When Massad Boulos, the US President’s Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs, chooses to meet senior Libyan officials from both East and West Libya in Malta rather than in any Libyan city, he resembles a man calling the faithful to prayer from an island where no one hears the call. Libyans continue to pray to the rhythm of their own cities — Tripoli, Misrata, Benghazi, Sabha — while Boulos raises his voice from Malta, a place that neither expects nor responds to such a summons. The metaphor is not ornamental; it captures the entire political moment. Libya’s crisis cannot be resolved from a Mediterranean balcony. It can only be resolved where Libyans actually live, negotiate, fight, and resist: on Libyan soil.

The choice of Malta is not a logistical detail. It is a political signal — a compressed expression of Washington’s approach to the Libyan conflict. The United States prefers to remain at a safe distance from the core of Libya’s fragmentation, managing its tensions, monitoring its lines, and calibrating its tempo without assuming responsibility for pushing the rival factions toward a real settlement.

The distance between Tripoli and Benghazi today is not merely geographic; it is psychological, political, and rooted in competing interests. Every meeting held outside Libya, especially in a symbolic location like Malta, widens that distance rather than narrowing it.

The distance between Tripoli and Benghazi today is not merely geographic; it is psychological, political, and rooted in competing interests. Every meeting held outside Libya, especially in a symbolic location like Malta, widens that distance rather than narrowing it.

When Libya’s “rival brothers” gather abroad, they do so as representatives of competing territories and authorities — not as partners in a single state. They return home more convinced that the solution lies elsewhere, waiting for another signal from abroad.

Boulos’s statement describing the Malta meeting as “constructive” reflects the familiar diplomatic vocabulary Washington has used for years: broad phrases about a “unified........

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