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A Region on the Cusp of War with Abdullah Al-Arian
137 Plays3 months ago
Abdullah Al-Arian joins host Yara Hawari to discuss the heightened tensions in the region as the Israeli regime expands its aggression on multiple fronts.
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Transcript
Arab States' Focus and Palestinian Impact
00:00:00
Speaker
What we're seeing now, I think, signals a drastic escalation, just given the severity of the humanitarian toll that this has all taken on Palestinians, to see that Arab states continue to invest in a regional security relationship that they believe is going to serve their interests. The interests not of the people, but the interests of these regimes, that this is the only thing that is keeping them essentially in power. And so they're willing to do everything in that regard, even if it means dooming the people of Palestine to these horrific conditions.
Introduction to 'Rethinking Palestine' by Yara Hawari
00:00:34
Speaker
From Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, I am Yara Hawari, and this is Rethinking Palestine.
00:00:45
Speaker
Amidst the ongoing genocide in Gaza being perpetrated by the Israeli regime and the accelerated colonisation of the West Bank and the rest of Palestine, there have also been regional escalations on various fronts.
Regional Escalations and Israeli Attacks
00:00:57
Speaker
Israeli forces have been consistently pummelling southern Lebanon throughout the genocide in what they call attacks on Hezbollah infrastructure.
00:01:05
Speaker
But in reality, it's resulted in not only the killing of Lebanese civilians, but also the destruction of hundreds of homes and evacuations of dozens of villages. Meanwhile, there have also been provocations with Iran. The Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus back in April, which killed two top Iranian commanders, among others, and the assassination of political chief of Hamas Ismail Hani on the 31st of July, as he was attending the inauguration of the new Iranian president in Tehran.
Potential for War and Regional Interests
00:01:33
Speaker
Many internationals have been told to leave the region on the advice of their governments, and a lot of Western-based pundits keep talking about a region on the cusp of war. And with so many different players involved in competing interests, nothing is clear. Joining me to discuss all of this is Shabaka policy member Abdullah Al-Aryan, Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University, Qatar. Abdullah, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Rethinking Palestine.
00:02:03
Speaker
Thanks for having me. The genocide in Gaza isn't happening in a vacuum.
Historical Context of Zionism and Arab Nation-States
00:02:08
Speaker
It's happening in a wider context of aggressive Israeli settler colonialism, but also shifting alliances in the region, which is very apparent in the way that regimes and leaders have responded to various developments. Can you give us a bit of a historical context that will help us understand this?
00:02:27
Speaker
I think one of the important things to do when trying to evaluate the role of various regional actors, in particular, of course, the various Arab states, is to think through some of the historical developments that have led us to this point. I mean, again, when we talk about
00:02:44
Speaker
the Zionist project having been given rise to at the same time that there was a broader colonial project for the entire region. And so I think seeing those things as being inextricably linked that the rise of the Arab nation state as we have come to know it.
00:02:59
Speaker
is very much coincided with the fulfillment of Zionist ambitions in Palestine. And so what that has meant is that historically, Arab states have always determined their course, their development, their fate, in part through their relationship with this settler colonial project in their midst.
Post-Colonial Relations with Israel
00:03:19
Speaker
And so what that has meant, of course, is that
00:03:21
Speaker
with the arrows of independence when all of these states more or less achieved their independence from colonial rule. They did so largely through the condition that they would adhere to certain sets of structures, the boundaries, for instance, the borders between them, the recognition of a broader international relations structure that maintains these states in relation to the state of Israel that then gets its independence in 1948.
00:03:49
Speaker
And so, as a result, it wasn't a surprise, I think, to many people that the Arab states in 1948 were not in any real serious position to challenge the settler colonial project, given the fact that their militaries had largely been under British and French colonial control, and that their heads of state, in many cases monarchs or even these early forms of an elite republican model of state, were also very much beholden to imperial interests.
00:04:18
Speaker
we already have this deeply intricate relationship in which there was not a significant challenge in the very early years of the Zionist project, which includes, of course, the 30s and 40s, but then through 1948 and then even into the
Failures of Anti-Zionist Movements
00:04:33
Speaker
1950s. And this shifts once you start to have
00:04:36
Speaker
revolutionary projects, the rise of Nazarism, for instance, but even things like the bath, the role of communists in the region throughout the 1950s and 60s that attempts to confront Zionism at that point, but obviously falls short in a number of ways.
00:04:52
Speaker
And I think as a result, we then reach a period by the late 70s and into the 80s where not only do you have things like the Camp David Accords that is turning a completely different page by having Egypt become the first state to normalize and it's the largest Arab state and the most significant Arab state in many ways in terms of its political and cultural influence for the previous half century.
00:05:17
Speaker
But that then takes us down a path in which normalization not only becomes an option for these states, but that you end up seeing the emergence of an entire class, a political elite class that is taking it on as a project in opposition to not just those
00:05:38
Speaker
large swaths of the populations within their societies that, of course, continue to see Palestinian liberation as a core component of their own national identities and as part of both national and regional political project, but also in line with a kind of realignment with
00:05:55
Speaker
particularly American influence in this region. And so when we think about the fact that these states are being realigned in terms of their, not just their kind of strategic military political realignment as part of a broader US influence in the region, but really even economically becoming more deeply integrated.
00:06:14
Speaker
then the notion of Palestinian liberation becomes completely at odds with that of most Arab regimes beginning in the 1980s and beyond. With very few exceptions, of course, you see it in Syria and Iraq. Iraq, of course, is meant to serve as a cautionary tale for Arab states given what happened to it following the US invasion in 2003.
00:06:36
Speaker
And so as a result, I think once we get closer to this moment, there's a need to take into account the events and developments of the last decade that have in some ways upended that previous order.
US-Israel Security Alignments vs. Palestinian Support
00:06:50
Speaker
That on the one hand, what you saw earlier is Arab states that were slowly shifting their interests and their realignment toward
00:06:59
Speaker
and a security order that was managed largely by the United States and Israel that was incorporating the political and military classes of various Arab states. But at the same time, you still had at least on the cultural level, on the popular level, even on the surface level, political level, you did have a continuation of a rhetorical commitment to Palestinian liberation. You would see Hosni Mubarak, for instance, in Egypt who would still
00:07:27
Speaker
feign his outrage at the latest Israeli incursion, for instance, during the Second Intifada. You would see the withdrawal of ambassadors from capitals like Cairo and Amman, and you would still continue to see that as part of the general political class of most Arab states, that Palestinian liberation would still be spoken about as being
00:07:47
Speaker
a core component. And certainly, normalization never really extended beyond that kind of narrow political normalization.
Normalization of Arab-Israeli Relations
00:07:55
Speaker
You didn't see massive cultural educational exchanges. Economic exchanges were quite limited. All of this, of course, changes in the last decade once normalization expands to a number of other states. It includes countries like the UAE and Bahrain and Morocco.
00:08:12
Speaker
as well as Sudan, and the commitments that arise out of those more recent agreements tend to go far deeper, that you start to see much more of a tourism exchange, you start to see educational exchanges, far deeper economic ties being established. So the question is, what changed in the midst of all of these different events that we start to see this being a possibility?
Impact of Arab Uprisings on Palestine
00:08:37
Speaker
And so I would argue that really thinking about the Arab uprisings as being
00:08:41
Speaker
the moment where the final break between Arab populations and their ruling regimes occurs, because this is a moment in which, of course, you start to see mass uprisings across the entire region
00:08:56
Speaker
making a number of significant demands and erasing a number of grievances, one of which of course is on the question of Palestine, but not exclusively. A lot of them are social, political, economic demands having to do with obviously political freedom being the first and foremost demand. We start to see very short-lived experiments attempting to do post-authoritarian transitions in places like Egypt and Tunisia, but even in places like Libya and Yemen where you end up devolving into
00:09:26
Speaker
very destructive civil wars. So all of this is to say that as those mobilizations, as those uprisings are rolled back quite aggressively, quite violently, we see of course the coup that takes place in 2013 in Egypt, that there's a kind of a new ruling consensus, a new ruling bargain that emerges quite aggressively and forcefully. And this is one that no longer has to take
00:09:49
Speaker
popular sentiments into account. This is one that can then basically put all of its interests into the hands of the US-Israeli security arrangement that is being developed for the region.
Palestinian Issues in 2023: Overshadowed by Normalization
00:10:02
Speaker
And we see it in terms of the deeper military and intelligence ties, the deeper economic ties, and the fact that now for the first time, you no longer have any serious expressions, even rhetorical expressions.
00:10:15
Speaker
about the Palestinian issue. So that by the time we get to 2023 in the fall, Palestine has basically been erased from the entire regional agenda. I mean, no one is really talking about it in any serious terms. It's not the first, it's not even the 10th agenda item, let's say, on kind of an Arab League summit.
00:10:32
Speaker
or in terms of what the regional Arab regime press, we should say, is covering on a day-to-day basis. It's become completely forgotten, and that, of course, is very much by design. What we're hearing about more and more is not just this massive wave of normalization projects, but thinking about Saudi Arabia as being the final feather in the cap, so to speak, that this becomes the largest prize of all, the thing that Israel and the US have been attempting to bring about.
Arab Regimes' Reaction to Gaza Genocide
00:11:01
Speaker
as a means of them paving the way for even broader normalization, bringing in countries like Pakistan and Malaysia perhaps, and then basically putting an end to the Palestinian question once and for all. There is palpable anger that Arab regimes for their inaction amidst the ongoing genocide, and I think it's not surprising considering especially the historical context that you just laid out.
00:11:24
Speaker
But I do think some are surprised at even the lack of rhetorical condemnation of the genocide by Arab regimes and leaders. What are some of the things that have stood out to you in recent months that speak to this?
00:11:39
Speaker
Well, I think if you told someone even just a few years ago or a decade ago or more, the idea is that the military capabilities of Arab states would be mobilized in support of an Israeli genocidal operation, the genocidal war that has been unleashed on Palestinians. People would say, no, that's a bridge too far. That's not something that Arab regimes could ever
00:12:04
Speaker
dream of doing, let alone actually putting into practice. And yet that's exactly what we've seen in terms of the mobilization of various Arab forces as a means of shielding Israel in the midst of its genocidal atrocities in Gaza, in the West Bank, by protecting them from any retaliatory strikes.
Regime Interests Over Palestinian Welfare
00:12:24
Speaker
If you told people just a decade ago that while the population of Reza is being starved in the worst famine, the worst starvation policy and siege that we've seen in modern times, and yet the Arab states would be
00:12:40
Speaker
rerouting trade goods, food for Israelis, I think people would have been shocked and would have basically said, no, that could never happen. Despite everything we know about these regimes, that this would be something too far. And I think that has been quite shocking for a lot of people. I mean, we know, for instance, that Egypt has maintained its role in the siege of Gaza for going on two decades now.
00:13:04
Speaker
And yet, what we're seeing now, I think, signals a drastic escalation, just given the severity of the humanitarian toll that this has all taken on Palestinians, to see that Arab states are only reacting to continue to invest in a regional security relationship that they believe is going to serve their interests. And again, the interests not of the people, but the interests of these regimes, that this is the only thing that is keeping them essentially.
00:13:30
Speaker
power is this relationship. And so they're willing to do everything in that regard, even if it means dooming the people of Palestine to these horrific conditions. I think that has obviously been, for many people, a surprise. Despite everything we know, as I said, and despite all of that history, but seeing it kind of devolve to this level, I think has been really unnerving.
00:13:53
Speaker
And I think what this speaks to is one fact, which is I don't think that we've ever seen this much of a disparity, a gap between where the Arab populations are and where their leaders are. I mean, again, despite all of the kind of horrific authoritarian rulers they've had in the past, despite everything that we know about that history, we've never seen this wide of a gap.
00:14:14
Speaker
And what we know about that, of course, is that this kind of picture is unsustainable in the long term, that you cannot maintain yourself in power through sheer force indefinitely, that you can only impose this on a temporary basis. You can do it here and there, but it's not something that I think is sustainable for the long term.
Instability in Arab Regimes and Alliances
00:14:34
Speaker
And given everything that we're seeing in terms of Israel standing in the region, given its military performance,
00:14:40
Speaker
given the fact that it's finally we're starting to see even just the first steps of some kind of international accountability at bodies that were completely off limits to Palestinians in the past, the ICC, the ICJ, certain other segments of the United Nations.
00:14:56
Speaker
The fact that those conversations and those actions are beginning, I think speaks to the fact that for these regimes at least, they have to also think that their positions are becoming more precarious. The fact that the United States, which of course has built an entire regional security arrangement that incorporates all of these various state apparatuses,
00:15:15
Speaker
and has never seen its credibility perhaps worse than it is right now. That there are going to be many, many open questions going forward in the wake of this in terms of what all of this means, not just for the Zionist project, but what it means for these Arab regimes as well. If you're enjoying this podcast, please visit our website al-shabaka.org where you will find more Palestinian policy analysis and where you can join our mailing list and donate to support our work.
US Ceasefire Efforts in Qatar
00:15:45
Speaker
Speaking of the US, at the time of this recording, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken just visited Qatar where you are based in what the US government framed as an effort to inject urgency into the ceasefire talks. What can you tell us about this latest effort compared to previous efforts and what role has Qatar been playing in all of this?
00:16:09
Speaker
More and more, I think we are seeing a emerging critique of these negotiations as being, as I've said before, that they're no more than kind of bad political theater. That I think the fact that it takes 10 months to agree on terms that everyone already knows, right? We know exactly what a ceasefire would look like. We know what it would require.
00:16:32
Speaker
we know what the terms would be in terms of even the phases of things like the exchange of captives. We know about Israeli withdrawal from various territories. We know in terms of lifting the siege that would then allow the 2.3 million people in Gaza to get their needs met in that. So all of that is very well known. We know the outlines of it.
Ineffectiveness of Ceasefire Negotiations
00:16:54
Speaker
So the fact that it has taken this long, I think, has
00:16:57
Speaker
produced a sense that these discussions were not only never serious, but that they were actually being deliberately designed to forestall the genocidal war that Israel is waging, that this is about maintaining the ability to continue to wage this war while having this kind of charade of a negotiations process.
00:17:22
Speaker
And of course, you do have states that are all involved in it that are attempting to wield whatever leverage that they have, whatever credibility that they have to be mediators in this process. But ultimately, this really comes down to
00:17:38
Speaker
The fact that we know that Israel is not serious, it's becoming more and more clear if it wasn't already that Israel has never been serious about agreeing to a ceasefire and that the United States has also never been able to or willing rather to exert any kind of influence on Israel, any kind of meaningful pressure. We know, I mean, it's been said many, many times that with one phone call, the US president could actually have brought this to an end the way past US presidents have. Again, of course, not
00:18:07
Speaker
before there was a tremendous death and destruction waged by Israel in previous wars in Lebanon in the 1980s and the West Bank during the Second Intifada and then, of course, more recently. But that political will has not been there with this administration. And so we're seeing the most pro-Israel US administration. And as a result, these negotiations have led nowhere. And as much as other states might try to
00:18:35
Speaker
expend their influence or their ability, it clearly has fallen short in that regard. And then you even have a state like Egypt, which is also very much playing a crucial role in these talks, and as everything we're hearing is attempting to extract its own advantages and its own benefits out of this, in terms of playing this role as a way to position itself more closely, perhaps, and realigning itself even more closely to the US and Israel, continuing to faithfully police the border with Gaza,
00:19:04
Speaker
to limit the aid that's going in, to limit Palestinians who are able to leave in order to seek crucial medical treatment. And so I think in that regard, there's also kind of something to be said about the role of all of these states.
Gaza's Future Discussed Without Palestinians
00:19:17
Speaker
In addition to what you so aptly described as political theatre negotiations, we also know that there are a lot of discussions ongoing behind closed doors about the date after the ceasefire and reconstruction in Gaza. Much of it, of course, is nefarious and ill-intentioned, if not all of it. Can you tell us about some of the actors in these discussions and what are their interests?
00:19:45
Speaker
Well, I mean, so much of this I think is still unfolding in real time. So it's difficult to get a full handle on it. But I think one thing is clear, obviously, is that Israel and with it the United States are attempting to redraw both the actual physical map of Reza in terms of the actual physical space and trying to completely reshape what the
00:20:10
Speaker
political leadership picture will look like there in the aftermath. And part of that, of course, involves enlisting a number of regional actors. So on the one hand, this includes certainly the faithful Palestinian Authority leadership, which has never really rejected any kind of invitation to play this role. We know that's exactly the role that they have been playing in the West Bank as it's been taken apart and absorbed piece by piece
00:20:34
Speaker
by the Israeli state while the Palestinian Authority has been there for 30 years and unable to do anything. And so part of the picture would obviously involve including them as part of any kind of new governing structure. There continues to be talk about a lasting Israeli occupation, at least in parts of it, dismembering, again, Gaza in a way that would maintain territories within it under full Israeli occupation.
00:20:59
Speaker
Again, these are all rumors, reports, but talk about the role of other Arab states potentially as playing a role as occupying forces. Again, not as a means of protecting the Palestinians or aiding in the rebuilding and tending to the needs of the survivors of genocide, but in fact, just being there as yet another policing force.
00:21:21
Speaker
And so all of these are incredibly concerning, I think, from the perspective of Palestinians. And at the same time, we saw recently a meeting of the various Palestinian factions coming together to pledge that they would form some kind of a unity government that would potentially play that role. And so I think, at least from the statements we've seen coming from Hamas, that they
00:21:43
Speaker
also envision a post-war Khaza that is governed collectively by all of these different factions, but again, based on certain common understandings.
Palestinian Unity Government Efforts
00:21:54
Speaker
And I think the idea would be, of course, not to concede either territorially to Israeli occupation or even to a kind of a subcontracted Arab occupation. And of course, so many of these international discussions are taking place without Palestinian presence.
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. And I think this has been really the dilemma from the very beginning is the fact that a lot of these decisions are being made by actors that clearly do not have Palestinians' interests in mind when doing so and are attempting to kind of leverage this for their own particular interests. And without any Palestinian representation, whether in these talks or in the actual governing structure that is then established,
00:22:38
Speaker
any of these attempts will lack any legitimacy. There will simply not be an acceptance. I think that's been made clear from the people. It has everything that we've heard, not just in these recent months, but historically has been that they will not accept a foreign occupying force irrespective of where it comes from and one that doesn't take their needs or their political will into account.
Conflict Escalation Concerns
00:23:02
Speaker
I know it's difficult to predict what might happen in the coming weeks and months and things can change so quickly, but do you see this expanding further into a wider regional war?
00:23:18
Speaker
I think there was certainly a window for that to occur. I think what we saw at the very end of July with the dual assassinations by Israel, both in Lebanon and in Iran, threatened to upend the state of things as we've come to know them, which is much more low-level tit-for-tat exchanges and retaliations, that there was that omen. But now that we are further removed from those events,
00:23:46
Speaker
And we've seen a lack of any kind of serious retaliation, not to say that there might not still be retaliatory attacks or strikes of some kind, but whatever shape they take, or at least at this stage seem to be less likely to then produce that kind of massive escalation that people were fearing.
Israel's Strategy and Regional Distraction
00:24:05
Speaker
We know that the US also has deployed far more of its military capabilities in
00:24:11
Speaker
the Gulf region as a means of acting both as a deterrent and to reaffirm its support for Israel and the idea at least potentially that it would be then embroiled in some kind of a broader regional conflict, which we are told that all these parties would like to avoid, maybe except for Israel, of course, which is attempting to
00:24:30
Speaker
to provoke this kind of an outcome. I mean, I think from the Israeli perspective, this has always been part of the strategy, which is to try to deflect from its massive incapability. And again, this is according to all of the leading Israeli military officials, that they did not accomplish their military goals in Gaza. And this is now going on 11 months.
00:24:50
Speaker
of this genocidal war. And so perhaps as a means of deflecting from those failures to then embroil the broader region into a far bigger conflict and one that would certainly, at least from the Israeli perspective, enlist the US as an actor in it.
00:25:05
Speaker
But that could also be the reason why we're not necessarily seeing the kinds of reactions that a lot of these groups, whether we're talking about Hezbollah in Lebanon, whether we're talking about the Iranian military, are refusing to be lured into this essentially what appears to be a trap. And at the same time, they continue to issue statements saying that they reserve the right to act on their own timeline. And so there are clearly other calculations that are taking place here.
Gaza Conflict's Impact on Regional Politics
00:25:33
Speaker
Abdullah, you spoke about this a little bit earlier, but perhaps you can expand your thoughts a little on how the genocide in Gaza will affect the region in years to come.
00:25:45
Speaker
I think it's an important question because I think, as I said before, that there was a trajectory for the region that we saw just as recently as probably a year ago in which Palestine had been relegated really to the margins. Again, I wouldn't ever say that in terms of what it meant for the populations, but certainly in terms of it playing a mobilizing force or even having the capacity to then forge part of the political identities
00:26:15
Speaker
of even new and upcoming generations, largely because of a very aggressive attempt by regimes to completely erase it. I mean, we've seen this even in literal terms when I say erasing. I mean, even Saudi Arabia as recently as this year has actually removed Palestine from its textbooks. The map of Palestine has been
00:26:36
Speaker
I'm completely removed. So there's a sense that this was the agenda as it was developing and
00:26:45
Speaker
this current moment, the events of the last year have completely upended that in ways that it's still too early even to envision kind of what this looks like, but certainly the political identities, the solidarities, even the very vocabulary that's being shaped right now among particularly, I would say, younger generations of Arab youth, perhaps some who were too young to experience both the highs and especially the lows of the Arab uprisings.
00:27:14
Speaker
over a decade ago and are now envisioning a different kind of politics, one that is not cowed perhaps by fear of authoritarian reprisal and that sees in the struggle for Palestine a broader regional struggle for their own liberation from these forces. And I think for one thing, you can measure it in so many different ways, right? Even if we say there's only a certain number of capitals where marches of over upwards of a million people like in Sana'a and elsewhere are possible,
00:27:44
Speaker
Such a thing may not be possible in Cairo, but one thing we have seen is the massive economic boycotts and what that has led to. And so I think we're also starting to see Arab populations expressing themselves politically in ways that we perhaps didn't really account for in the past by expressing themselves through their roles as consumers within their own societies.
00:28:07
Speaker
And even as producers, when we stop and think about even the role that industry is poised to play through the massive trade relationships that some Arab states have had with Israel. And so I think all of this is to suggest that there is a different kind of politics that's being forged, which we hopefully can continue to learn from and think about kind of what possibilities that poses going forward, both for Palestinians, but also for the broader populations of this region.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:28:37
Speaker
I think we'll leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me on Rethinking Palestine.
00:28:45
Speaker
Rethinking Palestine is brought to you by Ashabaka, the Palestinian policy network. Ashabaka is the only global independent Palestinian think tank whose mission is to produce critical policy analysis and collectively imagine a new policymaking paradigm for Palestine and Palestinians worldwide. For more information or to donate to support our work, visit al-ashabaka.org. And importantly, don't forget to subscribe to Rethinking Palestine, wherever you listen to podcasts.