Arab Zionism: An Infantile Disorder
The new year has brought with it a variety of political changes sweeping the Levant— regime change in Syria and ostensible regime stability with the recent election of the Lebanese president following a two-year vacancy. The new regional dynamic that we have yet to fully see materialise will reflect the metastasis of a growing cancer that has for decades plagued other parts of the Arab world such as the Gulf, Jordan, Morocco, and Egypt: Arab Zionism. The ruling classes in these countries have betrayed the Palestinian people by developing economic and political ties with Israel at the behest of Western powers in exchange for, frankly put, money and power. Regardless of whether these leaders truly believe in the merits of the Zionist Apartheid project, they have sold their souls to the “Great Satan” to maintain their positions as despots. This article will take a quite sarcastic and incredulous tone at times, not to undermine the gravity of this frightening realignment of the Arab ruling classes towards sustaining Israeli supremacy, but to treat the claims that the Palestinian liberation movement ought to embrace the realpolitik and accept that engaging with the apartheid state is the only means of achieving an independent Palestinian state with the seriousness it deserves— none. Firstly, we will analyse the development of this disease amongst Arab rulers in each of their contexts, then move onto a greater theoretical analysis of Arab Zionism, before discussing some potential future implications of its most recent outbreak.
Historical Development of Arab Zionism
Khaliji Zionism: The Original Variant
The Gulf’s treatment of the Palestinian cause and the warming of relations with Israel is a relatively recent occurrence developing over the last 30 years. Prior to the Gulf War, massive Palestinian communities existed across the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. The diaspora had well situated itself in the aftermath of the Nakba in Gulf states, becoming prosperous and integrated in civil and economic society in the process. In the 20-year period from 1961 to 1981, the Palestinian community in Kuwait increased ten-fold from 37,000 to over 350,000. As these communities were thriving, while minor segments of the local populations were becoming increasingly resentful of their relative success, it wasn’t until after the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein that the monarchy weaponized animosity against the Palestinians to drive them out of the country. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) refused to vote in favor of an August 10, 1990 Arab League resolution that jointly condemned Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and supported the deployment of American troops into the region. Although the PLO did not support Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, it argued that establishing an American presence in the region would have long-lasting impacts on the stability of the region (boy were they right) and were prevented by the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from presenting amendments to the resolution. The headline of refusing to condemn the Iraqi invasion allowed the Kuwaiti ruling class to effectively deflect discontent about current material conditions towards the Palestinian community as the root of the country’s problems. The UAE and Saudi Arabia followed suit by punishing citizens of countries who also refused to unconditionally support their resolution, consequently expelling thousands of Palestinians, Yemenis, Jordanian, and Sudanese residents for their government’s unwillingness to toe the Western line.
The PLO ended up being correct in their prediction. American intervention in Kuwait was catastrophic, paving the road for the violent plunder of Iraq, Libya, and Syria in the decades following. American presence gradually shifted fears in the Gulf to another enemy that further pushed them towards Israel: Iran. The revelation of an Iranian nuclear power program in the early 2000s raised alarm bells in the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, driving further cooperation under the tired principle that, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Closer ties with Israel meant distancing themselves from the Palestinian cause, as the strength of the Israeli military and its capacity to operate abroad is directly tied to its ability to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Providing material aid to the Palestinian resistance would not only upset Daddy Warbucks across the Atlantic, but would undermine the Israeli security apparatus that they relied on to eventually attack Iran. Israel’s, “sanctioned-unsanctioned” nuclear program, the world’s worst best-kept secret developed in-part with the consent of the Khaliji monarchs. Wahabi and Zionist leaders have made a malicious deal with their respective devils, laying the foundation for the numerous proxy wars across the Arab world over the last three decades. The mutual repulsion that drove their infernal pact is one that fundamentally concerns power and control, with the underlying autocratic means to achieve their goals being a centripetal rather than centrifugal force. More importantly, their relationship has been sustained by the same hegemonic power who will not stop to keep a vastly rich region under its sphere of influence, even if it means letting people kill each other senselessly in the process. With both teams established, they began to play their game on the chessboard that is the Middle East, funding proxy-conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Libya to sever the transnational support lines to the Palestinians.
Over the last year, the silence of Gulf countries in the face of atrocities being live streamed on the daily has been nothing short of shameful. Free trade deals and diplomatic relations have only strengthened Israel’s resolve to eradicate the Palestinian people. The influx of Western capital that has defined the sociopolitical landscape of the Gulf has bred an indifference to the plight of the Palestinians and a general disassociation with the Arab struggle.
Jordan’s English King: The Best Monarch Zionist Money Can Buy
The story of the development of Jordan’s particular flavour of Arab Zionism starts in the same way as its Khaliji counterpart. In 1950, Jordan annexed the West Bank and extended citizenship to the Palestinian population, changing the demographic makeup of the country to be two-thirds Palestinian and one-third Jordanian. Furthermore, Palestinians were provided half of the parliamentary seats and became well established in Jordanian civil society. Although it would be nice to believe that King Hussein was acting out of the goodness of his own heart, his concessions were for a less benevolent reason. Palestinian liberation groups, such as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), were established and carried out cross-border attacks against Zionist forces from the West Bank. Their militant approach towards achieving the principle of self-determination, which made them popular across the Arab world, threatened the Hashemite regime, particularly if the West Bank was independent and run by the PLO. The Palestinian issue was principally one that concerned national security to the Jordanian monarchy.
In 1967, the West Bank was annexed by Israel following the Six-Day War, creating further tension between the Jordanian monarchy and the Palestinian resistance groups. However, it was not until three years later that a confrontation erupted. The PFLP and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) began openly questioning the legitimacy of the Hashemite monarchy, calling for its overthrow and the establishment of a revolutionary government. In an era where Arab nationalist ideology was thriving and discourse for democratic self-governance was causing the ruling classes from Marrakesh to Madaba to tremble in their blood-stained boots, King Hussein saw Palestinian dissent as an immediate problem to be dealt with. Once the dust had settled on the battlegrounds of the Jordanian Civil War, it had been clear the Hashemites had emerged victorious. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation was expelled to Lebanon and the Jordanian monarchy consolidated its power through increased cooperation with Israel over the years to resolve their mutual “security” problem.
In the modern day, Jordan essentially exists as a Western vassal state that acts as a buffer between Israel and the rest of the Middle East. Multiple times in the last year Jordanian air defense systems have been utilized to prevent missiles from reaching Israeli airspace, and the Jordanian border security works hand-in-hand with occupation forces to restrict the movement of the Palestinian people into the West Bank. The English son of King Hussein and current ruler, Abdullah II, has paid plenty of google translated Arabic lip-service to the Palestinian cause while always falling short of providing meaningful material aid to the resistance he ostensibly cares for.
His tolerance for Israeli genocide does not come from passing his adolescence in the United Kingdom, but from a deep dependence on Western capital to sustain economic stability, and by extension his rule. The Jordanian economy is effectively subsidised by American aid due to an exceptionally tight monetary policy pegging the Jordanian Dinar to the United States Dollar. In order to maintain a fixed exchange rate, especially one that makes your domestic currency more powerful than the international reserve currency, an exorbitant amount of foreign cash reserves are required. As it stands, the Jordanian economy does not produce nor trade enough to cover those reserve requirements on its own. Therefore, it too made a deal with the devil. The terms of this compact are fairly straightforward: protect Israel from the other pesky Arab states, and the West will provide enough cash for Jordan’s financial system to stay afloat. From the United States alone, Jordan receives $1.45 billion in annual economic aid, a staggering 2.85% of its GDP. Insofar as an unsustainable economic policy fosters a crippling dependency on Western capital, Jordan will continue selling out the Palestinian people for the honorable position as America’s lapdog
A Betrayal from Across the Mediterranean: Morocco’s Normalisation Route
Despite discontent expressed by the Moroccan public en-masse following the pursuit of a normalization deal by the Moroccan government when it announced itself as a signatory of the Abraham Accords in 2020, the Moroccan government has deepened its security and economic ties with the Israeli state. The reality is that the relationship between the two countries existed well before state recognition. The Moroccan monarchy has historically kept a covert partnership with the apartheid state, receiving military technology and specialised training on their use to repress anti-monarchy dissent amongst the citizenry. The two countries’ ties date back to 1961 with the ascension of King Hassan II, who struck a deal with then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion that would have Israel pay Morocco for every Jew who emigrated from the latter to Israel. The decades that followed witnessed countless times of collusion between Morocco and Israel, with a particularly striking instance arising in 1965 when Rabat allowed Mossad to bug the private rooms of Arab heads of state, which the Israelis to this day credit for their “victory” in the Six-Day war.
Israeli weapons and intelligence systems have always been some of the most advanced in the globe due to their refinement through constant use on Palestinian populations. These systems have been highly sought after by autocrats seeking to consolidate power through violence, creating a lucrative industry for the nascent settler colonial economy. Despite the vast majority of Moroccans (roughly 98%) believing that Palestinian liberation is a cause that impacts all Arabs and strongly oppose normalisation, the message doesn’t resonate with the monarchy who have drawn national lines to create a degree of separation that absolves the state of any responsibility for their complicity.
Signing the Abraham Accords was a strategic decision made by the Moroccan government to secure American recognition of the kingdom’s claims over Western Sahara. Israeli military intelligence technology has been a vital instrument of repression for the kingdom to surveil and murder Western Sahara activists. Moreover, it gives the Moroccans an edge over their neighbours Algeria in the zero-sum relationship they have developed because of this territorial dispute. The grab for land and power at the expense of the Palestinian people is a tired old story repeated time and time again throughout the Arab world by despotic monarchs who find the phrase “govern by consent” as foreign as Palestinians in their country.
The Road to Tel Aviv passes through…Cairo?
Once the bastion of the revolutionary Arab decolonial struggle, Egypt is a shell of the country it used to be. One of the first countries to capitulate to Western powers, Egyptian Zionism begins with Anwar Sadat. A traitor to the popular political project of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sadat implemented a wave of neoliberal policies that would lock Egypt in a cycle of economic despair and dependency on foreign capital (this story sounds familiar, right?). In the 70s and 80s, Egypt accrued exorbitant amounts of debt to the point that its borrowing practices began to mirror an addictive habit: it needed to continuously consume foreign capital in order to keep a cosmetic layer of economic dynamism while slowly but surely the real economy stagnated to a crash. As in most cases of debt-trap diplomacy, America assumed the role of Egypt’s largest creditor, exerting considerable influence on Egypt to this day. Egyptian military and foreign aid sustains the current dictatorship and allows for considerable influence to be exerted by Western creditors to subdue the country through extortion.
However, Sadat will ultimately be remembered as a betrayer of the Palestinian people, and the reason why he was assassinated was for his participation in the Camp David Summit which led to the accord by the same name which established a formal diplomatic relationship between Egypt and Israel. The exchange of weapons, goods, and intelligence has underpinned the two countries’ relationship for the last 40 years. The volatility of the domestic political landscape in Egypt has been maintained by constant intervention by Israel and its Western allies, who seek to maintain a sympathetic government on its Southern border at all costs.
In regards to the current genocide in Gaza, Egyptian military forces have maintained tight control of its borders and reinforced the Israeli blockade of aid and other goods into Gaza. Egyptian border controls are just as restrictive and inhumane as the Israeli ones, and are funded by the same source. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the current dictator of Egypt, rode the coattails of a mass regional democratic movement that deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak for amongst other things, his close relationship with the Zionist state, and toppled a democratically elected government that threatened the status quo vis-a-vis Israel. Zionist Egypt has consequently been a staunch ally of the settler colony on the international stage in recent years, and the Western bribes have stuffed the pockets of these politicians to the point that they’re bursting at the seams for everyone to see.
Arab Zionism: A Theoretical Understanding
Now what exactly is Arab Zionism? Is it the endorsement of the fascistic ideology that presupposes the supremacy of white Israelis over Black and Brown people by Arabs? Not quite. The use of the word “Zionism” is borrowed in the more literal sense that a key tenet of Arab Zionism is the acceptance of the Israeli state and its inclusion in regional and international cooperation. Arab Zionism is the embrace of a realpolitik that essentially maintains that the apartheid state will exist in perpetuity and engaging with it is necessary for the advancement of the personal and political goals of Arab autocrats. Many will hide behind the rhetoric that as a matter of pragmatism the only way to secure the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people is through negotiations with the established institutions of power governing over them. The historical hindsight of these leaders is clearly close to levels of legal blindness, but realistically their endeavours are not to secure the liberation of Palestine, but to consolidate their grip on power at home.
There are two principled reasons motivating the diffusion of Arab Zionism amongst the technocratic and monarchic classes of the Arab world. First, the destruction of epistemic systems of knowledge production and education in the Arab world has pushed the new generation of “leaders” to study in the West, where their proximity to the Imperial core has led to their co-optation by American and British interests. In the mid-20th century, Beirut, Baghdad, and Cairo were the education hubs of the Middle East, attracting individuals from across the Arab world. Beyond the contributions to the arts, sciences, mathematics, literature that have historically originated from the region, in the realm of politics, these universities were centres of developing Arab nationalist thought. Cairo University and the American University of Beirut were among notable nuclei for the Arab Nationalist Movement which produced the likes of George Habash, Hani al-Hindi, Wadie Haddad, and Ahmad Muhammad Al-Khatib. Arab leaders educated in the Arab world spearheaded the anti-colonial movement and took a firm stance on the question of Palestinian liberation. In the 60s and 70s, numerous military conflicts with the Zionist state in confrontation with the settler-colonial logic of rapacious expansion were waged by Arab nationalist leaders. Governments received Palestinian resistance groups with open arms and offered material support. The economic crises of the 80s and their political fallout in the 90s created the conditions for predation which Western powers capitalised on. Arab centres of education were no longer viable places to live and study, meaning Arab ruling classes looked to England and America to send their rulers to study. The destruction of postcolonial spaces of knowledge production diffused the individualistic approach to politics and economics that is preeminent in Western thinking, creating a class of leaders both entirely disconnected with the struggles of their people and ill-equipped to alleviate their material conditions. As this is a simple recipe for popular uprising, maintaining power in the long run led to the submission to Imperial powers and the cessation of hostilities with Israel.
The second motivating factor relates to the unique threat to order that Palestinian resistance possesses. Historically, Palestinian liberation groups have openly questioned the legitimacy of Arab rulers and endorsed an intersectional view of their oppression as being connected to the subjugation of all Arabs across the region. The chains binding the working class regionally to their relegated status is directly connected to the maintenance of Zionist apartheid. A relationship with Israel therefore allows for the importation of their own systems of domestic repression that can quash dissent. However there is one glaring issue here that some may have already caught on to. Insofar as the Zionist settler-colony exists, resistance to its genocidal logic from the Palestinian people will exist. This is the fundamental contradiction underlying Arab Zionism. As the colonial relationship dialectically progresses along this principle, the international and regional political conditions around it change, forcing the dynamism of Arab Zionist thought.
Take the last year of genocide in Gaza. Mass public mobilisations across the entire world put enough pressure on states to isolate Israel on the world stage. From Colombia suspending coal exports to Spain officially recognizing the Palestinian state, the conditions under which the game of foreign diplomacy is played has forever changed and has forced the supporters of Israel to rethink strategy. Palestinian resistance to settler colonialism will continue to attract the sympathies of the global majority, and elucidate the parallel relationship between their struggles and the struggles of the rest of the region. The autocrats of the Arab world are therefore stuck in a double-bind: maintain ties with the apartheid state to continue the necessary Western support to maintain control, yet at the same time add fuel to the fire of popular discontent that if untamed will loosen their grip on power. They have taken a similar approach to the Americans and Europeans: double down on material support and repress the “intolerable” forms of civil disobedience targeted towards institutional complicity with the genocide in Gaza. The reality of Arab Zionism’s logical progression is one experienced by every anachronistic colonial ideology— violent death followed by victorious celebrations of freedom.
What the future has in store for Palestine: turning to developments in the region
The ousting of Bashar Al-Assad, the brutal dictator of Syria who treated crimes against humanity as a hobby; the election of Joseph Aoun as president of Lebanon; and the announcement of a ceasefire agreement have each had profound implications on the future of the Palestinian struggle. The future directions of Lebanon and Syria are under the shadow cast by the spectre of Arab Zionism. The ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel unmasks the illusion of power that American vassal states in the region cower behind. Yet to emphasize once again, as we are still in the nascent stages of these events’ aftermaths, and a skeptic could credibly question my arguments here as crystal-ball predictions. However I’m hoping that if you’ve made it this far down this article you’ve heard my reasoning out so far.
To not celebrate the rise of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to power in Syria is not to lament the downfall of the Assad regime. One does not have to go through the mental gymnastics to prove one option is better than the other, just that in the previously mentioned chessboard they are pawns on opposing sides. The former simply happens to be the pawn played by the CIA with connections stemming back to the days of Timber Sycamore. The new government has expressed wanting to open diplomatic relations with Israel, pledging not to threaten the security of the apartheid state. Ironically, Syria’s new president whose nisba is “al-Julani” from the fact that he’s from the Golan Heights but was displaced when Israel illegally annexed the area in 1967, had no feelings towards Israel’s invasion of the buffer zone between the two countries in the immediate aftermath of declaring his group’s control of Syria. Furthermore, their control of the country has effectively closed Hezbollah’s supply line of weapons and aid from Iran, hindering resistance efforts in Lebanon. The priority of this government is to feign “modernity” and “democratic rule” to its Western creditors, so Pringles and McDonald’s can enter into the market and spread freedom, at the concession of being obedient and keeping their teeth away from their Zionist neighbours to the Southwest.
While Hezbollah’s resistance efforts against Israeli occupation over the last year have been laudable, they must be separated from their involvement in the absolute clusterfuck which is Lebanese politics. Taking advantage of deeply entrenched sectarian lines in the country and the colonial-era institutional antiquity which is the confessional system of Lebanese “consensus” politics, their contributions to the incapacitated condition of the state cannot be brushed aside because of their fight against Israel. The entire political class of Lebanon looks divided on national television, but collude to maintain plutocratic control of state resources once the cameras turn off. The inability of the state to provide basic services to the Lebanese people as they starve and are faced with the worst economic crisis in their history in-part arises from the lack of a head of state to direct the institutions of governance. For over two years, Lebanon has been without a president due to irreconcilable sectarian divisions in Parliament making it unable to vote for a leader. Finally, the election of Joseph Aoun, the former Commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, as president seemed to present a reconciliation. The American- and Saudi-backed leader at best seems indifferent to and at worst cooperative with the Zionist state. With the priority of his government being “de-Hezbollafication,” Aoun is more concerned with disarming resistance groups than asserting Lebanese sovereignty in territory in which Israel has still not withdrawn from. Hezbollah has provided an alternative to state institutions in South Lebanon, running hospitals, schools, and local infrastructure projects. Dismantling their social welfare project would cut the source of their vast support from the roots. The additional choice of selecting Nawaf Salam to be the Prime Minister, vacating his role as the president of the International Court of Justice, letting it be filled by a judge who stood alone on the recent rulings on Israeli genocide and garnered condemnation by her own country, cannot go unmentioned. Avoiding diving deeper into speculation, it’s best to end my point here— while there are new faces, the same pockets are responsible for running Lebanon and now have the constitutional go-ahead to concretely realign the priorities of the country with their returned Western backers.
Finally, the ceasefire showed the world how truly weak the Arab Zionist states are. Despite having sat at the negotiation table for a year with the two parties, it ultimately took the pressure of incoming American president Donald Trump to get Israel to sign the ceasefire agreement that it had been flat-out rejecting for months. Ostensibly, the presence of states like Egypt and Qatar as “mediators” is that they have relationships with both sides in which they are able to exert influence so that compromise can be achieved. It is safe to say that no weight was pulled by either parties who acted more like decorations at the table as the Americans pulled the plug on the genocidal project to simply avoid a political headache for the incoming administration. The Arab Zionist states act to create the imagery that a solution was reached through the key role of regional and global actors, hiding the reality that only one decision-maker existed from the beginning. There was an illusion that these countries all act autonomously and their policies are self-determined, the way they responded the last 15 months of genocide shattered it. Arab Zionism’s subjugation of the ruling classes to the interests of Western empire consequently subjugates the entire citizenry to the violence the empire necessitates. As the Chinese celebrate 80 years since the end of their century of humiliation, the Arabs can thank their leaders as to why they're still in their own.
Further Readings:
[2] Khalidi, R. I. (1991). The Palestinians and the Gulf Crisis. Current History, 90(552), 18–37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45316464
[3] Hassassian, M. S. (Manuel Sarkis)., Davis, U., Butenschøn, N. A. (Nils August)., Universitetet i Oslo. Institutt for statsvitenskap. (2000). Citizenship and the state in the Middle East: approaches and applications. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.
[5] https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/15/jordan-king-hamzah-crisis-hashemites-us-banana-monarchy/
[6] https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-look-at-israels-decades-long-covert-intelligence-ties-with-morocco/
[8] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/11/23/sadat-to-salman-israel-at-the-expense-of-palestine
[9] Frerichs, S. (2016). Egypt’s Neoliberal Reforms and the Moral Economy of Bread: Sadat, Mubarak, Morsi. Review of Radical Political Economics, 48(4), 610-632. https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613415603158
[11] https://www.npr.org/2024/12/27/g-s1-40144/syria-israel-relations-hts-damascus-governor
