Statehood? Not So Fast. The Gulf’s Real Attitude to Palestine

Part 2 of the ‘Quiet Abandonment’ series on the Arab world’s retreat from the Palestinian cause. This time, it’s about what Gulf leaders are building and what they’ve quietly ruled out.

Saudi Arabia sat with France at the moderator's table of a three-day UN conference pushing for recognition of a Palestinian state as part of ending the Hamas-Israel war. However, the European Council on Foreign Relations reports that, together with the UAE, Saudi Arabia has "strictly controlled protests and displays of Palestinian symbols, from flags to keffiyehs" in the streets of the nation. Moreover, "despite strong rhetorical support for the Palestinian cause, no Gulf state seems ready to put at risks their national interests to pressure the warring sides into a ceasefire."

In Part 1 of this series, I argued that the Gulf states have moved on from the "two-state-solution" still being promoted by Western diplomats. How does Saudi Arabia's participation in the UN conference make sense when I argued that their real priority is stability, quiet borders, and managed populations as opposed to heroic liberation and an independent nation.

What do the Gulf states want?

They want a Palestinian portfolio that stops exploding, does not empower Islamist rivals, does not endanger ties with Israel, and allows them to maintain legitimacy at home while expanding influence abroad.

In other words, they want a solution that does not look like statehood. Even if they make public proclamations to the contrary.

What They Appear Willing to Accept

Limited Autonomy Without Sovereignty

Emphasizing their preference for technocratic, non-ideological governance, the Gulf states, along with the USA, urged Abbas to appoint a reform-minded government. He complied, to a degree.

Recent Gulf positions have consistently emphasized the need for a reformed PA, or even no PA, with what UAE analysts call "efficient administration" aligned with regional economic interests.

The Gulf regimes may be open to localized governance for Palestinians—technocratic councils, municipal authorities, and traditional leaders—so long as real power remains with Israel. This would resemble the current Area A arrangement, devised as part of the Oslo Accords, which already functions as a model of limited autonomy under overarching Israeli control. Palestinians administer local services, such as garbage collection, health services, and education, but not borders or airspace.

This will be discussed more thoroughly in a later article in this series.

Economic Growth over Political Rights

Gulf willingness to fund Palestinian development is well-documented, but with specific conditions. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have pledged $15 billion for reconstruction of Gaza conditional on technocratic PA governance (Al Arabiya, January 2024)*.

The Gulf approach appears to prioritize investment zones, employment programs, and infrastructure projects that could pacify populations without raising nationalist expectations. Based on their domestic development models, Gulf states likely view economic prosperity as a viable alternative to political independence, a framework where prosperity replaces sovereignty (Al Jazeera, Arabic 2023)*. In this sense, their thinking is not far from Trump’s plan for the economic development of the Palestinian territories.

Managed Population Movement

While no Gulf state will publicly endorse Palestinian emigration, their historical approach to regional population movements suggests tolerance for managed outflows. Gulf states have admitted Palestinian workers from Lebanon and Syria under temporary or humanitarian arrangements without granting citizenship (Al Jazeera, Arabic, 2023)*. There have been problems between the Palestinians and their Gulf hosts, such as when the former supported Saddam Hussein, but if quiet labour migration, education opportunities, or family reunification programs would help ease demographic pressure in the Palestinian Authority, Gulf regimes will perhaps view them as stabilizing rather than threatening. An example is Saudi Arabia’s educational programs in Jordan (Al Arabiya, February 2025)*.

This approach would echo the Gulf tradition of depoliticized population management that addresses volatility through opportunity, not repatriation. While unspoken, it opens the door to incremental resettlement without formal resettlement policy. It would represent a departure from the traditional Arab position that Palestinian refugees must remain in place until they can return to their pre-1967 territories.

Israeli Administration Under Certain Conditions

Gulf governments publicly oppose Israeli extension of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank), but their behavior suggests tolerance for continued Israeli administration as long as it is not formalized (Al Sharq Al Awsat, March 2025)*. The 2020 Abraham Accords were conditioned on Israel shelving plans for sovereignty, not reversing de facto control.

Gulf opposition appears more concerned with preserving the fiction of a peace process and avoiding public humiliation of Palestinians than with enforcing Palestinian sovereignty.

This distinction allows Gulf states to maintain ties with Israel while avoiding accusations of betrayal. As long as Israeli control remains unofficial and does not trigger mass displacement or religious crisis, they seem willing to accept it as the price of regional stability. It is certainly preferable over Hamas control or the collapse of the PA without a replacement on standby.

What They Cannot Accept

Mass Displacement

Mass expulsion of Palestinians would constitute a red line for any Arab government. The images of Palestinians driven from their homes at gunpoint would force the Gulf states into at least symbolic retaliation, regardless of their private preferences. Arab regimes still rely on domestic and regional legitimacy that cannot survive the appearance of collaboration in ethnic cleansing or a new “nakba.”

Religious Provocation

Any perceived desecration of Islamic holy sites would trigger reactions that no amount of quiet cooperation could contain. For Arab Muslim governments, restrictions on Muslim access to the Temple Mount during Ramadan, or actions seen as insulting to Islamic sites, would create domestic pressures that would override strategic calculations about Israeli partnerships.

Institutional Collapse Without Replacement

The Palestinian Authority is weak, corrupt, and increasingly irrelevant, but it remains diplomatically useful. It provides cover for Gulf states to maintain that a peace process exists. Complete institutional collapse without a substitute administrative body would eliminate this diplomatic fiction and potentially create the kind of chaos that invites Iranian exploitation of the situation.

Iranian Encroachment

Given their broader regional competition with Tehran, Gulf states fundamentally oppose any arrangement that creates power vacuums or ungoverned spaces. Any solution that could provide Iran with new footholds in Palestinian territories—whether through proxy militias, political movements, or failing institutions—runs counter to core Gulf security interests that drive their entire regional strategy.

The End of Palestinian Exceptionalism

What emerges from this analysis is a Gulf approach that treats Palestinians not as a nation seeking independence, but as a population requiring development assistance and administrative management. This represents the end of what might be called "Palestinian exceptionalism" in Arab politics.

For decades, the Palestinian cause enjoyed unique status in Arab political discourse. Palestinian political aspirations were treated as inherently legitimate regardless of their practical implications, and Palestinian self-determination was considered an unquestionable good that justified significant regional costs.

The Gulf states appear to have abandoned this framework. They now seem to treat Palestinian territories as they would any other underdeveloped region: a challenge requiring management rather than a cause requiring unconditional support. The language has shifted from "Palestinian national rights" to "Palestinian development needs," from "Palestinian independence" to "regional integration," from "historical justice" to "sustainable solutions."

What This Reveals

This is not betrayal but realpolitik. Gulf monarchies were never democracies answerable to Palestinian refugees in camps. They are autocracies managing complex balances between Islamic identity and modernization, between anti-Israeli rhetoric and pro-Israeli partnerships, between domestic stability and regional ambition.

A Palestinian state would serve limited strategic purpose for them. It would add another potentially unstable actor to an already volatile region. It might empower militant factions and jeopardize the normalization processes they are building with Israel and the broader international community.

Instead, they appear to prefer a managed gray zone: neither war nor peace, neither state nor statelessness. Just enough development to prevent collapse, just enough autonomy to maintain the diplomatic fiction, and just enough distance to avoid direct responsibility.

This Gulf approach reflects a broader regional trend toward post-nationalist governance that prioritizes prosperity over sovereignty and stability over self-determination. Palestinian territories will either adapt to this framework or find themselves increasingly isolated from the regional development and integration that Gulf states are pursuing.

Western policymakers who continue to promote Palestinian statehood as the solution to regional instability may not simply be out of step with regional realities. They may be actively working against the vision that the region's most influential Arab states are now pursuing.

Next: The Quiet Neighbors: Why Egypt and Jordan Privately Oppose Palestinian Statehood

---

* Research involving sourcing and translation of Arabic-language materials from outlets like Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Al Sharq Al Awsat, was supported by Grok 3, an AI developed by xAI.

---

🕯️ Thank you for being here.
I try to write what others overlook — about Iranians, Alawites, sovereignty, survival, and the war over narratives.
If you're new, start here: “Why I keep writing even when it would be easier to stop.”
And if what you read moved you, consider sharing or subscribing.

---

Because Israel is not supported on the Substack payment platform, I have set up an alternative for those who want to support my work.

You can make one-time or repeated donations in your own currency using Paypal (click image above) or the Ko-fi payment platform here. Israelis can send me a private message for another option.

Articles will always be free for all subscribers but a one-time or repeated donation is a way to help me sustain myself while doing all the work involved in putting these articles together and would be greatly appreciated.

Thank-you to all those who have supported my work by subscribing and/or by donating to my writer’s fund.