by Xinhua writer Guo Yage

CAIRO, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- In the closing days of 2025, the Middle East navigates an uneasy transition. In some places, the dust of rebuilding hangs in the air; in others, a constant hum of drones fills the ears. A fragile quiet has settled where ceasefires hold, but it is a nervous stillness, tense and thin.

This was a year that ended several major conflicts but delivered no true peace, only a precarious, uneven aftermath where personal resilience is tested daily against profound geopolitical shifts. What 2025 revealed is that stopping wars and building peace are fundamentally different challenges, and the region has mastered neither.

PRECARITY AND RESILIENCE: LIVING IN SUSPENSION

For millions across the region, 2025 was measured in the minute grammar of survival. In the southern Lebanese border town of Al-Khiyam, baker Jalal Abdallah works to the rhythm of excavators clearing rubble nearby, his own sales dwindling to little.

"Everything now is tied to the fear of an uncertain tomorrow," he told Xinhua. "None of the merchants and shop owners in these border towns risk buying large stock, as the sound of drones in the sky is enough to revive the memory of bombings."

That fear is grounded in a stark reality: Lebanese authorities reported over 4,500 Israeli strikes on the country since a ceasefire agreement between Hezbollah and Israel took effect on Nov. 27, 2024, with more than 250 killed and 680 wounded.

This state of "suspended survival," as Lebanese resident Hassan Al-Mustafa called it, reveals itself in small, poignant routines. In the town of Khiam, Layla Abdallah's seven-year-old son places his schoolbag by the front door each night, "ready for when things become normal again."

In Gaza, 18-year-old Rimas Shehadeh called the past year "a bitter and difficult life," a struggle defined by displacement in a tent, the search for water, and extreme weather. Her personal ordeal unfolded within a cataclysmic wider event: a sudden Israeli assault in March that shattered a ceasefire and killed more than 400 Palestinians in a single night. For Abdel-Monem Abdullah, 52, also in Gaza, the deepest wound is losing his son to an airstrike and facing the unanswerable questions of his young grandchildren.

Yet within this suspended reality, a quiet, tenacious fortitude endures. In Damascus, shopkeeper Ahmad al-Hassan dared to pair "uncertainty" with "hope," citing released detainees and returning relatives as signs of a tentative thaw, despite clashes in the southern province of Sweida having displaced nearly 2,000 families.

In Iran, teacher Sara Amiri identified "hope and love" as her anchors through a tense 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, while in Yemen, activist Abdullah Asban defined the entire year simply as "living on hope."

"I, like the majority of Yemenis, face difficulties in daily life and challenges on both public and personal levels," he said. "Remaining trapped in this cycle is psychologically destructive, and hope is the only thing that gives us motivation to keep going with what little capacity we have and to keep trying to overcome and change reality."

RUPTURE AND COHESION: SOCIETY UNDER STRAIN

Beyond individual endurance, 2025 laid bare deep fractures within societies and the arduous search for cohesion under extreme pressure. Ceasefires may silence guns, but they do not heal the fissures that made conflict possible.

Lebanon, according to Waref Kumayha, president of the Silk Road Institute for Studies and Research, exists in a "fragile balance" -- its sovereignty squeezed between Israeli attacks, U.S. pressure, and internal strife over Hezbollah's role. Citizens like unemployed Ali Bazzi from Bint Jbeil feel abandoned in the face of an "unknown future."

A parallel narrative of disintegration played out in Sudan, which political analyst Mohamed Al-Amin Abdul-Raziq summarized as "collapse, realignment, and awakening." UN figures show over 11.8 million internally displaced in Sudan, with 21.2 million facing acute food insecurity.

The ordeal of Sana Taj Al-Sir epitomizes this tragedy. She fled from her hometown El Fasher to Tawila, then to El Obeid and onward to Omdurman, while her journalist father stayed behind and was murdered.

"Loss isn't only my father's death," she said. "It's the city we left, our home, our neighbors, the school, all our memories."

Abdul-Raziq sees in such experiences a "painful awakening" within Sudanese society. "People are realizing that Sudan's survival requires a project larger than traditional loyalties," he told Xinhua. "The war has changed society itself, showing that solidarity remains the most effective response to the horrors of conflict."

In contrast, the Gulf region has maintained relative stability, a key achievement per Abdullah Al Marri, political analyst and editor-in-chief of Al Raya newspaper in Qatar. Yet even this stability proved fragile: in September, an Israeli airstrike targeting a Hamas mission in Doha killed at least six, and sent tremors through the region.

The broader Middle East remains a patchwork of incomplete transitions. Syria, political analyst Firas Allawi noted, is attempting "gradual stability" and "political transition," while neighboring Lebanon teeters. Yemen, conflict expert Marwan Al-Sheibani said, remains in a "no war, no peace" limbo, its conflict spilling into Red Sea shipping lanes with over 190 Houthi attacks reported.

ISOLATION AND RECALIBRATION: WHICH WAY FORWARD?

The tumultuous year accelerated a strategic reshuffling, exposing rival agendas for the Middle East's future and raising fundamental questions about which approach will prevail.

Roee Kibrik, head of research at Israeli think tank Mitvim, described a "region in transition" with "Israel in isolation," arguing that its government's unilateral, force-based approach has alienated it from broader diplomatic efforts centered on Palestinian statehood.

This isolation was exemplified by the Doha strike and by escalating settler violence in the West Bank, which surges against diplomatic initiatives like the UN-backed New York Declaration adopted in September.

Meanwhile, other realignments are underway. Syria's transition, Allawi said, is gaining cautious support. The Doha attack, Kibrik noted, prompted unprecedented regional coordination to halt the Gaza war. Yemen's file, Al-Sheibani observed, is now part of a "larger negotiating basket" as Gulf-Iran understandings evolve.

Underpinning this recalibration is a persistent void in effective, just governance. Kumayha and others highlighted a pressing need for reformed "global governance" and a robust "international legal framework" to protect sovereignty and cement fragile truces.

"The Middle East today needs not only de-escalation but also strong institution-building, comprehensive economic reform, and the regulation of regional and international relations," Kumayha said.

The alternative, as lived daily from Gaza to Sudan, is a cycle where war may pause but stability remains elusive. For example, UNICEF reported nearly two children in Gaza killed daily even after the latest ceasefire between Hamas and Israel took hold in October.

The path forward, as the stories of 2025 make clear, requires far more than ceasefire deals. It demands a fundamental reimagining of the region's order. The question for 2026 and beyond is not whether people here can endure -- they have proven they can, but whether regional and international actors will finally build the foundations that make endurance unnecessary.

For a Lebanese mother whose son dreams of returning to school, a Sudanese daughter who lost her father and her city, or a Gazan grandfather who had to bury his son and comfort his grandchildren, the answer cannot wait much longer. ■