The Arab world’s reaction to the war in Gaza and Lebanon is not surprising. Arab governments have paid lip service to the humanitarian crisis and the sufferings of the people in Gaza, called for a ceasefire and watched from the sidelines. Qatar has been an exception as it has worked with the US and Egypt to broker a peace deal. It is also Al Jazeera, a private media conglomerate telecasting from Doha and financed partly by the Qatar government, that has done a stellar job in bringing authentic picture of what is happening in Gaza and Lebanon to the world. It is not surprising then that Israel has banned Al Jazeera from operating from Israel and the occupied West Bank.

"Most Arab regimes are either monarchies, others are dictatorships and a few are sham democracies, most Arab people are enraged at the US and the West’s support to Israel and hold them complicit in the Gaza genocide and attacks in Lebanon, and on Houthis in Yemen. These regimes are terrified with the anger of their own people over what’s happening in Gaza but are utterly dependent on US and Western support for regime security of family rule. They are caught between conflicting pulls and pressures,’’ says Aftab Kamal Pasha, former director of West Asia Studies in JNU, who closely tracks developments in the region.

As Pasha points out, while the ordinary people in the bazars and mosques of the Arab countries are outraged at what is happening in Gaza and Lebanon, their rulers have a different approach. During the short-lived Arab Spring that shook Tunisia and Egypt and led to demonstrations in many Muslim countries, the Gulf rulers were shocked at the threat to their regimes. The Arab spring led to the ouster of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak and the emergence of political Islam as a major threat to the ruling cliques of the Arab world. The Muslim Brotherhood became enemy number one for Saudi Arabia and UAE and some of the other Arab ruling families.

Arab rulers have been close allies of the US, and many of them — Bahrain, Kuwait Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — host US military facilities on their territory. Though initially many Arab states refused to recognise Israel, most of them now do so or have been dealing with Israel despite their official stand. The Abraham Accords, brokered by the Trump administration, led to UAE and Bahrain normalising ties with Israel in 2022, followed by Sudan and Morocco.

The biggest prize for US and Israel, however, was to be Saudi Arabia; and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, or MBS as he is called, was keen to come on board. But his father King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was more cautious. As the custodian of Sunni Islam’s holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina, he did not want to risk public wrath without first getting some assurances on Palestine. The Saudis also wanted a defence deal with the US in return. While both Israel and the kingdom were willing, the Hamas attack put a stop to the process. Many believe that a key reason for the October 7 strike by Hamas was to prevent the Saudi-Israel deal coming through.

Israel, in fact, cooperated closely with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to wreck Iran’s nuclear pact with US, Russia, China, France, UK and Germany in the last days of the Obama administration in 2015. All three countries regard Iran as a threat to their security. Besides, the rivalry between Sunni countries in the Gulf and the Shia-majority Iran have been on for decades. It is only in 2023 that China played peacemaker between Iran and Saudi Arabia. However, centuries of suspicion cannot vanish overnight and Iran is still seen as a threat by Saudi Arabia. It was, after all, the Iranian Revolution that brought political Islam to the fore.

Scholars believe there are several other reasons for the lukewarm response to Palestine from Arabs as well. Over the years, Arabs have maintained several political identities, from the Arab and Islamic identities to their regional and national identities. The Arab and Islamic identity is why soon after the creation of Israel, Arabs refused to acknowledge a Zionist state in their midst. However, gradually national identities came to the fore. Since the Arab Spring, governments in the region have given priority to nation building and nationalism, and patriotism has won over Islamic and Arab identities. The fear of radical Islam and the fact that most of those involved in the 9/11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia was an eye opener to the rulers, and they focused on making life easy for their people. The oil wealth of the Arab world helped the process as governments extended comprehensive benefits to citizens. In this process, the Palestinian issue receded to the background.

Arab rulers, however, were not always so indifferent. After Israel was carved out of Palestinian territory in 1948, Arab government regularly waged war against Israel; but the Arab armies were defeated and Israel occupied more land.

Egypt, Iraq, Jordon, Lebanon and Syria went to war with Israel between 1948 and 1949. When the war ended, Israel had extended its frontiers by controlling all of the Negev, which was earlier the border between Egypt and Palestine. The Six Day War of 1967 resulted in Israel defeating the armies of Egypt, Syria and repulsing Jordanian attacks. By the end of the war, Israel was in control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and Jerusalem. The 1973 Yom Kippur War launched by Egypt and Syria, took Israel by surprise and would have been the first major defeat for Israel but for the intervention of the US on the side of Israel and the former Soviet Union backing Egypt and Syria. The peace talks that followed led to Israel returning a large portion of the territory captured in 1967, and to the 1979 peace deal between Egypt and Israel. The Sinai peninsula was returned to Egypt; Jordon, too, soon made peace with Israel and the Abraham Accords helped consolidate the gains.