs executed 9 attacks and 4 were thwarted by the Israeli security forces. An analysis of these cases leads to the following insights. First, most of the perpetrators chose to commit stabbing attacks (six cases). In other cases, there were mob attacks, throwing stones, and one an attack that was a combination of a mob followed by an attack with an ax. Second, all involved were males between the ages of 13 and 28. An unusual case involved 9- to 10-year-old children throwing stones in the city of Lod (central Israel). Third, two Jews were murdered, and at least ten were injured, some of them severely. Fourth, all the attacks that were not thwarted were carried out by a single attacker and without the support of institutionalized terrorist organizations. Most of the victims were killed, and most of the perpetrators were affected by the security escalation in Israel, which is also a combination of religious (Hamas) and national (Palestinian) identification of the perpetrators. Finally, a geographic analysis of the attacks indicates diverse areas that include the north of Israel (4), the center (3), and the south (2) (Elbaz et al., 2024; El-Hai & Zeitoun, 2024; Eli & Moghrabi, 2024; Lalotashvili, 2023). An analysis of the terrorist attacks by the Arab population in Israel would not be complete without referring to terrorist attempts that the security forces in Israel managed to thwart. In March 2024, the Israeli media revealed that the Shin Bet and the police had uncovered a cell headed by Muhammad Khaled and Muhammad Yosef, residents of the city of Sakhnin (northern Israel). They intended to carry out terrorist acts in Israel, and members of their group purchased weapons originating from the West Bank. Khaled was in contact with the Hamas infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, which provided him with instructions for preparing explosives and directed him to recruit more members to promote terrorist activity (Alkalai, 2024). A senior police officer estimated that the events of the war in Gaza led to the decision of several individuals to establish a terror cell as part of their identification with Hamas. As part of the cooperation with the Palestinians (Hamas members from the Gaza Strip), the possibility of damaging strategic facilities within Israel was also examined (Hachmon, 2024). In July 2024, three young civilians from Kalansawa (central Israel) were arrested on suspicion of having contact with Palestinian terrorists from the West Bank and supplying weapons to terrorist elements. As part of the investigation, among other things, a pipe bomb, an M16 rifle, a Carlo rifle, another gun, and ammunition were seized (Diaz, 2024). In April 2024, a terrorist network consisting of Arab Israelis and Palestinian residents of the West Bank was exposed for conspiring to carry out serious and extensive terrorist activity throughout Israel (Koriel et al. 2024). The head of the cell is Bilal Nasasara, an Israeli Arab living in Rahat in the south of the country, who was responsible for recruiting operatives from Israel. During their investigations by the ISA, it was revealed that the suspects planned to carry out attacks near IDF bases and secure facilities, including the Ben-Gurion Airport. They also planned to assassinate the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir after obtaining an RPG missile and kidnap IDF soldiers (Hacohen, 2024). Casualties among Israeli Arab Society following Hamas’ Attack The analysis of the terrorist data is only part of the characteristics and phenomena of the Arab society in Israel since October 2023. Close to 30 Muslim Arabs, citizens of Israel, were also murdered by Hamas (Goldman & Koplewitz, 2023) despite a fatwa from Hamas itself that forbids harming them (Izz al-din al-Qassam, 2022). Among the murdered were pregnant women (Sharon, 2023). These figures and the cases presented below illustrate the shared fate of living together as citizens of Israel. In this respect, the terrorist attack by Hamas did not distinguish between Jewish and Muslim victims. One of the prominent phenomena observed during the Hamas attack on Israel was the mutual guarantee between Jews and Muslims, all citizens of Israel. The story of Amer Abu-Sabila illustrates the shared fate of Muslims and Jews on October 7. Abu-Sabila, a 25-year-old father of two toddlers and an Israeli citizen from the Bedouin community in the Negev, saw Hodaya, the mother of two young daughters, in her car trying to escape the scene after her husband had been murdered before her eyes. Due to the intensity of the trauma, she was having difficulty driving, so Abu-Sabila got into her car to take her and her daughters to what he thought would be a safe place—Shderot police station. No one knew that at that time, armed terrorists were surrounding the police station building to take it over. When they arrived at the police station, Amer and Hodaya were murdered by Hamas terrorists, while the two little girls, aged 3 and 6, lay on the floor of the car in the back seat, witnesses to the horror (Times of Israel, 2023). Eventually, the two girls were rescued by the Israeli security forces who arrived at the scene a little later (Gabai, 2023). Abd al-Karim Nasasara from the Bedouin settlement of Kseifa in the Negev was also murdered by Hamas terrorists when he tried to rescue young people from the Nova music festival in Re’im (October7memorial, 2023). The 23-year-old Awad Musa Darawshe, from the northern Israeli village of Iksal, was in the festival complex as an ambulance driver and paramedic. When the terrorists entered, he found himself being approached by many wounded. He chose to stay and care for them until he was murdered (Hauzman, 2023). Yosef al-Ziadna, a resident of Rahat, was a minibus driver who took young people to the Nova festival on Friday. When frightened young people called him on Saturday morning at the start of the Hamas attack, al-Ziadna did not think twice and went to rescue them despite the entire area being under attack. With extraordinary bravery and despite continuous gunfire, he tried to save as many young people as possible. He managed to get 30 survivors of the massacre into his vehicle and save their lives. Al-Ziadna himself lost a relative who was murdered, and four of his family members were kidnapped to Gaza (Kidon & Cohen, 2023). Condemnations of the Hamas Attack among Arab Leaders The Arab political leadership in Israel is divided upon ideological lines: there are communists, Islamists, and nationalist parties. Among the Islamic parties is the United Arab List or the southern branch of the Islamic Movement (hereafter: Ra’am), headed by Knesset member Mansour Abbas. Ra’am represents the southern faction of the Islamic Movement in Israel. In contrast, the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, led by Sheikh Raed Salah, was outlawed by the State of Israel in 2015. On the other side, there are nationalist parties—Balad, led by Sami Abu Shehadeh, and Ta’al, led by Ahmad Tibi—and the communists (Hadash), led by Ayman Odeh. This section examines some of the statements of Arab leaders in the wake of the October 7 attack (Hitman, 2018). Mansour Abbas was the first Arab leader to condemn the Hamas attack as early as noon on October 7, when the dimensions of the disaster were not yet so clear. On his Twitter account, he denounced the “unfortunate, tragic, and obscene” events and called on all citizens of the country, Jews and Arabs, to behave responsibly and not be drawn into incitement. On October 10, he called on Hamas to release the abductees in their hands because “Islamic values command us not to imprison women, children, and the elderly” (Abbas, 2023). On November 6, he became the first Arab leader to meet with the heads of the families of the abductees (Shavit, 2023). On November 10, Abbas said in a TV interview that since the beginning of the war, he had been working as hard as possible to help free the hostages by appealing to religious leaders in the Muslim world. He watched the documentary Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre to feel the pain of the victims (Shinberg, 2023). Abbas also called for the removal of Knesset member Iman Khatib Yassin from his party, who claimed there was no massacre. He came out against the Balad demonstration that took place the day before—November 5, 2023—and claimed that Balad does not represent the mindset of Arab society. What does represent the mood in Arab society, according to Abbas, is the survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute in November 2023, which showed an unprecedented record of 70% identification of Israeli Arabs with the state (Abu Mookh, 2023). He concluded by saying that the goal is for Jewish and Arab societies to overcome this crisis together in peace (Oko, 2023). Statements and actions of this kind reflected Abbas’s choice of a civil partnership between Jews and Arabs in Israel, a position he has been advocating in recent years and stands in contradiction to the position of other political parties that prefer to highlight the Palestinian national identity. In another survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute (December 25, 2023), more than half of Arab society supported the positions of Abbas, according to whom the Hamas attack does not reflect Arab society and the values of Islam. Furthermore, most Arab societies supported the war effort (As’ad & Kaplan, 2023). Ahmad Tibi condemned the harm to civilians (but not fully), hurled accusations at the government and the Israeli right wing, and wrote about the need for an end to the occupation and peace for all parties (Tibi, 2023). On October 11, Tibi spoke about the efforts he was making to prevent incitement in the mixed cities, and on October 13, he addressed the Knesset, speaking about the difficult times and the horrific acts of murder committed in the South. He also spoke about the fact that there were Jewish victims as well as Arabs (Muslims) and condemned the events, but at the same time, he stated that revenge in the Gaza Strip was not the solution to the conflict (Tibi, 2023). Ayman Odeh wrote on his Twitter account on October 10, 2023 that the blood of the innocent was crying out and that there was another way, the way of peace, to be realized through the vision of two states (Odeh, 2023). In another post on the same day, he wrote that he had made calls to console his Jewish friends from Netiv HaAsara, his Arab friends from the Negev, and his friends from the Gaza Strip for the loss of their loved ones (Odeh, 2023). On October 11, Odeh, like Tibi, wrote that he was trying with local leaders in mixed cities and with the police to prevent violence and called on the Arab public to show restraint and responsibility. On October 13, in his speech in the Knesset, Odeh stated that nothing in the world, not even the occupation, justified harming civilians. He claimed that revenge in the Gaza Strip is not the solution and that only a political solution aimed at peace would bring security (Odeh, 2023). Theoretically and empirically, these statements reflected rhetorics to merge authentic sympathy for the Israeli (Jew and Arab) victims and, at the same time, to call for a solution to the ethno-national conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Sami Abu Shehadeh did not condemn the atrocities of October 7. Instead, he accused US President Joe Biden of giving Israel the green light to carry out ethnic cleansing of Gazans, expressing his pain about this (Abu Shahadeh, 2023). On October 17, Abu Shahadeh wrote on Twitter of the hypocritical Western approach toward Israelis and Palestinians. Given Biden’s visit to Israel on October 18, he asked whether Biden intended to pass through the Gaza Strip and see the Israeli damage or talk to the families of the injured Gazans (Abu Shahadeh, 2023). Raed Salah, the leader of the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, distributed a video on Al-Jazeera in which he addressed the international audience and asked every Muslim, Christian, and Jew to call for an end to the war (YouTube, 2023). He called on the public to spread peace, oppose damage to mosques, churches, and synagogues, and allow freedom of prayer. He spoke against harming the innocent: the elderly, women, and children (Al-Jazeera, 2023). In this video, Salah used general phrases about harming innocent people. There was no reference in it to the massacre committed by Hamas on October 7 or its condemnation. A month after the start of the war, Salah appealed in an interview on Al-Jazeera to every person of conscience in the world to call for an end to the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip. In addition, he praised the European nations, who, unlike their governments, showed humanity and took to the streets (YouTube, 2023). Sheikh Salah’s activity reflects full religious identification with Hamas (both movements emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood). His call for a worldwide protest against Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip was the maximum he could do. He chose not to incite a protest inside Israel because the faction he heads was outlawed, and he knew he risked another indictment. In this case, he took advantage of his right as a citizen in a democratic country to raise his voice without breaking the law. Kamal Khatib, Salah’s deputy within the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, also ignored Hamas’ atrocities and focused on accusing the Israeli side. On October 11, he wrote on Facebook that there was Jewish incitement against Arab Israeli leaders and that Jewish groups had distributed lists with the names and addresses of Arab leaders in Israel and defined them as a fifth column (Khatib, 2023). He said that the threats would not affect them or change their identity. He signed off the post with the following sentence: “We are getting closer to salvation, be happy” (Khatib, 2023). On October 24, he uploaded a video to the YouTube channel of Muwatini 48, a channel associated with the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, under the title: “Has the military government returned?” In the video, he said: “Since 7 October, what has happened in Israel, our people in the Palestinian interior have been exposed to an unprecedented attack.” He talked about gagging, preventing demonstrations, and preventing freedom of expression, as well as about the hundreds arrested and indicted. He concluded by saying he was not afraid of any threat and was proud of his Palestinian and Islamic identity (YouTube, 2023). In terms of reviewing the statements of the leaders of the Arab public after the massacre of October 7, their statements are not uniform and reflect personal (and collective) identity and ideology. The Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch was careful about expressing support for Hamas but emphasized religious and Palestinian identity. The nationalists focused on the Palestinian side being the victim of the conflict, and the communists called for a peaceful solution and coexistence between the parties. Anti-war Protests among the Arab Public Hamas attempted to recruit Israeli Arabs to its ranks as early as on October 7. In a recorded speech published on that day, Muhammad Deif, the commander of the military wing of Hamas, called on the Arabs of Israel to join Hamas (YouTube, 2023). Hamas sees the Israeli Arabs as a significant force that can help them in any conflict with Israel due to their proximity to major traffic routes and population concentrations (MEMRI, 2023). Previously, in May 2021, Hamas managed to mobilize the Israeli Arabs, who broke out in violent riots all over the country, especially in mixed cities (Hitman, 2023). Scholars in the Muslim world affiliated with Hamas also tried to harness the Muslim citizens of Israel for war against the State of Israel. For example, on November 7, 2023, the International Union of Muslin Scholars (IUMS) issued a fatwa regarding the duty of the governments of Arab countries and Muslims worldwide concerning the war in Palestine. They stated that all Muslims have an obligation to go out and fight for the victory of Gaza; according to the circle theory, with the first circle being the Palestinians in the West Bank, the second being the 1948 Arabs living in Israel, followed by the Arab countries neighboring Israel and, finally, the other Arab and Muslim countries (Ijtihad & Fatwa Committee of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, 2023). All these efforts were made based on a common national and religious identity. Unlike May 2021, when Israeli Arabs erupted in violent riots all over Israel, the religious leadership of the Muslims in Israel, namely the Islamic Movement’s two factions, did not respond to this call by IUMS. The Arab society in Israel responded to the war in Gaza with demonstrations and manifestations of protest. An exception in this context is the story of teacher Rami Habiballah from the north of Israel, who contacted Hamas operatives abroad to promote terrorist attacks in Israel during the war (Senyor & Mughrabi, 2024). The constant dilemma of the Arab residents of Israel, based on the triangle model presented in this article, was also expressed in the manifestations of the protest. On the one hand, some lost their family members in the war, and, on the other hand, some called for an end to it, claiming identification with Gaza. On October 12, 2023, the police dispersed a 15-vehicle Hamas support convoy in Umm el-Fahem and detained four people for questioning (Machol, 2023). On October 18, before the IDF’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Arab demonstrators took to the streets of Haifa Um el-Fahem and Taiba, calling for an end to the war in the Gaza Strip. Following the demonstrations and clashes with the police, several protesters were arrested (Khoury, 2023). On November 9, 2023, senior figures in the leadership of the Arab public, including Muhammad Barakeh, head of the Monitoring Committee of the Israeli Arab Leadership, and senior members of Balad (Abu Shehadeh, Hanin Zoabi, and Mtanes Shehadeh), organized a demonstration against the war in the northern city of Nazareth. The senior leadership of the Arab public in the country was invited to the demonstration. The demonstration was dispersed because the police claimed it was illegal (Sha’alan, 2023). In January 2024, a protest was held in Haifa to stop the war. This protest was the first of its kind, as both Jewish left-wing activists and Israeli Arabs from Haifa attended it. The protesters called for peace, an end to the war, and a stop to the cycle of bloodshed (Al-Jazeera, 2024). Unlike previous protests, the participants were asked to demonstrate their shared citizenship and concern for the victims and express their hope for ending the conflict. On March 2, 2024, a demonstration was held in Kafr Kanna. The demonstration was organized by the Supreme Monitoring Committee of the Israeli Arab Public after many difficulties in obtaining the necessary approvals from the Israeli police. In this demonstration, calls were heard for an end to the war in the Gaza Strip, identification with the Palestinians, and resistance to the occupation. In addition, Barakeh addressed the common national identity of the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians, stating that the Arab public would not forget what is happening in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and that the Arab public was best suited to protecting Al-Aqsa and the holy places from “the occupying Zionists” (Halevi, 2024). It can be observed that despite the severe war in the Gaza Strip, the destruction, and the many Gazan casualties, there was no escalation in the reaction of Israeli Arabs. Unlike the violent events of May 2021, they chose to maintain a low profile and limit their actions to calling for an end to the war through nonviolent demonstrations. This pattern of sporadic demonstrations led residents of the Gaza Strip to accuse Israeli Arabs of not participating in the protests, not supporting Gazans, and remaining silent throughout the war (Zbeedat, 2024). This situation can be understood considering that Israeli Arabs were also affected by the Hamas attack. Two additional reasons for the lack of violent incidents between Jews and Arabs are the enforcement policies of the Israeli police and the Ministry of Justice against expressions of support for Hamas or Gaza and the informational campaign by the Israeli government aimed at the Arab public (Sha’alan, 2024). In practice, the Israeli establishment implemented a stringent enforcement policy against anyone suspected of supporting Hamas or encouraging terrorism within Israel, particularly on social media. This was the case in November 2023, when the police arrested 103 suspects for expressing support for Hamas, with 46 indictments filed. In comparison, from 2018 to 2022, only 88 indictments were filed (Ma’anit et al., 2023). The fact that in the summer of 2024, the number of demonstrations by Arab society against the war has significantly decreased shows not only a routine in the shadow of war but a growing understanding that despite identification with the Palestinian nation, life has its own dynamics, and being citizens of a democratic state creates opportunities for them (alongside threats due to being a minority group). In almost all cases, the decision to stick to peaceful demonstrations is an expression of the clear preference of the Arab public to stick to their citizenship. The fact that the police arrested a few hundred out of a population of 1.5 million is also evidence that the majority of Arab society in Israel sympathizes with the Palestinian nation but remains indifferent when it is required to act in protest or violence to promote Palestinian national interests. Finally, the ongoing war has increased the lack of trust between Jews and Arabs. It is a common phenomenon in majority–minority interaction, especially when the political–identitarian conflict is intractable (Vered & Bar-Tal, 2017). The two cases below illustrate this argument: • Maisa Abd Elhadi, an Arab citizen of Israel from Nazareth, is known for her roles in numerous Israeli series and films and for representing Israel at international festivals. After the Hamas attack, Abd Elhadi posted content on social media expressing support for the terrorist organization and showing enthusiasm for the abduction of Israeli soldiers and civilians to the Gaza Strip (Sever & Machol, 2023). As a result, she was detained for questioning by the police, the broadcasting company HOT announced the termination of its association with her, and her representation agency, Kafri ended its contract with her (Mish’ali, 2023). Ultimately, she was released after 1 day of detention and placed under house arrest with restrictive conditions until December 2024 (Moshkovitz, 2023). • Dr. Abed Samara, the head of the cardiac intensive care unit at Hasharon Hospital, was suspended from his position in mid-October after the hospital’s management interpreted posts he made on Facebook expressing support for Hamas (Drucker, 2023; Efrati, 2023). After a month and a half of suspension and a battle to clear his name with the hospital administration, Samara decided in early December to leave the hospital where he had worked for 15 years due to the hostile atmosphere and the breach of trust between him and the management. The war between Israel and Gaza since October 2023 was another opportunity for Hamas to mobilize Arab society in Israel to support it on the basis of a common national identity. The long duration of the war resulted in reactions within the Arab society that highlighted identification with the Palestinian victims which was mainly expressed in support from afar through social platforms. Along with this, there was a minor increase in the number of terrorist attacks, although the protest was in low numbers. The Israeli government, against the backdrop of the war, took a rigid approach toward Arab demonstrators in an attempt to deter any escalation. Yet, the vast majority of the Israel Arabs did not participate in protests or engage in violence. Conclusion Like previous conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, the war in the Gaza Strip once again illustrated the complexity of Israeli Arabs’ reality and identity. They have Israeli citizenship and live among Jews. At the same time, their national and religious identities are different from the Jewish majority. This permanent situation and their activity since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip in October 2023 lead to several conclusions. First, they have no immunity against possible harm from terrorism. Second, their national and religious identity led a small number of them to act illegally and violently and carry out terrorist attacks against Jews. Third, compared to 2014, there has been an increase in the number of terror attacks carried out by Israeli Arabs. It is an outcome of shared national (and sometimes religious) identity with the Palestinians. Fourth, the vast majority of Arab society in Israel did not take part in protests or violence in response to the war. They remained passive and continued their lives without risking punitive measures from the government. In this context, it is worth noting that there has been an increase in the Arab society’s level of fear of the Israeli establishment, and some of the elements representing it have announced strict enforcement in the case of identifying with Hamas or breaking the law. Finally, the Arab leadership is not united in its attitude to the war. Their public statements reflect a traditional ideological difference, which puts an insurmountable barrier to forming a unified front of a minority society that constantly asks to improve its standard of civil life. Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingThe authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.ORCID iDGadi Hitman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9018-1241ReferencesAbbas Mansour. (2023, October 7). 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Abstract It has been over a decade since the emergence of what is now best known as the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). This Special Issue, a decade after the BRI was launched, highlights the immense complexity not only of the idea itself but also of China's global influence and the varied attitudes and responses towards it. We hope that these studies, with their diverse approaches and evidence bases, contribute to enriching the expanding literature on the BRI – a trend that is unlikely to wane anytime soon as China continues to be a major global force in the twenty-first century. It has now been over a decade since Xi Jinping first announced the “Silk Road Economic Belt” (丝绸之路经济带, sichou zhilu jingji dai) on land in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in September 2013. Later that year, in October, he also announced a new “twenty-first century Maritime Silk Road” (21世纪海上丝绸之路, ershiyi shiji haishang sichou zhilu) in Indonesia. These announcements marked the beginning of what is now best known as the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI; 一带一路, yidai yilu). For several years in the early first decade of the twenty-first century, as China's economy grew exponentially in size following its entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001, there were increasing calls for the country to clarify its global ambitions now that it was a genuinely global economic power. The short-lived notion – around the period between 2003 and 2005 – of China enjoying a “peaceful rise” (和平崛起, heping jueqi) didn’t help much in this regard, with the US and others calling on Beijing to state more clearly its commitment not just to multilateral trade agreements and arrangements, but to their underpinning values (Glaser and Medeiros, 2007). Hu Jintao's presidency from 2002 to 2012 coincided with a period of spectacular gross domestic product (GDP) growth and diplomatic silence. When China did indeed surpass Japan as the world's second-largest economy in overall GDP terms in 2010, the need to clearly articulate its view on its global role became more urgent. Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, the era of the “China Dream” (中国梦, zhongguo meng) and of “telling China's story well” (讲好中国故事, jianghao zhongguo gushi), both internally and externally, has finally begun (Wang and Feng, 2016; Xue Er Shi Xi, 2021). The BRI, therefore, was a core part of the messaging that the country was now engaged in. The initial policy document jointly issued by three ministries of the State Council in 2015 talked of connectivity, a zone of free trade, people-to-people links, and greater cultural communication, all of which were predicated on win–win outcomes (National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce, 2015). That was met increasingly, however, with external criticisms, which ranged from the general vagueness attributed to the BRI to its role in creating indebted partner countries as well as the suspicion that this was about attempting to acquire power, rather than being a cooperative, constructive member of the international community (Perlez and Huang, 2017). Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for instance, labelled the initiative something that did “harm” and framed it as the primary vehicle by which Beijing was extending its malign influence across the world to support authoritarianism and push back against democratic values (Murray-Atfield and Staff, 2020). With over a decade now in existence, this is a good time to reflect on and review what the BRI has meant to the world so far. In 2015, there was no real track record, beyond alluding to China's growing energy and economic interests in Africa, Latin America, and what became labelled as the “Global South.” Since then, a plethora of different treatments and studies have emerged, utilising various metrics, conceptual frameworks, and datasets (e.g. Garlick, 2020; Garlick and Havlová, 2020; Gerstl, 2020; Shakhanova and Garlick, 2020; Turcsanyi and Kachlikova, 2020; Vangeli, 2020). This Special Edition contributes to that literature with a set of contrasting approaches and geographical focuses regarding the BRI. This is a testament to the complexity of the phenomenon itself and its multidimensional character. The one thing that each contribution has, for all their differences, is a recognition of how complex the BRI is, and how it quickly evades straightforward frameworks and unilinear approaches. In Africa, as Ajah and Onuoha (2025) write in their study of Nigerian experiences with the BRI, the record shows that things are not as simple as to support the notion that China is using its newly acquired economic assets solely to assert its power in its own interests. Acknowledging the often critical analysis offered by subscribers to neocolonial, neo-realism and dependency prism theorists, they opt to use complex interdependence theory, stating that the BRI has “provided Nigeria with an opportunity to secure funds for rehabilitating and upgrading its railway infrastructure” (Ajah and Onuoha, 2025: 134). Based on detailed interviews and field research in the country, they show a situation in which the BRI, not just in railways, but in ports and airports, has “yielded tangible results in addressing Nigeria's infrastructural deficits” (Ajah and Onuoha, 2025: 137). That issue of tangibility is essential, with empirical data on both the amount Chinese partners have spent and the results they have achieved.  Recognising the issues around lack of transparency by Chinese partners at some points, and the problems around terms of funding and how these are negotiated and settled, the authors nonetheless conclude that the BRI offers Nigeria more opportunity than vulnerability, providing a cogent corrective to the blanket accusation of one-sided deals where “win–win” for China means that it gains twice. Comerma (2024) addresses the issue of values and frameworks in the differing context of the European Union, and in particular, how normative language emanating from the Chinese government appeared in the eighty Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) issued between China and various European governments since 2018. To some, this was a clear attempt by China to gain validation more widely for its signature foreign policy initiative, and ultimately, for its own desire for influence, recognition, and status. It was linked, as Comerma argues, to a push for a form of soft power with Chinese characteristics, which was popular in the first decade of the twenty-first century and which lingered during the early Xi era. However, leaving aside those MOUs that were impossible to get hold of, in the two that she offers detailed analysis of – those with Italy and Hungary – the outcomes proved very different in the end. Despite adopting some of China's normative language, its soft power was limited, particularly with an audience that holds European values (Comerma, 2024: 242). As she concludes, even if governments did accept Chinese normative language, which overrode their subscription to market values and democratic principles, in implementation, things have not gone smoothly. This is further testified to by the fact that Italy allowed its agreement on the BRI to lapse in 2022. Lin's (2024) approach looks not at a region or territory and its experience and engagement with BRI, but at the issue of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). As this article shows, China has shown interest not so much in soft power, but in what is labelled as “soft connectivity,” recognising that there were issues and responsibilities in terms of engagement and management of its overseas interests through the BRI that needed to be considered. As Lin writes, historically, China has “found itself at the receiving end of norms diffusion” (Lin, 2024: 154). With its own celebrated “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” adopted in the 1950s, China stands by a position of non-interference in the affairs of others. That should mean that its investments and engagements in the outside world do not seem to have overt social and political aims, despite the accusations made to the contrary by the country's critics. Lin argues that while China, of course, does not compromise on observing its own mode of doing things domestically, it has proven a “rational and pragmatic” actor externally (Lin, 2024: 172). In environmental issues, in particular, it has found at least a relatively non-contentious space by which to explore CSR-related actions in ways which are seen as mutually beneficial and acceptable, even as its stance on labour rights has been far fainter. The BRI land route was, as noted at the start of this introduction, initially announced in Kazakhstan. It is therefore timely that this volume includes a contribution by Primiano and Kudebayeva (2023) on how students at a university in Almaty view the BRI and Chinese influence generally. Their findings make sobering reading. Despite Central Asia being a key focus of BRI activity and often regarded as a region of largely positive relations with China, the views revealed through the surveys are largely negative and critical. Unsurprisingly, those with greater adherence to liberal and democratic values are the most critical of China, viewing the latter's investments as a threat to the country's oil and gas interests and displaying high levels of unease. At the same time, it is interesting and perhaps significant to note that the study also found a general lack of knowledge regarding the BRI and China's presence in Kazakhstan. Finally, shifting our attention to the sea, Schmitz (2024) offers an assessment of China's historical statecraft in the context of BRI, with a specific focus on the instrumentalisation of the Chinese notion of tianxia (天下, all under heaven) by the country's political and academic elites to narrate both China's past and present as a maritime power and legitimate its claims over various maritime territories. Drawing on textual materials sourced from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, one of the largest databases of academic publications in the country, Schmitz analyses the resurrection of memories of the now-celebrated Ming-era eunuch admiral Zheng He, as well as the archaeological and historical records of Zheng's extensive explorations up to the coast of eastern Africa in the early fifteenth century. For Schmitz, the BRI embodies this expansive thinking of tianxia, which maps out a world where there are the “core region” and “surrounding, concentric zones of influence” (Schmitz, 2024: 215). Acknowledging that “[d]espite the ambitious narrative that frames it, in practice, BRI is a patchwork […],” Schmitz argues, the narrative of tianxia under the sea should be understood as “more than simply a strategy used to calm fears” (Schmitz, 2024: 214), but presenting a different notion of what international space might be, and of how, at least from China's perspective, it seeks to operate within that space. This Special Issue, a decade after the BRI appeared, shows the enormous complexity not only of the idea itself, but also of China's global influence and the range of attitudes and responses to it. That the contributions contain perspectives from Africa, Europe, Central Asia, and the Asian region itself proves how expansive the reach of the project is, as well as how many different issues, from values to CSR, notions of power and dependency, and intellectual frameworks, are involved with it. We hope that these studies, with their very different approaches and evidence bases, help to enrich the growing literature on the BRI – a trend that is unlikely to disappear anytime soon as China continues to be a global force in the twenty-first century. Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingThe authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.ORCID iDsKerry Brown https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3472-2357Sinan Chu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9518-1953ReferencesAjah Anthony Chinonso, Onuoha Jonah Isaac (2025) China’s Belt and Road Initiative and infrastructure development in Nigeria: unveiling a paradigm shift or repackaging of failed ventures? 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Pashinyan and Aliyev sign groundbreaking agreements with Trump on peace and infrastructure projects between Armenia and Azerbaijan On August 8, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House for a “historic peace summit.” Both countries declared a permanent renunciation of war, endorsed 17 negotiated provisions of a future peace treaty, and formally withdrew from the OSCE Minsk Group. At the heart of the agreement lies the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP), an infrastructure initiative in Armenia’s Syunik region encompassing railways, pipelines, and fiber-optic networks. In exchange, the United States receives exclusive development rights for 99 years, while Armenia retains formal sovereignty over the territory. The deal diminishes Russia’s regional influence, strengthens Turkey’s strategic position, and provokes discontent in Iran. For Armenia, the agreement opens up new trade opportunities but also entails risks due to the rupture with traditional partners and domestic political criticism. Azerbaijan gains a direct land corridor to Turkey, access to new markets, and enhanced international prestige. For the United States, the deal offers economic and security benefits as well as a boost in global political standing. The European Union sees potential for regional stabilization and new trade routes but must acknowledge its diminished role as a mediator compared to Washington. If successfully implemented, the agreements could mark a historic turning point for the South Caucasus. Three-Way Summit at the White House While the world was watching the American tariff ultimatum to Putin, wondering whether a ceasefire in Ukraine might be imminent, an unexpected high-level meeting took place at the White House on August 8—one that could also make history and is at least indirectly linked to the larger conflict in Eastern Europe. Donald Trump personally received Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for what he—never shy of grand words—had announced as a “historic peace summit.” Against the backdrop of the nearly four-decade-long, geopolitically charged conflict between the two countries and the resulting blockade in the South Caucasus, this represented a breakthrough in efforts toward a peace treaty between Yerevan and Baku. Several agreements and contracts were signed. In addition to separate bilateral economic and investment deals with the U.S., and the official withdrawal of both capitals from the OSCE Minsk Group (a format established in 1992 to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict), two documents stand out in particular. Letter of Intent: Peace Treaty The first is a letter of intent in which both governments—under the symbolic mediation and patronage of the U.S.—reaffirm their commitment to finalize the ongoing peace treaty. The 17 points already negotiated are set as binding. Both parties declare their intention to end all wars permanently and renounce any acts of revenge. The core issue remains the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which since the late 1980s has claimed up to 50,000 lives and caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands. After more than thirty years of fruitless international mediation, Azerbaijan had created facts on the ground through its (re)conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh in two offensives in 2020 and 2023. Since then, Pashinyan’s government has sought a peace treaty, aiming to open borders not only with Azerbaijan but also with its close ally, Turkey. This effort entails effectively relinquishing claims to the Nagorno-Karabakh region, historically inhabited by Armenians for centuries. However, Baku had repeatedly made additional demands, such as amending the Armenian constitution or granting a corridor to its exclave of Nakhchivan through Armenian territory in the strategically sensitive Syunik/Zangezur region.[1] This long, narrow strip of land in southern Armenia—only about 30 km wide at its narrowest—separates Azerbaijan’s mainland from its western province and also forms Armenia’s direct border with Iran, a crucial lifeline for the historically beleaguered landlocked state. Granting the Azeris a “corridor” here had long been a red line for Yerevan. Mutual distrust remains high after decades of hostile propaganda, and Armenian society is deeply traumatized by the recent war’s displacement, cultural destruction, and fears of a potential annexation of the province by Baku. It is at this juncture that the U.S. steps in as a kind of “neutral” guarantor power for the so-called corridor. Trump Route for Peace and Prosperity In the second, and arguably most important, Washington agreement, the U.S. is granted 99-year exclusive special rights to develop infrastructure in the Syunik/Zangezur region. Through an Armenian-American joint venture, led by a consortium of private companies (including potential third-country partners), the so-called “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) is to be built. In addition to restoring a disused railway line for passenger and freight traffic, plans include new oil and gas pipelines and fiber-optic cables. Unlike some earlier proposals, the territory itself is not being leased to the U.S.—this is a commercial project in which Armenia retains full sovereign control. However, the use of private American security firms to protect the infrastructure is possible. After the meeting, all three leaders hailed the results as “historic,” and the European Union also voiced strong approval. But while the immediate participants stand to benefit significantly from implementing the deals, the likely losers are in Moscow and Tehran. Yerevan Distances Itself from Moscow Opening borders with long-hostile neighbors offers significant economic potential. Access to the Turkish market in particular could stimulate new growth. Geopolitically, it opens previously closed avenues for diversification; notably, the already ongoing strengthening of ties with the EU and the West could reach a new level. Since autumn 2023, Yerevan has been promoting its “Crossroads of Peace” project, a plan to expand cross-border infrastructure in the South Caucasus, in which the Syunik region is a crucial puzzle piece. The Washington deals also come with American investment commitments—not only in energy and infrastructure but also in fields such as semiconductor production and AI. Germany and the EU have also long pledged investments in Armenia’s transport links and regional connectivity. At the same time, bringing a U.S. presence into such a geostrategically vital chokepoint is a clear affront to both Russia and Iran, historically important partners for Armenia. Until recently, Moscow was considered Armenia’s indispensable security guarantor and still maintains a military presence in the country. Yet since 2023, Yerevan has been openly turning away from Russia. Until early 2025, Russian FSB forces still controlled Armenia’s border crossings to Turkey and Iran—a Soviet-era legacy—but Armenians have since taken over. In July, Pashinyan’s government even claimed to have foiled a Russian-backed coup attempt. At the end of August, Armenia will host joint military exercises with the U.S. for the third time under the name “Eagle Partner.” This is also unwelcome news for Tehran. Despite stark cultural and political differences, the Islamic Republic and Armenia share an interest in keeping trade routes open to Europe and Russia in light of their rivalry with Azerbaijan and Turkey. A U.S. presence right on its doorstep in Syunik would be a security nightmare for Iran and could disrupt this export route. For Yerevan, given Trump’s unpredictability in foreign policy, it is not without risk to damage relations with a friendly neighbor and openly break with Russia. Domestically, Pashinyan faces fierce criticism over the agreement. The opposition accuses him of having completely abandoned the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, failing to secure any prospect of return for the 100,000 displaced Armenians, and not holding Baku accountable for alleged war crimes. Voices from the Syunik region itself fear a sell-out of their land, new political tensions, and economic harm from a collapse in trade and tourism with Iran. Nevertheless, the Armenian Prime Minister hopes to benefit politically from the agreement. In the 2026 parliamentary elections, he aims for re-election, but his approval ratings recently stood at just over ten percent. A breakthrough in the peace process—which he has long declared the top priority of his foreign policy—could give him a vital boost, as the overwhelming majority of Armenians want peace. Baku’s Interests Critics had accused Baku of using a “salami tactic” of making ever-new demands to extract maximum concessions from Pashinyan’s government without genuine interest in a peace treaty—especially if it would bring economic growth and stability to its long-time enemy, and democratic, systemic rival, Armenia. But Azerbaijan’s own economic prospects are also a strong driving force. A direct land link from Azerbaijan’s heartland through Nakhchivan to Turkey offers major potential for trade and energy exports to Europe. At the same time, Aliyev wants to position his country for the post-fossil era as a hub for transit and trade. This requires open borders and international trust. With Pashinyan’s government seen as Baku’s “best chance” to secure a deal quickly and on favorable terms, Aliyev also has an interest in finalizing the agreement soon. For a government that has recently tightened the screws on what remains of a free press and democratic civil society, positioning itself on the world stage as part of a major peace initiative is a welcome image boost. Events like COP-29 (2024) and the Global Media Forum (2025) have already been used by Aliyev to polish his image and sideline human rights issues. Partners like Beijing have little concern for such matters, and Azerbaijan’s location on the “Middle Corridor” is already paying off: trade with China rose 25 percent in the first quarter of 2025. Relations with Moscow, however, have sunk to a new low since the downing of an Azerbaijani passenger plane in December 2024 and further escalations. By signing the Washington deal—paired with the lifting of U.S. arms export restrictions—Baku makes clear that it has finally emancipated itself from its former colonial power, Russia. U.S. Interests For the U.S. President, the “historic peace deals” are partly about business. Businessman Trump sees the opportunity and named as the goal of the route bearing his name “to fully unlock the potential of the South Caucasus region.” An American presence in such a geostrategically important area, right on Iran’s doorstep, is also a significant security move. Even if no state “boots on the ground” are planned to secure the project, joint military exercises are already taking place, and private security companies would still count as a U.S. presence. The new rapprochement between Washington and Baku also fits neatly into broader Middle East dynamics. While Baku’s relations with Tehran fluctuate between occasional cooperation and open rivalry, Azerbaijan is considered Israel’s most important partner among Muslim countries—particularly in security and intelligence cooperation. With Washington now lifting arms export restrictions for Baku, some observers see a possible new trilateral alliance between Washington, Tel Aviv, and Baku against Iran. Not least, the very name “TRIPP” suggests prestige plays a role for the U.S. President. With the “one day” in which Donald Trump said he would end the Russian war in Ukraine now in its eighth month, it suits the self-proclaimed Nobel Peace Prize candidate to claim that his genius has solved a nearly forty-year conflict through infrastructure projects (paid for by others) where the world’s major powers—and most recently Joe Biden—had failed. The White House promptly tweeted a photo after the summit captioned: “THE Peace President.” Europe’s Interests EU representatives and leading member states explicitly welcomed the Washington agreements. Not only German President Steinmeier and EU foreign policy chief Kallas had advocated for a peace treaty during visits to the region earlier this year, but Macron also expressed his support during a summer meeting with Pashinyan. The fact that the Europeans failed to take Washington’s place as guarantors of a peace deal—even though a similar offer involving a Swiss company was reportedly on the table—is as sobering as it is unsurprising. However, given that a qualitatively new U.S. presence could help stabilize this vital region in the EU’s neighborhood, weaken Putin’s war-waging Russia, diversify energy sources, and ultimately channel many of the new trade routes into the European heartland, the EU stands to gain much from the agreement. If the Armenians now get a boost to pursue their European ambitions, this offers an opportunity for greater engagement from Brussels and member states—especially through economic investments that expand the European footprint in the region and reduce Armenia’s painful dependence on Russia in trade and energy. Already Historic? Although Trump’s self-congratulatory statements after the meeting might have led some to believe the peace treaty was already a done deal, there are still hurdles to the final signing. Aliyev emphasized that Pashinyan’s government must first “do its homework,” referring primarily to the politically contentious constitutional amendment in Armenia. The planned “Trump Route” currently exists only on paper. Russia and Iran see their interests in the region directly threatened by the project, and although Russia’s weakness is largely self-inflicted—starting (at the latest) with its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which has since tied up most of its resources—both countries can be expected to take steps to disrupt or even block TRIPP’s construction. Tehran has already declared it will “turn the project into a grave.” Turkey, by contrast, stands to benefit if it can use the new economic links to expand its role as a regional power in the Caucasus. It will also be interesting to see how the deal might indirectly affect Georgia, an EU candidate country that is rapidly drifting away from the West. The expansion of alternative transport routes could undermine Georgia’s current monopoly on direct overland links between the EU, Azerbaijan, and Central Asia—the overhaul of the key Baku–Tbilisi–Kars railway is nearly complete. The “businessman”-controlled Georgian Dream government might thus become more “receptive” to economic pressure aimed at steering it back toward a democratic, pro-European course. If both agreements—a peace settlement, an open border, and the comprehensive development of planned infrastructure projects in the Syunik region under U.S. patronage—are implemented, the label “historic” would be entirely appropriate, with significance far beyond the region. Economically, it would make an important contribution to boosting connectivity between Europe and Central and East Asia via the “Middle Corridor” and the Caspian Sea. [1] The official name of the Armenian province is Syunik. The term Zangezur, on the other hand, is mainly used by Azerbaijan and Turkey and refers to a historical region that extends beyond the present-day province of Syunik.

Bukele's indefinite reelection marks a dangerous turning point for El Salvador, masked by popularity and a fleeting sense of security. In 2021, when Nayib Bukele updated his bio on X to read “The coolest dictator in the world,” he was flirting with a reality that had yet to fully unfold. But on July 31, 2025, the prophecy he once made on social media came true: with 57 votes in favor and just three against, the Legislative Assembly approved a constitutional amendment allowing Bukele to govern indefinitely. Among both supporters and critics, this latest assault on democracy comes as little surprise. Bukele’s presidency has long borne the hallmarks of an aspiring despot: subordination of the judiciary to the executive, a shrinking and reconfigured legislature, and more recently, forcing journalists and dissidents into exile under the Foreign Agents Law. Still, few doubt that last Thursday’s vote marks the darkest chapter yet in El Salvador’s accelerating descent into authoritarian rule. For now, the Salvadoran president appears untouchable. His radical security policy—despite serious human rights violations against both alleged and actual gang members—has transformed the former homicide capital of the world into one of the safest countries in the Western Hemisphere, winning him overwhelming support at home and abroad. He’s also been bolstered by a weak opposition, close ties to Trump and the so-called “new right,” and the conspicuous silence of Western leaders. Yet, according to a survey by LPG Datos, only 1.4% of Salvadorans find it troubling that power is concentrated in a single person’s hands. Still, Bukele will face future hurdles in holding on to power. What happens when Bukele’s brand of “peace” becomes normalized? Or when the country is hit by an economic, social, or environmental crisis? It seems unlikely that the self-proclaimed dictator would willingly cede power or allow a new government to take over following an electoral defeat. Democratic erosion Last week’s constitutional reform, which removed term limits for the presidency, also extended the presidential term from five to six years, eliminated run-off elections, and brought forward the 2028 presidential election to 2027 to align it with legislative and municipal elections—an attempt to capitalize on Bukele’s electoral momentum. These are merely the latest blows to El Salvador’s already fragile democracy. Just a year after his first presidential win in 2019, Bukele evoked memories of the civil war that plagued the 1980s. Flanked by heavily armed soldiers, he stormed into Congress to demand a $109 million loan for his “war” against gangs. In 2021, he went after the judiciary, purging the courts and replacing independent judges with loyalists from his party, Nuevas Ideas. But it was in 2022 that his presidency entered its defining phase with the declaration of a “state of exception,” which the Legislative Assembly has since renewed 41 times. For decades, El Salvador was caught in the crossfire between the notorious Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs (both Sureños and Revolucionarios), which controlled nearly every aspect of daily life. Attacks on businesses were common, and brutal killings occurred frequently and with impunity. Many families stopped sending their children to school, as the journey often meant crossing gang-controlled territories. Nearly every aspect of social life was confined to one’s neighborhood or home. Because Salvadoran gangs were not major players in international drug trafficking—unlike Mexican and Colombian cartels—violent extortion became their main source of income. In 2014, the Central Bank calculated that the cost of extortion in El Salvador equaled more than 3% of GDP; that same year, public spending on education was 3.8% of GDP. Every administration before Bukele promised to take on the gangs, but all failed to end the bloodshed. Clearly, their “tough” approach wasn’t tough enough. These broken promises, made over and over by the two dominant parties—right-wing ARENA and leftist FMLN—only deepened public disillusionment and a sense of chaos. Opposition missteps Despite his rising popularity as mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán under the FMLN—where he began his political career in 2012—Bukele’s relationship with his former party deteriorated. In October 2017, the FMLN finally expelled him for “defamatory actions,” following an incident in which he allegedly threw an apple at a party colleague. But the decision backfired: during the next year’s legislative and municipal elections, which Bukele had been poised to win, the FMLN suffered crushing defeats. In part, this was because a bitter Bukele had urged voters to spoil their ballots or stay home. With the FMLN stripped of its historic majority in the legislature, ARENA and the broader right were poised to take control. The FMLN’s hostility toward Bukele has hurt it ever since he became president in 2019. His critics—both inside and outside the party—have largely focused their attacks on his security policies, a strategy that has failed for several reasons. First, mass incarceration of gang members is the bedrock of Bukele’s popularity. Attempts to discredit him over human rights abuses tied to the Territorial Control Plan don’t resonate with voters whose own rights were routinely violated by the same gangs that the opposition now appears to defend. Second—and more importantly—security is just the visible tip of the “Bukelismo” iceberg. While his blatant disregard for the rights and freedoms of detainees (many imprisoned without trial in megaprison CECOT) deserves condemnation, the broader democratic backsliding—total institutional control, indefinite reelection, and an unprecedented concentration of power—is the more enduring threat to the future of this Central American nation. A fleeting calm? No one should be surprised by the popularity of a figure like Bukele in a country like El Salvador. After all, living without fear is a basic human right that Salvadorans were denied for far too long. Bukele’s ability to provide security where all his predecessors failed spectacularly explains not only his staggering popularity, but also the Salvadoran people’s willingness to discard their own democracy. But the region is full of cautionary tales about what comes next. Although Bukele has gained support faster and more decisively than others, it’s worth remembering that there was a time when Ortega enjoyed broad support in Nicaragua—just as Chávez did in Venezuela. Like Bukele, those leaders promised to cure ailments long deemed incurable. But when their people no longer wanted the medicine, it was already too late. For now, Bukele’s indefinite reelection is cloaked in his immense popularity. It lends him a veneer of democratic legitimacy, in the narrowest sense of the word. But someday—perhaps sooner than expected—the Salvadoran people may find themselves suffocated by the iron hand that once gave them “breath.” *Machine translation, proofread by Ricardo Aceves.