Arab Failures: The Unspoken Complicity in Israel’s Genocide
Explaining Arab political failure to challenge Israel through traditional analysis – such as disunity, general weakness, and a failure to prioritize Palestine – does not capture the full picture.
The idea that Israel is brutalizing Palestinians simply because the Arabs are too weak to challenge the Benjamin Netanyahu government – or any government – implies that, in theory, Arab regimes could unite around Palestine. However, this view oversimplifies the matter.
Many well-meaning pro-Palestine commentators have long urged Arab nations to unite, pressure Washington to reassess its unwavering support for Israel, and take decisive actions to lift the siege on Gaza, among other crucial steps.
While these steps may hold some value, the reality is far more complex, and such wishful thinking is unlikely to change the behavior of Arab governments. These regimes are more concerned with sustaining or returning to some form of status quo – one in which Palestine’s liberation remains a secondary priority.
Since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza on October 7, 2023, the Arab position on Israel has been weak at best, and treasonous at worst.
Some Arab governments even went so far as to condemn Palestinian resistance in United Nations debates. While countries like China and Russia at least attempted to contextualize the October 7 Hamas assault on Israeli occupation forces imposing a brutal siege on Gaza, countries like Bahrain placed the blame squarely on the Palestinians.
With a few exceptions, it took Arab governments weeks – or even months – to develop a relatively strong stance that condemned the Israeli offensive in any meaningful terms.
Though the rhetoric began to shift slowly, the actions did not follow. While the Ansarallah movement in Yemen, alongside other Arab non-state actors, attempted to impose some form of pressure on Israel through a blockade, Arab countries instead worked to ensure Israel could withstand the potential consequences of its isolation.
In his book War, Bob Woodward disclosed that some Arab governments told then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that they had no objections to Israel’s efforts to crush Palestinian resistance. However, some were concerned about the media images of mutilated Palestinian civilians, which could stir public unrest in their own countries.
That public unrest never materialized, and with time, the genocide, famine, and cries for help in Gaza were normalized as yet another tragic event, not unlike the war in Sudan or the strife in Syria.
For 15 months of relentless Israeli genocide that resulted in the killing and wounding of over 162,000 Palestinians in Gaza, official Arab political institutions remained largely irrelevant in ending the war. The US Biden administration was emboldened by such Arab inaction, continuing to push for greater normalization between Arab countries and Israel – even in the face of over 15,000 children killed in Gaza in the most brutal ways imaginable.
While the moral failures of the West, the shortcomings of international law, and the criminal actions of Biden and his administration have been widely criticized, for serving as a shield for Israel’s war crimes, the complicity of Arab governments in enabling these atrocities is often ignored.
The Arabs have, in fact, played a more significant role in the Israeli atrocities in Gaza than we often recognize. Some through their silence, and others through direct collaboration with Israel.
Throughout the war, reports surfaced indicating that some Arab countries actively lobbied in Washington on behalf of Israel, advocating against an Egyptian-Arab League proposal aimed at reconstructing Gaza without ethnically cleansing its population – an idea promoted by the Trump Administration and Israel.
The Egyptian proposal, which was unanimously accepted by Arab countries at their summit on March 4, represented the strongest and most unified stance taken by the Arab world during the war.
The proposal, which was rejected by Israel and dismissed by the US, helped shift discourse in the US around the subject of ethnic cleansing. It ultimately led to comments made on March 12 by Trump during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin where he stated that “No one’s expelling anyone from Gaza.”
For some Arab states o actively oppose the only relatively strong Arab position signals that the issue of Arab failures in Palestine goes beyond mere disunity or incompetence – it reflects a much darker and more cynical reality. Some Arabs align their interests with Israel, where a free Palestine isn’t just a non-issue, but a threat.
The same applies to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, which continues to work hand in hand with Israel to suppress any form of resistance in the West Bank. Its concern in Gaza is not about ending the genocide, but ensuring the marginalization of its Palestinian rivals, particularly Hamas.
Thus, blaming the PA for mere ‘weakness,’ for ‘not doing enough,’ or for failing to unify the Palestinian ranks is a misreading of the situation. The priorities of Mahmoud Abbas and his PA allies are far different: securing relative power over Palestinians, a power that can only be sustained through Israeli military dominance.
These are difficult, yet critical truths, as they allow us to reframe the conversation, moving away from the false assumption that Arab unity will resolve everything.
The flaw in the unity theory is that it naively assumes Arab regimes inherently reject Israeli occupation and support Palestine.
While some Arab governments are genuinely outraged by Israel’s criminal behavior and growingly frustrated by the US’ irrational policies in the region, others are driven by self-interest: their animosity toward Iran and fear of rising Arab non-state actors. They are equally concerned about instability in the region, which threatens their hold on power amid a rapidly shifting world order.
As solidarity with Palestine has increasingly expanded from the global South to the global majority, Arabs remain largely ineffective, fearing that significant political change in the region could directly challenge their own position. What they fail to understand is that their silence, or their active support for Israel, may very well lead to their own downfall.
War, Doublethink, and the Struggle for Survival: Geopolitics of the Gaza Genocide
Image by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona.
In a genocidal war that has spiraled into a struggle for political survival, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and the global powers supporting him continue to sacrifice Palestinian lives for political gain.
The sordid career of Israel’s extremist National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, epitomizes this tragic reality.
Ben-Gvir joined Netanyahu’s government coalition following the December 2022 elections. He remained in the coalition after the October 7 2023 war and genocide, with the understanding that any ceasefire in Gaza would force his departure.
As long as the killing of Palestinians and the destruction of their cities continued as long as Ben-Gvir stayed on board—though neither he nor Netanyahu had any real ‘next-day’ plan, other than to carry out some of the most heinous massacres against a civilian population in recent history.
On January 19, Ben-Gvir left the government immediately following a ceasefire agreement, which many argued would not last. Netanyahu’s untrustworthiness, along with the collapse of his government if the war ended completely, made the ceasefire unfeasible.
Ben-Gvir returned when the genocide resumed on March 18. “We are back, with all our might and power!” he wrote in a tweet on the day of his return.
Israel lacks a clear plan because it cannot defeat the Palestinians. While the Israeli army has inflicted suffering on the Palestinian people like no other force has against a civilian population in modern history, the war endures because the Palestinians refuse to surrender.
Yet, Israel’s military planners know that a military victory is no longer possible. Former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon recently added his voice to the growing chorus, stating during an interview on March 15 that “revenge is not a war plan”.
The Americans, who supported Netanyahu’s violation of the ceasefire—thus resuming the killings—also understand that the war is almost entirely a political struggle, designed to keep figures like Ben-Gvir and extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in Netanyahu’s coalition.
Though “war is the continuation of politics by other means,” as Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz once surmised, in Israel’s case, the ‘politics’ behind the war is not about Israel as a state but about Netanyahu’s own political survival. He is sacrificing Palestinian children to stay in power, while his extremist ministers do the same to expand their support among right-wing, religious, and ultra-nationalist constituencies.
This logic—that Israel’s war on Gaza reflects internal politics, ideological warfare, and class infighting—extends to other political players as well.
The Trump administration supports Israel as payback for the financial backing it received from Netanyahu’s supporters in the US during the last elections. On the other hand, Britain remains steadfast in its commitment to Tel Aviv, despite the political shifts in Westminster, thus continuing to align with US-Israeli interests while disregarding the wishes of its own population. Meanwhile, Germany, it’s said, is driven by the guilt of its past crimes, while other Western governments pay lip service to human rights, all the while acting in ways that contradict their stated foreign policies.
This mirrors the dystopian world of George Orwell’s ‘1984’, where perpetual war is waged based on cynical and false assumptions, where “war is peace… freedom is slavery… and ignorance is strength.”
Indeed, these elements are reflected in today’s equally dystopian reality. However, Israel substitutes ‘peace’ with ‘security,’ the US is motivated by dominance and ‘stability,’ and Europe continues to speak of ‘democracy.’
Another key difference is that Palestinians do not belong to any of these ‘superstates.’ They are treated as mere pawns, their deaths and enduring injustice used to create the illusion of ‘conflict’ and to justify the ongoing prolongation of the war.
The deaths of Palestinians—now numbering over 50,000—are widely reported by mainstream media outlets, yet rarely do they mention that this is not a war in the traditional sense, but a genocide, carried out, financed, and defended by Israel and Western powers for domestic political reasons. Palestinians continue to resist because it is their only option in the face of utter destruction and extermination.
Netanyahu’s war, however, is not sustainable in the Orwellian sense, either. For it to be sustainable, it would need infinite economic resources, which Israel, despite US generosity, cannot afford. It would also need an endless supply of soldiers, but reports indicate that at least half of Israel’s reserves are not rejoining the army.
Furthermore, Netanyahu does not merely seek to sustain the war; he aims to expand it. This could shift regional and international dynamics in ways that neither Israeli leaders nor their allies fully understand.
Aware of this, Arab leaders met in Cairo on March 4 to propose an alternative to Netanyahu-Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza. However, they have yet to take meaningful action to hold Israel accountable if it continues to defy international and humanitarian laws—as it has since the Arab summit.
The Arab world must escalate beyond mere statements, or the Middle East may endure further war, all to prolong Netanyahu’s coalition of extremists a little longer.
As for the West, the crisis lies in its moral contradictions. The situation in Gaza embodies Orwell’s concept of “doublethink”—the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both. Western powers claim to support human rights while simultaneously backing genocide. Until this dilemma is resolved, the Middle East will continue to endure suffering for years to come.
