This is a direct translation of an article that originally appeared in Arabic.
At no point have Arab relations offered a model of concord since the Arabs first embraced the idea of “joint action” and founded the Arab League, the body meant to nurture that endeavour, fortify it, and guide it towards some higher common interest said to command universal Arab assent. The current war on Iran has exposed, with pitiless clarity, the deep rifts dividing the Arabs and their rival conceptions of state interest, drawing them out of closed rooms and columns in foreign newspapers into the unforgiving glare of social media and mass television.
As is so often the case in Arab disputes, preserving a line of retreat seems absent from the list of priorities, so long as the disputants remain where they are once the dust of conflict has settled. Disagreement over issues can poison every store of prior goodwill, while a misunderstanding over a phrase, a position, a newspaper article, or a news bulletin may become the prelude to a protracted armed conflict. The quarrels spilling across screens and platforms have therefore sunk into bitter exchanges in which the graves of the past are opened and the spirits of the dead summoned back, those who, as the saying goes, “grip the living by the throat”.
The present war did not give birth to Arab divisions. It has, however, offered an occasion for hidden resentments to step into view. Mutual disappointments abound, as do grave misreadings of crushing domestic constraints and expectations of stances others simply cannot adopt without imperilling their own internal security. There are, too, those who read certain policies as a conspiracy against their sovereignty and territorial integrity.
All this was known and widely discussed long before the war. It had already revealed itself in arenas such as Libya, Yemen, and Sudan, where Arab states found themselves scattered across opposing trenches, even as many were compelled to arm those they regarded as allies while preserving relations with the allies of their enemies. All were drawn into an infernal circle of definitions: the enemy, the friend, the enemy’s enemy, the enemy’s friend, and the friend’s enemy, until each became at once the other’s ally and adversary.
Today, Gulf journalists and researchers are giving voice to their reproach towards Egypt, which, they say, has failed to support the Gulf states, now exposed to overt Iranian aggression by missile and drone, in the manner required. Gulf voices have grown louder in calling on Cairo to send forces to help defend the assaulted states and to transfer part of Egypt’s air defence capacity to the Gulf in order to repel Iranian attacks. Some media and journalistic figures have gone further still, faulting Egypt for the tenor of its war coverage and for the emergence of a measure of popular sympathy for Iran on the grounds that it is fighting Israel and devastating entire neighbourhoods in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and elsewhere.
Some in the Gulf contend that their states stood by Egypt’s economy and state institutions in their hardest hours, without mentioning the millions of Egyptian workers and employees who themselves help sustain Egypt’s faltering economy. In their view, all this formed part of a political investment from which certain Gulf states expected a return in the shape of firm positions and decisive measures once the Gulf came under attack.
