Get you up to speed: Why the Arab League could not stop Israel’s genocide

What remains unclear — It is uncertain how the war with Iran will impact Arab governments’ future security calculations and their pursuit of sovereignty.

Arab League struggles to address Israeli actions amid regional challenges

OPINIONOPINION, Opinion|Arab LeagueWhy the Arab League could not stop Israel’s genocide

Arab governments are constrained by dependency, regime survival and fear of empowering Iran-aligned rivals.

Most Arabs are perplexed by why their governments and the Arab League have been so docile in the face of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which is approaching its third year and has spilled into the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, Syria and Lebanon. Two critical actors that could redress this situation – Western and other global powers on the one hand, and Arab governments on the other – have mainly issued statements of concern, sent symbolic aid packages and called for United Nations meetings that only reaffirm their collective inaction. The Arab League especially, which claims to represent shared Arab interests, has been the poster child of Arab docility and empty words. Three intertwined dynamics might explain this.

The first is the post-colonial nature of statehood and power in Arab lands, which never fully shed colonial influence, since most Arab states formed after World War I were configured to suit foreign interests as much as, if not more than, their own people’s identities, rights and aspirations. So Arab countries, unlike Iran or Turkiye, for example, have never been able to harness their natural, human and geographic resources to become powerful, confident states that are not constantly manipulated by stronger powers, or that can occasionally resist foreign threats politically or militarily. Most Arab states, even energy-rich ones, rely heavily on non-Arab powers for financial, military, technological and other assistance that is vital for their survival; this deep dependence has diluted their sovereignty and ability to act independently, as the Gaza genocide has shown. This also makes the cost of challenging powers such as the United States and Israel too high to consider.

The second is that a quick glance across the region’s fragile and shattered polities, from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia to Sudan, is a daily reminder to Arab leaderships of the terrible costs of defying their neo-colonial patrons and Israel. Since the 1950s, Arab states have found themselves permanently under the gaze, if not the security and fiscal wings, of non-Arab powers such as the US, the United Kingdom, France and Russia, and, closer to home in recent decades, Iran, Israel and Turkiye.

The US in particular has expanded its web of connections among Israeli, American and Arab parties in essential sectors such as water, food, energy, transportation networks, financial aid, debt management, environmental protection, technology and military security. Much of this happens indirectly, through institutions such as the World Bank, the United Nations, NATO, the International Monetary Fund, or the vast US commercial banking and payments networks that enable the devastating sanctions the US liberally imposes on those who dare to challenge it or Israel. Any Arab state that actively confronts the US-Israel axis, rather than merely denouncing Trump in the media, would risk triggering punitive measures such as sanctions and military attacks that could threaten the stability, and even the survival, of weaker states.

The third driver of the quiet Arab response to Israel’s US-enabled genocide in Palestine has been the structural gap between Arab governments and their citizens, on both domestic policies and major foreign policy issues such as Israel, Palestine, Iran, resistance, or ties with Russia and China. The Arab citizen-state gap has been tempered by the prevailing social contract, often called “the authoritarian bargain”, by which governments define policies and allocate resources while citizens rely on the state for the essentials of life, such as water, food, housing, education and healthcare. Some Arab states that cannot harness the resources needed to sustain this system, including Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Palestine and Lebanon, have suffered chronic unemployment and poverty, ethnic and sectarian tensions, water and electricity shortages, and other stresses. These often open the door to foreign interventions that can cause Arab states to fray at the edges, or even fragment, as areas split off to form autonomous or independent regions.

I have no doubt, having lived in and reported on the Arab region for the past 60 years, that our governments, elites and ordinary citizens all care deeply about Palestinian rights and wellbeing, and would like to act effectively to assist the Palestinian cause. But the Gaza genocide, and now Israel’s US-backed assaults on Lebanon and Iran, have clarified how state officials and ordinary citizens act according to very different priorities. If the choice is between supporting Palestine or protecting their own incumbency and national wellbeing, Arab elites have mostly chosen their own survival as their top priority.

This is the nature of the post-colonial order in the region that has emerged in the past half-century via a neo-colonial web of interlinkages that serve Israel and its Western backers while treating the rights of Arab states and citizens as secondary. Our current neo-colonial order permits press statements, regional consultations, public protest marches, food aid, field hospitals, wearing keffiyehs, waving Palestinian flags and casting hostile UN votes by Arabs who oppose the US-Israel axis; but active military, economic or other resistance is not allowed. And when it happens, those behind it are bombed, sanctioned or subjected to genocidal obliteration.

The Arab order represented by the Arab League observes these rules because it is a reflection of Arab officialdom. The League itself is further hobbled by the fact that it operates through consensus politics in practice, which is impossible to achieve on any political issue more substantive than coordinating postal rates or airline fares. The Gaza, Lebanon and Iran crises also immobilised pan-Arab action because most Arab governments since 1979 have seen Iran as a major threat and do not want to boost non-state actors like Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemen’s Ansar Allah (the Houthis) and other resistance groups close to Iran.

The war with Iran revealed the weaknesses of the American-Israeli security umbrella for Arab states. Its consequences in the coming years could well revise Arab governments’ calculations about how better to achieve genuine and lasting security, along with full sovereignty in a post-colonial world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect WTX News’s editorial policy.