Palestine and the Arab World: The Decline and Possible Revival of Palestinian Regional Influence

During the first two years of the genocide in Gaza, Palestinians struggled to galvanize meaningful Arab support or intervention in their defense and met with limited success. Beyond the varying Arab governments’ own calculations of interests and concerns for not acting more decisively, this outcome can best be understood in the context of the Palestinians’ diminished political leverage with Arab states, which is the result of a steadily weakening Palestinian political leadership and an increasingly fragmented Palestinian national movement over the last few decades. Understanding the history and basis of Palestinian regional influence and its decline is thus important for understanding the present.

Sources of Palestinian Leverage

The Palestinian cause has always had a symbiotic—if highly fraught and inconsistent—relationship with the Arab states and with Arabism. For the stateless Palestinian people, Arab states provided strategic depth, a natural political constituency, and an essential source of moral, political, financial, and, at times, military support in the struggle against Zionism and Israel. Historically, this was as true of “revolutionary” Arab republics as of conservative, pro-Western monarchies, many of which funneled vast funds to the coffers of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) throughout the 1970s and 1980s.¹ At the same time, the causes of Palestine and Jerusalem resonate deeply with the Arab masses, transcending national, sectarian, and ideological differences and forming a key pillar of modern Arab identity. As such, Palestinian leaders traditionally wielded outsized influence with Arab regimes. In recent years, however, this sway has sharply declined due to two parallel and mutually reinforcing trends: the steady weakening of Palestinian political leadership and institutions, and the deprioritization of Palestine by Arab governments.

Until 1967, the Palestinian cause was largely the domain of Arab states, which often vied with one another over who was its greatest champion. The Arab defeat in the 1967 war disabused Palestinians of any hope of liberation by Arab states alone and forced them to take greater agency. By 1969, Palestinian guerrilla groups had taken control of the PLO, which had been established by the Arab League in 1964, and transformed it into a genuinely autonomous body for Palestinian decision-making.

Despite its obvious geopolitical constraints, the PLO succeeded in forcing itself onto the international political and diplomatic scene, reaching its peak influence in the decade and a half after the 1967 war. By 1974, under the charismatic leadership of Yasir Arafat and his Fateh movement, the PLO had secured recognition as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” first from the Arab League—an outcome even Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, the PLO’s archrival in matters of representation, was forced to accept—and shortly thereafter from the United Nations.²

The PLO’s influence with Arab states flowed from three primary sources. The first was the physical presence of large Palestinian diaspora and refugee populations in certain Arab countries, most notably Jordan and Lebanon, where the PLO effectively operated as a “state within a state” with a substantial demographic, political and military presence. Even after the PLO’s expulsion from Jordan in 1970 and Lebanon in 1982, the demographic presence of Palestinians in both remained a source of influence, albeit a diminished one.

A second instrument of influence was armed struggle, which was pioneered by the guerrilla movements that became the constituent factions of the PLO and later taken up by Hamas and other Islamist resistance groups. Armed action against Israel—whether from inside occupied Palestinian territory or from neighboring Arab countries—helped galvanize Arab public opinion and, at times, forced Arab regimes to respond, either militarily or politically. Official Arab support for Palestinians was not merely altruistic but also helped bolster the domestic legitimacy of the regimes in the eyes of their citizens, for whom Palestine was widely viewed as a core Arab cause.

Lastly, Palestinian leaders often appealed directly to Arab public opinion, which has been—and remains—deeply sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle. Arafat was particularly adept at harnessing public sympathy for the Palestinians and wielding it over Arab leaders. His skillful navigation of intra-Arab rivalries also helped shield the Palestinian leadership from excessive external interference and preserved a measure of independent decision-making. By the late 1970s, Arafat’s PLO had not only emerged as a serious national liberation movement but as a consequential regional player in its own right.

Lost Leverage

All three sources of leverage have significantly eroded over time due to two parallel and mutually reinforcing trends. First and foremost is the growing political weakness and dysfunction of Palestinian political leaders and institutions, which is both structural and self-inflicted in nature.

The PLO began its steady decline following its forcible removal from Lebanon in 1982 at the hands of Israel, severing the PLO from its only remaining autonomous territorial base on the border with the Palestinian homeland.³ The process of PLO debilitation accelerated following Arafat’s decision-making during the 1990 Iraq-Kuwait crisis, which left the PLO financially strapped and politically isolated. In the aftermath, the PLO formally renounced armed struggle as the price for entering a U.S.-led peace process, relinquishing a key source of leverage (which Hamas and other groups happily took up). The signing of the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s provided a momentary boost for the PLO leadership but ultimately helped to deepen and institutionalize Palestinian weakness and erode Palestinian agency. Meanwhile, the fragmentation of Arab diplomacy into separate negotiating tracks under the U.S.-sponsored peace process further undermined Palestinian leverage.

Oslo was more than a peace process. Beyond reshaping Palestinian relations with Israel—and by extension with the United States—it fundamentally reorganized internal Palestinian politics, decision-making, and foreign relations. As both a peacemaking and state-building project, Oslo required the Palestinian leadership to relinquish a degree of internal autonomy in exchange for access to negotiations and the expectation that Washington would ultimately “deliver” Israel and statehood. For the first time in the modern Palestinian national movement, the U.S. and Israel had a direct say—and oftentimes an effective veto—over internal Palestinian politics. This dynamic was most evident in Arafat’s sidelining after 2001 and the rejection of the 2006 election results, which precipitated the Fatah-Hamas schism.

Moreover, the organic and existential ties that bound the PLO to Arab states became secondary. Where the PLO had been largely reliant on, and responsive to, Arab states, the newly established Palestinian Authority became dependent on new patrons—chiefly the U.S., Israel, and Western donors—who were less sympathetic to Palestinian grievances and less susceptible to Palestinian pressure. As Oslo collapsed under the weight of settlement expansion, repression, failed negotiations, and the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, Arafat sought to escape its constraints and reassert Palestinian agency, implicitly through armed struggle, but was quickly contained and marginalized.

After the Second Intifada

Palestinian political weakness has deepened under Mahmoud Abbas, who has presided over a fractured, dysfunctional, and demobilized polity that has been easily ignored. The 2007 rupture with Hamas left the PA without a functioning parliament for 12 years before Abbas dissolved it in 2018,⁴ indefinitely forestalling elections and entrenching instability in Gaza. Rampant corruption and growing authoritarianism further shredded the PA’s domestic legitimacy. Despite numerous reconciliation accords, Abbas consistently chose national disunity over risking Israeli or American sanctions. Unsurprisingly, his domestic standing collapsed: even before October 7, 2023, 78 percent of Palestinians wanted him to resign—a figure that surged to 88 percent in late 2023 amid Israel’s war of annihilation in Gaza, its widening crackdown in the West Bank, and Abbas’s impotence in the face of both.⁵ Why then, one might ask, should Arab states prioritize Palestinian welfare over their own national interests, if Palestinian leaders have failed to overcome factional rivalries or meet their people’s basic needs?

Having internalized the lessons of Arafat’s marginalization, Abbas has doubled down on the original Oslo trade-off, deepening his dependence on the U.S. and Israel as a matter of survival.⁶ The leadership’s overreliance on American “deliverance” precluded the development of a more flexible diplomatic strategy, including in Arab and Muslim arenas, leaving it unable to identify diplomatic challenges or seize opportunities as the PLO once did. While not the decisive factor, Palestinian neglect of the Arab file did nothing to impede the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain’s normalization with Israel in 2020.

As Palestinian leverage declined, Arab states increasingly deprioritized Palestine, especially after the 2010-11 Arab uprisings. Beyond their shrinking bandwidth, the Arab revolts also exposed an ideological affinity between Palestinian liberation and Arab popular movements,⁷ prompting counterrevolutionary forces to suppress both.⁸ Resurgent authoritarianism, most notably in Egypt following the 2013 coup, recast Palestinian solidarity in Arab regional and local politics as a threat to regime stability rather than a useful pressure release valve. The result was to accelerate Arab divestment from Palestine: between 2013-2020, Arab contributions to the PA plummeted by 95 percent, declining further after the Abraham Accords were signed.⁹ This was an unmistakable sign that Arab states were no longer willing to subordinate their bilateral or regional interests to the mirage of a Palestinian state.

Amid a Genocide

The horrific and unprecedented Israeli assault on Gaza after October 7 has not been enough to overcome Arab officialdom’s apathy—and in some cases hostility—toward Palestinians, despite clear signs of anger among Arab publics. The crackdown on pro-Palestinian solidarity activities since the start of Israel’s genocidal war underscores regime insecurity over Palestine. This was starkly illustrated by the Al-Sisi government’s violent disruption of the Global March on Gaza’s “sumud convoy,” as Arab and international activists converged on Egypt seeking to break Israel’s near-total blockade on Gaza’s starved population.¹⁰

Measured against the Palestinians’ traditional sources of leverage, the overall picture has changed dramatically since the PLO’s heyday in the 1970s. Although armed attacks against Israel remain relatively popular across the Arab world,¹¹ and can still compel Arab engagement (as seen with the crucial role played by Qatari and Egyptian mediation in the current war is one example), the costs have risen sharply as the returns have diminished. Gaza’s devastation, the rather anemic Arab response to it, and the proliferation of violent regional conflicts over the past decade and a half, have eroded armed struggle as an effective source of Palestinian leverage. Demographic influence has likewise waned—with the possible exception of Jordan—owing to the absence of an organized and organic political movement among the populations. The Palestinians’ chief source of influence with Arab states, therefore, remains the enduring potency of their cause in Arab public consciousness.

The combination of dysfunctional Palestinian leadership and Arab officialdom’s downgrading of Palestine helps explain the tepid Arab response to Israel’s genocidal war, whether in comparison to other governments around the world or to their own stances during previous crises in Palestine. Since October 2023, Arab action has largely been limited to ceasefire appeals, rhetorical support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel, and occasional symbolic gestures, without deploying real leverage against Israel or the U.S., its chief sponsor. Within a year of October 7, Colombia, Bolivia, and Nicaragua had severed diplomatic relations with Israel over its actions in Gaza, but no Arab state has done so; while Jordan and Bahrain merely withdrew their ambassadors from Israel. Arab states likewise refrained from sanctions, arms restrictions, or curtailing economic ties, lagging behind some European and Latin American countries. Even at a declaratory level, Arab states remain far behind countries like South Africa and Colombia in their advocacy for Palestinians. Apart from Palestine itself, only Libya has joined South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Apart from Egyptian-Qatari mediation, meaningful Arab interventions have been sporadic. The Saudi-French-led initiative to implement a two-state framework, following the 2024 UNGA vote adopting the ICJ’s ruling on the illegality of Israel’s occupation, was notable but detached from the more immediate catastrophe happening in Gaza. Meanwhile, Egypt’s post-war Gaza reconstruction plan, which gained Arab League backing, came about only after U.S. President Donald Trump’s alarming call to depopulate the territory and construct a “Riviera” on its ruins. Arab reluctance to use leverage was again evident during Trump’s visit to the Gulf in May 2025. Despite growing international outrage over Israel’s blockade and starvation in Gaza, Gulf states declined to condition major U.S. investment pledges on a change in Washington’s Gaza policy—even as they pressed for sanctions relief in Syria.

Regaining Palestinian Influence

Regaining Palestinian influence with Arab states will require the reversal of the aforementioned negative trends. This means strengthening Palestinian national leadership and re-embedding the Palestinian cause within broader Arab politics. The latter, however, is unlikely to materialize without narrowing the widening gap between Arab publics and their governments, and enabling greater democratization across the region, neither of which appears likely in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, the most effective step Palestinians and their allies can take is to focus on rebuilding their national movement and political institutions. This includes forging a unified national leadership that is broadly representative, enjoys domestic legitimacy, and—crucially—is capable of independent decision-making.

Widespread affinity for the Palestinian cause, while important, is insufficient on its own. Without a credible Palestinian political agent capable of channeling Arab public solidarity into concrete political support, the Arab street is likely to remain confined to expressions of frustration and moral outrage, rather than sustained mobilization on behalf of Palestinian objectives. Only a credible and autonomous Palestinian leadership will have the wherewithal to articulate a clear and coherent strategy for national liberation, including a viable diplomatic strategy. Arab inaction (and indifference) will be harder to sustain or defend before domestic audiences when faced with a unified and revitalized Palestinian national movement, much as Arab leaders felt compelled to rally behind the PLO in the 1970s.

Reasserting Palestinian political autonomy will entail tough internal choices. These include pivoting away from the current leadership’s near-exclusive reliance on the West—and Israel—in favor of a more layered and diplomatic strategy that re-centers Arab states and the Global South and finds ways of integrating Hamas into a reformed and unitary polity. The era of a U.S.-led peace process has long since passed. Persisting with the failed and obsolete Oslo framework—especially as Israel and the U.S. openly work to dismantle it—is a recipe for continued marginalization and political paralysis.

In sum, the Palestinians’ most enduring source of influence vis-à-vis Arab states remains the primacy of the Palestinian cause in the hearts and minds of Arab citizens across the region. However, this asset cannot be fully leveraged without meaningful reform of Palestinian internal politics and the re-emergence of a unitary, representative, and genuinely autonomous leadership that enjoys both domestic and international legitimacy. While such a revived leadership may not, on its own, reverse unfavorable regional trends or recapture the Arab imagination, it is difficult to imagine either occurring in its absence.

Endnotes

¹ An exact figure is difficult to come by, but estimates range from several hundred million to a billion dollars. See: Rosemary Said Zahlan, Palestine and the Gulf States: The Presence at the Table (New York: Routledge, 2009), 63.

² May Barakat and Yasser Amouri, “Who is representing the Palestinian People: The Palestine Liberation Organization or the State of Palestine? The Aftermath of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 67/19,” Arab Law Quarterly 38, no. 1-2 (2022): 50-79, https://doi.org/10.1163/15730255-BJA10115.

³ Following its forcible removal, the PLO was also subject to a Syrian-backed campaign waged against its remnants in Lebanon from 1983-1988. For more details on Syria’s involvement in Lebanon, see: Adeed Dawisha, “The Motives of Syria’s Involvement in Lebanon,” Middle East Journal 38, no. 2 (1984): 228-236, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4326796.

⁴ Mohammed Daraghmeh and Fares Akram, “Palestinian president to dissolve parliament, Hamas irate,” AP News, December 22, 2018, https://apnews.com/general-news-dafe379cb9a245a49f41407d6957b2e2.

⁵ Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), Public Opinion Poll No. 89, September 2023, https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/955; PCPSR, Public Opinion Poll No. 90, December 2023, https://pcpsr.org/en/node/963.

⁶ Khaled Elgindy, “The Fall and Fall of Mahmoud Abbas,” Foreign Affairs, August 30, 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/palestinian-territories/fall-and-fall-mahmoud-abbas.

⁷ Khaled Elgindy, “Egypt, Israel, Palestine: Prospects for Peace After the Arab Spring,” Cairo Review on Global Affairs, June 2012, https://www.thecairoreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/CR6-Elgindy.pdf.

⁸ Karim Haggag, The shifting security landscape in the Middle East: An Egyptian Perspective, MEI Perspectives Series 12 (Singapore: Middle East Institute at National University of Singapore, March 2019), 11, https://mei.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Karim-Haggag.pdf; Marc Lynch, “The Coming Arab Backlash,” Abu Aardvark’s MENA Academy (Substack blog), April 22, 2024, https://abuaardvark.substack.com/p/the-coming-arab-backlash; Yasmine Akrimi, “The Arab World, the Question of Palestine and the Spectrum of the Arab Spring,” Brussels International Center, April 4, 2024, https://www.bic-rhr.com/research/arab-world-question-palestine-and-spectrum-arab-spring.

⁹ Omar Shaban, “International Aid to the Palestinians: Between Politicization and Development,” Arab Center Washington DC, August 4, 2022, https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/international-aid-to-the-palestinians-between-politicization-and-development/.

¹⁰ Raouf Farrah, “On the Road to Rafah—The Sumud Convoy and New Maghrebi Geographies of Resistance,” Middle East Research and Information Project, October 20, 2025, https://www.merip.org/2025/10/on-the-road-to-rafah-the-sumud-convoy-and-new-maghrebi-geographies-of-resistance/.

¹¹ For example, according to one major poll, 67 percent of respondents from across 15 Arab countries viewed Hamas’ October 7 attack as a legitimate resistance operation. See: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, Arab Public Opinion about the Israeli War on Gaza (Doha: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, January 2024), https://www.dohainstitute.org/en/Lists/ACRPS-PDFDocumentLibrary/arab-opinion-war-on-gaza-full-report-en.pdf.