The Arab press is rife with criticisms of American policy in the Middle East.
Washington is in charge of overseeing the conflict even while Israel and Hamas are engaged in a ground battle, as the Al Ahram daily stated on November 7. The Biden administration’s current attempts are out of sync with the times and seriously jeopardize both President Biden’s political prospects and the USA’s status in the world.
The Saudi press stressed that relations with Washington would reach a breaking point depending on how the Gaza war turned out. No Arab nation can jeopardize its support for the Palestinian cause.
Le Monde, a newspaper, claims that the White House’s support for Israel alienates Arab opinion and estranges a large portion of the democratic electorate in the United States.
The Biden administration is gradually realizing that Israel’s stubbornness is hurting it: as more Palestinians perish, the United States is losing ground politically across the world.
When US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, visited the Middle East recently, he was met with a frosty response. In Amman, his counterpart, Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi pressed Blinken to “stop the madness.” Even tougher was the rhetoric he heard in private around the region. His meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas lasted less than an hour and ended without a joint statement. Turkish President Erdoğan did not even bother to meet with him.
During Blinken’s meeting with Abbas in Ramallah, the Palestinian leader stated that his administration could return to Gaza following the war, but only “as part of a comprehensive political solution”—in other words, as a step toward the two-state solution, against which Prime Minister Netanyahu has fought for his entire political career. According to The Economist, a British magazine, there won’t be any serious discussion of a Gaza solution if he remains in office.
Press agencies are stating, however, that talks headed by the leaders of Mossad, the CIA, and the Qatari prime minister are taking place in Qatar for the release of ten to fifteen hostages in return for a one- or two-day ceasefire.
It is significant that an increasing proportion of Americans are calling for an outright end to hostilities rather than settling for humanitarian breaks.
This is all happening while Israel continues bombarding Gaza’s civilian population, destroying or damaging around 45% of the enclave’s residential structures, according to the UN. Gaza will become uninhabitable if the war continues.
Regular Arab citizens are applying more and more pressure to their leaders to stop further slaughter of Palestinians. In many Islamic nations, sentiments along these lines are becoming more widespread.
On November 11, Riyadh will host the joint summit of the Arab League and on November 12, respectively, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
It’s obvious that as long as Israel keeps bombing the Gaza Strip inhumanely, anti-American demonstrations throughout the Arab world will get more violent. Similar feelings may also be seen in the European Union, where on November 8th, Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter declared, “It is time for sanctions against Israel. The rain of bombs is inhumane.” De Sutter emphasized that the European Union should immediately suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement, an import ban on products from occupied Palestinian territories should be implemented, and “violent settlers, politicians, and soldiers responsible for war crimes should be banned from entering the EU.”
The Arab press feels that Washington has failed to act as an honest broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that the US has rejected warnings from its Arab allies that the region is at a boiling point. If the Palestinian issue is not resolved equitably, chaos will break loose. And that’s exactly what’s happening right now.
According to Arab News, Saudi Arabia’s daily newspaper, the US monopoly in the ‘peace process’ must end. It is impossible to deny that Israel has perpetrated innumerable war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Following the war, an emergency international peace conference is required, with key participation from Russia, China, the Arab region, and the rest of the Global South. It is irresponsible for the USA to lead another round of peace negotiations by itself, as this will only buy Israel more time to finish annexing what remains of Palestinian territory. The Arab Peace Initiative and the peace accords guaranteed Israel’s right to exist. But this is not a blank check to be cashed at the expense of millions of Palestinians, who have the right to self-determination and a state of their own. We have come to the moment of truth in the conflict in Gaza: Israel’s goal is to permanently end the Palestinian issue. That’s not going to happen.
Vladimir Mashin, Ph.D. in History, a political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.