Hamas-Israel war: Why Arab frustrations with US are spiking

A peace summit in Jordan canceled at the last minute, a public lecture from the Egyptian president, ghosting the U.S. secretary of state for an entire night in Saudi Arabia.

Arab leaders’ rebuffing of U.S. officials this week underscored a deepening frustration with an administration seen as unable or unwilling to rein in the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, which they say is destabilizing the region and, amid a devastating blast at a Gaza hospital, their regimes at home.

Protests shook Amman and the West Bank for the second day Wednesday over the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip, which has uprooted more than 1 million Gazans and killed nearly 3,500 people in response to a Hamas attack that killed 1,400 Israelis.

Cairo was also the scene of mass protests, and the U.S. Embassy in Amman was forced to close.

The main diplomatic casualty was a peace summit set to have taken place in Amman Wednesday between President Joe Biden and the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority.

It was canceled within hours of an explosion at a Baptist hospital in Gaza City that local officials say killed 500 civilians Tuesday evening, less than 12 hours before President Biden was set to arrive in the region and as protesters marched in Amman. One reason for its cancellation, analysts say, was Mr. Biden’s refusal to put talk of a cease-fire on the table after the hospital blast.

“There is no point in doing anything at this time other than stopping this war,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told Al Jazeera Wednesday. “There is no benefit to anyone holding a summit at this time.”

The tensions laid bare unprecedented frustration for America’s Arab allies, who face a difficult balancing act. They rely on U.S. aid, support peace with Israel, and have supported American foreign policy over the past two decades, even as their stance has enraged their own people.

They accuse the Biden administration of being out of touch and “dismissive” of both the impact of the war at home – including the perils of a new refugee crisis – and the risk of regional conflagration.

Washington, say Arab officials and analysts, fails to understand how the mass displacement of Gazans evokes for Arab states and societies the multigenerational Palestinian refugee trauma created by the 1948 and 1967 wars, which transformed the region and echo to this day.

They say the lack of understanding held up humanitarian efforts in Gaza while leaving moderate Arab governments weakened at home and unable to contain a war threatening to spill across the region.

“We are in for long weeks ahead,” says one Arab official not authorized to speak to the press. “And it seems there is nothing we can do to avert a wider catastrophe.”

Mr. Biden said Wednesday that Israel had agreed to allow “lifesaving” humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt – an Israeli statement specified “food, water, and medicine” to southern Gaza – and that the United States would provide $100 million to help civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Canceled summit

Wednesday’s summit was designed to ease humanitarian suffering and “avert a regional war,” officials said.

For the Arab allies, its immediate goal was to solve the impasse over the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and to stress to President Biden their refusal to facilitate a mass exodus of Gazans into Egypt, according to Jordanian official sources.

It was hoped that face-to-face diplomacy would drive home the seriousness of the regional fallout of the war and encourage President Biden to pass along the message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and obtain a humanitarian cease-fire in the besieged strip.

Yet the de-escalation efforts were shattered before the summit could be held when a blast Tuesday evening shook the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, which was doubling as a makeshift refugee shelter. Gaza health officials say 500 people were killed, making it the single deadliest wartime calamity in the strip in two decades.

Hamas immediately blamed Israel, calling it a missile strike. Israel attributed the blast to a failed rocket launched nearby by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Wednesday presented video and a phone intercept as evidence. In Israel, President Biden noted there are “a lot of people who are not sure,” but that initial intelligence from the Department of Defense indicated it was “the other team,” Palestinian groups.

Yet video evidence provided by residents near the hospital and distrust of Israeli military statements – including its monthslong denial of responsibility for the killing last year of American Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank – led Arab governments and publics to conclude that Israel was to blame and had committed a war crime.

“The summit lost its momentum after the bombing of the hospital,” says Mohammed Momani, former Jordanian minister of information and an international affairs expert close to Jordanian decision-makers. “It was a clear sign Israel is not going to stop the aggression, and it set up the summit for failure” before it convened.

Protests erupted in Amman and Ramallah over the hospital blast and Mr. Biden’s planned arrival. Jordan’s King Abdullah called the alleged strike a “heinous war crime that cannot be ignored.”

Protesters in Ramallah and Nablus in the West Bank clashed with Palestinian Authority security services as they demanded “the downfall of the president,” Mahmoud Abbas.

For Arab leaders with close ties to the U.S. and peace agreements with Israel, simply being seen with President Biden was becoming a liability.

Under a mutual agreement between Jordan and the U.S., the summit was canceled, although bilateral talks continued between Arab governments and Washington, diplomatic sources said.

“The summit’s cancellation dashes some hope that there would be some leverage on Mr. Biden vis-à-vis his position on Israel,” says Jawad Anani, former foreign minister and Jordan’s lead peace negotiator with Israel.

“It would have been a good opportunity for the three leaders to have a debate with Mr. Biden on the reasons why they have to say no to the transfer of populations.”

Refugee red lines

Arab concerns run beyond the humanitarian toll and deteriorating situation of 2.2 million Gazans under a siege unprecedented in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the prospect of another Palestinian refugee exodus.

Hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents were displaced by Israeli strikes following the Hamas assault Oct. 7. Hundreds of thousands more fled to the southern part of the strip, heeding an Israeli warning to evacuate an impending battle zone as it prepared a ground invasion aimed at Hamas installations in and around Gaza City in the north.

“What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force civilian residents to take refugee and migrate to Egypt, which should not be accepted,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Wednesday in a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

“Egypt rejects any attempt to resolve the Palestinian issue by military means or through the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land, which would come at the expense of the countries of the region,” he added.

King Abdullah, whose country hosts 2.2 million Palestinian refugees, said multiple times this week that “the expulsion of Gazans is a red line for Jordan and Egypt.”

“No refugees in Jordan. No refugees in Egypt,” the king said from Berlin Tuesday. President Sisi warned of Egypt being dragged into war.

The Arab leaders see in the current war the ghosts of the aftermath of the 1948 and 1967 wars – 5.9 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants across the Middle East.

“In 1948, Palestinians who left thought that it was a temporary transfer; they carried their keys thinking they would go back to their homes,” says Mr. Anani, the veteran Jordanian diplomat. “This is why Jordan and Arab states are working to prevent any push-or-pull factors for populations in Gaza. They fear that Israel is waiting for the humanitarian situation to get so desperate that Egypt and Jordan would be forced to take in populations from Gaza.”

Such concerns led to the impasse between Egypt and Israel over the Rafah border crossing and the entry of humanitarian aid.

Barriers for Blinken

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s shuttle diplomacy in the region this week encountered unprecedented pushback, multiple Arab diplomats said. Israel and the U.S. requested that Arab states allow Gazan civilians passage into Egypt, and that Gulf countries fund the humanitarian aid.

In response, Mr. Sisi gave Mr. Blinken a public lecture, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman kept him waiting in Riyadh overnight before finally meeting with him and bluntly demanding a cease-fire.

Arab states caution that America’s refusal to urge Israel to rein in its military response or call for a cease-fire is only strengthening Hamas and Iran, which are rivals to moderate Arab states and have long criticized their ties with the U.S. and normalization with Israel.

Analysts say Saudi Arabia is tired of the consequences of U.S. policies.

“There is a widespread perception of hypocrisy by the U.S.,” says Aziz Alghashian, a Saudi foreign policy expert and fellow at the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianization project based at Lancaster University’s Richardson Institute.

“There is a sentiment that you wanted us to help you in Ukraine, and now with a conflict like this is happening and affecting our stability, you are not willing to use your leverage to help us.”