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The coincidental timing of an emergency meeting of Gulf foreign ministers in Doha with a visit to the same city by the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, for talks with Qatar’s emir raises questions about how the Gulf states will react if Israel pushes ahead with its plan to use its recent military success not just to weaken Iran, but reorder the Middle East.
This Sunni coalition of six Gulf monarchs is not naturally well disposed to Iran or its Shia proxies, and only in 2016 labelled Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. But they also oppose further Israeli escalation, and believe it is ultimately only Washington that has the means to restrain the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
They insist the establishment of an independent Palestinian state is the only path to regional stability, integration and prosperity.
“Palestinian statehood is a prerequisite for peace, rather than its byproduct,” the Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan wrote in Wednesday’s Financial Times, without making any reference to the Israeli-Iran conflict, or the likelihood that Joe Biden, in the twilight of his presidency and a month out from an election, is going to put the thumbscrews on Israel.
The reality is that Gulf state leaders, despite popular support in their countries for the Palestinian cause, are unlikely to change their own collective year-long strategy of not providing Palestinians anything other than humanitarian aid and political support.
