The Gaza War Has Left Moderate Arab Countries Stranded In Their Own Region

-Analysis-

CAIRO — The moderate Arab states, which include Egypt, Jordan, and a number of Gulf states, are intent on finding a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian cause.

Since 2002, they have sought to push forward the “Arab Peace Initiative,” originally proposed by Saudi Arabia at a Beirut summit. The initiative, at its core, called for establishing comprehensive normalization between Israel and the Arab countries on the condition of establishing an independent Palestinian state on the borders of June 4, 1967.

Recently, an additional condition was announced by some Arab leaders. They said that the Palestinian state could be demilitarized in order to undermine Israel’s argument that the establishment of a Palestinian state would be more threatening to Israel than Hamas.

Historically, the Palestinian cause has been a major source of problems for Arab countries, as the conflict with Israel has brought numerous wars, with enormous economic and human losses. Eventually, the Palestinian cause would decline on the list of priorities of many Arab countries after the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel.

​The decline of the Palestinian cause

Moreover, the decline in the relative importance of the Palestinian issue spread to several Gulf countries, which were facing a major threat from Iran since its 1979 revolution, with subsequent success in building, strengthening and empowering various militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states failed to stop this expansion: the war it declared on Yemen’s Houthis in 2015, has failed and it was eventually forced to court Iran to establish a cease-fire with the Houthis in 2023. That means that the Houthi rule of large areas in Yemen will remain an Iranian sword to blackmail most of the Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia also lost its traditional influence in Lebanon, and stopped supporting the Lebanese government financially. If we add to this the Iranian nuclear project, which still causes regional concerns, the decline of the Palestinian cause in most of the Gulf states will appear a natural conclusion.

Since Iran was openly hostile to Israel, a common interest arose between the Gulf states and Israel: confronting the Iranian threat.

Saudi normalization

This common interest was evident in the rejection of the nuclear deal that Iran reached with the international powers in 2015 during President Barack Obama’s administration; and then in concluding normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain during President Donald Trump’s administration.

The normalization agreements — the Abraham Accords — also included Morocco, which agreed to join in return for the United States’ recognition of its right to annex the southern Sahara region.

Saudi Arabia was also on this normalization path, but linked any deal to the start of a peace process that would lead to the establishment of a state for the Palestinians.This, naturally, represents a threat to Iran’s ability to expand in the region, and a change in the balance of power in the Gulf region.

In light of this, it can be said that halting this path was one of the fundamental motivations — if not the primary motivation — behind Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

​Hamas’ popularity problem

In the context of the basic conflicts in the region, the October attack pushed the Palestinian cause once again to the forefront of priorities. The normalization process between Israel and Saudi Arabia was put on hold — even if American efforts in this regard are still continuing.

We were forced to reconsider their recent calculations

The region’s countries, especially the moderate Gulf countries, were forced to reconsider their recent calculations. Achieving some kind of settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has become the central demand for Saudi Arabia in exchange for normalization.

To put it mildly, most Middle East countries do not like Hamas, due to its currently close relationship with Iran. Many have officially recognized the Palestinian Authority as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

At the Arab-Islamic Summit held in Riyadh last November regarding the war, the Arab countries demanded a cease-fire, but the summit’s final communique didn’t mention Hamas.

But even Arab countries most strongly opposed to Hamas remain interested in stopping the war in Gaza to avert negative consequences that may result from Israel’s complete military control over the Palestinian enclave. This includes warnings about how the conflict could incite domestic unrest in many Arab countries because of sympathy with the Palestinian people.

March on Palestine

This is not an imaginary possibility. Hamas leaders have repeatedly called on the Arab people of the street to “march” on Palestine Israel, at the very least, should liberate Jerusalem as a holy Islamic place, or to liberate Palestine as a country and people.

That can be considered propaganda, to which transnational Islamic organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood have also contributed, each for its own reasons.

There is no doubt that Jordan is the weakest link in this plan, because half or more of its people are of Palestinian origin, and Islamic forces sympathetic to the militia camp are rooted in the Jordanian society. This has been reflected in massive demonstrations, demanding the cancellation of the peace agreement with Israel, to deplete the legitimacy of the ruling monarchy.

The main concern is Israel’s intentions

But the moderate Arab countries’ efforts to stop the war are also driven by the economic damage it has caused to the region as a whole. This includes the obstruction of shipping routes through the Red Sea; the impact of the war on the flow of foreign investment; or the cost of urgent aid to the people of Gaza.

Egypt has been the most affected in all of these aspects, due to its relative economic fragility, and its geographical proximity to the ongoing war.

Israeli settlements in Gaza

The moderate Arab countries’ main concern is Israel’s intentions regarding Palestinians, whether in the short-term or on the long-term. Such fears arise from public statements by some Israeli ministers, threatening to force the residents of Gaza to cross into Egypt (which also raised concerns in Jordan, in anticipation of a similar perception for the residents of the West Bank).

While these fears have relatively subsided (they have not completely disappeared, due to Israel’s invasion of Rafah), deeper fears have emerged that Israel’s decisive victory, i.e. the elimination of Hamas, may lead — whether according to a prior plan or according to the course of political conflicts in Israel — to the restoration of Israeli settlement in Gaza.

This will turn Gaza into a series of isolated Palestinian pockets, similar to the situation in significant parts of the West Bank. This means even less hope for any peaceful, negotiated solution to the conflict, and thus deepening the dominance of the discourse of resistance and the Israeli far-right over the population of the region as a whole.

Dire consequences

These results are incomparably worse than the marginal negative results of stopping the war, which Hamas will present, as usual, as if it were a kind of victory. In the end, after the “joy of victory,” Hamas and its supporting camp will face the dire consequences of the October 7 operation.

For all these reasons, the moderate Arab countries have continuously pressed to stop the war. The hope is to exploit the disastrous war and the deterioration of Israel’s international standing to launch a serious attempt to end the conflict through the two-state solution.

There are ongoing diplomatic discussions about the possibility of avoiding the worst outcomes by deploying forces from some Arab countries in Gaza after the end of the war, on the basis of a supposed withdrawal of the Israeli army and the fall of Hamas’ rule there.

It would be a fundamental step towards the two-state solution.

This appears to be an appropriate means as a transitional period until Gaza is handed over to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah which will be a fundamental step towards the two-state solution.

But this proposal involves many risks. It actually means the possibility of these Arab forces being plunged into internal Palestinian conflicts, as well as bearing the cost of managing Gaza that has faced massive destruction and needs massive investments for rebuilding.

Counting on Washington

Right now, the long-held aspirations of the Arab moderation camp to fulfill the two-state solution appear farther away than ever, whether this camp managed Gaza or not.

On the one hand, it is difficult to achieve reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and on the other hand, the Israeli government and the entire Israeli right refuse to hand over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. They also rule out the two-state solution.

Finally, the two-state solution negotiations, if they begin, will be difficult to reach their conclusion, in light of the weakness of the supporters of peace on both sides, the Palestinian and the Israeli.

That leaves a final hope: American and international pressure that returns to lead to the two-state solution.