Riyadh Summit on Israeli genocide in Gaza

Exposed Arab despots betrayal and political bankruptcy

By Latheef Farook

After 400 days of relentless bombing, dropping more than 85,000 tons of bombs, killing around 200,000 Palestinians – 70 percent of them women and children , destroying infrastructure and turning Gaza into a grave yard , Saudi Prince Salman woke up to host an Arab Islamic summit in Riyadh on Monday 11 November 2024 .

The summit of mainly despots from across the Arab and elected leaders from Islamic world was to focus on Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Lebanon. The irony is that Saudi Arabia, together with Egypt ,Jorden, United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries, facilitated the US, UK.France and Germany backed Israeli butchery of Palestinians in Gaza from October 8 2023 onwards by turning blind, is hosting this summit.

However, as expected, the summit failed to take any action to stop the genocide. Instead and, as usual, they urged the international community to take definitive action to end the genocide.

At the opening of the summit, Saudi Crown Prince Salman demanded Israel immediately end its massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanon and for the first time described Israel’s war on Gaza as a “genocide”.
The summit concluded with a call for urgent humanitarian support to Lebanon and Syria, condemning, as usual, Israeli aggression in these countries and stressed the need for international protection for Palestinians.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, installed in power by US, Israeli Saudi, Kuwait and UAE at a cost of 11 billion dollars toppling the first ever elected government of President Mohamed Moray in 60 years in a free and fair elections, refrained from describing the war on Gaza as a genocide, but denounced “the systematic murder of civilians in Gaza”.

To Sisi interest of Egyptians and Palestinians is not important. What is important to him is US-Israeli and Arab despots support to remain in power. To ensure this he has compromised Palestinian and Egyptian interest and given a free hand to Israel to slaughter Palestinians and starve them to death

Warning against Israeli plans “to annihilate Palestinians “Turkish President Recap Taya Endogen criticized Western nations providing Israel with “political, economic, military and moral support,” while acknowledging “the failure of Muslim countries to respond adequately” to the situation in Gaza , Israel cannot even tolerate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza and has been keeping aid supplies waiting in Egypt for months, Endogen further said.

In a scathing attack on Israeli barbarity Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim called for the urgency to “effectively and permanently” end Israel’s genocidal acts against the Palestinians in Gaza. He called for decisive actions in eliminating the Zionist Israeli regime’s blatant and unchecked aggression, which has also threatened the stability of the region following the regime’s flagrant strikes in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Syria.
Furthermore he also suggested that Israel be expelled from United Nations.

Writing under the title “How Arab autocrats enabled Israel’s Gaza genocide” columnist Mated Mansour said “The Arab democracy movement left autocratic states hollowed out and often reliant on US and Israeli support to survive. Palestinians cannot expect help anytime soon. As Israel continues its genocidal war in Gaza, and expands it to Lebanon, most Arab countries appear to be mere enablers of the massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians on an unprecedented scale.

Even with the threat of a large-scale regional war looming, which could have extremely destabilizing effects on the entire region, the ability and desire of Arab states to restrain Israeli imperial hubris appears to be non-existent.

There is good reason to argue that the main enabler of the current crisis engulfing the Middle East is none other than the United States, which has effectively funded the Israeli wars on Gaza and Lebanon, with aid topping $17.9bn since 7 October 2023. It has also provided diplomatic cover to Israel and given its far-right government the green light to expand the war into Lebanon.

This, however, misses an important aspect of the dynamic. Namely, Israel’s colonial hubris regards having the ability to reshape the Middle East through mass violence being fed by the autocratic nature of the Arab states and the failure of the democratic movement in the region.

More than a decade after the mass revolts that swept the region, the result is weak states, with contested legitimacy, only able to exercise power over their own citizens through mass violence – not dissimilar to the way that Israel is treating the Palestinians.

In many ways, the logic of regime survival at any cost has eroded the ability of these states to influence events in the region – and, in some cases, the social foundation of the national state itself.
Flow of US aid

A notable example of this is Egypt, the most populous Arab state and the only one to have a border with the Gaza Strip, making it, theoretically, one of the Arab states with the most potential to influence the conflict and restrain Israeli aggression. Egypt is also a close ally of the US, receiving a whopping $183.5bn in aid since the end of the Second World War, positioning it as a possible interlocutor with Israel’s patron.

This strategic positioning, however, was overridden by the Sisi government’s obsession with survival, which placed it in a dependent relationship with Israel.Indeed, Israel played a not insignificant role in the consolidation of the Sisi government after the 2013 coup, offering political support, security cooperation and deeper economic ties to the direct benefit of the Egyptian elites.

War on Gaza: Arab despots’ failure to stand up to Israel could fuel an explosion

The relationship between Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been described as the closest between any leaders from the two nations since the peace treaty of 1979.This apparent closeness was anchored in close security cooperation between the countries, with reports emerging in 2018 that, in the preceding two years, Israel had conducted over 100 air strikes against militants in Sinai, with Cairo’s approval.

This security cooperation was extended to include direct repression of peaceful dissent in Egypt, with the sale of Israeli spyware to Sisi’s government, which was used to hack into the phone of Ahmed Tantawy, a prominent member of the secular opposition.

This is not to argue that these states were not repressive before, but there is not now even a pretence of confronting a dangerous external enemy, now that said enemy is internal.

The dissident has now come to replace colonists and the occupier as the number one enemy of the Arab states, with the mass slaughter of the Palestinians, Lebanese and whoever dares to challenge the Israeli vision of the new Middle East standing as a testament to a new Arab autocratic political order.

The Arab ‘despots betrayal has placed people in the region for generations to come to the conspiracies and barbarity of Israel and its US European imperial supporters.

Two days after the summit outgoing US President genocide Joe Biden welcoming Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog at the White House said “You know my commitment to Israel is ironclad and we share a deep friendship”.

It was on this US the Arab dictators who had abandoned Islam, Muslims and Palestinians depend for their political survival. This is the shameful state of affairs in the Arab World? Thus the Riyadh summit is nothing but a summit of betrayal and hypocrisy.