The Quiet Abandonment: The Gulf States Have Moved On from Palestine

First in a series examining how the Palestinian question has evolved from a central Arab cause to a managed diplomatic fiction, and what that means for the future of Gaza and the ‘West Bank.'

While international media still count bodies in Gaza, UAE customs officials count profits from trade with Israel, trade that grew 11% between 2023 and 2024. Even more striking, bilateral commerce has continued across technology, tourism, and agriculture sectors despite the Arab public backlash against ties with Israel.

This is not an anomaly.

Perhaps the most important shift in Middle Eastern geopolitics over the past decade is not the rise of Iran, the fall of Assad, or even the October 7th attacks. It is the quiet abandonment of the Palestinian cause by the Arab world's most influential states. What we are witnessing is not temporary wartime pragmatism, but a fundamental realignment that renders the old slogans about Arab solidarity and Palestinian liberation increasingly hollow.

The Numbers Don't Lie

The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, were expected to be vulnerable to exactly the kind of crisis that erupted on October 7th. Critics predicted that the first major flare-up would force Arab states to choose between their new Israeli partnerships and their historic commitment to Palestinian liberation.

Instead, the accords not only survived but thrived. UAE-Israel bilateral trade surged from tens of millions of dollars before 2020 to $3 billion in 2023, continuing to grow during the war itself. According to the Abraham Accords Peace Institute (AAPI), trade with Bahrain increased almost 900% in the first seven months of 2024, with Morocco up 64% in the first five months of 2024. The institute celebrated that "Abraham Accords ties break new records, remain steady after October 7".

Saudi Arabia's Calculated Ambiguity

Perhaps even more revealing is Saudi Arabia's carefully orchestrated response. Within days of October 7th, while Israeli blood was still fresh, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry issued its ritual condemnation:

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia affirms its categorical rejection of calls for the forced displacement of the Palestinian people from Gaza, and its condemnation of the continued targeting of defenseless civilians there.

But observe what happened behind the curtain of diplomatic theater. While Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would later become the first Saudi leader to use the word "genocide" in reference to Israeli actions in Gaza, Saudi Arabia was simultaneously deepening its integration of Israeli technology. At least one Israeli firm claims to have provided policy-relevant data analysis that informed early Saudi reform decisions, including lifting the ban on women driving. There is no confirmation in the Saudi press but it is known that Israeli technologies in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and solar energy are already being used to advance Saudi goals — even as the official Vision 2030 website makes no mention of Israel whatsoever.

More telling still, intelligence cooperation continued throughout the conflict. Israel received advance warning of Iran's April attack through Saudi channels, and the land corridor established in December 2023 through Saudi Arabia and Jordan continues to transport goods threatened by Houthi attacks on sea routes.

The pattern is clear: public condemnation coupled with private cooperation.

Silence and Selectivity

While Israeli cooperation is now embedded in Gulf projects at the highest levels—from solar energy to cybersecurity—this reality remains almost entirely absent from Arabic-language press. Regional Arabic outlets continue to focus on public condemnations of Israeli military actions and gestures of solidarity with the Palestinian people, but they do not cover Saudi or Emirati engagement with Israeli firms, technologies, or logistics partnerships. Documentation of this cooperation appears almost exclusively in English-language Israeli, American, and international outlets, not Gulf media. The issue is still untenable in local political culture and the public remains shielded from it, but the cooperation has become normalized for elites.

In an era where private firms are highly sensitive to boycott campaigns and reputational risk, it is not surprising that they have backed away from earlier agreements, such as the much-publicized Saudi-Israeli solar energy venture announced in August 2023, which has seen no further public updates since October 2023. It is the governments that are choosing to engage with Israel and to keep doing so throughout war.

Unlike the UAE or Bahrain, Saudi Arabia has not formally joined the Abraham Accords. Its quiet alignment with Israel, therefore, makes it all the more politically significant. It is not a byproduct of normalization. It is precursor to it.

The Geopolitical Realignment

The strategic calculations that drive UAE and Saudi decision-making in 2024 have little to do with Palestinian liberation. This behavior reflects a fundamental shift in Gulf priorities.

Iran containment remains the Gulf's primary security concern, and Israel offers intelligence sharing, advanced defense technology, and strategic coordination that no Palestinian entity can provide. Economic diversification requires partnerships with global technology leaders, and Israel's innovation ecosystem serves Vision 2030 in ways Palestinian institutions cannot. Regional stability depends on managing, not inflaming, sectarian conflicts. Hamas's October 7th attack reminded Gulf leaders why they view Palestinian militant organizations as threats to regional order, not champions of justice. Most importantly, domestic legitimacy for Gulf monarchies increasingly derives from delivering prosperity to their populations, not from symbolic solidarity with distant causes.

What This Means

From the Khartoum Resolution of 1967 to the intifadas of the 1980s and 2000s, "liberating Palestine" was the axis around which Arab politics spun. Today, that axis is broken.

The quiet Arab abandonment of Palestine represents more than changing regional alignments. It signals the end of an era in which the Palestinian question could serve as the organizing principle of Arab politics and diplomacy. For decades, Arab regimes used Palestine as both sword and shield, as a way to deflect domestic criticism, justify authoritarian control, and maintain legitimacy through opposition to Israel.

That framework is collapsing. Gulf states have found more profitable and sustainable sources of legitimacy in economic development, technological advancement, and strategic partnerships with global powers.

This creates a fundamentally new strategic environment: Palestinian factions can no longer count on unconditional Arab support, Palestinian maximalism can no longer hold Arab development hostage, and Palestinian statehood no longer serves as a prerequisite for Arab-Israeli normalization.

While the world debates Palestinian rights, Gulf customs officials process Israeli goods, Saudi technicians work with Israeli software, and Abraham Accords institutions celebrate record-breaking cooperation during the height of the Gaza conflict.

Arab states are moving on. The question now is whether Western policymakers will acknowledge this new reality or continue to base their diplomacy on a fiction that even its supposed champions no longer believe.

Next: What Gulf states actually want to see happen in Gaza and the West Bank—and why it's not Palestinian statehood.

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