Gaza war sharpens Arab world’s grievances against Israel: ‘peace is only on paper’

In Egypt, the atmosphere is heavy and anxious. The Rafah crossing on its border with Gaza is the sole way in and out of the besieged strip, meaning the country is set to become ground zero for a huge influx of Palestinian refugees if the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate.

According to the Gazan health ministry, as of Friday more than 10,500 people had been killed and around 26,000 injured by Israel’s relentless bombardment and ground invasion, launched in response to a deadly incursion into Israel by militant group Hamas on October 7. Craig Mokhiber, who recently resigned as director of the UN office for the high commissioner for human rights, called Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank “a textbook case of genocide”.

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“I am frustrated and depressed,” said Amr Mohy, 37, a journalist from Cairo. “This is the feeling of every Egyptian and every Arab. We are watching children, young people and old people being killed every day, live on social media. Israel makes a threat every now and then, like the possibility of dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, and a plan to evacuate Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.”

Mohamed Alfayoumi, a 39-year-old data analyst in Cairo, shared Mohy’s despondency. “I have no confidence that Arab countries will take serious action, especially Egypt who typically follows the position of its biggest funders, such as the United Arab Emirates,” he said.

Since the 2020 Abraham Accords, the UAE and Israel have worked closely to foster a more Jewish-friendly environment in the region.

“For Egyptians, peace [with Israel] is only on paper,” said Sherif, whose grandfathers both fought in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973. “Those who support it, by doing business with Israel, are doing it for the money.”

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In Cairo, there seems to be a wholesale rejection of Israel’s plan to displace Gaza’s population and resettle them in the Sinai desert. Many cite domestic security concerns in an already flailing economy, and fear of a tragic repeat of the Nakba – the wholesale violent displacement and dispossession of Palestinians that occurred in 1948, the year Israel declared its independence.

In a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on October 15, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi condemned Israel for exceeding its right to self-defence. In a statement issued on the same day, he also said Egypt rejected any plan to displace Palestinians.

“We reject giving up Sinai, a part of our land,” said Nagwa Hedayet, director of the Hedayet Institute for Arabic Studies in Cairo. “This is not because we refuse to accept Palestinians. We have perhaps a million Palestinian refugees living in Egypt. But in this situation, it would be like giving Gaza to the occupier on a silver plate. It would allow them to take Palestine again like they first did in 1948. This is crazy.”

Alfayoumi, the Cairo-based data analyst, said: “There is a general feeling that relocating Palestinians to Sinai means the end of the Palestinian right to return to their homeland. Also, attempts to attack Israel from Egyptian soil and vice versa will cause many problems.”

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But for Egyptians on the ground, their collective outcry at the violence is an overdue expression of resentment that has been bubbling under the surface for decades.

“Egyptians have never been neutral when it comes to Palestine. It is clear that they are totally against normalisation with Israel,” Alfayoumi said. “Most Egyptians look at this conflict as their own because of their political, religious and national affinities with Palestinians.”

‘Quiet criticism’ of normalisation with Israel

Further away in the Gulf, protests against Israel have been more muted and smaller in scale. Civic dissent is tightly controlled in the region, so the public has focused more on raising money to aid humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza.

Yaser, a 29-year-old consultant in Dubai who gave only one name citing the fear of repercussions for publicly speaking out on the issue, said that the normalisation of ties with Israel in 2020 had not generally been well received.

“There has always been more of a quiet criticism, even though people are largely accepting of Jewish people, whose visibility has risen in the country since 2020,” he said.

“Those with a centrist view had hoped that maybe normalisation will make things better for the Palestinians, as was promised in the Abraham Accords, but none of these agreements or steps towards peace were realised. In today’s context, things look even worse.”

Nour, an Arab student at the American University of Cairo who has lived in the Gulf, agreed: “A lot of people thought that increased normalisation between the Arab states like Bahrain and the UAE and Israel would lead to peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”

“But a big number, including me, did not think this treaty meant anything but an economic advantage to Israel and the United States,” she said.

Memories of peaceful coexistence

Despite the unfavourable public sentiment, Israel became Dubai’s fastest-growing tourism source market post-normalisation, with 85,000 arrivals in the first two months of this year alone – though the war has put an indefinite hold on travel.

On the ground floor of the landmark Burj Khalifa skyscraper, a kosher restaurant managed by a Jewish rabbi is just one of the many Jewish-owned or Jewish-friendly establishments that have opened in the UAE since 2020.

In 2021, the UAE’s Crossroads of Civilisations Museum played host to its first-ever Holocaust exhibition and earlier this year, the Abrahamic Family House – an interfaith complex housing a synagogue, a church and a mosque – also opened in the capital Abu Dhabi. But such efforts to combat antisemitism and promote inter-religious tolerance in the Arab world have received mixed reviews.

“From a religious perspective, promoting religious tolerance is good, especially if you are trying to battle the rhetoric prevalent in Muslim countries, which often paints Jews as the enemy,” Dubai-based Yaser said.

“But what is your end goal? Do these efforts to promote tolerance aim to end the suffering of the Palestinian people? Because if not, it does not matter how many synagogues or museums you build. The people are never going to accept it.”

In Egypt, where Muslims and Jews have lived side by side for centuries, there is a sense of betrayal and confusion underlying the anger over Israel’s recent actions.

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“As an Egyptian Muslim, I can say that Judaism is not strange to us. It rose here in Egypt, where peaceful coexistence between the faiths was once much rooted in our country,” Hedayet said.

“This is one of the many reasons we stretched out a hand of peace in 1979, even though the peace agreements have historically been unfair to Palestine.”

“Jews lived with us in peace before the world wars. What happened? We did not kill them in the Holocaust,” Egyptian artist Sherif said.

“Why are Palestinians paying the price for something they did not do?”