War in Iran, chaos in the Gulf, repression in the west: and the thread that binds them all is Palestine | Nesrine Malik
A war spiralling in the Middle East. A death toll now in the thousands across Iran and Lebanon. Energy prices soaring. The Gulf seized up with Iranian strikes. It’s one of those eras that feels bewildering, incomprehensible, out of control. But there is, at the heart of it, a simple logic: everything that is unfolding is a result of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians.
As the conflagration spreads, the connection to Palestine becomes obscured. But it is clear how much of the stability of the Middle East was secured at the expense of the Palestinians. Look at the region before 7 October 2023. US policy on the Middle East focused on “integration’’: containment of Iran, signing up more Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel and the creation, therefore, of a bloc of economic and security interests under the US military umbrella.
Iran would be isolated by this Israeli-Arab alliance, and the Palestinians’ file would be closed. Arab countries would pay lip service to them, through demanding guarantees that there would be efforts towards the creation of a Palestinian state, or that the West Bank should not be annexed. But in reality what was on the cards was a continuation of the occupation of Palestinian territories in perpetuity.
Faith in the durability of that status quo was always wishful thinking: a form of denial about how volatile, unpredictable and explosive the situation will always remain if you occupy and settle the lands of 3 million people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and blockade and isolate another 2 million or so in Gaza. All while not working towards any meaningful prospect of self-determination.
And then Hamas struck on 7 October, and the plan to create a new Middle East over the Palestinians’ heads fell apart completely. The arrangement could not withstand an attack on Israel that triggered a bloody response from the Israeli government both in Gaza and the West Bank, and revealed to the world the ruthlessness and impunity of the Israeli regime.
By the laws of nature, the occupation, apartheid and ultimate dominion of Israel over all Palestinians’ lives are not containable. This is not just a moral crime, one which claims people’s homes, lives and dignity, but a practical folly. And so the concentric circles with Palestine at their centre began to widen.
After 7 October, Israel claimed that its security now relied not just on eliminating Hamas in Gaza, but all those that Israel considered its proxies. It went about that mission in Lebanon and Syria in much the same way it did in Gaza, occupying more land and killing thousands of civilians in the process.
And now, with the Iran strikes, Israel, with the US’s backing, is further widening the definition of what is required for its security – regime change in the country that backs those proxies. This, even though Benjamin Netanyahu already has all that he asked for: he has levelled Gaza, is en route to de facto annexation of the West Bank, and has so far avoided standing trial for corruption in Israel or being arrested abroad, as demanded by the international criminal court. In reducing the entire region to its arbitrary definition of what is threatening, Israel has expanded into essentially dictating the fate of that entire region – and the rest of the world.
The failed attempt to force through the quiet suffocation of the Palestinian cause is at the root of why children are being killed in Iran by US strikes, why the Gulf countries are in a historic crisis, why it now costs more to fill up your car. It is why the electoral map in the UK is changing and why students in the US were thrown into detention. There are accelerants, of course: a particularly unhinged and supremacist Trump administration, ditto for Netanyahu’s government. But the circumstances that brought the world here predate both: namely, a consensus that Palestine is a problem that can be kicked into the long grass as trade agreements, military sales and US aid – both to Israel and to Arab countries – establish a region of prosperous partners of US hegemony.
The foolishness of that is now clear. Because what has been revealed over the last two weeks or so is that those partners and allies, even those that did normalise relations with Israel, such as the United Arab Emirates, were never seen as partners, but minions: countries that are expected to pay an increasingly high price for Israel and the US’s reckless campaigns. Not only that, they are instructed to join the war against Iran, and threatened if they do not. “Hopefully Gulf Cooperation Council countries will get more involved as this fight is in their back yard,” Republican senator Lindsey Graham posted on X. “If not, consequences will follow.”
What a colossal slap in the face to countries that have given over their economies and airspace to the consequences of the war on Iran, and their lands and resources to US military airbases. Defence partnerships only go one way: to the benefit of the US and its allies’ agenda.
There are growing grumbles in the region about the imbalance of this relationship. But they will only become meaningful if these countries revisit the original bet that was made, and which is now not paying off – the configuring of political, economic and military arrangements towards US and, by extension, Israeli interests, rather than holding their resolve as a region and coordinating the accretion of pan-Arab power. The sort that could act on behalf of citizens, express their connections and solidarities and fortify them against the powers now holding the region hostage to their caprices.
To accept and become complicit in the subjugation of millions of Arabs at the heart of the region is to accept your own. To expect that Israel can manage that subjugation without a constant stream of scandal, death, displacement and military dominion in Palestine and beyond, is to unrealistically expect that your turn, in one way or another, will not also come.
I point out that these roads all lead back to Palestine not to make a rhetorical point, but to show the path to the only way these global shockwaves can be reversed. The absence of peace and self-determination for the Palestinian people is the original sin; all flows from there. Netanyahu prefers to be in a costly state of wars with seemingly no end rather than see a free Palestine. His government has yoked Israel, the Middle East and the entire world to this expanding crisis, rather than solve the fundamental issue.
Even if we assume that this conflict will kill every last Hezbollah member and topple the Iranian regime, for billions of people across the Arab region and the wider world, Palestine is now a live issue. To forget that, to elide how mass killing and occupation inflame passions and resist normalisation, is to make those same mistakes that world powers made in the past. To achieve security, Palestine can not be “integrated”, it can only be freed. Until then, we are all paying the price.
