Introduction

Abstract

In the year 2014, the ongoing Syrian civil war, the advancement of the Islamic State (IS) in both Syria and Iraq, another round of failed bilateral negotiations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the military escalation in Gaza raised the question as to whether the developments in the Levant might lead not only to processes of regime change, but possibly also to an even more fundamental alteration of the Levant’s entire state system. In the period after the Arab Uprisings of 2010–11, any hopes for a democratic, social, and political change in the Middle East have increasingly been disappointed. This applies in particular to the subregion of the Levant, where warfare has characterized the situation in Syria, Iraq, and the Gaza Strip. Hopes for a democratic rule in Syria and Iraq, as well as for the establishment of a Palestinian state in coexistence with Israel, have been essentially frustrated. Confronted with the enormous human suffering in Syria, the international community has shown an appalling inability to act in an efficient way. The Syrian population has become the pawn of a complex setting of brutal regime repression, militia warfare, organized crime, and the diverging interests of regional states and international great powers.