The Israeli attack carried out two days ago against Qatar, targeting such Hamas officials present in Doha, such as Aviv, set fire to the powder in the Middle East. It has been learned recently that it was Mossad that has dissuaded Netanyahu, in its all -round attacks in the region, to stick to air and non -terrestrial strikes in Doha.
Rarely an assault has aroused such an immediate reaction: the Arab countries will hold on Monday September 15 an extraordinary summit in Doha, in an attempt to exist, but above all to give themselves the means to make sufficient pressure to finally reach a war which has lasted for almost two years and has made tens of thousands of deaths. It is an unprecedented opportunity to gauge the capacity of the Arab world to find a form of unity, even though the Israeli-Palestinian question has long been-and continues to be-a factor of division and helplessness.
The memory of a unit not found
For decades, the Arabic heights have followed one another, without ever managing to transform discourse into actions. The Arab League, founded in 1945 to embody the unity of the Arab world, has gradually lost its credibility, and its meetings are barely announced in the international media. His meetings, whether they stand in Cairo, Riyadh or Algiers, most often end with symbolic declarations, without sanctions, without calendar, without concrete commitments. Gaza, yet a recurrent theater of tragedies, failed to reach a solid consensus: neither during the operation “Draft lead” in 2008, nor during the massive bombing of 2014, nor even after the waves of successive violence of the last two years. The “Ummah”, this community of believers, remains well not found.
The helplessness of the Arab League is explained by national rivalries, by the interference of external powers, but also by the inability of the Arab states to overcome their internal fractures since the Arab Spring. The weakening of Iran, a non -Arab country, has repeated the coat of arms of Riyadh and put in the saddle Mohammed ben Salmane as a leader of an entire region, in addition to being a guardian of the two major holy places of Islam. Each capital continues its own agenda, often contradictory with that of its neighbors. The initial Arab solidarity project has been effoching, to the point of leaving the field free to Israel to advance its pawns, both diplomatically and military.
Today, many Gulf countries are frightened by the weight of Israel, further reinforced by the return of Donald Trump to the White House. And Qatar, a historic ally of Washington, and mediator between Hamas and Israel for almost two years, feels betrayed after the Israeli attack, which the United States has seen good not to prevent-or, at the very least, to “forget” to warn Doha upstream.
The fracture of the Abraham agreements
The top of Doha highlighted a fracture line in light between two visions of the Arab world around the Hebrew state. On the one hand, the countries that have signed the Abraham agreements – the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020 – have chosen normalization with Israel for strategic and economic reasons. For these states, the alliance with Tel Aviv constitutes a lever for regional influence, privileged access to advanced technologies and a security guarantee against Iran. On the other hand, states that refuse any recognition remain as long as the Palestinian question has not found a fair and lasting solution: Saudi Arabia in mind, and Qatar.
This division weakens any attempt at collective action. The signatories of the agreements are found in a clerk: they must reconcile their rapprochement with Israel with the Arab solidarity displayed vis-à-vis the Palestinians. The Emirates have very little protested against Israeli policy in Gaza since 2023, until recently. However, they had threatened to freeze their normalization if Israel continued colonization in the West Bank, but it is clear that, despite the continuation and acceleration of this colonization by successive Israeli governments, no rupture was born. The contradiction is obvious and nourishes the distrust of Arab public opinion, largely favorable to the Palestinian cause.
Between illusions and realities: what can the top of Doha produce?
The possible scenarios of this summit are honestly limited, but it will have the merit of existing from Qatar. The most radical – a withdrawal from the Emirates or Bahrain of the Abraham agreements – appears very illusory. For the past five years, the economic, diplomatic and security interests which now have linked these countries to Israel have been too important to be sacrificed. The other possibility would be a strong, coordinated declaration, calling Israel to stop its offensives and to end colonization. But what weight? Here again, the absence of sanction mechanisms or influence levers limits the scope of this option. However, she will be able to legitimize the position of Qatar again, who continues to want to play the mediator between the members of Hamas and the Hebrew State, to continue to shine from this experience and this international role which he claims.
The Saudi track remains. Saudi Arabia, a pivot of the Arab world, plays a balancingist card. Riyadh has not yet signed an official standardization with Israel, but inexorably gets closer to it, in exchange for strategic advantages such as civil nuclear, with the approval of the United States and Israel. The kingdom could use this summit to land as a leader in a “responsible” Arab position, seeking to spare the Palestinian cause without compromising its long -term interests. Can it hold?
Since the 2017 Gulf Crisis, which had completely isolated Qatar, accusing it of multiple ills, the Gulf countries have been in need of unity, despite reconciliation. The Doha summit illustrates both the fragility and the persistence of the Arab solidarity reflex. Internal divisions, contradictory ambitions and national calculations make an unified and durable response improbable. However, faced with the Israeli aggression against Qatar, the Arab countries are common front – at least for a moment. Behind Doha, they try to recall their collective existence and their attachment to a Palestinian cause which remains, despite everything, the most solid cement of their shared political identity.
*Sébastien Boussois Is a doctor of political science, researcher Arab and geopolitical world, teacher in international relations at the IHECS (Brussels), partner of the CNAM Paris (Defense Security Team), at the Institute of Applied Geopolitics Studies (IEGA Paris), the Nordic Center for Conflict Transformation (NCCT Stockholm) and at the Geostrategic Observatory in Geneva (Switzerland).
