Why the US plan to introduce Arab forces into Gaza will fail

Israel’s army chief of staff met with five Arab army commanders in Bahrain recently, in the presence of the head of the joint US forces in the Middle East, according to American website Axios. The goal of the meeting was to discuss options for managing the situation in Gaza after the end of the Israeli war. Washington believes that one option is to introduce Arab forces into the occupied and besieged Palestinian territory.

This option is doomed to failure. It is merely another example of the US confusion and illusions about the region.

The meeting was held secretly, according to Axios, and senior officers from five Arab countries participated: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Bahrain. Perhaps the secrecy stemmed from the fact that such desired cooperation between Arab armies and the occupation state is an unpopular policy throughout the Arab world. New opinion polls in several Arab countries have shown that the vast majority of the people — about 89 per cent — refuse to recognise the occupation state or accept the normalisation of relations with it. The polls also suggest that 92 per cent of Arabs believe that Palestine is an Arab issue, not just a Palestinian issue. In other polls, the vast majority of Arab people believe that Washington is biased in favour of the occupation state in its military offensive against the Palestinian people, and that this bias has a negative impact on US interests in the region.

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These polls not only show the large gap between the Arab peoples and their regimes regarding the Palestinian issue, but also the failure of American policy in the region, because Washington does not understand or take this gap into account. The US disregard for the positions and aspirations of the Arab people and its focus solely on its own interests with the regimes is one reason for the failure of its policies in the Middle East-North Africa region. This is why most Arabs feel hostile towards the US, and is why its plans for the future of Gaza will fail.

For decades, the US has supported undemocratic regimes in the Arab region, and believed that it was achieving its interests through this support, given that the regimes could manage their relations with Washington according to the latter’s interests without paying attention to popular protests against this policy. However, history has proven that this did not achieve the interests of the US, nor did it help stabilise the region. Its new attempts to persuade Arab countries to introduce their forces into the Gaza Strip will achieve the same result that it has achieved over previous decades; it will increase hostility towards America in the region, and will make the region even more unstable by creating a bigger gap between the Arab people and their regimes if they respond positively to American efforts.

Washington’s attempts to manage the Gaza Strip after the war through Arab proxies will also fail because the Palestinian factions will reject any presence of non-Palestinian forces without a credible agreement with them.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other factions have already said that they will consider any military presence in Gaza as an occupation force.

While Washington has ignored the rights and interests of the Palestinian people for many years, its foreign policy has revolved around the interests of the Israeli occupation and has treated the Palestinian people as if they do not exist. This basic disregard for the Palestinians did not achieve Washington’s goals, because it did not guarantee Israel’s security, nor did it end the conflict or stop the Palestinian people from engaging in their legitimate struggle for freedom and justice.

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If Washington pressures the Arab countries to introduce their forces to control Gaza, the same failures will be repeated. Such a move will lead to further conflict and will not give the occupation or the region as a whole any chance for calm and stability.

The Arab countries are aware that sending their forces into Gaza without an agreement with the Palestinians would be a fatal mistake, and that is why Egypt, Jordan and the UAE have rejected it clearly and publicly. The latter even issued a strongly-worded statement attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after he claimed that Abu Dhabi is ready to cooperate with Tel Aviv in managing Gaza after the war.

Arab countries concerned with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have said on more than one occasion that they will not offer such cooperation unless it is part of a comprehensive political agreement, based on the two-state solution. According to Western and Israeli analysts, neither the Palestinian Authority nor the Arab countries can play a role in governing Gaza if Hamas is not eliminated. More than eight months after the start of the Israeli military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, however, US and other Zionist officials, as well as expert analysts around the world, know that it is impossible to “eliminate” Hamas, the objective that Netanyahu has promoted since last October.

Nevertheless, it has also become clear that Washington does not want to — and cannot — impose a political solution on Netanyahu in accordance with the two-state solution.

The occupation army’s inability to eliminate Hamas, and Washington’s failure to achieve a comprehensive political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, make it almost impossible for Arab forces to enter and control Gaza after the war ends.

The US must understand that it will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East, nor its plans for Gaza, without considering the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the aspirations of the Arab people and their position on Palestine. If Washington does not stop deluding itself and everyone else about controlling the Middle East without considering the interests of the people across the region, it is doomed to fail.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Arabi21 on 25 June 2024

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