Palestine As “The Great Arab Cause”: What’s Changed Since October 7

–OpEd–

BEIRUT — The war in Gaza has entered its fifth month, and the number of dead and wounded is nearly 100,000. While there are talks about a long-term truce, and repeated statements from Israel deny the intention of evacuating and displacing Palestinians, the fate of the Palestinian population remains unknown: those who were not killed have lost their housing and are deprived of the basic necessities of life — with the situation worsened by the suspension of funding for UNRWA.

This is in addition to what the Jewish-Zionist far-right says openly, not only about a plan to expel the people of Gaza, but also to rebuild colonies (more accurately called “settlements”) there. Add to all of this the systematic displacement and colonization that was taking place before Oct. 7 in the West Bank, which was accompanied by unlimited violence and continuous Judaization of Jerusalem.

The greatest tragedy is that the situation this time is more violent, bloody, and destructive.

Israel “achieves” many times more deaths from Palestinians, without distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and “achieves” massive destruction. There is no military justification, in light of Arab impotence and confusion, if it is not indifference, and the presence of radicalism in the form of political Islam that does not seem to care about the high human cost of what is going on.

This bloody war may end within weeks, but it will remain engraved in our minds.

The “Great Arab Cause”, as it is often described, is not dead. But Arab countries assumed it was dead even before Oct. 7, when they normalized relations with Israel without setting a political price for the victims of the occupation. It was as if Palestine and its people had already disappeared. The matter here goes beyond principles and morals, as the Palestinian cause remains a cornerstone of political legitimacy in the Arab world.

Normalization without Palestine

As an example, Egypt, the first Arab country to have a peace agreement with Israel, committed to the terms of “autonomy” for the Palestinians. The Arab Peace Initiative, which was proposed at the Beirut Summit in 2002, also linked Israel’s withdrawal to the borders of June 4, 1967, to normalization of ties. Perhaps all of this was not enough — the self-rule negotiations between Egypt and Israel, with U.S. participation, did not include the Palestinians, and floundered repeatedly until they ended without a tangible result — but these initiatives at least pointed to the root of the problem.

This normalization represents an absolute disregard for the Palestinians and their rights.

Finally, this commitment to Palestinian rights disappeared. Arab countries rushed to normalize ties with Israel as it was ruled by right-wing parties led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who worked hard throughout his political life to eliminate any possibility of the emergence of a Palestinian state.

This normalization with an Israeli government —which includes the likes of far-right extremists such as Itamar Ben Gvir and Yisrael Smotrich — represents not only an absolute disregard for the Palestinians and their rights, but also a disregard for the reality in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, as well as for the reality of politics in our Arab countries.

False promises

Therefore, despite the fact that the reality on the ground makes one feel nothing but oppression and helplessness, millions in the Arab region cheered what happened on Oct. 7, and saw it as a huge victory. Celebration is a reaction, a way to release resentment and anger, not a long-term vision or an achievable solution. The miserable reality is enough to create such an emotion.

Therefore, perhaps it is natural for political Islam to take the lead on the scene, as this is the prevailing form of radicalism today (an alternative to Marxism and nationalism that prevailed before that in different forms). What we see in political Islam are “totalitarian” ideas that only accept whatever they want, even if their leaders in reality accede to compromise. It is forgotten here that striving to obtain everything is likely to lead to nothing, and that radicalism-totalism and nihilism are two sides of the same coin.

This is what the history of the Palestinian cause, in particular, tells us, and much of what has happened and is happening around the world in general. But whoever feels completely helpless will be pleased to hear someone tell the story of the promised complete victory, whether it can actually happen or not.

When one reects reality, a desire for extreme solutions prevails. That desire is preoccupied with reaction and movement before thinking or contemplating, starting with slogans of the Muslim Brotherhood, from whose womb Hamas emerged: “God is our goal, the Messenger is our role model, jihad is our path, and death for the sake of God is our highest aspiration.”

Disdain for life

And if language is the limit of thinking, as philosophers have told us before, it is no wonder that in Arabic we do not have a synonym for Pyrrhic Victory, in reference to “Pyrrhus,” one of the ancient Greek kings who achieved a victory over Rome. He described it as destructive victory because of the many losses he endured to achieve it. For this reason (that is, for this linguistic absence), Hezbollah considered its war with Israel in 2006 a “divine victory,” and Hamas will consider its mere survival after this war a significant victory, whatever the cost.

There is no similarity here with King Pyrrhus’s admission of the heavy cost of what he achieved, nor is the belittling of lives limited to Israel, even if it is the criminal killer that we know. Not to mention that the victory standard here is not only the gain on the ground, but also the enemy’s failure to achieve its declared goals.

Did Hamas expect this response? Did it seek it to lure Israel into a public relations disaster to be at the forefront of the “resistance” scene?

On the one hand, it was clear that what happened on Oct. 7, in light of the history of the conflict, and with a government like Netanyahu’s in power, was bound to draw a response of such cruelty and madness.

What other path does the Palestinian have in this reality?

Thus Hamas’ decision appears to have been made with a complete disregard for the lives of Palestinians — a disdain that matches the logic of “dying for the sake of Allah is our highest aspiration”, even though the overwhelming majority of those who died did not seek their death.

But on the other hand, whether Israel was lured or not into this bloodshed, it remains the primary criminal responsible, not only for the genocide and destruction that we see live every day, but for a reality it created. No matter how much we criticize Hamas and Jihad, what does a Gaza resident have to lose? Weren’t their lives before Oct. 7 actually equal to a death sentence?

If the discourse of political Islam is not realistic from a political point of view, then what other path does the Palestinian have in this reality? It’s the same reality — created by neglecting the cause — in which political Islam stands out as the sole combative alternative.

Until the reality on the ground changes for Palestine and its people, the scene will remain as it is. Those who want to rein in Hamas must first look at what produced its popularity and presence.