The year 2024 will, like its predecessors, be a distinguished Gulf year, characterized by security and safety in a volatile region, where the value of security has become much greater and more important than that of gold and diamonds. In many countries of the region, we witness citizens leaving their homes in the morning without knowing if their houses will still stand by evening. As countries in the Middle East and North Africa succumb to the throes of civil wars, which their peoples find it difficult to escape, a phenomenon observed throughout human history, accompanied by political deadlocks, crises, and economic disasters, the six Gulf states remain a safe haven for people, businessmen, companies, investments, and the creation of job opportunities. In fact, the Gulf states are among the few places in the world where there is no difference between walking in their streets and neighborhoods at three in the afternoon or three in the morning; security is stable, and peace is assured. Typically, crimes that occur in these regions are met with swift arrests of the perpetrators.
**Destructive Phenomenon**
At a time when countries in the region, along with those in the global south, are witnessing a continuous destructive phenomenon that severely impacts the standard of living of their people—namely, the successive collapses of their currency values—the Gulf states have managed, through the wisdom of their leaders and sound financial policies, to maintain the stability of their currencies since the era of independence and the free movement of capital within them. The Gulf states believe that true human rights and dignity cannot be confined to boxes opened every four years, often accompanied by chaos, instability, wars, bloodshed, and resource wastage. Instead, the Gulf states provide their people with opportunities for work, exceptional educational and health services, cultural development, effective growth, independent judiciary, and a bright future. It is not only through empty, flashy political slogans devoid of substance that human beings live.
**The Arab Hero**
Ultimately, the Gulf states have been able to offer a new definition of the Arab hero, just as they have provided a new understanding of human rights and dignity. The Arab hero, in the Gulf perspective, is not the adventurous leader who delivers passionate speeches that end in disasters and defeats, but rather one who saves the blood of peoples, constructs rather than destroys, grows wealth instead of wasting it, unites homelands and protects their independence instead of fragmenting them and causing occupation, cares for martyrs, the disabled, and the poor instead of leading to loss of lives, disabilities, poverty, and famines through his adventures. The Arab hero is one who ensures that developmental plans provide electricity and clean water, rather than one whose wars and adventures cut them off, as they are the lifelines of existence.
**Gulf 2024**
The Gulf in 2024 and beyond, thanks to the wisdom of its founding and previous leaders, in continuity with the achievements of its current leaders, their prudence, and foresight—those who meet the new definition of the Arab hero—who have inherited governance and good management through generations, and are not newcomers, are planning for honest and healthy relationships with neighbors and the whole world as a means for peace, harmony, development, and reconstruction. It is time to end wars, hatred, and grudges to build new nations in a region that has soaked its land, soil, and waters with blood. The time for construction has come.
