The war in Gaza is entering a decisive phase; at least, that is what everyone thinks. The uncertainty of this eight-month-old conflict has tested the patience of the most stubborn. Hard-core supporters of Israel are having second thoughts about the righteousness of their chosen side. President Biden is facing massive protests at home and in American universities. His biggest worry is whether his stance in the Israel-Hamas conflict will affect his party’s chances of coming back to power? If reports are to be believed, his handling of the situation will likely rob him of a significant vote share in the November ’24 Presidential elections. Suppose this dilemma reflects the helplessness of the American President. In that case, it’s true reasons rest in the complexity of the Israel- Hamas, albeit Israel- Palestine problem.
What is baffling to most is the complete lack of unity in the Arab world on Hamas. There is little support for Hamas in the Arab countries, signalling to Prime Minister Netanyahu that Israel is free to prosecute Hamas till its war aims are achieved. While Hamas has support amongst the population of the Arab nations, which is visible today, historically, it’s not the case. Statistics lay bare the reality. Throughout the history of this conflict, population surveys have shown that support for Palestinians and Hamas has been on the lesser side, meaning more on the unfavourable side. This article attempts to analyse if the above statement is true and, if ‘yes’, what are the reasons for the same.
Genesis
The genesis of this problem has two critical milestones. The first is the formation of Israel and the displacement of the Palestinian population in 1948, and the second is the Six-Day Conflict of 1967. In both of these conflicts, the Palestinian population had to shift en mass from their homeland to other nations. In 1967, Arab nations gave legitimacy to PLO by recognising it as a de jure organisation representing the interests of the Palestinians. PLO became the legitimate voice of the Palestinians in forums of the world. The second milestone, the Six-Day War, also broke the myth that Israel could be disintegrated or wiped out. Until then, it was a common belief amongst Arab nations that they could recapture the lost territory and end Israel’s existence. While dealing with Palestinian migration, it became apparent no country in the Middle East was willing to accept the Palestinian people on their lands. Yet this diffidence was not too strong. Jordan and Lebanon accepted Palestinians and allowed them to settle in refugee camps on their soil. At this point, the fear was not so much on account of the population as much as from the Palestinian Authority, the PLO Fateh group under Yasser Arafat, who could lay claim to the foreign territory for the Palestinians. PLO under Yasser Arafat was a prophesying secular ideology which was at variance with the Islamic thought process advocated by almost all the Islamic nations in the Middle East. The fear of the population being influenced by such an ideology was an existing threat. In hindsight, the region had the best chance of solving the Palestine problem in the late sixties and early seventies. The conflict was essentially confined to a fight for space and not religion.
PLO and its Relations with Neighbours
As feared, PLO became the proverbial camel in the tent. The PLO harboured intentions of expanding its reach. They mounted a coup to depose the King in September 1970 to achieve this in Jordan. The coup failed because of the Jordanian armed forces, who launched a full-fledged attack on the PLO. The PLO armed elements were driven out of the cities and later allowed to shift to Lebanon via Syria. This conflict came to be known as the Black September. The PLO element, which moved into south Lebanon, started creating trouble during the civil war 1975. PLO controlled the southern and western parts of Lebanon. They were one of the principal reasons for igniting the Lebanese civil war. They teamed up with the leftist Arab movement to fight the Christian nationalist Maronites. The civil war destroyed Lebanon. It lasted for 20 years and left Lebanon in complete disarray and ruins.
The PLO did not enjoy good relations with Syria either, as Yasser Arafat and Syrian President Hafez Assad did not trust each other. The Syrians were always suspicious of the Palestinian refugees in Syria. In the Syrian civil war, the Syrian forces targeted the Palestinian refugees and the PLO cadres. Later, in 2011, Hamas endorsed the Syrian civil uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, thus deepening the chasm even more.
Egypt has been a supporter of the Palestinian cause since the beginning of the formation of Israel. They provided moral and Political support and were the first to recognise Palestine as an independent state in 1988. Yet Egypt was never keen to allow any Palestinian refugee on their soil. Their plea was their hands were full of migrants from other Muslim countries, and they could not bear the burden of additional influx coming into their country. Egypt shares a border with the Gaza Strip, which has a check post at Rafah. Such an arrangement allowed them to send aid to the Gaza Strip and prevent the influx of refugees into their country. This happening was before the Arab Spring. Then, the Muslim Brotherhood happened. The group, which initiated the Arab Spring in Egypt in 2010, found support from Hamas, which was entrenched in Gaza. Wary of Hamas and their support to the Muslim Brotherhood, they never allowed any Palestinians to come into Egypt after that.
Hamas Era
When the Gaza Strip held elections in 2007 and voted Hamas to power with an overwhelming majority, it changed the equation for every Muslim nation in the region. After Yasser Arafat, the Fateh under Mahmoud Abbasi ruled Palestine’s West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Hamas was critical of Fateh, calling them too soft on Israel. They prophesied harsher opposition to Israeli occupation. The plank appealed to the Gazans in their newfound patriotic fervour, and they elected Hamas to power. Hamas is a militant organisation first and then a political one. All the neighbouring countries understood this attribute well, thus the desire to steer clear of them. There was no overt show of opposition, but the underlying currents were to signal distancing from Hamas in Gaza. All surveys from 2002 to 2014 indicate that Hamas was unpopular in neighbouring Muslim states. The PEW centre survey held in 2014 is given below.
Source: PEW Research Centre : Spring 2014 Global Altitudes Survey: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/07/01/concerns-about-islamic-extremism-on-the-rise-in-middle-east/
As is evident from the above tables, the Muslim world population was not supportive of the Palestinian refugees and the Hamas organisation. The above survey was done in 2014 and may seem outdated. But the sentiment was very much against accepting Palestinians as refugees in neighbouring countries till mid of 2023. There are many reasons, and these are elaborated on later. On 07 Oct 2023, the Hamas executed a raid into Israel, killing its citizens and taking hostages. This Hamas operation gave way to a new conflict in the region. Israel went on a full-scale offensive. The Gaza Strip had a compulsory population migration to facilitate the Israeli offensive into the northern part of the Gaza Strip first and now the southern part of Gaza. Yet not one Islamic nation or Arab country announced that it would accept the outflow of Palestinian refugees. The two neighbouring countries, Egypt and Jordan, were categorical in stating that the Palestinian solution has to be found without the burden of refugees. Quoting from the Reuters report from Amman/Beirut on 14 Oct 2023: ‘Calls for a humanitarian corridor or an escape route for Palestinians from Gaza as a conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has escalated, has drawn a blunt reaction from Arab neighbours. Egypt, the only Arab state to share a border with Gaza, and Jordan, which is next to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, have both warned against Palestinians being forced off their land. It reflects deep Arab fears that Israel’s latest war with Hamas in Gaza could spark a new wave of permanent displacement from the land where Palestinians want to build a future state‘. In a statement to Reuters on the same day, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Thursday. “It is important that the (Palestinian) people remain steadfast and present on their land.”
In an interview with Politico, a U.S. Magazine that reports on policymakers, politicians, and finance, former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who spent nearly four decades in the Middle East in various assignments for the Foreign Office, when asked about shifting Palestinians to Egypt for the duration of the war, had this to state: “That is why Egypt just exploded when [U.S. Secretary of State] Tony Blinken proposed they give temporary sanctuary to Gazans. Again, there is an ideological overlay of enmity because of Hamas’ Muslim Brotherhood affiliation, but the deep antipathy and fear on the part of the Egyptian government toward the Palestinians predates that by decades.” The Ambassador thinks that Arab states only provide lip service to the Palestinian cause. They have no real intent of helping the Hamas. He points out that judging by the reaction of the Arab states to the Israel offensive into Gaza, “They haven’t even recalled their ambassadors from Israel in response, except Jordan, which was forced to do so due to a large section of Palestinian population which now has Jordanian nationality”.
Reality Check
The reality is the Arab nations have no desire to bail out Hamas and, least of all, allow Palestinian refugees to settle in their lands. There could be many reasons, but four major ones are emphasised.
Political Dynamics. Many Muslim nations have complex relationships in the region. Many share adversarial relations with each other. On the contrary, most are now friendly with Western countries; the U.S. and the E.U. Latest foreign policy initiatives indicate the desire to improve relations with Israel. Four years back, the Abrahamic Accords were a way to mend fences with Israel for Saudi Arabia and its partners, such as the UAE, Morocco, and Bahrain. The geo-political and geo-economic compulsions of the region dictate this change. Oil is a fast-depleting resource, and the world is shifting to alternate forms of energy, thus reducing its dependence on fossil fuels. The transition and its future state could spell doom to the oil-dependent economies. Mending relations with Israel comes at a cost, lowering the scales of the Palestinian cause.
Internal Security Concerns. Every Arab country has a rebellion brewing in its backyard. Most are hard-core fundamental groups keen to take their nations into the 7th century. Arab governments have difficulty keeping them at bay, and maintaining peace takes much of their time and resources. In such situations, an influx of Hamas cadres or even PLO Fateh Cadres into their country to join up and provide impetuous to the existing Muslim Brotherhood-like organisations is least desired. Such an influx could shift the balance of power and destabilise the regimes.
Regional Rivalries. The Saudi-Iran rivalry is a cause of many conflicts in the Middle East. The Houthis, the Sudanese crisis and even the current Hamas attack on Israel are attributed to the rivalries’ between the larger two nations of the Islamic worlddriven by thefundamentally conflictingreligious ideologies. It is ironic that Hamas and the PLO, which were the ideological rivals of Hezbollah in the Lebanon civil war in the seventies and eighties, are now partners in their war against Israel. What is worth noticing is that while Sunni nations like Saudi Arabia and UAE have shown little concern for Hamas, a Sunni organisation, it is Iran and Hezbollah, a Shia nation and group, that have come to Hamas’s rescue. This contrast is symptomatic of the temporal nature of support in the Middle East. In this situation, Saudi Arabia can only pay lip service to its support for the Hamas and Palestinian cause.
Domestic Public Opinion. As the article has brought out in the earlier part, the population of the Arab countries is not too happy about the way Hamas and Palestinians have advanced their cause. Constant violence and confrontation with Israel have taken peace away from the region. Civil wars and ideological disputes are a by-product of the region’s suffering. Considering the domestic public opinion, the Arab nations are happy to provide moral and ideological support to Hamas; they are willing to provide aid, too, but they have drawn a line. They do not want the Palestinian wars to enter their country.
Conclusion
The recent conflict in Gaza has raised the support for the Hamas and Palestine cause in all Muslim nations. A survey in Egypt has shown that ever since the October ’23 attack, the support for Hamas has grown. Below is a graph that depicts the same.
A Graph depicting the Support to Hamas in Egypt over the years
Even in the U.S. and Europe, the protests in favour of the Palestinian cause have increased, leaving Western governments to ponder if they are losing their domestic popular vote because of Israel. The protests in the U.S. universities have gained ominous proportion. Yet, Netanyahu’s government is pressing forward and likely to continue its attack on south Gaza in a bid to destroy Hamas. Whether it is an achievable goal is hard to predict. But if they don’t wrap it up fast, they will lose their support from the West. It is doubtful that Hamas would give up their fight. The death of the Iranian President is only a temporary setback. Iran is a proxy in this war, and hence, the political vacuum in Iran is unlikely to influence the situation in Gaza. As Israel prolongs the conflict, Hamas gains greater support. In this conflict, whether Hamas survives as a military organisation matters. If it does, Israel will lose the war, and Hamas will regain control of Gaza.
Such an outcome of the conflict is within the realm of possibility. But while Hamas would gain public support, it is unlikely that the Arab nations would change their official stance to accept the Palestinians in their country or cut their ties with the Western nations. It would prove the old adage: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
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