Passion for Palestinian Cause Had Faded, but Violence in Gaza Reignited It

[Uncle Joe]

The Israeli bombardment of Gaza, in retaliation for a deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel, brought a new outpouring of support in the Arab world for the Palestinian quest for a state.

Moroccans waved Palestinian flags and shouted slogans in the capital, Rabat, on Wednesday to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.Credit...Mosa'Ab Elshamy/Associated Press

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“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was relegated to the background, partly because of apathy and partly because of a feeling of helplessness that was pervasive in the Arab world,” said Lina Khatib, the director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London.

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Palestinians inspecting the damage on Thursday from an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza.Credit...Yousef Masoud for The New York Times

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The Palestinian predicament, however, remained dear to many people across the region who viewed it as a distillation of Arab suffering and humiliation and Israel as a prime example of the forces seeking to keep the Arabs down, with generous political and financial support from Western countries like the United States.

The region’s autocratic leaders have long allowed pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activism as a release valve for people to vent frustrations that extend to their own failures to develop just, thriving societies.

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“People across the Arab world see in the continuation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict a continuation of the victimization of the Arab region at large by Israel and its Western allies,” Ms. Khatib said. “And even though some Arab countries took steps toward bilateral normalization with Israel, this did not reflect the wide popular sentiment in those countries.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/20/world/middleeast/palestinian-protests-gaza-egypt-morocco.html