Gaza and the winds of change
The writer is a geopolitical analyst. She also writes at globaltab.net and tweets @AneelaShahzad
Tiny Bahrain is the only Gulf state that agreed to be part of US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian against Yemen. But Bahrain doesn’t have a navy, just a few small combat vessels for its own maritime defence! Nevertheless, the US needed it as an Arab cover after the rest of Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, had rejected this alliance.
It must be remembered that most small Gulf states on the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula that were originally part of Arabia had been carved into existence by Britain’s colonialist interventions. Britain needed control on these major ports, so even after Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE, all got their independence from Britain in the 1970s, each hosts US naval and air facilities to this day. Bahrain is the regional headquarter for the US Fifth Fleet that has an aircraft carrier, several submarines, naval destroyers, dozens of fighter jets and thousands of American soldiers.
The Sheikhdoms have had a symbiotic relationship with the West, where one ensured their independence from post-Ottoman Arabia and the other facilitated Western economic and political dominance in the region. And it was this long-term relation that pushed the UAE and Bahrain towards signing the Abraham Accords. But has this symbiosis eventually eroded?
This erosion began when the Saudis were disillusioned with the US when they withdrew from the Syrian War. The US had played the Arabs into this war on the pretext of the deepening Shia-Sunni divide with Iran and its allies. But since then, the Saudis have trodden an inverse route, that of reconciliation with the Shia world. Eventually in March 2023, under Chinese patronage, Saudi Arabia and Iran restored ties. Since then, China and Russia are sparing no day in trying to align the Middle East away from the West and towards the east. China has made investment deals worth $10 billion with the Saudis. Already trade between the two countries was worth over $106 billion in 2022, a 30% rise from the previous year, while the US-Saudi trade was $55 billion in the same year. Chinese companies are opting for bids in MBS’ Vision2030 and in the kingdom’s under-construction smart city NEOM.
Since the Gaza War this alignment has been even more obvious. President Xi Jinping’s calls for ceasefire on Gaza and for an ‘independent, fully sovereign state of Palestine’; and the same solidarity with Palestine from Putin has been constant. And the Arabs have flatly rejected the US-Israeli narrative over Hamas and the Palestinian struggle.
Last month Putin made a lightening tour to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Trade between Russia and the UAE has increased by 63% since the sanctions were put on Russia related to the Ukraine War. The UAE is Russia’s largest trading partner in the GCC, accounting for 55% of its total trade with the region. Russia, being the de facto leader of OPEC+, is relying on the UAE for trading and exporting Russian oil. Russia, being a founding member of BRICS, also met the UAE on the pretext of BRICS expansion. This means that although the UAE created a land bridge through Saudi and Jordanian territories to Israel for goods transport from East Asia when others had severed relations with Israel — at the same time the UAE has been strengthening ties with the anti-US, anti-Israel axis.
So, Saudi-Russia relations as in OPEC and OPEC+ partnership; Russia-UAE relations as in trade and investments; China’s extensive BRI investments and constructions in the MENA region; Russia and China’s deep and long-running ties with Iran; and the BRICS expansion into Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Ethiopia and Egypt in January this year — all point to the erosion of Western presence and influence in the MENA region.
Rather, it is pointing to a new multinational grouping that would actually work for the security and prosperity of the disenfranchised world compared to what the toothless UN can and has done. BRICS has created its own version of the SWIFT payments system and is considering creation of an alternative currency. For this reason, many states are buying massive amounts of gold so they will be able to compete with the new standard.
As the winds of change fill the geopolitical atmosphere, one BRICS nation, South Africa, that has traditionally been a Western ally, has suddenly summoned the ICJ accusing Israel of ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza. It seems like a complex interaction between BRICS and the Iran-led Axis of Resistance for Gaza has been brewing. It seems like while the US-Israel axis is losing allies one by one (like Italy, Spain and France refused to participate in Operation Prosperity Guardian), the Axis of Resistance has been gathering friends from the expanding the BRICS club.
The Axis of Resistance, comprising Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansarullah and several pro-Iranian militias active in Iraq and Syria, has relentlessly targeted Israel, Israel-bound trade in the Red Sea and US bases in Iraq and Syria, and is constantly vowing to keep up their onslaught.
So, on the one hand, Netanyahu is seeking an emigration-or-annihilation plan, a Final Solution comprising Nakba and genocide. And on the other, the Axis is gaining moral imperative that is increasingly being recognised by the world community; it is engaging and gathering the Ummah upon the need for a Final Solution that would limit Israel into ethical conduct and its 1967 boundaries. News is that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has offered $10 billion to Egypt and $5 billion to Jordan for accepting Gazan refugees, an offer they have apparently declined.
What needs to be seen is: are the Middle East and North Africa ready to use their economic, military and political clout to eliminate or curtail the Israeli plague from its body, like they have been trying since the 1st Arab-Israeli War on May 14, 1948? Or will they still want to keep clinging to a morally deprecate, politically failing and financially collapsing West? Will civilisational Islam still keep bearing with the perverse, racist, ethnocentric Zionist Project of the Judaic civilisation?
Has the blood of Gaza not dropped upon the hearts of the Ummah?
Has the time not come?
Published in The Express Tribune, January 19th, 2024.
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