Arab leaders deliver tough talk action on Israel during Qatar summit.
Attendees of the emergency Arab-Islamic leaders' summit to discuss the Israeli attack on Hamas on Qatari territory, pose for a family photo, in Doha, Qatar September 15.
Following Israel's attack last week on a meeting of Hamas leaders in the city, the leaders of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation gathered in Doha to show their support for Qatar. They issued a lengthy communiqué at the summit's conclusion, condemning Israel and reiterating their support for 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.
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.
However, as Israel intensifies its push into Gaza City, as the death toll in Gaza reaches almost 65,000 (most of whom are women and children), and as a UN commission concludes that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, many of the nations that paid a high price in 1973 for US support for Israel remain largely passive.
Rami Khouri, a seasoned analyst at the American University of Beirut, explains, "Arab governments in the past century have not achieved full sovereignty." “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.
The rulers who met on Monday in Doha are best described as supplicants who rely on the whims of an erratic US president to intervene on behalf of Israel's leader. “We… expect our strategic partners in the United States to use their influence on Israel 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.
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