Why Arabs Are Fed up With the Palestinians

by Khaled Abu Toameh
July 12, 2022 at 1:00 pm

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18694/arabs-fed-up-with-palestinians

Translations of this item:

German

The Palestinians can only blame themselves for antagonizing their Arab brothers and consequently losing the Arab money. The Palestinians have been spitting in the face of the Arab countries, while at the same time expecting these countries to continue funding them.
The Arabs are clearly not as naïve as the Americans and Europeans, who are continuing to pour millions of dollars annually on the Palestinians without conditions and without demanding accountability.
Had the Palestinians welcomed the many peace accords between Israel and the Arab states instead of condemning them and bad-mouthing the Arab leaders, they would have been in a much better situation today. They would have continued to receive financial aid from the Arabs and been able to use this money to build a better future for their children
The Arab countries have more urgent issues to deal with than the corrupt, thankless Palestinian leaders do. You can start with the welfare of their own people. The Palestinian leadership, by contrast, is happy to fail its people by indoctrinating generation after generation with bloodlust for Jews. When Palestinian society finds itself left in the global dust of progress, it can thank its leaders for bringing them to that sorry pass.

The Arabs are clearly not as naïve as the Americans and Europeans, who are continuing to pour millions of dollars annually on the Palestinians without conditions and without demanding accountability. Pictured: Palestinians burn a US flag in Bethlehem, on January 29, 2020. (Photo by Musa Al Shaer/AFP via Getty Images)

The Palestinians are disappointed: their Arab brothers have stopped providing them with financial aid. The truth is that most of the Arab countries long ago turned their backs on the Palestinians. They can only blame themselves for ruining their relations with the rest of the Arab world.

It is ironic that while the European Union recently announced its decision to resume unconditional financial aid to the Palestinians, the Arab countries continue to completely ignore the Palestinians. It is also ironic that while the Biden administration continues to talk about providing financial aid to the Palestinians, the Arab countries do not seem to care at all about their Palestinian brothers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians receive a lot of lip service from the Arabs, but see hardly any money being channeled to their coffers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Consequently, for the past few decades the Palestinians have become almost entirely dependent on American and European taxpayer money.

Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh recently revealed that, with the exception of Algeria, the Arab countries have stopped sending financial aid to the treasury of the PA.

Shtayyeh refrained from offering any reason as to why the Arabs had decided to cut off the funding to the Palestinians.

Shtayyeh and the PA have condemned the Arab countries that signed normalization agreements with Israel during the Trump administration era. Some of these countries, especially the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, used to help the Palestinians in many fields, including financial aid and providing jobs to tens of thousands of laborers.

The Palestinian leadership has accused the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan of "betraying" the Palestinian people, Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) by agreeing to make peace with Israel.

It is these serious allegations that have alienated these countries and other Arabs, who are accusing the Palestinians of being ungrateful and biting the hand that feeds them.

Earlier this year, prominent Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Al-Jarallah explained why he and many others are fed up with the Palestinians. Reminding the Palestinians of what the Gulf states have done for them over the years, Al-Jarallah wrote:

"We are the only ones who rescued them [Palestinians] in the year 1970 when they launched their war on Jordan. The late Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah evacuated their leader Yasser Arafat from Amman. The Arabian gulf states, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, boycotted oil export to the western countries during the 1973 [Israel-Arab] war. Furthermore, Riyadh presented two initiatives to solve the conflict. Despite their [Palestinians'] support of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and their participation in acts of intimidation, abuse and killing against Kuwaiti citizens, the Gulf states continue to support the Palestinians. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg of what the Gulf states and their people offered to the Palestinians, who were and still are ungrateful."

The Arabs are apparently not only fed up with the Palestinian leadership, but also with international organizations and agencies that help the Palestinians. Arab financial aid to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has dropped by 90% in the past few years, according to the agency's spokesperson Adnan Abu Hasna.

In another sign of Arab disregard for the Palestinians, the Palestinian Islamic-Christian Committee for the Support of Jerusalem and the Holy Sites warned of the repercussions of drying up the Arab financial support provided to the city.

The committee said that this year witnessed a "dangerous and unprecedented decline" in the level of financial support provided by a number of Arab countries to Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem.

The committee added that a number of governmental and civil bodies that were formed in some Arab countries to provide direct support to dozens of Palestinian institutions were suspended for reasons that were not disclosed.

"Cutting off this Arab aid caused the disruption of vital services that were provided to Jerusalemites, especially in the health and educational fields," the committee added. "Dozens of cultural, social and sports institutions are suffering from a stifling financial situation that threatens to close them and lay off their employees."

The Palestinians can only blame themselves for antagonizing their Arab brothers and consequently losing the Arab money. The Palestinians have been spitting in the face of the Arab countries, while at the same time expecting these countries to continue funding them.

Had the Palestinians welcomed the many peace accords between Israel and the Arab states instead of condemning them and bad-mouthing the Arab leaders, they would have been in a much better situation today. They would have continued to receive financial aid from the Arabs and been able to use this money to build a better future for their children.

The Palestinian leadership, however, chose to spit in the well it has drawn from for many years, and now it is drinking the bitter waters of its decisions.

The Arab countries have more urgent issues to deal with than the corrupt, thankless Palestinian leaders do. You can start with the welfare of their own people. The Palestinian leadership, by contrast, is happy to fail its people by indoctrinating generation after generation with bloodlust for Jews. When Palestinian society finds itself left in the global dust of progress, it can thank its leaders for bringing them to that sorry pass.

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

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Related Topics: Palestinian Authority

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Comment on this item

12 Reader Comments

Zev Kowitz • Jul 20, 2022 at 22:41

The Arabs as a whole have only been concerned with the Palestinians as an expedient political pawn, at best, perhaps, a tax write off when they figured financial support was a good move politically in capturing or retaining citizens' hearts and minds. See Fawaz Turki's "The Disinherited" to see what a Palestinian reporter lamented as far as who was most to blame for his people's plight (besides themselves). Hint: it's not the Israelis, despite Turki's personal anti-Semitism. It is pathetic such a people, characterized by hatred, ingratitude, love of violence, lacking any semblance of culture or soul. More than corrupt, politically amoral, even beyond one who never loses an opportunity to lose an opportunity, consistent in maintaining a societal house of cards for the sole intention of destroying another people based on lies, misinformation, and generational stupidity. A two-state solution? They wouldn't know what to do with a windfall if it fell into their hands. It never changes. They never learn.

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Mordechai • Jul 17, 2022 at 14:03

Jews lived in the Land of Israel before the Arabs and before the Zionist movement was born.
Most Arabs in the Land of Israel are descendants of Arab immigrants in the new era.
The Zionist movement brought to the Land of Israel more Arabs than Jews.

Jews lived in the countries called nowadays "Iraq" and "Syria" before the Arabs!! Jews lived there from the Babylonian times until they were expelled in the 1950s.
Arabs lived in the Arabian Peninsula. The Babylonians were not Arabs.
Jews lived in Egypt before the Arabs! The ancient Egyptians were not Arabs. Even during later times, the Greek rule of Egypt and the Roman rule of Egypt, they were not Arabs. Jews lived there at the times of Greek rule and Roman rule.
And Jews lived in the Land of Israel before the Arabs and during all the Muslim occupation of the land.
The problem was that the Zionist movement was secular, and it ignored what they called the "Old Settlement" that was Jewish religious. Instead, the Zionist movement chose to emphasize the narrative of the Return to Zion, while the Arabs, who also were newcomers, created the false narrative that they were always there.
I would recommend reading Dr. Rivka Shpak Lissak about the history of the Arab immigration to the Land of Israel.

The Arabs were never the indigenous people - the Jews were.
It is time to end the (Arab) occupation and dismantle the (Arab) settlements.

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Ben

Mordechai • Jul 18, 2022 at 11:02

You are right on every point brother. It is mostly European anti-Israel and liberal idiots in the US that want to propagate the hatred of the Jews by funding and enabling these so called fictional "Palestinians" as a separate group of people.

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Michael Dar • Jul 14, 2022 at 05:50

Qatar keeps pumping money into Gaza!

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Peter Rotberg • Jul 13, 2022 at 04:48

And... again.
Aren't the Palestinians not Arabs themselves ???
Do they meet classic criteria for being classified as separate Nation in accordance with classic definition by Carnegy?
1. different language
2. different culture
3. different historic background
4. International recognition*
I wonder
Peter Rotberg

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Gary Katz • Jul 12, 2022 at 16:38

Good points, although there's another side of the coin: Most Arab countries treated so-called Palestinians as pawns, to harm Israel, for decades. The continuous "refugee camps" demonstrate that aptly, as well as Arab countries' denying various rights to their Palestinian residents. So the resentment flows both ways, I'm sure. Actually, if the Arab countries hadn't enabled Pal intransigence all these years, maybe the conflict would've ended by now.

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Stephen Becket • Jul 12, 2022 at 15:37

Having worked in the Middle East on and off over the last 45 years I can say that the ordinary Arab has despised the Palestinians for a long time. They look down on them as being the lowest of the Arabs.
They despise them for not solving their own problems and for continually having their hand out for largesse. Now Arab governments no longer feel it necessary to maintain the support charade - Only in the west do we fear being honest and telling the Palestinians to sort themselves out. Only in the west do we feel comfortable with self flagellation rather than confronting external issues honestly. As long as we do that the PA will maintain their corrupt governance and the ordinary people will continue to suffer.
When Palestine can contribute to the Arab world, rather than bleed it, then they will be accepted as equals amongst the Arabs.

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Rob Porter

Stephen Becket • Jul 12, 2022 at 17:19

Stephen, when people like those of the West naively embrace idiotic notions of guilt (for their societies being successful) and gullibly fall for idiotic notions of 'victimhood' (toward people who through their own choices and corruption have failed), they become too dimwitted to take practical measures, in this case against the Palestinians. When whites ruled South Africa it received and required no foreign aid, but now, 28 years after the end of apartheid, under corrupt and incompetent rule South Africa requests and receives foreign aid from the West. You'd think that at some point these Western imbeciles would ask themselves:'What the devil are we doing?' At what point, if ever, will Westerners ask for Palestinian accountability for their utter failure.

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Stephen Becket

Rob Porter • Jul 13, 2022 at 16:57

Rob, I couldn't agree more!
I have travelled and worked in different parts of the world for most of my long life. I have seen things with my own eyes and spoken with locals on the ground. I believe this gives me a unique perspective.
I suggest the west is in the position of victim due to its own gullibility and naivety and that many are taking advantage of our stupidity - and laughing all the way to the bank. It is time for Western Colonial Cringe (and American Slavery Cringe) to end. If we want a democratic world we have to allow every nation to stand on its own feet, let them solve their problems. We can set a proper example of how to do it rather than my being international Nannies!
This is a subject I could write a book about!

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Terry Taylor • Jul 12, 2022 at 11:58

Maybe because the Arabs have changed? They don't need the Palestinian cause anymore? A Tunisian colleague and good friend about 15 years ago in Germany told me that Arab leaders needed (1) soccer and (2) the "Palestinian" "cause" to divert the attention of their people from how their own leadership was destroying their lives. They will always need soccer, but maybe no longer need to hate the Israelis? Because maybe they love they own children enough now? (Golda Meir)

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Tom Hellinger

Terry Taylor • Jul 13, 2022 at 09:39

The cause of this great change was the impending threat of a nuclear armed Iran and their proxy armies that are now attacking the Arab world on multiple fronts. The flame of their religious war on the only non-Muslim nation in their midst is almost extinguished. The Jewish state's military power with nuclear force, is now looked upon as their destined saviour.

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cammo99 • Jul 12, 2022 at 11:17

The PA and even more overtly Hamas are pro-Iran and Muslim Brotherhood hard core Islamists. Though you would not be allowed to think so in some democracies.

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