Arab silence on Gaza more eloquent than Israeli cannons

Cairo: The pendulum of the Arab Spring has swung in the opposite direction. The top state secret is the Arabs do not favour the Hamas any more. The Hamas spurned the truce brokered by Egypt, exposing their own people to Israeli cannons. They care less for the lives of people as long as they can live under the illusion of the glory of an empire, which is a mirage. There is very little sympathy for Hamas in the Arab world, unlike two years ago when the whole Arab world put pressure on Israel to end the conflict, which is not happening now. But the story is not finished yet.       

After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states – Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan – that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed. 

The Arab states’ loathe political Islam, and we have never seen a situation like this. The silence is deafening, commentators say. 

Although Egypt is traditional go-between in any talks with Hamas, Cairo this time surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting point for any further discussions. 

There is clearly a convergence of interests of these various regimes with Israel. In the battle with Hamas, the Egyptian fight against the forces of political Islam. “Whose proxy war is it?” a former negotiator asks.  

Egyptian officials have directly or implicitly blamed Hamas instead of Israel for Palestinian deaths in the fighting even when, for example, United Nations schools have been hit by Israeli shells, something that occurred again Wednesday. 

And the pro-government Egyptian news media have continued to rail against Hamas as a tool of a regional Islamist plot to destabilise Egypt and the region, just as it has since the military ouster of President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood one year ago. (Egyptian prosecutors have charged Hamas with instigating violence in Egypt, killing its soldiers and police officers, and even breaking Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders out of jail during the 2011 uprising.) 

The diatribes against Hamas by at least one popular pro-government talk show host in Egypt were so extreme that the government of Israel broadcast some of them into Gaza. 

At the same time, Egypt had infuriated Gazans by continuing its policy of shutting down tunnels for cross-border smuggling into the Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting. 

Egypt and other Arab states, especially the Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are finding themselves allied with Israel in a common opposition to Iran, a rival regional power that also has a history of funding and arming Hamas.