Arab leaders have been surprisingly quiet after 18 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire over the weekend during Hamas-led protests near Gaza's border with Israel.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International condemned Israel for a lethal response to protests that the groups said did not pose a serious threat to Israeli soldiers.
The response in the Arab world, by contrast, has been more muted, apparently because Israel's behavior is less worrisome to moderate Arab leaders than the radical Palestinian group Hamas and its allies, such as Iran.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman said in an interview with The Atlantic magazine, that Israelis are entitled to their own land — the first time a Saudi leader endorsed the notion of a Jewish homeland. He also called for a peace agreement with Palestinians that would allow Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to pursue shared interests with the Jewish state. He never mentioned the violence in Gaza.
“I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation," he said in the interview published Monday. "I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land.”
Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab nations with peace treaties with Israel, have also been silent about the Palestinian deaths, said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator for the Middle East and an adviser to past Republican and Democratic presidents.
Miller and other analysts said the silence reflects fundamental changes in the region:
Hostility to Hamas
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and their allies share Israel’s hostility to Hamas, which governs Gaza. During Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas, “no Arab state responded with reprisals or even rhetoric,” Miller said. “They don’t like Hamas."
Fears about Iran
Since Israel was founded in 1948, "most Arabs have viewed Israel as the main destabilizing factor, the main strategic threat,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“But in the past 10 years, many in the Arab world have shifted. ... There’s a shared strategic threat regarding Iran,” a majority-Shiite nation that is the arch-enemy of Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia.
Iran has expanded its influence with military support into conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Threats from ISIS, al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood
Many Arab leaders are increasingly worried about the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, as well as al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.
After Iran, "the second biggest threat is not Israel, it’s the terrorist groups — ISIS, al Qaeda and all these groups," Ibish said. "Increasingly there’s a sense that the Muslim Brotherhood is a part of the terrorist threat."
The Muslim Brotherhood was banned in Egypt after President Mohammed Morsi was ousted in 2013, but the group continues to have a strong following there, as well as in Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Frustration with Palestinian leadership
Arab leaders blame a lack of progress toward Mideast peace on Israel as well as on the Palestinian movement divided by two feuding factions — the moderate Palestinian Authority led by aging President Mahmoud Abbas that controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel.
Arab rulers see Gaza and the West Bank " as a money pit that they continue to support without much result," Miller said.
While Hamas is seen as an obstacle to peace, “Palestinian leadership is directionless, dysfunctional and corrupt,” Miller said.
Saudi-Israeli economic ties
Saudi's Prince Mohammed has met with business groups that include a number of Jews during his U.S. tour that began last month to promote a massive project to diversify the Saudi economy. He referred in his Atlantic interview to Israel’s dynamic and technologically driven economy.
“Israel is a big economy compared to their size and it’s a growing economy, and of course there are a lot of interests we share with Israel,” he said. “If there is peace, there would be a lot of interest between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and countries like Egypt and Jordan.”