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11:29 26.02.2025 •
Donald Trump’s threats of invading Gaza have forced Arab and Muslim leaders to react, exposing their vulnerability and the wider US-Israeli agenda for reshaping the region.
Pic.: Al Mayadeen
For 15 months, the majority of the Arab and Muslim World’s leaders sat back as the first live-streamed genocide took place inside the land of Palestine. Praying for a return to the status quo that once supported their rules, they have now been faced with an ultimatum. Now, it's time to pick a side, writes ‘Al Mayadeen’.
While US President Donald Trump presented his idea of clearing out Gaza’s civilian population, taking control of the territory, and reconstructing it, he did so using the tone of someone believing such actions would be humanitarian in nature. In reality, what was being proposed was an invasion, mass murder, and ethnic cleansing.
The threat of such a monstrosity alone has proven enough to instantly mobilise the Arab and Muslim nation's leaderships in a way we have not witnessed in decades. Suddenly, they woke up.
Now, for the first time, we feel a pulse. Why? Because everyone’s head is on the chopping block. A glimpse was caught of what Donald Trump’s proposed future could cause and the likes of Jordanian King Abdullah II realised they are just another Arab in the eyes of the Israeli-US alliance, nothing more and nothing less. The only reason they remain is because they capitulate. This was Trump’s true message; it was not so much as a threat but a reminder.
When Hamas announced that it would postpone the weekly prisoner exchange arrangement until the Israelis allowed sufficient humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement, Donald Trump’s reaction was to threaten opening the “gates of hell”. Despite the threats that came from Trump and Netanyahu, the Israelis caved under pressure and were quickly set to allow the prisoner exchange to go ahead as planned.
The outrageous and illegal proposals that Trump has put forth have helped save the image of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in front of his extremist coalition.
Trump managed to suddenly shift the conversation and manipulate popular understandings of who is in control and “winning” the war.
It has brought together the Arab and Muslim leaders who were previously inactive or distant from the post-war Gaza plan.
The reality in the region is that the leaderships of West Asia are still trying to revert back to the status quo that existed pre-October 7, 2023. Now they are having to come to terms with the fact that this is no longer an option.
Although this may seem hyperbolic, the Israel that everyone knew from before is no more, it no longer exists. To those who have studied the issue closely, this was somewhat inevitable.
The Palestinian to Jewish population inside the borders of historic Palestine had become roughly 50/50. On top of this, the fastest growing Jewish group has been the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox), who do not serve in the army and don’t even believe in the worth of modern Nation States. Yet, all Israelis wanted the West Bank and to rule over occupied Jerusalem. With land concessions to the Palestinian Authority off the table, there were only ever going to be two options that the Zionists were going to have to choose from: Commit a genocide or mass ethnic cleansing; or both.
With the rise of right-wing nationalist religious fundamentalism, the secular-leaning right-wing system that modelled itself off of “Western Liberal Democracies” suddenly found itself under threat. Prior to October 7, 2023, this was a dominant theme in Israeli politics, where the religious ultra-nationalists were challenging the somewhat contradictory vision that was held onto by around half of the Israeli Jewish population.
What happened here is that the secular-leaning Israelis were trying to cling onto their delusion that they could simply live in a liberal Jewish supremacist Apartheid colony forever and expect a level of stability that they had long enjoyed due to the overwhelming power of their military. On the other hand, the extremist right-wing coalition of Benjamin Netanyahu that won power in late 2022 began to present an alternative vision in a way that hadn’t been done before.
Then came the wakeup call, Hamas launched Operation al-Aqsa Flood. The knee-jerk reaction of the Zionists was to think “how dare these people challenge our supremacy?!”. For the first time in its history, the Zionist Entity had been militarily torn to pieces and proven incapable of overcoming an indigenous resistance force armed primarily with light weapons and self-produced armaments. US-Israeli supremacy in West Asia appeared to be crumbling, so the occupying entity and its imperialist backer responded in the only way they know how, mass murder.
What happened in Gaza was a frenzy of racist violence that was supposed to “teach a lesson” to the Arab and Muslim peoples that they will remain forever inferior. The genocide was calculated to send a message: resist our supremacy and you will die.
Two things are now happening:
- The Israel of the past died, now it is scrambling to redefine and recreate itself;
- The US is attempting to revive its efforts to transform the region through normalisation and the construction of new trade routes, but is going to do so using maximum force in order to put down any semblance of dissent.
The United States is projecting its intention to remodel the entire region. This message is clear, yet it won’t likely come through a US invasion of Gaza, rather from putting tremendous pressure on the nations of the region to capitulate and work as slaves of the US-Israeli alliance.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine between 1947-49 left a major scar on the Arab World as a whole, one that has never healed. What just occurred in Gaza is a much deeper wound that will inspire Resistance until the end of the Zionist regime. Although it is often not factored into the equation, the Israelis also murdered 3,000 people in Lebanon too, including the late Secretary General of Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah.
A mistake often made by the imperialists and settler colonialists is assuming that because a population appears pacified today, it will also be tomorrow. In reality, revolutions and resistance movements take time, with mass mobilisation sometimes occurring due to what could be perceived as mere chance when it emerges.
In the event of the Israelis annexing the West Bank, this could eventually trigger the downfall of the Palestinian Authority and/or initiate a major uprising. In such a scenario, the Israeli military could then seek to ethnically cleanse large swathes of the West Bank too. The destination of these displaced refugees could also end up being Jordan.
Even former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned, in his second last address about foreign policy, of the collapse of the normalization agreements between the Zionist regime and its neighbours in Amman and Cairo. Speaking at a conference organised by the Atlantic Council, Blinken stressed that without a so-called “Two-State solution”, the normalisation deals with Egypt and Jordan could collapse.
…All of what is mentioned above will not likely just unfold overnight, everything takes time. Yet there is no question that the war is far from over, ‘Al Mayadeen’ concludes.
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