Khalid bin Ahmed is the foreign minister of Bahrain.
Yesterday he tweeted, “It’s not helpful to pick a fight with the USA over side issues while we together fight the clear and present danger of The Theo-Fascist Islamic republic.”
This public breaking of the message of unity on Jerusalem that the Palestinian leaders have been carefully cultivating has caused great anger and much coverage in the Arabic media.
Ma’an’s headline was probably accurate when it slightly changed his words to say that he meant that not only Jerusalem but “Palestine is a side issue” in the Arab world.
It is true. At the same time that Arab leaders will mouth their support for Palestinians in forums like the UN, when the West isn’t the audience they have been signaling their impatience and apathy towards the issue for years.
We noticed this as far back as 2008, as the Arab world already then was reluctant to pay their pledges to the Palestinian Authority (holding back some $700 million!) because the Hamas/Fatah split proved that the Palestinians don’t have their own act together.
When asked to protest against Israel, sure, the Palestinian factions can speak with a unified voice, but they have no unity outside of hate for Israel. They can’t agree on anything – not even when to hold elections.
The Arab world, faced with threats like ISIS and Iran and Syria as well as internal threats, has no patience for Palestinians or their whining. The Gulf countries have been making their positions clear in their actions for quite a long time, and now they are starting to say the same things in English.
The Palestinians, drunk with how successful their UN initiatives are, are willfully blind towards this long term trend. And one day in the not too distant future, they will wonder whatever happened to their political power in the Arab world.
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