They gathered in Doha – the leaders of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation – to show support for Qatar in the wake of Israel’s strike last week on a meeting of Hamas leaders in the city.
When the summit ended, they issued a wordy communique condemning Israel and reaffirming solidarity with Qatar. Missing in the communique, however, was any concrete action.
It was an exercise in futility, underscoring how great wealth has not translated into real power. That despite the huge strides made by countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, they are either unable (or unwilling) to do anything to pressure Israel, and its principle backer, the United States, to end the war in Gaza.
How much has changed.
Fifty-two years ago, in October 1973, the oil ministers from the countries that made up the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) met in Kuwait while war raged between Israel, Syria and Egypt and the world teetered on the brink of a nuclear showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union.
In Kuwait, OAPEC ministers, led by Saudi Arabia, decided to cut oil production and impose export restrictions to the United States and others supporting Israel and its war effort. This was the beginning of the Arab oil embargo that helped push Western economies into recession.
The war, which began October 6, 1973 with a coordinated attack by Egypt and Syria on Israeli troops occupying the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and the Syrian Golan Heights, ended after 19 days. OAPEC’s oil weapon played a part in accelerating moves toward a ceasefire.
Yet today, as Israel intensifies its push into Gaza City, as the death toll in Gaza reaches almost 65,000 ( with the majority of casualties being women and children), as a UN commission determines Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, many of the same countries that in 1973 exacted a high price for US support for Israel, have remained largely passive.
“Arab governments in the past century have not achieved full sovereignty,” explains Rami Khouri, a veteran analyst at the American University of Beirut. “They depend on foreign states for their wellbeing, protection, or survival.”
And ironically, even that dependence hasn’t spared them. In 2022, the US designated Qatar as a Major Non-NATO Ally, and Qatar hosts the largest US air base in the Middle East.
At best, the rulers who met in Doha on Monday act as supplicants, relying on the whims of a unpredictable US president to intercede with Israel’s leader. “We…expect our strategic partners in the United States to use their influence on Israel in to for it to stop this behavior,” Dubai’s state-run Al Bayan newspaper cited Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary General Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi as saying. The US “has leverage and influence on Israel, and it’s about time this leverage and influence be used.”
Yet such hopes seem to be grounded more in unrealistic expectations than reality. In early August, President Trump quipped “it’s up to Israel” what it does in Gaza.
And so, early Tuesday Israeli forces said they began ground operations in Gaza City. The Doha summit communique didn’t stop them.