Absurd plays in which nothing happens are one of the artistic aspects that reflect a person’s view of his surroundings. With a simple examination, one can notice the extent of Biden’s absurdity in constructing his play, and his search for formalism devoid of any meaning.

Waiting for Godot is a play by the famous Irish writer Samuel Beckett, which belongs to the absurdist tragicomedy and revolves around two men named Vladimir and Estragon who wait for a person named Godot who never comes. While waiting, they engage in a variety of conversations and meet different characters, and unfortunately, they can neither deduce nor agree on the place and time when they expect to meet Godot.

They only know that they must wait at the tree endlessly, and when they become desperate to wait, they think of the possible rewards of continuing to wait for Godot, and they wait again. 

The monologue begins relatively coherently, but soon dissolves into prolixity and deception, especially after a boy arrives, claiming to be a messenger sent by Godot to tell the two companions that he will not be coming that evening “but will surely come tomorrow,” so the two wait for Godot again, until they lose track of time.

Beckett’s story “Waiting for Godot,” which has entered the global and human heritage, leaves room for the possibility of applying it to various situations. Everyone is free to act, quote from it, and weave on its pattern. Perhaps this is the reason why the plot of “Waiting for Godot” can be applied to completely different contexts, starting from the prisoner in prison waiting for the guard to release him, to waiting for peace after wars, or waiting for aid after surviving a hurricane or disaster, to waiting for a deal and a ceasefire in Gaza after all these “absurd” negotiations led by the United States. 

With a little imagination, the play “Waiting for Godot” can also be played in closed negotiating rooms, and even outside them “to kill time” as Netanyahu, the “Israeli Godot” in this case, wishes, to bring everyone back to square one, with his usual “tense” positions, continuous evasion and obstruction. And if we do not know what to expect, the United States suggests that our imaginations take us on a long journey of waiting for Netanyahu, in which everything around us becomes “uncertain.”

Samuel Beckett’s play depicts a state of mysterious waiting similar to the one we are experiencing today while awaiting the results of the deal negotiations, hoping that the “Israeli Godot” will come, perhaps not today, but certainly tomorrow! It is a theatrical story full of twisted and mysterious negotiations between different parties waiting for an arrogant, reckless person, in an unclear place and at an unknown time. Just as no twentieth-century play has raised as much ambiguity as “Waiting for Godot,” so do the US-led negotiations to conclude an exchange agreement between the resistance and “Israel.” Just as “Vladimir” and “Estragon” discuss the ideas that are going through their minds during the period of waiting for Godot, the United States recycles Netanyahu’s positions, which are his brainchild, and discusses them with him in a ridiculous, funny and confusing way after he turned against them and denied them time and time again.

The play “Waiting for the American Godot” reveals the depth of the crisis of waiting for salvation from this war and its repercussions, within a dark atmosphere covered by weak comedy that mocks everyone with a boring, useless, and vulgar language and plot, in which boredom seems to be the master of the situation. While the United States is absorbed in thinking and acting in an “empty showmanship” manner, Netanyahu continues to procrastinate and obstruct, and the American administration has no choice but to remind us that “we must stay and wait,” and that “it is time to make sure that no one takes steps that obstruct the possibility of reaching a deal and a ceasefire.” Rather, the American administration sends “the boy” Blinken once again, for the ninth time, after a series of previous “empty” rounds similarly, to tell us that the Israeli Godot will not come today, but he will definitely arrive tomorrow; it is absurd and nothing happens except absurdity!

Netanyahu and the US administration’s narratives about the war and the deal continue and multiply within the duality of master and slave, the wisher and the obstructer, as we see them from a contemplative, sarcastic perspective in which the follower, after each presentation, loses the sense of time, and no longer remembers how many times Blinken came before, nor is it expected that he will remember the events of today’s visit in the future. 

This is how the Biden administration holds on to the threads of events that did not happen, and weaves a highly exciting and volatile behavior that mixes hopeless hope and hoped-for despair within a satirical theatrical game. Just as Samuel Beckett toyed with facts and events to the point of logic, the United States is trying to combine reality and wishes in a vulgar theatrical work that resembles black humor.

Biden and his administration are playing their favorite game of misleading people’s obsession with the new, through incomprehensible chatter about the chances and possibility of implementing “the deal and the ceasefire that will never come.” In short, it is an unproductive discussion; as the two parties are far apart and different. Netanyahu is a person who only cares about himself and his political future, and often goes to disrupt this path and even undermine it. The resistance, on the contrary, is interested in entering into a serious path that leads to the release of prisoners and stopping this destructive war on Gaza.

The truth of the matter is that Biden and his administration have nothing new. The event is what does not happen, and perhaps “what does not happen is the best event,” as the English expression goes. Netanyahu has twisted the story and rebelled against his American ally and subjected him to his desires. The same has been done by international bodies and platforms that he has disabled, belittled, and no longer values. This has earned him fame after waves of anger and disapproval in Israeli circles. Therefore, it was not strange, according to this approach, that the negotiations turned into a vulgar theatrical act that all societies and public and popular circles joke about in a painful expression of the loss of hope in reaching something in “Waiting for the Israeli Godot.” 

Absurd plays, in which nothing happens at all, are one of the artistic aspects that reflect a person’s view of his surroundings and how he deals with them. With a simple examination, we can notice the extent of Biden’s absurdity in constructing his play, and his search for formalism devoid of any meaning; there is no event, no plot, and no logic. However, Biden wants to give us in the end a sense of optimism based on the fact that “nothing happens, but nothing will stay in place,” which is what we call in colloquial Arabic “there is a blessing in movement”!

Finally, it seems that in the face of time and its painful monotony, war and its wreckage, the questions of when and how and their answers, and the inability to even think about the possibility of reaching an end to this destructive war of extermination; in the face of all this, there is nothing but waiting; waiting as a kind of action, which we are certain is the only miserable means left to the American administration to beg for “Israeli Godot” while waiting for someone to come or bring him.