Gaza genocide: How Arab regimes became the enemy within
In a televised speech last month, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas crudely lashed out at Hamas, calling them “sons of dogs” and demanding that they disarm and release the remaining Israeli captives.
In his speech, he seemed to forget his previous plea to the “international community” for protection from the occupiers’ aggression in May 2023, when he addressed the United Nations.
“People of the world, protect us,” Abbas said. “Aren’t we human beings? Even animals should be protected. If you have an animal, won’t you protect it?”
This past February, Israeli media reported that Saudi Arabia had put forward a plan for Gaza centred on disarming Hamas and removing the group from power.
Arab and American sources told the Israel Hayom newspaper that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would not participate financially or practically in the reconstruction of Gaza unless it was guaranteed that Hamas would surrender its weapons and play no role in postwar governance.
In March, Middle East Eye reported that Jordan was proposing a plan to disarm Palestinian groups in Gaza, as well as to exile 3,000 members of Hamas, including both military and civilian leaders, from Gaza.
Then, in mid-April, just days before Abbas issued his threat to Hamas, Egypt presented a “ceasefire proposal” to a Hamas delegation in Cairo that included a demand for the group’s disarmament.
Pattern of hostility
The calls from Abbas and prominent Arab regimes for Hamas to surrender its weapons reflect a broader pattern of hostility from the Arab political order towards the resistance in Gaza.
This raises crucial and legitimate questions about the very essence of the struggle for liberation: do the occupied have a right to resist their occupier? How can an unarmed resistance stand up to a brutal military occupation that commits genocide against defenceless people?
What guarantees are there to end the occupation and lift the siege if Zionism continues its unchecked aggression, while Arab regimes and the world turn a blind eye?
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The calls for the disarmament of Gaza would in western discourse be viewed as “appeasement” and a reward for aggression. Such demands evoke a long and painful history of Arab regimes betraying Palestine.
Over the years, this betrayal has transformed into the complicity of these regimes - rooted not in incapacity, but in design. For them, resistance is futile, defeating the occupation is a myth, and the existence of a free and defiant Palestine would threaten the regional order they seek to preserve.
Throughout the struggle against Zionist colonialism, there have been numerous critical moments when Arab governments had the opportunity to intervene meaningfully, either to challenge the Zionist project or, at the very least, slow its progress. Instead, the Arab political order has repeatedly betrayed the Palestinian cause. Three key milestones stand out.
Silence in Damascus
The first dates back to 1948, the year of the Nakba, when the state of Israel was established on the ruins of Palestine.
In the lead-up to the Nakba, a revered Palestinian fighter, Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini, was killed while leading a counter-offensive to retake the strategic village of al-Qastal, located west of Jerusalem.
Husseini, who had gained prominence during the 1936 Palestinian rebellion, travelled to Damascus in March 1948 to appeal to the Arab League for weapons, as Zionist militias were advancing. Then came the news that Qastal had fallen. Husseini pleaded with the Arab League for weapons, but was met with silence.
Before returning to Jerusalem, he addressed the Arab League, stating: “I am going to al-Qastal, and I will storm it and occupy it, even if that leads to my death. I now wish for death before I see the Jews occupying Palestine. The men of the League and the leadership are betraying Palestine.” Later, he wrote a letter to the League: “I hold you accountable after you left my soldiers at the height of their victories, without aid or weapons."
After returning from Damascus, Husseini quickly organised a military operation to reclaim Qastal, but he was killed in battle on 8 April 1948. Many fighters subsequently left the village, which was then destroyed by Zionist gangs.
The following day, Zionist militias carried out a horrific massacre in the nearby village ofDeir Yassin, killing and mutilating dozens of civilians and reducing the village to rubble.
Many Arab historians regard the battle of Qastal, which was the first Palestinian villages to be occupied in 1948, as one of the war’s decisive battles. Its strategic location, perched above critical access roads to Jerusalem, made its loss a pivotal moment that facilitated the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
This is what makes the betrayal by Arab regimes significant and shameful. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz described the battle as “a fight to the death” and a “betrayal by the Arab world”, leading to “the most disastrous 24 hours in Palestinian history”.
Egypt's betrayal
The second devastating betrayal came when the most influential Arab state, Egypt, officially conferred legitimacy on the Zionist colonisation of 80 percent of Palestine through former President Anwar Sadat’s signing of the Camp David Accords.
In exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, limited Egyptian sovereignty over the territory and an annual $1.5bn US “bribe”, Egypt effectively abandoned the Palestinian cause, leaving Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli occupation.
The Camp David Accords removed Egypt from the Arab-Israeli conflict, marking the realisation of a long-held Zionist dream. Israeli writer Uri Avnery described the agreement as one of the most significant events in Israel’s history, writing in 2003 that Sadat “was ready to sell the Palestinians down the river in order to sign a separate peace with Israel and gain the favor (and money) of the United States”.
This betrayal only deepened the occupation’s sense of impunity and arrogance. The agreement neither brought peace nor prevented wars.
Instead, it marked the beginning of a prolonged normalisation process between Israel and Arab leaders, who abandoned revolutionary principles and broke the long-standing taboo against negotiating with Zionism, choosing instead what they perceived as a pragmatic approach grounded in realism and self-interest.
In Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo, Jewish scholar Seth Anziska argues that the accords played a central role in perpetuating Palestinian statelessness and creating crippling challenges to their aspirations for a homeland, ultimately laying the conceptual groundwork for the disastrous Oslo Accords.
Several years after Camp David, Israel launched a brutal invasion of Lebanon, killing thousands of civilians and destroying cities. The fruits of betrayal must be bitter.
Massacre in Lebanon
The invasion, which took place in the summer of 1982, was the third milestone in the dismal history of Arab regimes’ betrayal of Palestine. As Israeli forces besieged Beirut and relentlessly bombed the city, Arab governments responded with nothing more than a display of emotions.
Eventually, the US and some Arab states intervened to fulfill the goals of the invasion: the removal of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters from Lebanon. Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan participated in persuading PLO leader Yasser Arafat to leave Beirut, assuring him that Palestinians in the camps would be safe.
The western “protection force” gave similar guarantees to Arafat, who swallowed the bait and agreed to the plan in August 1982. What followed the departure of PLO fighters was the nightmare many had feared: the promises of protection were shattered, and on the morning of 16 September 1982, members of a Lebanese Christian militia known as the Phalange stormed the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila to carry out a massacre - all under the watch of Israeli troops.
Up to 3,500 people were slaughtered over a three-day period. Entire families were exterminated, babies had their heads smashed against walls, victims were dismembered, and women were raped before being hacked to death with hatchets.
Just days after the massacre, Saudi Arabia received Arafat. I remember seeing him at King Fahd’s reception for Muslim dignitaries in Mina on 28 September 1982, wearing a medal, likely awarded to him by the king.
What remains etched in my memory, however, is the pale, yellowish tone of his face, like that of a squeezed lemon.
On 16 December 1982, the United Nations General Assembly officially recognised the Sabra and Shatila massacre as an act of genocide. UN estimates of the death toll have put the number at 3,500, but it’s possible that the true number will never be known, with many victims buried in mass graves or under rubble.
Harvest of tyranny
The genocidal massacre of Sabra and Shatila could have been prevented if influential Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, had taken a principled stand, rather than pursuing appeasement and short-term political gains.
Today, 43 years after that horrific crime, history is repeating itself. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and the Palestinian Authority want Gaza to surrender to Israel’s aggression, and for Hamas to release the Israeli captives, and disarm.
There are calls for Hamas leaders to follow in the footsteps of Arafat by departing Gaza - a proposal widely circulated by Saudi-backed outlets and Saudi loyalists on social media since 7 October 2023.
The Arab political order appears eager for the defeat of Gaza’s resistance and the triumph of what many scholars and human rights groups, as well as millions of people around the world, perceive as a campaign of genocide. This repetition of history is not lost on observers: the same forces that pressured Arafat to leave Beirut and later killed the Arab Spring, an extraordinary phenomenon that opened a window of hope for the liberation of Palestine, are now calling for the disarmament of Gaza.
The involvement of some Arab regimes in these efforts highlights their ongoing complicity in undermining Palestinian self-determination. While people across the Arab world have shown overwhelming support for Gaza, their governments have done nothing beyond offering empty rhetoric.
This gap between public will and government inaction underscores the grip of tyranny and dictatorship across the region, where personal agendas and regime survival are prioritised over ethical norms and even national security imperatives, such as the Palestinian cause.
The deeply shameful stances of states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan towards the genocide in Gaza reveal a stark truth: the abandonment of Palestine has evolved into outright complicity - a culmination of decades of calculated distancing, political manoeuvring and shifting regional priorities.
Looming blowback
The normalisation agreements between Israel and some Arab states are not isolated incidents; they reflect a broader pattern of abandonment and complicity. The widely accepted narrative that Arab regimes fail to confront Israel due to disunity or a lack of advanced weaponry is simply a myth.
It implies that, under different circumstances, these regimes would champion the Palestinian cause. In truth, their inaction stems not from incapacity, but from a calculated strategic alignment with Zionist interests, often in direct contradiction to the values and sentiments of their own citizens.
A stark example of this stance emerged after Arab leaders endorsed a Gaza reconstruction plan in Cairo in early March. Days later, MEE reported that the UAE was lobbying the Trump administration to jettison the plan and to pressure Egypt into accepting forcibly displaced Palestinians.
Throughout months of bloodshed in Gaza, most Arab governments were slow to issue even mild condemnations. Though their rhetoric eventually shifted in tone, their actions remained largely passive - or worse, overtly supportive of Israel, helping it to evade diplomatic isolation and economic backlash. In contrast, Yemen’s Houthis engaged in tangible action in an attempt to stop the genocide.
In his new book War, journalist Bob Woodward reveals that some Arab officials privately reassured US leaders of their support for Israeli aggression aimed at dismantling Palestinian armed resistance. Their chief concern was not the mass killing of civilians, but the possibility that images of Palestinian suffering could trigger unrest within their societies.
Gaza has shattered the illusion of credibility in the Arab political order, exposing its deep structural and moral bankruptcy. No amount of wealth, foreign alliances or internal repression can offer true stability to Saudi Arabia or its counterparts while Palestinians are being besieged and murdered.
There is no moral or political rationale for partnering with Zionism. Gaza’s genocide has laid bare its essence as a bankrupt ideology built on dispossession and terror. To believe that Palestine can be crushed, or that Zionism can survive unscathed after all this savagery, is a ridiculous fantasy.
Do the Arab regimes that once facilitated the forced expulsion of Palestinian fighters from Beirut grasp that dismantling Gaza’s last line of defence could clear the path for a slaughter much worse than Sabra and Shatila? And if that horror unfolds, will they bear the burden of what they helped unleash?
History has shown that supporting the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people is the only path forward. Betraying those aspirations erodes the legitimacy of ruling elites. For more than 19 months, the relentless images of suffering from Gaza have etched themselves into the world’s collective memory. People are watching. They will not forget.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.