Why Arab rulers aren’t more vocal about Gaza as global outcry grows
The Arab governments which, for decades, have been ferocious defenders of the Palestinian cause have now faced their timid response to the extreme suffering in Gaza caused by the War of Israel, risking a dangerous flaw with their increasingly repeated citizens.
While the death of Israeli famine and bombing have mounted, the Palestinians, their supporters and certain analysts led their anger towards the Arab leaders in the region which they perceive as being too passive and calm. They point to countries outside the Middle East which have publicly criticized Israel and tried to prevent it from extending its military operations to Gaza.
“Where are the Arabs? The Arabs are napping. The Arabs are nowhere.
The situation in Gaza has become even more disastrous because the Palestinians risk their lives to get food. A aid distribution system implemented by the United States and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), supported by the Israelis, led hundreds of other Palestinians killed, often by Israeli soldiers.
Wafaa Eeed, a Palestinian in Gaza, said last month at NBC New July 24, A day reserved only for women. She and two other witnesses said they had been slaughtered, sprayed with pepper and gas.
“The Arab states, why don’t you help us? We don’t want Americans,” said Eeed.
Two women were killed on their way to the site, said a health official in Gaza. The GHF said at the time that there was “no incident” on the site itself.
The Israeli defense forces did not respond to a request for a comment on the incident, but at the time she told the BBC that early during the day, she had “identified suspects who had approached them, constituting a threat to the troops” and “from warning”.
He was not aware of the victims, and the shots were fired “hundreds of meters” from the GHF site before his opening hours, he said.
Israel also denies that there is famine in Gaza, contradictory doctors in the Palestinian enclave, world aid groups and even a close ally, President Donald Trump.
Some Arab leaders dependent on the US assistance and security guarantees are wary of angry the United States and Israel and see little strategic advantage to help Palestinians, which they can even see as a threat,, say the experts.
The Arab states have participated in ardrops of aid and food convoys in Gaza, but the Palestinians and the aid groups say that it is far from being sufficient to ward off an imminent famine. Egypt and Qatar have also publicized talks between Israel, the United States and Hamas, but they did not lead to the end of the conflict.
Several Latin American states, as well as Spain, Ireland and Norway, have energized Israel for its conduct in Gaza and have threatened with sanctions or a demotion of diplomatic links.
And in recent weeks, longtime Israeli allies such as France and Australia have committed to officially recognizing Palestine – a decision criticized by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. At the end of 2023, South Africa filed a case with the United Nations court alleged that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza.
The Arab states were much less vocal, Egypt and Jordan even reprimanded pro-Palestinian demonstrations and activism, fearing to turn against the country’s leaders, according to experts.
“Palestine resonates deeply in the Arab imagination,” said Gerges. “Palestine reminds Arabs the subsistence of their governments. Palestine reminds Arabs of hegemony and domination and colonialism and continuous imperialism of the West.”
He added: “I would say that Gaza, the Gaza tragedy, the destruction of Gaza, could really serve as a time bomb that implodes the Arab political order from the interior.”
The survey before October 7, 2023 has shown that most Arab citizens rejected standardization links with Israel, a feeling that subsequent surveys have only deepened since.
A survey published in June by the Arab Surveration Barometer revealed that a support for such a decision collapsed, not exceeding 13% in the seven countries questioned.
The Egyptian and Jordanian Embassies in the United States, as well as the Gulf Cooperation Council with Six Nations, did not immediately respond to requests for comments on this story.
Egypt and Jordan, even with repression, have enabled limited demonstrations, although hundreds of activists have also been arrested, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
The Gulf States rarely allow demonstrations, but they have largely maintained diplomatic and commercial links with Israel throughout its devastating offensive in the Gaza Strip which started after the killed of October 7, 2023 led by Hamas, in which some 1,200 years were killed and 250 emations.
Gaza health officials claim that more than 61,000 Palestinians, most women and children, were killed in the war that followed.
Many academics, including Israeli academics, have joined rights forces in recent months to condemn Israel’s operations in Gaza as a genocide, a charge of Israel vehemently denies.
“Despite the genocide, in the midst of the genocide, this extraordinary depravity that we see in Gaza, not a single Arab State which has relations with Israel has established relations with Israel, although other states in other parts of the world have declared,” said Urssama Makdisi, professor of history and president of the Chancellor at the University of California.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were among the Arab states that signed the Abraham agreements in the United States in 2020, paving the way for economic and diplomatic ties with Israel. Saudi Arabia was to follow, but the Gaza conflict suspended these plans.
For the Arab States of the Gulf, better links with Israel have much to do with public attitudes and more to do with Realpolitik, according to experts. The Gulf States are hosting several American military bases which, analysts, say they help protect them from the regional rival of Iran and to maintain Western access to the vast energy supplies in the region.
Access to the dynamic technological sector of Israel has also been a draw for certain Arab states, which used its surveillance technology to stifle dissent, according to experts and rights.
“These regimes in the Arab world dependent on the United States for its security, they do not depend on their legitimacy vis-à-vis their own people. They depend on American protection, on American military bases,” said Makdisi.
The Houthis rebels, which control large parts of Yemen, have drawn missiles and drones on Israel and ships in the region in what they say, it is an attempt to end the offensive of Israel in Gaza, but Yemen is alone among the Arab states by pressure on Israel. Arab countries could apply economic pressure by oil embargoes or limit access to the Suez canal and Arab airspace, but experts say that such movements are unlikely.
The Arab countries have provided Palestinian militant groups with weapons, funding and bases from which Israel attacks, but such solidarity has proven costly and dangerous.
In Jordan, tensions between Palestinian militant groups and the leading monarchy exploded in the civil war “Black September” in 1970, leading to the expulsion and resettlement of activists in Lebanon.
The presence of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon in the 1970s exacerbated the country’s civil war and sparked an Israeli invasion in 1982 to target “Palestinian terrorists”.
More recently, Israel invaded Lebanon last year, strongly bombing the south of Beirut in an offensive against the Hezbollah militant group, which had pulled roquettes on Israel in solidarity with Hamas.
Hezbollah and Hamas are supported by Iran, which has led some Arab states to distant two groups.
For Ryan Crocker, former American ambassador to Iraq, Lebanon and Kuwait, the warm Arab support for the Palestinian cause concerns us less and Israeli pressure and more on self-preservation.
“The Palestinians, both the cause, the PLO and the population, in Jordanian and Lebanese examples, were both considered a threat to the rule of these Arab regimes,” Crocker told NBC News.
The United States and Israel had made plans for Arab countries to accept tens of thousands of refugees from Gaza, but the idea was categorically rejected, these Arab countries fearing both a renewed Palestinian activism and accusations of helping ethnic cleaning, according to experts.
Crocker compared the Palestinians to the Kurds, another stateless group in the Middle East.
“There is a saying among the Kurds, which are dispersed between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, that they have no friends that the mountains,” he said. “Well, the Palestinians don’t even have the mountains.”
