Gaza war widens divide between Arab rulers and citizens
As the afternoon light softened, a man with a megaphone stepped forward in front of a crowd of about 200 people in the Bahraini capital Manama and began shouting at the top of his lungs.
The demonstrators, waving Palestinian flags, echoed his words with gusto and begged their authoritarian government of their allies to expel the Israeli ambassador. appointed two years ago, after Bahrain established diplomatic ties with Israel.
“No Zionist embassy in Bahraini land!” they sang. “No US military bases on Bahraini land!”
Less than four miles away, American and European men in full military regalia gathered for the Manama Dialogue, an annual dialogue conference which brings together senior officials from Western powers and the Middle East to discuss regional security. Just hours after the protest, they walked around a gilded ballroom at the heavily guarded Ritz-Carlton hotel – largely unaware that it had even happened.
When Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa took the stage, he delighted much of the audience by condemning Hamas, the Palestinian armed group that controls Gaza and which led the October 7 attack on Israel, which he said about 1,200 people died. to the Israeli authorities.
The war in Gaza that followed the attack has not only exposed a rift between many Arab leaders and their people; it has broadened it.
Bahrain, a Gulf state of about 1.6 million people, has witnessed an outpouring of popular support for the Palestinians and a rise in hostility toward Israel since the war began. The Israeli army responded to the Hamas attack by bombing and besieging Gaza in a military campaign that Gaza authorities say has killed more than 16,000 people.
While there has long been a rift between many Arab states and their citizens over their approach to the Palestinian cause, the war has brought that rift into sharp focus in years. In many protests across the region, people have gone beyond condemning Israel to chant in support of Hamas and criticize their own governments.
In Morocco And JordanThousands have gathered to demand that their countries cut ties with Israel. In Cairo, pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in Tahrir Square, where Egypt’s Arab Spring uprising began. revived a revolutionary call for bread, freedom and social justice.
And in Bahrain, demonstrators said they not only felt a deep sense of shared Arab and Muslim identity, but also saw connections between Palestinian liberation and their own liberation from political repression.
“I look forward to us being free people,” said Fatima Jumua, a 22-year-old Bahraini woman who attended the protest in Manama. “Our existence and freedom are linked to the existence and freedom of Palestine.”
For decades, most Arab governments have refused to establish ties with Israel before the establishment of a Palestinian state. But that calculus changed in the years before the war, as authoritarian leaders weighed negative public opinion toward Israel against the economic and security benefits of a relationship — and the concessions they could extract from the United States, Israel’s key ally .
“The government of Bahrain wants to be seen as a voice of moderation in the United States, and it is increasingly using its new relationship with Israel to shape this perception in Washington,” said Elham Fakhro, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a thinktank. “But at home it has a different effect.”
In 2020, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco established relations with Israel in agreements brokered by the Trump administration known as the Abraham Accords, joining Egypt and Jordan, which have signed dozens of years of peace agreements with Israel.
The deals were celebrated by Western governments that have long supported the region’s royal families, and in September the Bahraini government signed a comprehensive security pact with the Biden administration.
But polls showed that most ordinary Arab citizens are increasingly reluctant to establish ties with Israel.
In Bahrain – with its Sunni Muslim royal family and a predominantly Shia Muslim population – officials said the accords encouraged tolerance and coexistence. But that sounded hollow to many citizens, while the government continued to crack down domestically disagreement.
The Palestinian cause and opposition to Israel unite Bahrainis across sectarian and political lines: Sunnis and Shiites, secular leftists and conservative Islamists, young and old. Asked inside a poll before the war what impact the Abraham Accords would have on the region, 76 percent of Bahrainis said negatively.
The accords were “forced against the will of the people,” said Abdulnabi Alekry, a 60-year-old Bahraini human rights activist.
Ms Fakhro of Chatham House said Bahrain has been tense for years due to tensions between the government and opposition movements.
“This crisis is widening that divide even further,” she said.
Bahrain crushed an Arab Spring uprising in 2011 with the help of Saudi and Arab forces. It also houses one of the most important US military bases in the region.
Bahraini protesters said they see Israel as a colonial-style occupying power and a Western-backed project designed to dominate the region. Some said Israel shouldn’t even exist.
Ms Jumua said Palestinians and the rest of the region’s population all live under the rule of Western powers.
“So far we see that we cannot move without US approval,” she said.
Back at the Ritz-Carlton hotel the morning after the protest, senior Arab and American officials returned to the glitzy ballroom to debate a path forward for Gaza.
Asked about negative public opinion about the Abraham Accords, Brett McGurk, a top White House Middle East official, said he was focused on the immediate crisis. But otherwise, he said, U.S. policymakers remained committed to the “integration” of Israel and its neighbors.
Before the war, the White House held talks with Saudi Arabia on a complex deal in which the kingdom, the most powerful Arab country, would recognize Israel.
“We cannot allow what Hamas did on October 7 to take this permanently off track,” Mr McGurk said.
But some Palestinians feared that an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel would have further undermined their fight for statehood.
A senior Bahraini official said his government believes Israel is here to stay and that the region’s peoples should coexist. Bahrain is concerned about the war fueling anger and extremism, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. The Abraham Accords must be protected as a tool to bring peace, he said.
But when asked about the gap between Arab leaders and public opinion, the official did not directly address the question. Instead, he said Bahrain believed the situation in Gaza was catastrophic and was doing everything it could to promote peace.
The most damning charges against Israel at the conference came from the foreign minister of Jordan – where a large part of the population is of Palestinian descent – and a senior Saudi royal, Prince Turki Al Faisal, who called for sanctions against Israel.
Prince Turki – a former head of Saudi intelligence – rejected the idea that building ties between Arab states and Israel would bring peace, calling it an “Israeli, American and European illusion.”
As Prince Turki spoke, another protest took off about ten kilometers away and stretched for blocks through the narrow streets of Muharraq – a city of low-rise buildings in shades of white and beige. The air smelled of gasoline from idling cars as streams of people blocked traffic, waving Palestinian flags and carrying children on their shoulders.
Freedom of association and assembly remains high limited in Bahrain. But many of the recent protests were given government permission — creating a semi-sanctioned space to let off steam.
Thousands of protesters shouted in English and Arabic until they became hoarse.
“Down, down, Israel!”
“America is the head of the snake!”
Some sang in support of Hamas and urged Hamas to bomb Tel Aviv.
In his speech the day before, Bahrain’s Crown Prince had deplored the “continuous bombardment” of Gaza, calling it an “intolerable situation.” But he did not threaten a diplomatic break with Israel and called the US “indispensable” to any peace process.
When he was done, his guests devoured saffron-poached peaches and chicken breasts stuffed with ratatouille. In a speech on the sidelines of the conference, Bahraini officials told participants they were determined to protect their deal with Israel.