From Riyadh to Cairo, Tehran to Jerusalem, Palestinians are merely useful pawns in the Middle East regional game of tyrants
Opinion: In August I sat with a group of academics beside a public pool at a Kibbutz in southern Israel/Palestine. It was an idyllic, green, indeed tranquil, setting – if one could ignore the brightly decorated heavy concrete rocket shelters all around.
My colleagues, several from Abraham Accord signatory states, reflected on the complexity of the Arab-Israeli conflict with some saying that what is required sometimes is firm, basically authoritarian, rule. I listened for some time before speaking up.
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For some reason I decided to quote the Syrian pro-democracy activist ‘Abd al-Rahman al Kawākibī, assassinated for his activities in 1902, who wrote, “a nation that does not feel the misery of tyranny does not deserve liberty”. I pointed in the direction of the fence that forms the buffer zone with the Gaza Strip a few hundred metres away and commented to our Israeli hosts, perhaps ungraciously: “It is hard to sit here and feel content in the shadow of the world’s largest open-air prison.” (Excepting perhaps the Idlib enclave in north west Syria.)
“I am sorry, but you are not free.”
A few weeks later, on Saturday, October 7 2023, the 50-year anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, that fence was torn down in numerous locations and hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters poured across and the world reacted with condemnation of the terror attacks that followed. But to me the underlying cause of the horror that started that day is not Islamic terrorism but the disease of tyranny, which afflicts almost all the countries of the Middle East, including Israel.
To someone living amid fear, hatred and insecurity or injustice and repression what does tyranny feel like? Do Israelis feel the tyranny that the Palestinians are subject to? Do they understand the nature of the tyranny that Middle East societies are subject to across the region, even as Jerusalem seeks to entrench normalisation deals with autocratic Arab rulers?
In recent times Israelis began to feel tyranny more directly. Within the cabinet of the most extreme right-wing government in the Israeli state’s 75-year history, there are senior members such as Bezalel Smotrich who stridently promotes the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and openly dehumanises Palestinians in rhetoric hauntingly similar to the 20th Century’s darkest days, when speaking of a ‘decisive plan’ to bring them to heel.
Standing in the way of activating such plans are Israel’s institutions, which is why Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government has sought to remove the ‘reasonableness’ clause of the Supreme Court, the main check and balance in Israel’s uncodified constitution, which sparked massive and sustained protests across the country – albeit not on behalf of Arab Israelis, citizens who have been conspicuously absent from the otherwise diverse protest movement.
If one peels back the layers searching for the triggers for the current escalation, it is clear to see how regional tyrants (including the aspirant in West Jerusalem) are playing dangerous political games with the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.
The underlying kindling for the current violence has been growing provocation of Palestinian insecurities around the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount compound – the tension was obvious during my visit in August – and the increasing intransigence of settlers in the West Bank, emboldened by the stances of the current Israeli government.
However, round one of the current games of politically motivated escalation possibly came on July 3 2023, when Israeli security forces, citing increased violence by Palestinians against settlers, launched an invasion of the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. Dozens of Palestinians were killed, hundreds wounded, and thousands displaced. To some Israeli observers, Prime Minister Netanyahu launched the operation in order to “divert attention from and ultimately silence the public protest against him” over the supreme court bill.
About 12 months ago large-scale anti-regime protests [re]erupted in Iran. The Mullahs were suspicious in their paranoia that Israel was behind this attempt to collapse their regime from within, which was confirmed in their minds when Israel's ambassador to the United Nations held up a protest sign during a speech from Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Iranian pro-democracy activist Narges Mohammadi on the day before the Hamas-led attack from Gaza, may have been the last straw for Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
Iran has undoubtedly been supplying weapons and materiel to Hamas, and the more hardline Islamic Jihad, and almost certainly gave the go-ahead for Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, as well as the supporting fire by Hezbollah into the contested Shebaa farms on the Lebanon border to the north.
One of the mysteries of the successful cross border raid was how the vaunted Israeli intelligence failed to recognise the build-up to Hamas’s operation? It is important to note here the role of Egypt. The Biden administration has come under increasing pressure to withhold military aid to Egypt over human rights concerns. By allowing Iranian weapons to pass under his nose and neglecting to deliver warning signs to the Israelis of the impending attack, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is reminding the US of Egypt’s role in preserving Israeli security.
The complexity of the autocratic regional chess game has been increased by the moves by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who in a recent long Fox News interview described his vision for a brave new region with his kingdom astride it in partnership with a network of autocratic rulers – a club the Israeli government seems keen to join.
From Riyadh to Cairo, Tehran to Jerusalem (not forgetting UAE or the rehabilitated Assad regime) there is no room for Palestinians in this vision of a new Middle East, apart from as useful pawns in the regional game of tyrants. Whether Israelis and Arabs can feel the misery of this new shiny wave of tyranny, or indeed whether the West can recognise it, might determine whether peace and liberation is possible in the Middle East.
