How The Gaza Attacks Could Reshape the Middle East

A conversation with Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental Institute.

The attack on Gaza is not just a humanitarian catastrophe and war crime, although it is both. It could also destabilize the entire Middle East.

Reading or hearing about it in mainstream media is like trying to see the world through those cardboard cutouts they give you to watch an eclipse. You probably know the ones I mean. They’re flimsy things with tiny slits that barely let in any light.

Occasionally the media will drop an item into an article, perhaps below the fold in paragraph eight or nine, hinting at larger shifts that may be underway. But I haven't seen much analysis of what this violence is doing to the region’s fragile latticework of relationships.

For further insight, I interviewed Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. Here are some excerpts from Vijay’s remarks, lightly edited for clarity.

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What the Middle East Sees

UNICEF said this: “Gaza is becoming a graveyard of children.”

That’s very strong language from a United Nations agency. That's how people in the Arab world are seeing it. They're seeing it as a massacre of Palestinian children, of Arab children. And nobody cares, which is why there are major demonstrations across the Arab world.

In Egypt, the government of President Sisi has basically said no demonstrations will be allowed. But he can't control his people. They're out on the streets — in small groups, larger groups, and so on.

In Jordan, where King Abdullah is married to a Palestinian woman, Queen Rania, there were perhaps a million people on the streets of Amman. He can't control that. Queen Rania herself went on Christian Amanpour's show and was very strong … She is responding to the Arab populations inside Jordan.

In Yemen, the Ansar al-Din group, which people call the Houthis, has declared war on Israel. There’s a lot of pressure on them from the population of Yemen.

In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, under pressure, picks up the phone and — for the first time since 1979, Richard — he talks to the President of Iran. They talk about how horrendous the situation is. The President of Iran turns around and says that Muslim countries need to do something.

In Lebanon, a heartsick population is saying we've got to do something. They are waiting on Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, who commands tens of thousands of fighters some people say up to 100,000 fighters, with lots of rockets. They haven't let loose yet.

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The View from Türkiye

And … not only in the Arab world, but also in Türkiye. There was a massive rally that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Türkiye, addressed in Istanbul. (There were) maybe a million people, red flags all over the place. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Hamas is not a terrorist organization, it's a political organization. He's responding to heartsick sentiment among the Turks, who are saying fellow Muslims are being killed.

A Palestinian called in to a Turkish radio program, Richard, and he said something powerful. He said, “We're all going to die in Gaza. When we are killed, we don't want Muslim countries to offer prayers to us.”

He said, “I don't want you to offer prayers because you are already dead. You're not acting for us. You're already dead.”

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Uprisings in the Street

That's the sentiment in and around the Arab world. That sense of helplessness, anger, rage, and so on. To wrap this up, what I want to say is that this means that the governments of the region, whether monarchies in Jordan or in Saudi Arabia or the old Arab states of Egypt and Syria and Lebanon, these governments must at some point respond to their populations.

How they respond is an open question. Will Egypt and Jordan tear up the peace agreement with Israel?

Will Hezbollah let loose its 100,000 fighters, with hundreds of thousands of rockets that they'll fire at Tel Aviv? Will that happen?

Will there be pressure on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other countries to stop oil shipments to Israel?

When you get to 20,000 dead, they may not be able to contain their populations.

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The Abraham Accords

In a sense, the Abraham Accords were quite clever because what the Trump administration did was, it went to what in a way were the weakest regimes in the Arab world … the monarchies. It went to Morocco, to Bahrain, to Saudi Arabia, and opened a conversation saying, listen, guys, why don't you normalize with Israel? There'll be some benefits.

You’re monarchies, you don't really have to answer to your street, to the populations under you. And we give you a lot of weapons already. You’re integrated into our security arrangements. You want to continue to be under U.S. security.

Morocco wants to have the Western Sahara, which it captured and has a lot of potassium. The United States says, we’ll recognize your claim to Western Sahara (but) you have to normalize with Israel.

You’ll get weapons. Saudi Arabia, you're already getting weapons. Normalize with Israel …We'll do a recommitment ceremony like they had in the Suez Canal, with FDR and King Abdul Aziz and so on. Let's do it again. And with Bahrain, well, Bahrain is an appendage of Saudi Arabia.

That was the idea. It's a very clever idea. If you peel away Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and you've already peeled away Jordan and Egypt. Eventually, Iraq might have to reconsider …

That was the game plan. Clever. I have to give it to them. Very clever.

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Redrawing the Map

Building on top of that: because the United States is very anxious about China's Belt and Road Project — supremely anxious about it — the United States has looked for an alternate way to link India into trade routes with Europe …

Well, here was a clever political alternative. They unveiled it at the G20 meeting in Delhi earlier this year. (That’s) when Biden and Narendra Modi and Mohammed bin Salman and others said there'll be a new corridor to Europe. It will go from India to the Gulf Arab states, most likely first the United Arab Emirates.

That was one map. From the United Arab Emirates, they would unload goods at the Dubai port. It would go across land in Saudi Arabia, go up into Israel — mind you, through Jordan — into Israel. And then from Israel, goods would go back in onto boats and go to Europe.

Now, when I looked at that map, I thought there were two strange things about it. One, it's not a very convenient route. And two of the ports in that route are already managed by the Chinese. So how is this going around the Chinese?

The second peculiarity is that it already assumed that Saudi Arabia had normalized with Israel, because goods were expected to go through Saudi Arabia into Israel. That would be difficult for Saudi Arabia to allow without normalization.

This was the Biden addition to the Abraham Accords: take this normalization with the monarchies and bring trade into it. And there are advantages along these trade routes and so on.

Well, in a way, the events after October 7th have probably ended that trade route. It's very unlikely that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia is now going to permit goods to go through it to Israel. There would be mayhem inside Saudi Arabia.

Even ruthless repression by the monarchy won't stop people's feelings.

Now, most people believe that not only Saudi Arabia – which actually has developed links to China and has got another pathway for itself –  not only Saudi Arabia is not interested, but maybe Morocco will have a hard time going through with this.

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New Generations, Long Memories

I think you're going to have generations now who remember the events of 2023 like we remember 2014 Operation Protective Edge and, before that, the grotesque Operation Cast Lead of 2008 or 2009. And we can keep going backward to the Second Intifada, when Ariel Sharon went extremely provocatively to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem – a very provocative action saying, Jerusalem is Israel's. And then before that to the First Intifada in 1987 …

We can remember these punctual instances of protest rising up and then crushing repression from the Israeli state — people arrested, thrown into prison, children arrested, thrown into prison and so on. You and I can remember this.

But now think about this: New generations, people who are now in their teens, will remember the events of 2023 for the next 70 years.

Richard, this is not going to be forgotten — which means every picture of a child that is out there on social media has gripped the imagination of a young person around the world who is beginning to dislike Israel greatly.

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Battleship Israel

I don't see how Mr. Netanyahu's calculation works. This massacre of the Palestinians, what people are calling a genocide, is not going to make Israel more secure. It's going to make it far, far more isolated.

Israel provides the United States with a kind of battleship¹ in the western flank of Asia, the same way as maybe sections of Japan, South Korea, and so on provide a battleship, a land-based vehicle to manage chaos in their region.

Now, over time, it looks like Israel is doing the opposite of managing chaos. It's creating more and more chaos. Whereas, you could make the argument that South Korea, Japan, and others have maintained the US order a little bit.

One argument is that Israel actually plays the role of a kind of offshore military installation in West Asia, keeping many of the counter-US regimes in check. That's one argument.

I believe the argument that “we stand with Israel” is actually a fig leaf. The real thing is the United States is committed to having a battleship in West Asia …

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Wine-and-Cheese Extremism

On the New Yorker radio hour – I want to reflect on this a minute. This is the highest periodical of American liberalism,  and (New Yorker editor) David Remnick is like the god of liberalism. It's the journal that all liberals like to subscribe to, and in the evening pour a glass of nice –  well, maybe not French wine anymore, maybe Chilean wine – and sit in their living rooms to read the New Yorker and listen to the New Yorker radio hour.

And, in a typically liberal way, (Remnick) had on a Palestinian philosopher, Sari Nusseibeh, a very interesting man. But he also had Yonit Levi, who's a television personality from Israel. And Yonit Levi said something bold. She said that there is no moral equivalence between 1400 Israelis killed and at the time, 4500 Palestinians. No moral equivalence.

In other words, you can kill many more Palestinians. Israeli life is more precious.

And David Remnick didn't even challenge it. He just let that go. And that suggests to me that there is a lot of incipient support in the United States for letting Israel do what it wants. And there'll be no price to be paid.

1. The interview was conducted last week. Yesterday, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “said the quiet part out loud”: “Israel is a bulwark for us... it’s almost like having an aircraft carrier in the Middle East.”