For the first time in more than a decade, the demonstrations against Israel over the indiscriminate violence against millions of Palestinians living in Gaza has placed Arab publics on the same page with their respective governments in many countries. Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated against Israel in Arab capitals since the war between Hamas and Israel began following the brutal October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed over 1,400 people. And social media is blowing up with Arab anger toward Israel.
In Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq, state policy is in sync with public outrage against Israel – even if the motivations may differ between state and society. For the Egyptian and Jordanian governments, one primary concern is to avoid inheriting tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Jordan is already home to millions of Palestinians, many of whom were refugees at one point. Recent, now stillborn Israeli efforts, buttressed with U.S. support, pressing Egypt to open the Rafah crossing to fleeing Gazans, fanned fears in Cairo, Amman, and Gulf Arab states that Israel would forcibly relocate as many Palestinians from Gaza as possible to a neighboring Arab country.
A recent vote at the United Nations demonstrated Arab states’ solidarity with their citizens. The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas. The 193-member body approved the resolution, drafted by a group of 22 Arab countries, by a margin of 120 to 14, with 45 countries abstaining. The United States and Israel voted no.
That the views of Arab publics and governments are coinciding is important for several reasons. First, the three-year-old normalization process between some Arab states and Israel, which the administration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr. strongly supports, is likely to experience a substantial pause for countries that have already normalized ties and suffer serious disruption in the trajectory of anticipated Saudi normalization with Israel. The ultimate impact of the violence on relations normalized – or to be normalized – through the Abraham Accords process is likely to be a function of how long the violence lasts and the extent of the civilian death toll in Gaza.
Arab publics have never expressed anything close to majority support for the Abraham Accords. The Arab Barometer, spearheaded by Princeton University, showed that public opinion in the Arab Middle East and North Africa was overwhelming against normalization with Israel. Less than 15% of those surveyed in Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, and Algeria said they were in favor of normalization, according to the 2022 survey.
Now, that facade of strong public support has been lifted, as widespread protests have drawn attention to underlying public attitudes reflected in the polling. Israel’s air and land bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, making it more difficult for Gulf countries to continue pursuing normalization policies on the assumptions that Arab publics no longer care about Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and that these normalization policies have a broad base of at least passive support. That doesn’t necessarily mean Gulf countries won’t continue to pursue such policies when the war ends, but it does signify that these agreements lack a broad base of Arab public support, and comforting assumptions about gradually building out such support seem less persuasive, in the wake of the violence Israel has inflicted on Gaza.
Governments in the region are carefully assessing developments in Gaza and the impact in their own countries, even while expressing their own criticisms and anger about Israeli actions. But so far, official statements, while evolving toward stronger criticisms of Israel, have largely hewed to calls for a cease-fire, the urgency to protect civilian lives, warnings about the risks of escalation and regional spillover, and rejection of any forced displacement of Palestinians. Statements from Abraham Accords signatories the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain just after the Hamas attack criticized the group for taking civilians as hostages. Official actions, where taken, have remained in the category of reversible when the crisis atmosphere subsides (or reinforced if it intensifies). Following Jordan and Turkey, which have full diplomatic relations with Israel, Bahrain, for example, has recalled its ambassador from Israel (a step well short of severing diplomatic relations).
The second important outcome of the alignment between Arab state and society is that it is increasingly more difficult for Biden, who has given carte blanche public support to Israel, and much of the American mainstream media to reduce Hamas to simply a terrorist militia with no support among Arab populations. A recent poll has found a dramatic surge in Palestinian support for Hamas following the Gaza war, with around three-quarters of respondents viewing Hamas as a victor in a battle against Israel to defend Jerusalem and its holy sites.
The poll, by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which has conducted surveys for more than 25 years, also found plummeting support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has seemed further sidelined by the war but is seen by the United States as a partner for reviving the long-defunct peace process. The poll found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,” while only 14% supported Abbas’ secular Fatah party.
The third effect of Arab opinion in the Middle East is its influence within the United States. American Muslims and Arabs are more emboldened now perhaps than any other time to raise their voices against U.S. policy and Biden personally. In fact, there are now calls on social media for groups not to vote in the presidential election in 2024 or offer any support to a candidate who endorses the continuation of Israel’s violence in Gaza, which could be devastating for Biden. Muslims and Arabs vote for Democrats by substantial margins, and, in states such as Michigan, which Biden narrowly won in 2020 and needs to win in 2024, the boycott could cost him the election.
Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, which has killed thousands of civilians and rendered homeless nearly half of the enclave’s 2.2 million residents, may change the political dynamics not only in the Middle East but in the United States, too. For now, if past Israeli military actions in Gaza are an accurate metric, U.S. standing in the region will take a substantial hit. If Israeli military actions continue for a sustained period, support for the United States is likely to fall more dramatically and support for violent extremism is likely to increase, posing its own set of risks. If Arabs and Muslims in the United States boycott the upcoming presidential election, that could help imperil the reelection prospects of an already weakened Biden. In all of this, duration matters. A cease-fire in the coming days could change the dynamics, in the region and the United States. A prolonged continuation of the violence in Gaza – and a mounting Palestinian death toll – is likely to highlight more dramatically these surging currents in Arab public opinion and the ways they could impact decision making, in the region and the United States.
