If it wasn’t for the Arabs, the situation in Palestine would be much worse

The most damning question heard these days is, “Where are the Arabs?” This is usually followed by insults about Arabs. I will not address the relationship of non-Arab Muslims with Palestine, because this requires a different and more complex type of research than that related to the Arabs.

Where are the Arabs when it comes to the genocide of an Arab nation in Palestine? How can all of this happen while the Palestinians are surrounded by 400 million Arabs? Such questions are repeated by their friends with regret and pain, and their enemies repeat them mockingly to discourage them.

The truth is that the Arabs are present, and if it wasn’t for the Arabs the cause of the Palestinian people would have disappeared since 1948, the year of the Nakba. While it is true that we would have hoped for something greater than this, if it wasn’t for the Arab people’s presence around Palestine, the Palestinian people would have disappeared. They would have been in danger of extinction in a world ruled by force and turmoil, and in light of the unlimited colonial support for the occupation state, which was established as a “bastion” of civilisation and the US-European spearhead in the flank of the Arab homeland.

The Palestinian cause has not been absent from the agendas of any of the Arab regimes, whether positively or negatively.

Some of them have exploited it for their own interests; some have used it as a bridge to work for the West; and some regard themselves to be the sole protectors of Palestine and Jerusalem and so they should be the reference point. In any case, Palestine has not been absent. Why? Simply because the Arab people have never given up on Palestine being the top Arab cause. Even when these countries are involved in civil or foreign wars, the Palestinian cause has always been present, and that is because the Arab people and most of their intellectuals have not abandoned Palestine.

The Zionist media tries to portray the Arabs as enemies of the Palestinians on the popular level, which is why they hunt down individuals through whom they promote their narrative. Hence, we see pictures of someone wearing a red and white keffiyeh attacking the Palestinians, followed by electronic flies supporting him and others opposing him and cursing him. This individual or a few others appear as if they represent a specific Arab nation, but it is a false image of the feelings of the Arab people in these countries towards the Palestinians and what they are exposed to.

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This is similar to the situation when Arabs from outside Palestine see an Arab soldier in the occupation army calling for killing “saboteurs” and another praising Israel and criticising the resistance, and it seems to those who are on the outside that these are “Arab Israelis”. It makes it seem as if all of them are like that Arab soldier in the occupation army.

After the siege of Beirut in 1982 and the expulsion of the Palestinian resistance movement from Lebanon, several Arab countries embraced the leaders and fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). They would not have done this had their people not sympathised with the Palestinians, which is important, because, as everyone knows, the ambitions of the Zionists are not limited to Palestine; they want to occupy neighbouring Arab countries, and take their wealth. They also act as a contractor for Western interests.

More than 95 per cent of the Arab people support the Palestinians, and their right to struggle by all available means. A very high percentage of them consider Palestine to be an issue that concerns them and concerns their religious beliefs, not just their national loyalties. The Arab regimes limit the energy that the Arab people can expend in support of Palestine, restricting them and tricking them.

Moreover, we must acknowledge that many Arab regimes have supported the Palestinians financially with billions of dollars since the founding of the PLO.

The Palestinian leadership bears responsibility for how this money was spent, and for the emergence of corrupt classes within its fold.

In addition to financial support, there is Arab support at the UN and other international organisations, although it is not sufficient and does not match the level of South Africa’s support for the Palestinians in the current genocidal war. However, we cannot ignore the popular support for Palestine in the form of mass demonstrations held in a number of Arab cities, even in Arab countries that have normalised relations with Israel. The position of the people often differs from the positions of the regimes.

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A survey conducted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy at the end of 2023, about two months after 7 October, showed that 95 per cent of Saudi citizens support the Palestinians, and 91 per cent of them believe that the resistance groups defend all Arabs and Muslims.

All Arab peoples, without exception, support the Palestinians, and they consider any resistance achievement as their own, and celebrate it, to whatever degree they are allowed to express themselves. Many are oppressed by their regimes and unable to express themselves because of this.

I often monitor responses from various Arab countries to news on social media, and I see thousands of people supporting the Palestinian resistance groups and sympathising with them. They voice opposition to their rulers who are complicit with the occupation, and they apologise for their helplessness.

One Arab sheikh, a Kuwaiti I believe, asked his guests at a wedding feast not to post pictures of the food because there are hungry Arabs in the region, alluding to the Palestinians in Gaza. The issue has popular regional support.

All Arab nations are preoccupied with their own issues, internal wars and divisions, such as those in Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Iraq. There are also disagreements over the issue of the Western Sahara. The Arab countries themselves are suffering and are under attack and at the centre of plans that seek to undermine and weaken them. Nevertheless, no matter how complicit, selfish and subservient to the West they might be, regimes cannot eliminate the relationship between the Arab people and Palestine and its people.

It is our duty as Palestinians to act with more caution.

Insulting Arabs and making generalisations about an Arab nation because of a few individuals is a grave mistake. This only serves those who actually want to isolate the Palestinians from their brothers, and those who seek to destroy the Arabs.

We must not be drawn into the provocations of some ignorant people and must not give them more time than they deserve. The Arabs are a great people, without whom the Palestinian cause would not have survived. If that had happened, the field would have been left clear for Zionism, with Western support, to eliminate the cause forever.

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This article first appeared in Arabic in Arab48 on 28 October 2024

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.