Washington’s vision for a Middle East in which economics and security bind Israel with its Arab neighbors is in tatters.
Hamas’s attack on Israel and the subsequent offensive in Gaza are testing a long-held belief that hostility among Arab citizens toward Israel is irrelevant to their leaders’ choices about normalizing ties with the Jewish state.
Pressure is mounting on Arab nations to act in the face of more than 30,000 dead Palestinians, including thousands of women and children — numbers now cited by the United Nations and US President Joe Biden — and images of starving people.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has made clear that a precondition to diplomatic rapprochement with Israel is “an irreversible path” toward a Palestinian state — anathema to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government.
A deal announced last year for BP and the United Arab Emirates’ state oil firm to buy a $2 billion stake in Israel’s NewMed Energy was supposed to highlight burgeoning ties between the UAE and Israel. It was suspended yesterday.
The war has undone “30 years of efforts to normalize the idea of peace with Israel in the Arab world,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in an interview last month.
Arab editorialists now wonder what it means to be America’s friend in a world where it’s being challenged by China — Beijing mediated a détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran last year — and defied daily by Israel over calls to pause the offensive.
They question, too, why the US, Israel’s leading arms supplier, can’t ensure food deliveries by land to Gazans and instead must build a dock to bring in aid by sea that will take months to complete.
For many, it all indicates the growing limits of US power. — Sam Dagher