PNN – In an analysis, the American magazine “Foreign Affairs” reminded the inattention of the leaders of the Arab countries of the region and Western countries to the demands of the people who support Palestine and warned about its dangers.
According to Pakistan News Network’s report from the Foreign Afraz analytical base, following the flare-up of the war in Gaza, the people of the Arab countries of the region, including Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen, came to the streets and demonstrated in support of Palestine. In the meantime, the people of Jordan who see their government in full cooperation with the occupying regime have fled and made the embassy of this regime the headquarters of their protest rallies. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia has refused to continue the process of normalizing relations with the occupying regime due to the fear of public opinion.
In the eyes of Washington, these events are of no importance, while the leaders of the Arab countries in the region also have a long history of ignoring the demands of their citizens and prefer the people in these countries to be engaged in the issue of Palestine instead of protesting the internal conditions until they get tired and return to their homes.
In the meantime, despite all its claims about defending democracy and human rights, Washington has had a good relationship with the pragmatic autocrats in these countries without thinking for a moment about the political consequences of this indifference to the “Arab Street” or the public opinion of the Arab countries of the Middle East region.
This American magazine wrote: The leaders of these countries, with the support and approval of Washington and ignoring the decades of sympathy of the people of the region with the Palestinian cause, have maintained their peace treaties with Israel, and even Egypt actively participates in the siege of Gaza. Actions such as the transfer of the American embassy to Jerusalem or the bombing of Yemen mean that the West and the Arab leaders have forgotten the outburst of public anger during the “Islamic Awakening”.
The phrase “Arab Street” was created in the 1950s as a result of the widespread support of the people for Pan-Arab leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser. In response to this behavior of the Arabs, the West decided to assume that Arab public opinion is controllable and mass, opinions that need “force” and not logic. It is interesting that despite the “Islamic Awakening” incident, in line with the advancement of Washington’s Middle East policy, this phrase and the remarkable thinking in it are used in the policies of the western region. The West has always preferred to suppress the Arab world’s support for Palestine under the name of “anti-Semitism” rather than to understand the main reasons for this widespread anger.
 “Islamic Awakening” which was realized as a result of this pivotal role of the Arab people in 2011, showed how wrong is the idea of ​​the West that “Arab autocrats tremble but do not go away”. This awakening was no longer a blind eruption of the “Arab Street”, but introduced all the subtleties of the thoughts and spirits of the Arab people to the world with thoughtful and decisive critiques.
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The author of the Faren Afrez analysis writes, unfortunately, the lessons of “Islamic Awakening” were soon forgotten, and military coups, political engineering, and widespread repression of Arab leaders resumed, while the West stood on the sidelines and watched. In front of the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Arab leaders supported the brutal suppression of the protests in Bahrain and the military coup in Egypt. The regimes that came to power with the help and support of the digital West more powerful than before silenced the civil society of their countries so as not to witness the next wave of critics.
The West resumed the former routine of interaction with the heads of regional countries, and this disregard for Arab public opinion is nowhere more evident than the issue of Palestine. Donald Trump, the former Republican President of the United States, ignored the public opinion of the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco more than ever in brokering the “Abrahimi Agreement”.
The Democratic President of the United States, Joe Biden, also welcomed Trump’s approach to the Middle East, despite his election rhetoric, and continued to normalize Arabs and Israel and ignore democracy and human rights. After his inauguration, he forgot the promise to put pressure on Saudi Arabia for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist and critic of the war in Yemen. There were many signs of Arab discontent with normalization and numerous warnings of an imminent war in Gaza, but Washington dismissed them as another example of the “Arab Street.”
The author emphasizes that, contrary to the “misunderstanding” of the West, in the Middle East, political forces move seamlessly between internal and regional forces, and this means that a successful leadership must consider both elites and public opinion in order to survive in the struggle for survival. Arab leaders think about one thing more than anything else: Stay in power. For this reason, on the one hand, they are interested in the widespread suppression of protests, and on the other hand, they are forced to consider serious and real cases of public dissatisfaction. This is why attention to the Gaza issue should be of great importance to both the West and their allied dictators.
The author points out that even in their pro-Palestinian positions, the heads of the Arab countries seek survival, and reminds, for example, how the UAE uses the prevention of the occupation of the West Bank as an excuse to justify the “Abrahamic Agreement”. He emphasizes that the fierce competition of these Arab leaders with the regional influence of Iran and Turkey has become so intense in recent decades that they have completely forgotten their public opinion.
However, the amount of public anger over the genocide in Gaza is beyond what the West and the Arab leaders can stand in front of, so that even Egypt, the ally of the United States, has stated that if Israel attacks Rafah or expels the residents of Gaza to Sinai, the “Camp David” agreement will be signed.
The author states that in the shadow of this popular mobilization, the Arab media, which had been polarized by regional differences, have once again joined forces to defend Gaza. Faren Afrez points out that “Al-Jazeera” news channel has once again returned to its glory days, and with its round-the-clock coverage of the massacre in Gaza, even the killing of its journalists by the Israeli army, so as not to fail in its mission. The way Tik Tok, WhatsApp and Telegram circulate videos and materials related to Gaza, they easily pass the soft censorship of Western media.
Arab intellectuals make strong arguments in explaining Israel’s aggression in Palestine and introduce new styles of thought into the dominant discourse of the West. South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice was largely based on these arguments. Therefore, the war of ideas that America had waged against Islamic and Arab thought after September 11 has been reversed by the Gaza war and has put America in a defensive position.
All of this is happening in a situation where the Arab leaders in the last decade and even before the Gaza war have gradually established their independence from the United States with positions such as maintaining relations with Iran, refraining from lobbying with Washington against Russia, sending weapons to Syria, and Saudi Arabia’s refusal to cooperate with Washington has expressed for the price of oil.