Fearing fallout, Gulf rulers urge US to help stop war in Gaza

From one end of the Gulf to the other, the frustration in Arab capitals is palpable.

The positive spirit of regional cooperation that reigned here only two months ago has been swamped by frustration with the United States. Washington may have recommitted to the Middle East, but it has proved unable or unwilling to end a war in Gaza that Gulf officials fear will destabilize the entire region.

Seeking to curb that war – now seen as potentially an existential threat – Gulf sheikhdoms are partnering with Egypt and Jordan to act as a united bloc, hoping their combined clout can bring an end to the conflict before it ignites a new wave of extremism and violence.

“We don’t want the moderate middle to fall,” says one Gulf diplomat. “This war does not only threaten all the progress we have made the past couple of years. It threatens to be another Iraq War and create a cycle of violence and instability that spreads across the region.”

“Think about what this will create in the age of social media,” Bahraini Crown Prince Salman warned recently, recalling how the U.S. invasion of Iraq paved the way for the rise of the Islamic State.

“I think we will be looking at a far more difficult next 20 years,” he told participants in an international security conference.

The war in Gaza has brought conflict back to a region where détente and cooperation had been taking hold.

Saudi Arabia and Iran recently sealed their rapprochement, Gulf states and Turkey resolved some of their differences, as did the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, amid a broader regional push for normalization with Israel.

Initially an inconvenience, the war is now being viewed by Gulf states as a security threat. They see the Israel-Hamas war undermining the very idea of moderation, bolstering Islamist extremists sympathetic to Hamas who advocate violence.

The longer the war drags out, they conclude, the higher the likelihood it could threaten Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and the Jordanian monarchy. Their collapse would be catastrophic, according to several senior Gulf officials.

Gulf rulers already feel overextended, propping up failed Arab states such as Sudan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen with diplomatic and financial aid. Jordan and Egypt, key Gulf allies, are among the last functioning non-Gulf Arab states.

A new bloc

Gulf states are also worried by the pressure the war is putting on Arab countries with ties with Israel, whose public opinion is demanding action.

Protests in Egypt, sometimes targeting President Sisi, have been growing; in Jordan, near-daily demonstrations have called for Jordan to scrap its peace treaty with Israel and close the Israeli Embassy in Amman.

In Bahrain, small-scale protests continue, while anti-Israel protests have sparked violent crackdowns by the authorities in Morocco.

In the absence of a clear American stand, Arab states have united into a bloc, coordinating their diplomatic efforts and coalescing around three “nos”: no forced transfer of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, no Arab troops in Gaza, and no Israeli reoccupation of the strip.

Several Arab officials described this cooperation as the closest coordination among Arab states on the Palestinian issue for generations.

Each country is playing to its relative strengths: Qatar retains diplomatic and communication channels with Hamas to broker cease-fire and hostages talks; the UAE retains ties with Israel; Jordan’s influence in the West Bank provides a diplomatic voice for the Palestinians; Egypt, which borders Gaza, is a corridor for humanitarian aid; and Saudi Arabia, which until the war broke out was on the brink of normalizing its relations with Israel, adds further weight.

The bloc has drawn up plans for the day-after in Gaza, including new Palestinian governance in Gaza to replace Hamas, and a Gulf-funded reconstruction plan worth billions of dollars.

Where’s China?

But their immediate concern is a cease-fire. The bloc has increased its collective diplomatic effort to pressure the Biden administration to call for a pause or end to the fighting.

A United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire, introduced by the UAE last Friday, prompted a predictable U.S. veto, which “made America take ownership for continuing the war,” as one Arab diplomat put it.

A follow-up, nonbinding General Assembly resolution calling for a cease-fire, introduced by Egypt on Tuesday, was passed overwhelmingly. The U.S. was one of only 10 countries to vote against it, adding to Washington’s isolation on the world stage.

“Voting against the resolution at the UNGA today amounts to condoning war crimes,” Ayman Safadi, the top Jordanian diplomat, said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

If the U.S.’s renewed interest in the Middle East has been insufficient to force a cease-fire, it has nonetheless posed a puzzle for Arab states.

Over the past four years, Gulf Arab states and their allies have built alliances and connections elsewhere, feeling that Washington’s pivot away from the Middle East, toward Asia, meant that it was no longer a reliable guarantor of their security.

Most recently, Gulf states have been advancing ties with China, seen as a rival to American influence in the region, and to Russia.

Yet since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, these new partners have been nowhere to be found. “Where is China?” wonders Abdulkhaleq Abdalla, who teaches politics at UAE University. “After all the talk of Chinese involvement in the region, where are the Chinese officials?”

Not a single high-level Chinese official has visited an Arab capital since Oct. 7; Russia, consumed by its war in Ukraine, has been largely absent.

In contrast, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Austin Lloyd, CIA Director William Burns, and White House Middle East point man Brett McGurk have been rotating in and out of Arab capitals since Oct. 7.

President Joe Biden’s military commitment to Israel and his rapid mobilization of warships to the region have once again reinforced America’s hegemonic position – and reignited Gulf states’ desire to secure written security pacts with the U.S.

One Saudi official, not authorized to speak to the press, described a “paradox.”

“America is the sole superpower with the ability to protect us from external threats,” he says.

“But what happens when the one power which can guarantee your security is not willing to do anything to stop a war that is threatening that?”