No state with militias... no future with dependence on foreign powers

From Yemen to Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine… it is the people who pay the price of the conflicts of the axes, and it is the state that loses. The question that everyone must confront honestly is: What has Yemen gained from the Houthis, other than years of war, destruction, hunger, displacement, and killing, alongside the deterioration of state institutions and strained relations with neighboring countries? What has Lebanon gained from Hezbollah, now that its independent arsenal and its war-and-peace decisions have become among the most prominent issues threatening the country’s stability and exposing its people to the risks of confrontation and destruction? What has Iraq gained from armed factions linked to Iran, while the state still faces the challenge of monopolizing weapons within official institutions? What have Palestinians gained from subordinating their cause to the conflicts of the axes, and from turning Gaza into a battlefield whose residents pay the price with their lives, homes, and their children’s future? These questions are not political luxuries, but a necessary accountability for every project that raises the slogans of resistance and liberation, only to leave behind exhausted states, displaced populations, devastated economies, and fractured societies. The issue is not in the slogans raised by armed groups, but in the outcomes borne by citizens. What value do slogans have if the people go hungry? What value does a weapon have if the state cannot protect its citizens? What is the point of regional influence if its result is the erosion of sovereignty, the obstruction of development, and the expansion of hostility and tension with neighbors? Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine are not open arenas to serve others’ agendas, and their peoples are not fuel for endless wars. The just Palestinian cause must not be reduced to Iran’s calculations or those of any other axis, nor should the Palestinian people be held responsible for their tragedies amid the occupation, war, and destruction they endure. What is required is not punishing peoples, but restoring the state; not expanding wars, but ending the monopolization of war-and-peace decisions by militias. This entails strengthening legitimate institutions, monopolizing weapons within the state, cutting off illegal financing and arms supplies, holding perpetrators of crimes accountable, and launching political processes that protect civilians and rebuild what wars have destroyed. The measure of political success is not the number of missiles or the extent of influence, but the number of schools built, hospitals functioning, homes to which displaced families return, and opportunities that youth find in their homelands. The outcome is clear: there is no sovereignty with a parallel arsenal to the state, no development with proxy wars, and no future for peoples whose causes are used to expand others’ influence. The time has come to prioritize homelands over axes, the lives of peoples over militia calculations, and state sovereignty over the power of weapons.