Israel and the threat of the Arab Summit

The first thing that can be inferred from the flood of Israeli reports and analyses of the Arab summit expected to be held soon is that it is a very important milestone in the history of the Arab world’s positions on the Palestinian issue.

According to one report, the assessment of the political and security establishments in Israel of this summit will be determined by their position in the face of the policy proposed by the United States and Israel following the change in the US administration and the return of President Donald Trump, Israel’s strongest ally, to the White House, whose main goal can be defined as eliminating the Palestinian issue and imposing unilateral solutions that do not meet the aspirations of the Palestinian people and the Arab peoples, including supporting annexation in the West Bank and institutionalizing the apartheid system.

Israeli politicians are waiting to see what the Arab leaders’ decisions will be, and whether they will agree on a unanimous position in the face of the challenges posed by this US and Israeli policy, especially in light of the push forward of Trump’s plan to deport Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, which is recognized as a threat to the national security of some countries, specifically Egypt and Jordan.

In the same context, it is also noted that Arab summits can leave an imprint on developments related to the Palestinian issue, and this was the case at least twice: the first time when the Arab summit in Rabat in 1974 recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and the second time when the Arab summit in Beirut in 2002 adopted the Arab Peace Initiative, which Israel has been trying to circumvent since that time through normalization relations and its declared agreements.

Israel has repeatedly stated that its conclusion from the normalization agreements, known as the “Abraham Accords,” is essentially that the Arab leaders have completely forgotten this initiative, and no longer commit themselves to it. They may even have accepted that it has become impossible to revive or even restore. They have also accepted that Israel has succeeded in aborting it, although it did not accept it completely or reject it outright. This conclusion may not be justified, but it cannot be ignored that it governs Israeli behavior at its core.

There is an Israeli emphasis that the Arab countries cannot only declare their complete rejection of the transfer idea proposed by Trump, but must also present a plan for the future of the Gaza Strip after the war, which must include a reconstruction and rehabilitation program, and the establishment of an authority to manage it civilly.

According to the articles of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mouthpieces, Israel is sending two messages to the Arab summit: The first is the need to exclude Hamas from any administration that will be formed to take over the civil administration of the Gaza Strip. There is a near-firm belief in Israel that even if Trump abandons the transfer plan, he will not abandon the demand to exclude Hamas, and will perhaps push for a plan of action “aimed at combating the continued military capabilities of this movement in the Strip,” which means destroying Hamas as a military force in the Strip. The second message is a threat that if the summit does not reach such a result, Israel will have no choice but to resume the war on Gaza to impose this by force, despite the failure of the war, which has entered its 500th day, to achieve this.

Even if we assume that the war will actually end, the Palestinian issue will remain. At the same time, it must be noted that as a result of the war, there is a decline in the willingness of the Israeli Jewish public to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state, despite the fact that more than 70% of the Jewish public supports ending the war, returning the kidnapped soldiers, and wants normalization with Saudi Arabia, along with a “separation path” from the Palestinians, and the establishment of a regional security alliance against Iran, according to a public opinion poll in Israel last month (January).