Amidst a devastating war, the Arab Islamic League met at Riyadh to vent their disgust at the war crimes of Israel while making a stern warning to Israel and in and through that to the western allies in having to facr severe and serious consequences if the bloodshed continues and pitched for a united plea to bring an immediate pause to the war and allow the renormalization to take place through dialogue more than the vengeance .
Arab and Muslim leaders are frustrated that the UN Security Council has failed in their eyes to exercise any restraint on Israel’s military in Gaza. America’s opposition to a ceasefire has deeply embarrassed those countries it calls allies in the region. Washington’s strategic alliance with the oil-rich Gulf Arab states dates back to 1945 and a wartime meeting on a US warship in the Red Sea between President Roosevelt and the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz . Today, the US still provides the bulk of Saudi and Gulf Arab defence and security needs. But below the surface things are changing. Ever since the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” there has been a fear here in the Gulf that the US is losing interest in the region, that it cannot be relied upon as a loyal partner. At the same time, the influences of Moscow and Beijing are in the ascendant. China recently brokered the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. President Putin has impressed Arab leaders with his unstinting support for Syria’s President Assad. They compare this with how quickly Washington abandoned Egypt’s President Mubarak in 2011 when the crowds came out on Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Yet there is no denying that the 7 October Hamas raid and the ensuing war has changed the whole paradigm in the Middle East. Up until that murderous morning in southern Israel the tectonic plates of regional politics were shifting away from the interests of Iran and its militant allies. Six Arab nations had already established full ties with Israel; Saudi Arabia was well on the way to being next. The Israeli tourism minister visited Riyadh just days before the Hamas raid. Dubai has been luring Israeli tourists in large numbers and there has been a huge Arab appetite for Israel’s expertise in technology, surveillance, bio-tech and other sectors.
With the exception of Qatar, which hosts the exiled political leaders of Hamas, Gulf Arab rulers had grown tired of what they saw as the corruption, inefficiency and infighting of Palestinian leadership. While sympathetic to the plight of ordinary Palestinians, still without a state after 75 years, they largely took the view that Israel was too important a nation to ignore, and that it was time to move on and normalise ties with it. The question of a future Palestinian state, while still featuring in speeches, was getting little practical attention. But anyone expecting concrete, punitive actions against the US or the UK was left disappointed. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which only recently opened full diplomatic, trade and security ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords, resisted calls to break them off.
What really surprises the International community is that the Arab Islamic League is clearly holding onto their individual agendas while voicing forth for a united charge against Israel as most of the countries of League have recently partnered with Israel for mutual trade negotiations and historically been in the thick relations with US over the Oil trade pacts but appear to be wading away the exposure of it before the eyes of the summit..Is it not a surprise that the so called peace mongers of Arab Islamic League have conveniently and completely wiped off from their memories the ghastly act of Hamas over Israeli civilians killing a staggering 1200 of them while holding 240 as captives as yet on murderous morning of October 7th..and the world is watching.
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