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The Arab world without Israel
Summary: if the war in Gaza leads to the beginning of the end of Zionism this could signal a return of the Arab Spring and a complete reshaping of the Arab world.
Writing on Israel and Palestine in 1970 the philosopher Bertrand Russell had this to say in his “Last Message on Israel and Palestine”:
Not only does Israel condemn a vast number of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.
For more than a century Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa have laboured under puppet regimes and corrupt military dictators who serve the demands of their Western patrons ahead of the needs of their own people.
Absolute dictators have long been the West’s preferred solution for “managing the Arabs” because experience shows only they can be truly relied on to deliver the required results. The more corrupt the authoritarians are the better, as this makes them easier to control and more prepared to act against the national interest, a prerequisite above all when it comes to the issue of Israel.
But now Israel is facing an existential crisis.
The genocide in Gaza is eviscerating its international legitimacy and sapping what sympathies remain for the Jewish state. Despite Israel’s efforts to eradicate it, and with full Western and Arab complicity, the Palestinian resistance continues to strengthen and grow.
Operating under the banner of Islam to maximise their legitimacy and support, while exploiting Israel’s excessive repression in a classic guerrilla manner, Hamas and the other resistance groups have successfully provoked Israel into a giant trap, just like bin Laden did with the US after 9-11.
With no end in sight to the war, more commentators are predicting that this looks like the beginning of the end of Zionism. The war has laid bare Israel and the occupation’s vulnerabilities, that they depend on two factors outside of Israel’s control for survival: Western support and Arab betrayal.
Neither can continue indefinitely.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog was greeted in Amsterdam on Sunday with signs ushering him to the Hague to be prosecuted for war crimes in Gaza.Should the Israelis persist in their genocidal war, conditions will change and a process will be triggered that could ultimately lead to Israel’s collapse. It could be fast or slow, but once set in motion it will be irreversible.
If Israel collapses, either through internal strife or under the blows of Palestinian resistance and global revulsion, besides being a calamity of unfathomable proportions for Jews, this would also lead to comprehensive changes in the entire regional system since most of the Arab world has been structured around Israel’s existence.
Without any Israel to protect, Arab dictators would suddenly become much less necessary and though western countries would still seek to maintain their interests in other areas, they could finally abandon them, allowing a much more normal political life to develop in Arab countries with more normal levels of freedom. This would have a deep restorative effect on the long and fraught relationship between Arabs and the West. Democratic elections could be held and all the extremist groups and regimes that are founded on the philosophy of resistance to Israel and the West would lose their reason to exist and would disappear. The Jihad phenomenon in Europe and attacks like that by Salman Abedi in Manchester Arena in 2017 would end.
The obstacles to this rosy picture of Arab liberation and Euro-Arab harmony are Israel, the current Arab regimes and violent jihadist groups.
And like Israel, Arab regimes are not stable either.
Egypt under Sisi is one of the fundamental components of the contemporary Arab political landscape, playing a key role in protecting Israel and suppressing Arab democracy. In return, Sisi enjoys the support of the West and its clients in the Gulf. For now the Egyptian regime’s immense coercive capabilities allow it to continue to maintain the status quo. But if the Egyptian people lose patience and decide the risk of revolution outweighs the fear of repression then nothing the West and the Gulf can do will be able to protect the Sisi regime.
Saudi Arabia is the other pillar of the contemporary Arab political landscape. The Saudis use their diplomatic, religious and economic weight to support US endeavours in the region and to maintain the status quo.
However, despite all its religious and material capabilities Saudi Arabia’s stability is built on a regime of fear that could quickly collapse should its much-hyped economic transformation, Vision 2030, flounder.
A disruption, internal or international, whether due to domestic politics in America, major changes in Israel/Palestine, an internal rebellion or a confrontation with one of its neighbours could collapse the regime. That in turn would have a powerful "domino effect" on Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority which all depend on Saudi largesse, paid both in the service of America and to secure regional stability.
The smaller Arab gulf states depend completely on the regional status quo.
The UAE, for example, where immigrants make up 88.1% of the total population would have no chance in a conflict with any regional entity or armed group. Regime change there, like in Saudi Arabia, would also have a major "domino effect" across the region because the UAE is involved in Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, the Horn of Africa and to a lesser extent also Iraq, Syria and Jordan.
Despite the success of the post-Arab Spring counter-revolution, resilient pockets remain across the region waiting for the opportunity to mobilise and transform into state level forces.
The Syrian revolution has been stalled by a collusion of forces: the Assad regime, Iran, Russia, Türkiye and America as well as the various Syrian factions allied with them. This has come about only because of a rare intersection of interests between these outside players and should this fragile balance collapse the situation in Syria would change completely.
The revolution will unfreeze and many fighters who had previously been prevented from joining non-state groups would do so, multiplying their cadres and capabilities and paving the way for the end of the Assad regime.
Given the many factions in Syria, Yemen and Libya and the strength of Iran’s proxies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, an Israeli collapse could open up a Pandora’s box with many countries in the region descending into conflicts between armed groups, violent jihadism and civil war. Whether some form of Arab democracy can emerge from such a scenario is difficult to discern. However America’s leadership in driving forward unconditional support for Israel by Western democracies will only accelerate the dead-end road the Israelis are on. The fuse has been lit and a catastrophic war on many fronts is looming. A new Arab reality will emerge, hopefully one that encompasses freedom both economic and political, but it may be birthed amidst chaos and bloodshed the likes of which the region has never before seen.
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