Will the Gaza conflict mark a shift towards a multipolar order?

With the US’ credibility as a regional security guarantor fading, West Asia might see increased diplomatic engagement from China and Russia.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield looks on as Algeria’s Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama and Chinese Ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun raise their hands for a yes vote on a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York on March 25, 2024. | Photo Credit: ANGELA WEISS/AFP

The scale of the human tragedy that defines the six-month Gaza war has been dulled by the daily chorus of numbers of the dead: over 32,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are children, their mothers and sisters. Each of these will be a persistent ache in the lives of their family members and friends.

Then there are the images of thousands of injured and the destitute, eking out their lives in squalid conditions, desperate for food, water, and medical attention. These basic necessities are being denied to them as collective punishment for Hamas’ assault on security personnel and citizens of the occupation state.

These realities on the ground paint a different picture from the well-appointed, even opulent, council halls and assembly rooms where ministers and officials meet to discuss the tragedy in their midst, all the while conscious of the interests of the rulers that invariably supersede the needs of the people of Gaza.

The Gaza conflict has exposed the various facets of the complex issues and interests that shape the approaches of regional states and their global partners. There is popular support for Palestinian aspirations among Arab populations; there is Israel’s rejection of any political arrangement that would address Palestinian interests and concerns; the sustained and unconditional support of the US to Israel’s maximalist demands; and, finally, deep divisions among Arab leaders on how to balance their interest with regard to the engagement with Israel in the face of their people’s strong commitment to the Palestinian cause.

Popular support for the Palestinians

The countries that have normalised ties with Israel have seen fierce demonstrations in favour of the Palestinians in Gaza. In Jordan, demonstrators marched on the Israeli embassy, but the police stopped them. Several thousand Moroccans demonstrated under the banner, “The People want the criminalisation of normalisation”, leading to the closure of the Israeli liaison office and the return of its staff home.

In Bahrain, the national assembly declared the recall of its ambassador from Israel; Israel, however, denied this. The Bahraini government then said that “the ambassador had returned to Bahrain some time ago”, without giving any details. Hundreds took to the streets to express solidarity with the Palestinians, holding posters calling Biden a “war criminal”. Some posters showed the king holding hands with Netanyahu, suggesting the king’s complicity in the killing of Palestinians.

Despite the al-Sisi government’s hostility to Hamas, Egypt has witnessed the most strident pro-Palestinian demonstrations: slogans in support of the Palestinians were first heard on October 8 at a football match. Protests then erupted in Cairo and Alexandria, including at the Al-Azhar Mosque, after Friday prayers.

Student activism, which had been curbed since al-Sisi’s coup in 2013, has been revived and, according to the commentator Hossam al-Hamalawi, “the current protests are a turning point that will produce a new generation of activists”. Last October, thousands of demonstrators gathered at the iconic Tahrir Square shouting “Bread! Freedom! Social Justice!”—the Arab Spring slogan that brought down the Hosni Mubarak regime.

Opinion polls reflect strong support for the Palestinians. A survey of 8,000 persons in 16 Arab countries reveals their sentiments: one, the reasons for the Hamas attacks on October 7 are the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the need to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque; two, the security and stability of the Arab region is most threatened by US policies; and, three, the US is not serious about helping set up a Palestinian state. A majority of the respondents hold negative views of the Arab states that have normalised ties with Israel, with about 36 per cent wanting these governments to cancel all relations with Israel, and about 40 per cent indicating positive views of Russia and China.

Palestinian flags are seen as protestors take part in a Stop the War Coalition pro-Gaza demonstration outside Parliament on April 17, 2024 in London. | Photo Credit: Leon Neal

Response of the Arab states

In responding to the Gaza war, the Arab states have had to take into account the strong support their citizens have shown for Palestinian interests. According to commentator Nader Hashemi, for many decades, Palestinian suffering has been a “core marker of identity” for Arabs and Muslims. Nesrine Malik noted in The Guardian that “the issue of Palestine is a constant”, which new generations of Arabs know as a “relentless injustice, one they had to accept as a bitter inheritance from their forebears”.

Thus, as Palestinian casualties rise, Arab leaders have sought to affirm their citizens their full commitment to Palestinian interests through a steady tempo of tough statements and hectic diplomatic activity. The Gulf scholar Kristian Coates Ulrichsen speaks about a “rough division of labour” among the GCC states: Saudi Arabia has taken the lead in convening Arab and Islamic conferences; the UAE, as a UN Security Council non-permanent member, has been active at the UN platform; and Qatar, with close ties with Hamas (whose political leadership lives in Doha), has been involved with the ongoing mediation efforts.

Saudi statements have been strident. On October 7, it called for “immediate halt to the escalation between the two sides”. A week later, after a meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Foreign Office said that the kingdom “affirms its categorical rejection of the calls for the forcible displacement of the Palestinian people from Gaza and reiterates its condemnation of the continued targeting of unarmed civilians”.

Three days later, Saudi Arabia convened an executive committee meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) where its Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, criticised the international community’s inaction and double standards concerning Israel’s military operations in Gaza. He also upheld the importance of the “Arab Peace Initiative” of 2002 in terms of which the Arab states would normalise ties with Israel in return for Palestinian statehood.

Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE’s permanent representative at the UN, noted that the “plan” of the UAE, Israel, and the US to deliver “coexistence and cooperation” to the region (in the context of normalisation of ties between her country and Israel in August 2020) was now jeopardised by “the indiscriminate damage visited upon the innocent people of Gaza”.

Qatar has played a central role in mediation efforts: it obtained a “humanitarian pause” agreement in November in terms of which 50 Israeli hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners were released. It is even now playing an active behind-the-scenes role in achieving a ceasefire and the exchange of the remaining hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

Even as Arab states have maintained a tough public posture with regard to Israel’s violence and Western “double standards”, there is a clear divide between them about how far they will go in taking concrete action against Israel. This became apparent in early November when Saudi Arabia convened an Arab League summit to discuss the Gaza war.

The New Arab has reported that “four influential countries” prevented the adoption of proposals that “would carry concrete measures against Israel”. These proposals were: one, prohibiting the use of US and other military bases in Arab countries to supply Israel with weapons and ammunition; two, freezing Arab diplomatic, economic, security, and military relations with Israel; three, threatening to leverage oil and other Arab economic capabilities to exert pressure and halt the ongoing aggression; and four, supporting the right of the Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation.

This divide at the Arab League summit led Saudi Arabia to convene a joint Arab League-OIC summit on November 11. This conclave passed a ringing resolution against Israeli depredations against the Palestinian people but did not contain any of the items for concrete action that had been discussed at the Arab League summit earlier. The commentator Nimrah Khatoon pointed out in The People’s Network that the joint summit “exposed the deep-seated divisions and differing priorities among the participating countries”.

Delegates observe a minute of silence to honour all humanitarian workers who lost their lives in the line of duty in Gaza at the start of a United Nations Security Council meeting at UN headquarters in New York on April 17, 2024. | Photo Credit: CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP

Divisions among Arab states

While the four Arab states that opposed the concrete measures against Israel’s war in Gaza during the Arab League summit have not been mentioned, they are speculated to be Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain.

What unites them is their engagement with Israel: three of them already have formal diplomatic ties with Israel, while, till the eve of the Hamas attacks on October 7, Saudi Arabia was said to be discussing with the US the bases on which its relations with Israel would be normalised. According to US reports, the kingdom was seeking US approval for a domestic civilian nuclear programme; access to state-of-the-art US weaponry; and a security guarantee from the US to protect the kingdom. The only reference to Palestine in these reports is that the kingdom was seeking from Netanyahu a commitment to a Palestinian state, without asking for a concrete, time-bound plan of action.

There was considerable opposition to these terms in both the US and Israel, and given his extreme right-wing coalition, Netanyahu was unwilling to give even a token statement of support to a Palestinian state. The October 7 attacks have ended all talk of normalisation for the time being.

Besides the Israel factor, the four Arab states are also brought together by two specific concerns: one, the lead role of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Hamas in the ongoing conflict; and two, the status obtained by the Iran-led “axis of resistance” as the principal coalition against Israel and the major champion of Palestinian interests in the region.

Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE see the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates as the principal challenge to their traditional monarchical order. The Brotherhood, whose political thinking marries Islamic principles with the norms of parliamentary government, is alluring to large sections of the Arab people who chafe at their exclusion from participation in their domestic political order and dislike their leaders’ close ties with the US. Thus, the two monarchies recall with concern that the Arab Spring uprisings initially ushered in Brotherhood-affiliated governments in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. The Gulf monarchies had then made every effort to get the democratically-elected Mohamed Morsi administration overthrown in a military coup in Egypt.

Thus, Hamas, with its Islamist credentials, has never been a favourite of the two monarchies, which for long have supported the rival Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. The latest Gaza conflict, which has inflicted unprecedented damage to Israel’s political and military reputation, has boosted Hamas’ standing. To complicate matters, Hamas is also a part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” that includes the Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the Shia militants of the Popular Mobilisation Units in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen.

From the beginning of the Gaza war, these militant units have regularly directed their firepower at Israeli and US assets in the region. Though they have suffered retaliation from both countries, they have remained resolute. As the Arab commentator Rami Khouri has noted, while the Arab states have offered Gaza “low-key rhetorical, material and diplomatic support”, which has been largely ineffective on the global stage, the Arab non-state armed actors that make up the “axis of resistance” are using their military capabilities “against Israeli and Western imperial threats”. Regional observer Giorgio Cafiero has noted that since the start of the war, support for Hamas among Saudi citizens has increased from 10 per cent to 40 per cent.

Hence, not surprisingly, some Gulf Arab states view this “axis” as a threat to their political order.

Burnishing the public image

Given the perceived challenge from the high status enjoyed by the “axis” and Iran, the Gulf monarchies have made efforts to burnish their own pro-Palestinian credentials in the eyes of their people.

Thus, despite US persistence, Saudi Arabia has had to repeatedly make public statements that, at this juncture, it is not willing to discuss with the US the normalisation of ties with Israel or the future administration of Gaza after the war. In early February, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that the US had received “positive feedback” on Saudi-Israeli discussions on normalisation. Kirby further said that the normalisation process was a “separate track” that was not connected with the ongoing conflict.

The kingdom then issued a stinging rebuke by asking the US to stop misrepresenting its position; it insisted that normalisation could not be separated from the Palestinian issue and that the Palestinian state on 1967 borders remained a Saudi priority. The US’ push for normalisation amidst the ongoing conflict has been seen by the US-based commentator on West Asia, Nader Hashemi, as reflecting “the complete disconnect that the White House has from the realities of the Middle East and the broader Arab and Islamic worlds”.

Similarly, since November, Saudi Arabia has firmly resisted US attempts to get Arab states involved in discussions on the post-war administration of Gaza, with troops and financial support. This is seen as enabling Israel to end the war on its terms; what the kingdom and its Arab allies would instead like to see is an Israeli initiative to address Palestinian aspirations as part of a serious peace process.

The UAE has cultivated the closest possible ties with Israel in defence, trade, and technology. However, the continuation of the war over several months and the increasing privations of the Palestinians in Gaza have led its spokespersons to speak publicly about the need for Israel to address the “final status” issues of the state, East Jerusalem, and refugees. Against this background, reports in Politicosay that the UAE is “increasingly restricting the US from using military facilities on its soil to launch retaliatory airstrikes” on militants belonging to the “axis of resistance” in Syria, Iraq, and the Red Sea. The explanation given is that the UAE does not wish to be seen as hostile to Iran or backing the West and Israel during the ongoing conflict.

The response of Egypt and Jordan to the conflict is influenced by their sharing borders with the occupied territories and their historic ties with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Both countries now have normal diplomatic ties with Israel, Egypt from 1979 and Jordan from 1994.

Egypt shares with Jordan the concern that Israeli leaders, supported by sections of the US political establishment, see the final solution to the Palestine issue in the mass transfer of Palestinians in the occupied territories—those in the West Bank to Jordan and those in Gaza to the Sinai in Egypt. As these ideas were aired recently in Israel, both leaders rushed to reject them firmly.

Outlook for the region

As this is being written in early April, the Gaza conflict is at the edge of two major escalations: one, the prospect of an Iranian response to the Israeli attacks on its embassy in Damascus, in which two of its generals and other officials were killed. And, two, the launch of Israel’s much-threatened assault on Rafah where nearly two million Palestinians are now located after their displacement from their homes in other parts of Gaza.

Though speculation about the shape of various facets of the region after the war is fraught with uncertainty, the following are some likely developments after a ceasefire is in place:

1. There will be an impact on the Israeli political scenario: Will the Netanyahu government survive or will a new government emerge that could be a coalition of centre-right, centrist, and leftist groups? Regardless of the outcome, it is unlikely that any Israeli government will accommodate Palestinian aspirations on the “final status” issues.

2. The Palestinian Authority will be revamped, with fresh elections for the presidency and, possibly, the Palestine National Council. However, the outcome of these initiatives is unpredictable. Some Arab states are likely to promote the interests of their own candidates, even as the Gulf Arabs and Israel (and the US) will work to ensure that Hamas has no place in the new order. However, given Hamas’ popularity, it might be difficult to exclude this movement from the political process, though it might reinvent itself to pass muster.

3. The principal focus for the US could be on the November elections, with the final result likely to be decided by a few hundred thousand “undecided” voters. The Biden camp may believe it can increase its supporters by achieving Saudi-Israeli normalisation, just as Trump had thought when he promoted UAE-Israel ties in the run-up to the 2020 elections.

4. Flowing from the above, the US will push hard for normalisation of Saudi-Israel ties, possibly by conceding the kingdom’s three demands (mentioned above). The difficulty here will obviously be the concessions Israel is willing to make to address Palestinian concerns, particularly since neither the Palestinians nor the Arab states are likely to accept being fobbed off with vague promises of statehood.

5. Though seriously and deliberately provoked by the Israeli attacks on its embassy in Damascus and under considerable domestic pressure to retaliate, Iran is unlikely to opt for a military response: a region-wide armed conflagration will be most destructive and, in all probability, not yield a decisive result. It is more likely that the low-key attacks from its “axis” allies will continue as capability demonstrations while avoiding a larger regional conflict.

6. The continued exercise of “strategic patience” by Iran will have the advantage of quietly, but decisively, moving the region towards a larger diplomatic role from China, in tandem with Russia, even as US credibility as the regional security guarantor gets more diluted. The US is unlikely to abandon its status as the regional hegemon without seriously challenging China’s inroads into its domain.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation Reem Ebrahim Al Hashimy and the Secretary-General of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Hussein Al-Sheikh, in Cairo, Egypt, March 21, 2024. | Photo Credit: AMR ABDALLAH DALSH/REUTERS

However, its insistence on viewing competition with China as a fresh binary divide, a “New Cold War”, will have hardly any takers in West Asia. As Arab states assert strategic autonomy, what will emerge from the regional competitions will be a push in favour of a multipolar order, shaped largely by the aspirations and initiatives of regional and extra-regional middle powers.

Thus, the principal result of the Gaza war will be an acceleration of the new regional order which will have several influential players, but no hegemon.

Talmiz Ahmad is the former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE. He holds the Ram Sathe Chair for International Studies, Symbiosis International University, Pune. His latest book, West Asia at War: Repression, Resistance and Great Power Games, was published by HarperCollins in April 2022.