Bulletin N°58 juin 2025 A reversal that we can measure today
For a long time, the Palestinian cause was not simply a geopolitical issue in the Arab and Berber world; it was an essential, even existential, cause, a shared red line between governments, peoples, workers, and the intellectual petty bourgeoisie.
It symbolized much more than a people's struggle for their land: it embodied the humiliation suffered since the end of the Ottoman Empire, the wounds of colonialism, the division of the Arab world decided and organized by Western imperialists, and the shattered dream of Arab unity. But this centrality has crumbled. Today, in several Arab countries, Palestine is no longer perceived as a common cause. It has become "the Palestinian problem," even a source of discomfort or unease for certain regimes... and part of their populations.
The current state of this political and cultural upheaval, which is not new, can be measured by a recent event: the March to Rafah. Contrary to what was announced here and there, there was no demonstration by the Egyptian workers and people to help the march take place. Almost no one stood up against the police repression in Cairo and its surroundings against the marchers who had arrived by plane. Nor did anyone attempt to open the border to allow the passage of the numerous vehicles from Algeria and Tunisia, which were already well blocked in the part of Libya controlled by the ultra-reactionary puppet Haftar, a servant of the Western imperialists.
Did the Algerian and Tunisian leaders pick up the phone and call Field Marshal Sisi and ask him to allow their compatriots to pass? We don't know, but if they did, it was all very discreet and, in any case, without any results. And yet, the Algerian and Tunisian leaders are very clearly committed to solidarity with Palestine; they have no diplomatic relations with the Zionist entity.
The situation from the 1960s to the 1990s: a slow but certain evolution
In the 1960s and 1980s, the Arab streets were buzzing with support for Palestine. The PLO had a strong presence, and Yasser Arafat was welcomed with honors in Algiers, Damascus, Tunis, and Cairo. Even when states diverged over strategies (military, diplomatic, revolutionary), Palestine remained a symbolic point of convergence.
However, this is not to exaggerate its scope. While many Arab peoples and those of the Maghreb had sympathy for the Palestinian cause, this was not without calculations concerning certain leaders, even Arab nationalists. The divergences between parties or factions clearly show that not everyone at the head of the Arab states was equally penetrated by the fundamental side of the Palestinian question. One can even think that the great pan-Arab cause, which was the banner of Arab nationalist governments from Yemen to Iraq, via Syria and Egypt, led to much disillusionment, favoring national withdrawal in the face of the dream of a single Arab state. Ultimately, it actually did more harm than good for the liberation of Palestine.
The defeat of 1967 (Six-Day War) helped to prepare both the end of pan-Arabism initially linked to non-Marxist "Arab socialism", replaced by a facade of solidarity between all Arab states, including reactionaries and those sold out to US imperialism, and in the longer term, that of solidarity with Palestine.
The majority of Baathist leaders have always believed that solidarity between Arab states was more important than support for Palestine, and the war against the Zionist entity was a global war of the Arab countries, more than Palestinian national liberation. The only exception was the leaders of the Syrian Baath between 1966 and 1970, notably Salah Jedid, close to the Marxists, who undertook a rapprochement with the USSR, a policy of socialization and agrarian reform. And, after the Six-Day War , he supported the Palestinian Resistance. But, in 1970 during the repression led by the Jordanian army against the PLO , the famous Black September, Jedid sent military aid to the fedayeen. The Baath Congress gave him its support against the Minister of Defense, Hafez El Assad, who refused air support. The day after the congress closed, on November 13, 1970, Assad used his support in the army to orchestrate a coup d'état, seizing key points in Damascus and arresting Salah Jedid and President Noureddine Atassi.
The Iraqi Baathists, although adversaries and then sworn enemies of those in Syria, particularly the Assads, have always held the same position regarding the fight against the Zionist entity. Witness the positions of the ALF (Arab Liberation Front), a Palestinian organization founded by Baathists linked to the Iraqi movement and even to the Iraqi state. In accordance with the Baath's pan-Arab ideology , the movement opposed the "Palestinization" of the conflict. Until the 1990s, the ALF believed that the Zionist entity was not at war with Palestine alone, but with the Arab world led by Iraq.
From then on, future wars will be conceived solely as wars to reconquer lost territories, of an alliance between Arab countries, whatever their regime, including the monarchies of Jordan and the Gulf.
Nasser's Egypt, while also committed to pan-Arabism, had a different logic. Its solidarity did not extend to the reactionary monarchies supported by the US and the British. On the contrary, the Egyptians had supported the Arab nationalists of North Yemen who, after overthrowing the king, were attacked by the Saudi army supporting the deposed monarch between 1962 and 1967. The defeat in the Six-Day War undermined the Egyptian leader, and Egypt's support for the liberation of Palestine was not to survive him.
The 1973 Yom Kippur War was clearly a war to reclaim lost territories. The Palestinian Fedayeen were driven out of Jordan in 1970. Massively fleeing to Lebanon or Syria, they participated in the fight alongside the Syrian army, but the ceasefire brought them nothing more. UN Resolution 338 confirmed Resolution 242, which demanded the evacuation of the occupied territories, but as usual, the Zionist entity ignored it.
After 1973, Sadat definitively broke with the USSR and negotiated a mutual recognition agreement with the Zionists, a treaty signed on March 26, 1979: this was the beginning of normalization.
The last real supporters of the Palestinians in the Middle East in the following years were the militants of the Lebanese left. The forced departure of the Fedayeen in 1982, after the invasion of Lebanon by the Zionist entity, marked the end of a cycle. The Palestinians of the PLO were welcomed in Tunisia and from then on could only count on themselves and the solidarity of certain armed militias.
Oslo, the “Arab Spring” and normalization in progress
The Oslo Accords are a major achievement for the Zionist entity: all PLO organizations, including the Marxists, renounce armed struggle against the mess of a Bantustan subservient to the Zionists. They create immense relief in most Arab chancelleries, freed, they believe, from the Palestinian question.
This was clear at the time of the second intifada (2000 to 2005). Although popular, it demonstrated the exhaustion of effective Arab support. Palestinian youth at the time definitively understood that they could no longer count on anyone but themselves and that they had to put an end to their illusions about the solidarity of the Arab world.
Presented as a popular uprising in official historiography, the "Arab Spring" of 2010 is a much more complex affair. While real discontent arose against the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, it was quickly seized upon by the Muslim Brotherhood, a fascist organization close to the armed militias of Al Qaeda and then ISIS, used as an ally, or even as a supporting force, by the US imperialists who wanted to put an end to the rotting Arab nationalist regimes, after having overthrown that of Iraq and dismembered the country in 2003.
The destruction of Gaddafi's Libyan Jamahiriya by imperialists supporting Islamist fascist mercenaries, and then that of Baathist Syria, organized since 2010 by Obama, are the concrete results of this spring. After the dismemberment of Iraq, followed those of Libya and now, Syria.
But the intervention of the Muslim Brotherhood and all their cousins, the Wahhabis and Takfirists, at the forefront also had the effect of sweeping the Palestinian issue under the carpet and facilitating normalization. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and others, to varying degrees, have opened embassies, signed economic agreements, and launched joint projects. The ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood do not prioritize the national question, much less the question of pan-Arabism, but rather theocratic issues. The Palestinian question does not exist for them. This is also why Hamas, in Gaza since 2010 and globally in 2020 after the normalization agreement with Morocco, led by a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, broke with them.
For all current leaders of the Arab countries of the Near and Middle East, Palestine is no longer "the mother of all causes," if indeed it ever was. It is one cause among others, often exploited, sometimes marginalized. Normalization is becoming an accepted break... but not a sustainable one. All this under the banner of "political realism," technological cooperation, and sometimes even the fight against a common enemy: Iran.
Guilt-free normalization before October 7
This normalization has not always been accepted or digested everywhere at the popular level. It has caused strong moral tension among some intellectuals in these countries. They found themselves reflexively defending Palestine, while justifying or excusing the position of their state, which cooperates with Israel, hence a dissonance, a discomfort, a contradiction that they had to manage. This is where the normalizer complex was born. This complex is the need to feel on the right side of history, while being linked to a state that has turned its back on a major moral cause. To reduce this contradiction, several mechanisms have been used.
First, guilt shifting was used. Instead of pointing to Israel as the oppressor, some shifted responsibility to other actors, particularly Iran and Shiite movements. Hezbollah became more dangerous than the IDF. The Houthis were condemned more than Netanyahu. There was more talk of the previously hypothetical Iranian missiles than of the very real Israeli bombs. This rhetoric helped protect one's own side: " My country may cooperate with Israel, but it is to protect itself from a greater danger. "
Then, defensive relativism was also common. Many also adopted a discourse like: " But others do the same. " They accused Algeria, Turkey, Qatar, or even the Palestinians themselves of also having economic or discreet ties with Israel. Even if these accusations were often true, their function was clear: to relativize one's own position so as not to feel alone in betraying it.
Finally, recourse to conditional criticism intervened if the above was no longer possible: " Yes to Palestine, but not with Hamas. "; " Yes to the Palestinians, but they are divided. "; " They sold out their cause to Iran. " These phrases became commonplace. They allowed people to continue calling themselves "pro-Palestinian," while denying or minimizing the real commitment that required publicly denouncing normalization or supporting a resistance designated as an enemy by the state.
October 7: The dust comes off the carpet!
And now, with its attack on October 7, 2023, the Palestinian armed resistance has brought the Palestinian question back to the forefront, brutally interrupting the quiet slumber of normalization.
The October 7 attack and the subsequent genocide revealed the structural dissonance, now firmly entrenched among most leaders and thinkers of the Arab peoples of the Middle East. After years of silent normalization, sheltered from the spotlight, it is emerging from the hole, not as a malaise, but as an acceptable posture, as political maturity, as a step toward peace, as a rejection of ideology. In this new normal, the Palestinian cause becomes a burden, an embarrassment, an old memory that is evoked with distance.
But this assumed dissonance has been exposed for months and months. And the peoples of the Arab countries and the Maghreb are far from all joining in the scheme. The immense demonstrations of solidarity in Morocco, those in Mauritania, Tunisia, and even Jordan, the flags in stadiums in Algeria are all wedges driven into the sacred union with the Zionist colonizing state. The solidarity of progressive militias and Marxist organizations in Lebanon and Iraq, and that of the people and state of Yemen are more alive than ever.
Even though the leaders and the majority of the intelligentsia of the Arab states of the Middle East have definitively given up on the Palestinian cause, among these peoples, the die is cast; the anti-colonialist fiber, the solidarity with the oppressed and massacred Palestinian brothers and sisters, endures. The flame is not about to be extinguished.