Do national borders in the Levant make sense any more, did they ever?

Can national States survive in the Levant after all that has happened? Or should minorities start to think of setting up a State or States of their own that, like IS, transcends current borders and protects their interests? Such a State could conceivably be a union of minorities. We need to ask ourselves: Are we still Arabs committed to the Arab national cause, is there or was there ever in fact such a cause? Or was it all just creative fiction designed by Arab strongmen to keep their ethnically and religiously diverse populations united, loyal and distracted? Are we as an Arabic-speaking region of one identity? Are the States whose straight, angular lines decorate our maps, in fact, still viable political national entities where religious systems could continue to coexist alongside secular legal systems? Are we still confident that these traditional nation States can meet our security and existential needs as minorities? These are all questions that any sane Levantine should start to ask themselves regardless of any nostalgic feelings we may have and our wish to restore the old nation State model, naively assuming, as we do, that democracy and good intentions will solve all our problems.

What is happening today shakes the very foundations of all I was raised to believe in and trust in. Could it be that I (we) got it all wrong? Is this in fact why so many upper middle class Arab parents advise and indeed encourage their offspring to go abroad to study and perhaps make a new life for themselves? Could it be that our parents, who spent most of their lives dodging one crisis or another, taking refuge in Europe, the US or the Gulf or wherever they could, could it be they knew this day would come, a day when our Arab identity would no longer be recognised in our countries, where your countries would no longer exist, their borders erased through unilateral action by IS? Maybe they felt it in their gut that Arab nationalism enforced by military strongmen could never keep at bay the religious and ethnic aspirations of majorities, or protect ethnic and religious minorities from the coming storm that would uproot all?

Maybe we'd all be happier apart than we are forced to live together, I mean divorce does not need to be messy, if we can all be adult about it, separation could prove to be the rational path to take. There are well defined ethnic, religious and tribal lines along which new maps may be drawn up. I mean in the past foreigners drew our borders maybe this time we should all be consulted about the new borders, maybe proposals could be made by learned scholars and maybe a referendum could be held on proposed new borders that includes everyone concerned, even the worst of enemies. If we can all sit down and talk and agree to give some and take some and live and let live, this traumatic process, and unavoidable population transfer, sadly, could proceed almost painlessly. The only other unavoidable option, as I see it, is perpetual war that would make Europe's one hundred years war pale in comparison!

I am not being alarmist, nor am I advocating erasing borders or drawing new ones, I'm just thinking out loud like so many of you out there and making the next rational leap, and make no mistake, it is a leap, and we have to be rational about this, whatever happens and whatever we decide, rationality and reason have to guide our actions, not passion and rashness. I wonder if anything I post on this blog really matters or makes any sort of impression or contributes in any meaningful way to the general discourse, I just feel its time everyone started to talk about subjects we have all been too fearful to take about up until now.