From Morocco to Iraq, governments have acted extremely cautiously towards popular mobilisation against the war in Gaza.
Each state puts its own strategic needs to prevent the resurgence of major rebellions first.

In the weeks following October 7, the whole world had its eyes on the Middle East, not only to assess Israel’s response to the Hamas terrorist attack, but also to see how the Arab masses in the various countries of the region would react to the ongoing earthquake.

One could then expect a new wave of popular protests and agitations, along the lines of what happened in 2011 in favour of democracy with the Arab Springs, but in defence this time of the historic and common Palestinian cause that has resurfaced in all its unresolvedness. Despite expectations, none of this materialised: the “Arab world” did not ignite, and popular mobilisations were relatively few and contained.

More than one year have passed since the 7 October tragedy and its enormous consequences, in different ways and with diverse nuances, the government and security apparatuses of authoritarian Arab regimes have acted to stem, contain, repress and/or channel the discontent and anger of the populations. This has been not so much a matter of law and order as a means to ensure that the protests would not affect their
overriding interests.

Instead of unhesitatingly supporting the popular outpouring in favour of Palestine, each government has pursued its own strategic objectives, essentially based on the preservation of the status quo and, in some cases, the safeguarding of normalisation agreements with Israel.

In other words, the Arab regimes have wanted to avoid these priorities being compromised or challenged in any way by a re-emergence of transversal mobilisations animated by those civil societies which, since 2011, have been relegated to the sidelines. This is a new version of the dynamic that has characterised the history of the Middle East’s longest-running conflict since 1948.

The Palestinian cause has always been central to the rhetoric of Arab countries since the decolonisation phase. The first concrete result of pan-Arab ideology, which aimed to unite all Arab states from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic under one government, was the establishment of the Arab League (1945). From its foundation, the Palestinian cause became its beating heart, the federating theme of all its member states from the most conservative to the most radical-revolutionary.

However, as was evident already during the first war against the newly proclaimed State of Israel (1948-1949), behind the veneer of common opposition to Zionism, deep divisions were concealed with respect to the strategies and precise ambitions of each nation.

Pan-Arabism was in essence an ideology good for igniting the Arab masses who had been galvanised by the liberation struggles and then shaken by the birth of Israel, an event that, albeit with the appropriate distinctions, had followed the same colonial logic. This ideology was then adopted by the movement’s main leader, the Egyptian Gamal Abdel Nasser, for his hegemonic plans.

That the four Arab-Israeli wars were fought by Arab governments for their own national interests and not really to promote the establishment of a Palestinian state is now written in history. By way of example, it is sufficient to recall: the now-documented Jordanian-Zionist collusion during the convulsive final phase of the British mandate; the Suez Canal crisis when Nasser was crowned hero of the Arab world thanks to his ability to oppose the old imperialisms, but less so Israel; the collapse of the pan-Arab front in the Six-Day War (1967); finally, the Kippur War (1973) that Anwar Sadat’s Egypt and Hafez al Assad’s Syria waged to recover only the Sinai and the Golan respectively.

OPEC had also threatened at the time to block oil supplies to Western countries until the liberation of all occupied territories in 1967, but eventually retraced its steps, maintaining the embargo for only five months. The peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979 was the tombstone of pan-Arabism, and into the vacuum left by that unitary ideal, which had been secular and socialist and had made the masses dream, another great ideology, Islamism, crept in, leveraging what was considered the true and only strength of the Arab peoples, Islam.

With the first Intifada (1987-1993), the conflict became effectively Israeli-Palestinian and the role of Arab governments became increasingly secondary with the subsequent Oslo Accords. The PLO then recognised the Jewish state’s right to exist and Jordan also concluded a peace treaty with Israel (1994).

After the violent years of the second Intifada (2000-2008), the situation, for better or for worse, stabilised, effectively reducing the chances of the two-state solution and then facilitating the “normalisation” of relations with Israel by four Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

Regardless of the decisions taken by various governments, the prevailing sentiment among the many millions of Arabs around the world remains one of bitter injustice and deep resentment over the fate of the Palestinians who are denied the right to self-determination.

The Palestinians have never been granted the very independence that each Arab people won in its time at the cost of hundreds of thousands of victims in the struggles for liberation from colonialism. In the first weeks after 7 October, this sentiment was allowed to vent itself in very popular demonstrations, often organised by the regimes themselves.

On the first Friday after the Hamas attacks, 13 October 2023, masses of people gathered after prayers in the main streets of Baghdad, Amman, Beirut, Damascus, Manama, Doha, Sana’a and Tunis; on 15 October in Rabat tens of thousands of people came from all over the country to demonstrate; in Tunis and Tripoli demonstrations were organised on 18 October; a huge procession was staged on 19 October in Algiers, and in Cairo on the following day, Friday 20 October, when thousands of people filled Tahrir Square for the first time in ten years.
In the North African countries, the respective regimes stirred up the squares in search of popular legitimacy, which is increasingly in crisis due to economic difficulties.

The protests in the following weeks waned. First of all, they were materially prevented by the regimes of Algeria and Egypt, both of them mindful of too recent and convulsive Arab Springs. Alongside the slogans for the liberation of Palestine, against Israel and the United States, the demonstrators had in fact begun to request the end of the authoritarian governments of Al Sisi and Tebboune.

The Algerian regime took it upon itself to continue its official support for the “Palestinian resistance”, as it had never stopped doing since 1962, linking it to the war of liberation against the French and associating the Palestinians’ right to self-determination with that of the Sahrawi population. Algiers is also one of three countries, besides Qatar and Türkiye, that host a representative office of Hamas (Sinwar has just congratulated Tebboune on his re-election, just for the record).

Not on the streets, but online and in certain fields, Egypt is the Arab country where the BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions) movement is most active. Lebanon immediately had to deal with the situation in the south following the resumption of Hezbollah’s attacks, thus overshadowing popular support against the continuation of the war in which the entire country was in some way implicated.

Assad’s Syria has from the outset completely disengaged itself from what is happening in Gaza, as has Libya: both countries are still too focused on controlling the aftermath of their respective civil wars to afford to let masses of citizens take to the streets to demonstrate.

As for the Gulf, Bahrain from the end of October 2023 launched arrest campaigns and repressions to stop any movement that could in any way challenge the trade ties with Israel resulting from normalisation deals. And in a more radical manner, in the United Arab Emirates no mass demonstrations have ever been allowed.

There remain only three Arab countries where demonstrations have continued with regularity this year: Yemen, Morocco and Jordan. In Yemen, the large Friday processions serve as popular legitimisation of the Houthis for the open “front” in the Red Sea: the Shia group
tightly frames the demonstrations participated by hundreds of thousands of people.

The case of the two religious monarchies is in turn peculiar since both countries have established stable relations with the Jewish state. In both cases, the regimes are trying to channel and vent discontent with the contingent conflict and with the more general normalisation, but without allowing it to go too far, since a review of the agreements is not on the agenda at all.

Committees “for Palestine and against normalisation” are active in Morocco (as well as in Tunisia, though to a lesser extent) and regular demonstrations have been organised throughout this year by a broad spectrum of civil society. In Jordan, home to the largest Palestinian diaspora, numbering two million individuals, demonstrations are mostly promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood, so much so that Hamas, which had an office in Amman until 1999, speculated in April that if they were kicked out of Qatar, its leaders, most of whom who have Jordanian citizenship, could move here.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, through its political arm, the Islamic Action Front, has capitalised on this activism by winning a majority in the latest legislative elections. In both countries, although popular support for maintaining relations with Israel has always been low or very low, the governments in power have never questioned their strategies
in this regard.

Therefore, the general tendency of regimes from Morocco to Iraq towards popular mobilisation against the war in Gaza has been one of extreme caution. This attitude has been dictated by each state’s own strategic needs to prevent the resurgence of major rebellions, at the expense of full and total support for the Palestinian cause, which has been reduced to a slogan appropriated by the official narrative.

The Arab states, which could have relied on a mass consensus on the issue, have thus once again missed the opportunity to really count at the negotiating tables not only for a ceasefire, but also for a broader post-war solution to this long-standing conflict. (Photo: Palestine flags. 123rf)

Caterina Roggero/ISPI