The year 2026 does not appear to be a year of explosion, but rather a year in which patience with managing collapse runs out. After years of recycling crises, reproducing them, prolonging conflicts, and betting on temporary settlements that neither end wars nor build states, the Arab region is approaching a different moment. It is a moment in which regional and international actors realise that the cost of preserving the status quo has become higher than the cost of changing it. Politics is no longer used to open pathways to solutions, but to postpone confrontation. As open files accumulate from Sudan to Gaza, and from Yemen to Libya, the question becomes less diplomatic and more abrasive: how long can collapse be managed without a solution being imposed by force?
A region that has lived on temporary calm, repeated mediations, and fragile balances is reaching a point where exhaustion intersects with hard calculations. Crises without political horizons, wars without victors, and states drained to their last reserves, while the same discourse about stability is recycled. At this moment, confrontation is no longer a theoretical possibility, but an option placed on the table, even if undeclared.
The year 2026 appears closer to a harsh test moment for active regional players, foremost among them the United Arab Emirates, which over the past decade built a cross border network of influence, but is now entering a phase of erosion of positions rather than expansion.
By way of reminder, the United Arab Emirates supported Haftar against the legitimate government in Libya, supported Hemedti against the legitimate government in Sudan, supported separatists in southern Yemen, supported the government of Myanmar against Rohingya Muslims, supported Hindus against Muslims in India, supported China against Uyghur Muslims, supported extremist forces in Somalia, contributed to the construction of the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, fought Muslims in Europe and incited against them, caused the closure of the largest mosque in Ireland, which is a major Islamic mosque and centre in the country, backed corrupt Malaysian opposition forces, financed the coup against Imran Khan in Pakistan, financed the coup attempt against Erdogan, stood behind the coup in Egypt, was the primary instigator of the blockade against Qatar and was preparing to invade it were it not for Turkish intervention, attempted interference in Algeria and Tunisia, seized the wealth of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, particularly gold, in addition to countless political, military, and moral disasters committed by the United Arab Emirates in service of a purely Zionist agenda that serves no Arab interest in any way, including most recently its alliance with the occupying entity against the resistance in Gaza and Palestine more broadly.
First: The United Arab Emirates and the Zionist entity. A functional alliance, not an equal partnership
It is a mistake to read the Emirati-Israeli relationship as a conventional political alliance. It is rather a mechanistic alliance based on a division of roles. Israel acts as a security and technological mind, while the United Arab Emirates functions as a logistical platform providing funding and Arab cover. This is clearly evident in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, and certain security files in Libya and Sudan.
The problem is that the cost of this role has begun to rise. The occupying entity does not pay political costs in the region, while the United Arab Emirates pays from its Arab and African standing. As the war in Gaza intensifies and the occupying entity turns into a global moral and political burden, functional attachment to it becomes a point of weakness rather than a source of strength, as Abu Dhabi once imagined. It has become in the eyes of many a blatant example of betrayal and subservience to the enemies of the Ummah.
2026 may likely be the first year in which Abu Dhabi is forced to reduce the level of its destructive role, not because it has declined morally, but because it has become politically costly.
Second: Gaza as the event that ended the age of management and opened the age of eruption
What happened in Gaza was not a war as much as it was a collective international moral collapse. In 2026, the results of this collapse will become clear. It will no longer be possible to contain anger after political sedatives have lost their therapeutic effect, and the term calm will no longer be marketable.
Gaza is not a chapter in the book of 2026, but a page that burned while its trace remained. What follows is not a natural continuation of history, but a history marked by an open wound. Any attempt to speak of stability, order, or calm without passing through Gaza is writing over ashes that have not yet cooled.
In 2026, Gaza will not be a suspended moral question, but a determining factor in the trajectory of the region. The precedent imposed there will produce three expected paths.
First, the wider normalisation of violence. What occurred in Gaza will be read in practice as a signal permitting further violence, killing, and destruction, since excessive criminality has not resulted in decisive political cost or international punishment. International accountability can be postponed or emptied of substance. Public opinion can be exhausted until it loses its capacity to reject. In 2026, this will appear in other conflicts managed with a strike first and explain later mentality, because Gaza proved that shock does not deter for long.
Second, the retreat of politics and the expansion of security. Gaza will accelerate the region’s transition from the logic of settlements to the logic of security-based crisis management, built on containment through force rather than diplomatic solutions, restoration of rights to their owners, or punishment of criminals. In short, the ceiling of politics will be lowered in favour of coercive suppression of crises.
In 2026, stability will be redefined as the absence of visible chaos, not the presence of justice or horizon, and harsh measures will be justified as lessons drawn from the Gaza chaos.
Third, the erosion of legitimacy and the accumulation of deferred anger. The most dangerous outcome is not immediate explosion, but the accumulation of meaninglessness. People see yet do not believe, laws are invoked and suspended depending on the identity of those benefiting from them, and official discourse fails to convince even its own authors.
Gaza did not close a door in history, but opened a precedent. In 2026, the region will be managed based on that precedent: violence without restraint, politics without horizon, and stability without legitimacy. What appears today as silence will tomorrow turn into a general context that is difficult to escape.
To be continued.
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