The US will not deliver justice for the Palestinians, argues Vladimir Unkovski-Korica

Let’s start with the big question: with Israel continuing its genocidal war against the Palestinians, will the US under president-elect Donald Trump rein in Israel or not? To understand that, we need to understand the place of Israel and of the Middle East in US foreign policy.

The US, Israel and the Middle East

Historically, Israel has acted as an attack dog for US imperialism in a region critical to US interests since the Second World War. For reasons of oil, trade and its geopolitical location, the Middle East has been important to the collective West.

A colonial-settler state, Israel was at odds with its Arab neighbours from its inception in the late 1940s. It had to rely on the US for its survival, and it acted viciously to put down Arab nationalism, led by Nasserist Egypt, which challenged American interests in the region over several decades during the Cold War.

The end of Egypt’s challenge to US-led hegemony in the region in 1978, under Nasser’s successor Anwar El-Sadat, was a major turning point, leading to a process of slow accommodation by most of the region’s states with the US and Israel. This marked the slow decline of left-wing nationalism as a force in the region.

The US supremacy peaked in the 1990s during the unipolar moment, after the end of the Cold War. But the US was in reality already an imperial force in decline. Its economic supremacy was being challenged by a variety of competitors, which pushed the US towards compensating by relying on its overwhelming military might.

Its disastrous wars against Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003 pushed the region into chaos. Infamously, the US had no plan for post-war Iraq, opening up a period of jostling for power between the different regional powers. A new challenge emerged from a very different source compared with Nasserist Egypt: Iran, on a slow rise after its Islamist revolution in 1979.

The US relied on the Sunni-Shia divide in Islam to continue to divide and rule in the Middle East. Most in the region are Sunni, while Iran is Shia. But the obvious enrichment of the undemocratic minorities ruling most of the region’s oil-rich states, in cahoots with their imperialist backers, did not escape the impoverished masses of the people.

Indeed, as in the era of the Cold War, the US has continued to fear a regional uprising which could blow away its allies in the region. That was evident during the Arab Spring, during which the US resisted revolutionary change in allied states, like Egypt, but co-opted movements and even directly intervened militarily to attempt regime change against hostile governments, as in Syria and Libya.

For years now, amid the tumultuous changes that have followed, US state managers have sought to secure a new order in the Middle East friendly to the US empire, so that Washington could safely undertake what the then president, Barack Obama, called ‘the Pivot to Asia’. The US ruling class has become ever more worried by the economic rise of China, and the threat of bipolarity or multipolarity in global affairs.

Unravelling Pax Americana

The fear in Washington is that the rise of a rival power like China would progressively threaten the US’s primacy in various parts of the world: smaller states could play the Great Powers off against each other, and lessen their influence in particular regions of the world, as they had done during the Cold War. Over time, a grouping of states has emerged promising to be an alternative to the US: the BRICS+.

The BRICS+ – initially Brazil, Russia, India, China and thereafter South Africa, but now a larger grouping of states from across the Global South – comprises over 45% of the world’s population and between a quarter and a third of global GDP. While it has talked up its potential to provide an alternative, its members have often diverged over key issues. An obvious example is that India and China have a long-standing border conflict that periodically leads to fighting. Moreover, they do not have a unified military wing, as the US does with Nato.

Nonetheless, the emergence of the BRICS+ suggests that global capitalism continues to be dynamic, but uneven and unstable. Rather than reflecting a move towards stability, we see increasing friction.

As the US declines, its rising challenger in Asia threatens it elsewhere. So, in the Middle East, China has emerged as Iran’s main trade partner, while Russia became an increasingly important military ally, after Moscow intervened in the Syrian Civil War in 2015 to help Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s ally, stay in power. The war in Ukraine has deepened Russian and Iranian military cooperation, with Tehran supplying Moscow with drones and Moscow promising advanced air-defence systems.

To create an anti-Iranian front, the US pursued so-called normalisation between Israel and other US allies, usually Sunni powers, primarily Saudi Arabia, in the region. Since the existence of the state of Israel is premised on a violent, mass dispossession of the Palestinian people, and since it has involved expelling Palestinians into neighbouring Arab lands since the late 1940s, its security has been tied to the ability of the Arab dictatorships to maintain a lid on mass discontent and the danger that it fuses with popular anger over the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel.

The closest the US came to achieving this goal was the previous Trump administration’s ‘Deal of the Century’ or the so-called Abraham Accords of 2020. Fearful of Iran’s growing influence and its nuclear programme, the Sunni states of the region had come ever more openly to accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel during the 2010s. The Abraham Accords led to the open recognition of Israel by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on 15 September, 2020. That led to other states moving in the same direction or more openly normalising relations with Israel.

A key plank in this trend was to soften the impact of such a recognition by Saudi Arabia. Despite being run by a theocratic autocracy, Saudi Arabia has a population massively hostile to Israel and indeed the US. Massive majorities have been registered opposing the Abraham Accords in opinion polls in the country. This means Saudi rulers have always had to tread carefully in relation to their policies towards the Zionist state, despite their obvious desire to end this hostility and concentrate on Iran.

Yet there was a problem. The Abraham Accords included a whitewashing of Israeli apartheid policies towards Palestinians as mere security measures. They also effectively opened the way for the legitimation of Israeli annexation of Palestinian land like the Jordan Valley. In other words, the Abraham Accords depended on the successful subjugation of the Palestinians. Arguably, the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023 were about disrupting the diplomatic attempts at normalisation in the region, by, violently, demonstrating the refusal of Palestinians to be subdued.

Multipolarity, global and regional

Israel’s subsequent attempt at strangling Gaza, pummelling the West Bank, bombing the Houthis in Yemen, invading Lebanon, and goading Iran into an open war over the last year have however massively alienated world public opinion and inflamed tensions within the region. It has shone a bright light on how far US allies have drifted from Washington, in the world and in the region itself.

The scale of Israel’s barbarity has become difficult to ignore or explain away, giving rise to a mass international solidarity movement with the Palestinians. The changed political atmosphere facilitated an unprecedented challenge to Israel through global institutions hardly known for their radicalism. South Africa spearheaded a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, which established that South Africa’s claims are plausible. More recently, the International Criminal Court has filed arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu himself.

So significant has the pressure become that even steadfast US allies like the European Union have been divided. Although the EU as such has been supportive of Israel, countries like Ireland and Spain have been vocally critical, while Germany has been cravenly apologetic, betraying deep fissures over foreign policy. Moreover, while the US ‘fundamentally rejected’ the International Criminal Court’s decision to file arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, the EU declared the decision ‘binding’, deeply embarrassing Washington.

What has been going on globally has slowly seeped into the region too. We can see this by looking at the main US allies in the region besides Israel, that is, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt. Their ability in recent years to use an increasingly multipolar world to assert their own interests against those of the US on particular issues has become ever more apparent, as has their increasing willingness to criticise Israel’s policies in Gaza.

It is undoubtedly the case that their ability to do so is deeply connected with the rise of China in world affairs over the last few decades, although Russia’s involvement too has been an obvious factor. The Gulf states, for instance, refused to heed Joe Biden’s call to increase oil output after the Russian invasion of Ukraine to bring the price down. There has been talk for two years, moreover, of China being able to buy Saudi oil for Chinese currency, the yuan, though this has not happened yet.

But growing Saudi independence from the US is evident given its increased economic, trade, technological, security and military links with China. China now imports oil from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and has built key infrastructure like ports there. To give a sense of scale, while Chinese trade links with Iran are significant, totalling $16 billion a year, trade with Saudi Arabia totalled $87 billion and with UAE reached $99 billion. The result? Growing diplomatic weight in the region. China facilitated the resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March 2023, dubbed a Chinese equivalent of the Abraham Accords.

This has proved to be not just symbolic. Saudi Arabia quickly condemned Israeli strikes on Iran this year, and has called Israeli policies in Gaza ‘genocide’, saying it will not proceed with normalisation with Israel until a solution is found to the conflict. We should of course not take Saudi declarations at face value. Saudi rulers will be happy for Iran to be degraded as Iran remains their main regional foe. But it is also not clear that all-out regional war and chaos is in the Saudi interest, and continued Palestinian suffering is only likely to destabilise the rule of the house of Saud.

We can see that Turkey, a Nato member, also takes independent initiatives. In Ukraine, it has acted as a go-between between Nato and Russia. Furthermore, it has consistently been a vocal critic of Israel since October 2023, arguing for an arms embargo on Israel at the UN in October 2024. Its priorities have clashed with those of the US in Syria for many years; the two do not see eye to eye on the Kurdish question. While Turkey has not enjoyed good relations with China on account of the latter’s treatment of Turkic Uyghurs, it went to lengths to seek rapprochement this year. This was symbolised by the leading Chinese electric-car giant BYD’s announcement in August 2024 that it will build a billion-dollar factory in Turkey.

It is evident that Egypt, too, is loath to bear the brunt of Israel’s attack on Gaza. The implicit threat from Israel throughout the conflict has been that it will push the Palestinians from Gaza in Egypt’s Sinai desert. Throughout, Egypt has resisted this, knowing only too well that it would be very costly, not just economically, but also politically, as pro-Palestinian feeling in Egypt is significant. More broadly, Egypt has significantly diversified its international ties in recent years. It has maintained friendly relations with Russia, with which it signed a comprehensive set of agreements on military and economic relations in 2018. In yet another move suggesting significant independence, Egypt joined the BRICS+ in October 2024.

The unreliable proxy

It is apparent that these states can now flex muscle more independently of the US than before, and it is apparent that they want the US to reign in Israel as a condition for continuing good relations. What does all this mean for the US relationship with Israel and Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians? What does it mean for the US more broadly in the Middle East?

The situation is complex. Certainly, Israel knows that it cannot act as independently as its competitors in the region, tied by umbilical cord as it is to the US. But, while that is a weakness, it is paradoxically also a strength. It knows that it is Washington’s most indispensable ally. And its leadership indeed knows the US can’t afford to lose its support in the context of increasing inter-imperialist and intra-regional rivalries.

So, Israel feels a certain level of confidence when crossing supposed US red lines in the Middle East. That would not have changed whoever was sitting in the White House. Simply put, even though dependent on the US, Israel can go beyond what the US wants precisely because it knows that the US fears Israel becoming weaker in the region. A weaker Israel is a weaker US in the Middle East. That’s a reality that goes beyond any discussion of the power of the Zionist lobby in the US.

And that in turn puts the US in an unenviable position. It is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t, stop Israel from escalating ever further. However powerful the US is as a global actor, it is a declining power, and is unable to enforce its will on global capitalism and the attendant competitive inter-state system that goes with capitalism. So it finds itself in a situation where it is uncertain about how to deal with its unreliable proxy in the Middle East.

With Israel’s Netanyahu in big domestic trouble before 7 October, he has been aware that the war was an opportunity he could not let go. He knows that the minute the war is over, his domestic position could be in grave doubt. Over time, he has grown bolder, sensing an opportunity to use the situation to remake the Middle East in Israel’s favour for generations if he is able not just to break Palestinian resistance, but to take out Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Yemen and the region as a whole.

However, Israel’s actions have led to huge political embarrassment for the US and the West as Israel has so brazenly ignored the so-called international rules-based order that the West supposedly represents. Moreover, Israeli actions risk massive and escalating war. There is no way of knowing how Russia and China would react to a direct attack on Iran. Russia has already supplied Iran with advanced air-defence systems and radar equipment. The economic, social and political turmoil that may result from a regional war may also do great damage to US allies and interests in the region and beyond.

Globalising the intifada

The global reaction to Israel’s genocidal war and escalating barbarity in the region have in fact complicated Trump’s otherwise strongly pro-Zionist politics. It is known that Trump and Netanyahu are friends, and Trump’s appointments all point in the direction of a hawkish stance towards Iran. In fact, Trump himself took a hard line on Iran during his first presidency. He dumped Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and assassinated a famous Iranian general. During the election campaign, Trump even said he would support Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear sites. Yet he has also postured as an anti-war figure over the last year, garnering key Muslim votes in the swing state of Michigan.

What Trump – and Netanyahu – do next is anyone’s guess. From the US perspective, allowing Israel to go too far could alienate its allies in the region and open the door more to China in the Middle East in the long run. But reining Israel in could lead to domestic instability, weaken America’s main ally in the region, and potentially weaken the US in the long run in the region too.

It is potentially a lose-lose scenario, as neither a total victory over Iran nor a revitalised Abraham Accords look immediately likely. The region remains too important to lose, yet too unstable to effectively govern. While the US would love to pivot away to Asia, it remains unable to do so. Whether or not other, connected, wars, like the one in Ukraine, are brought to an end, wider instability beckons.

Indeed, only one thing appears certain: the declining US order in the Middle East will not provide justice for the Palestinians. If there is hope, it does not lie in Washington, Moscow or Beijing, but on the streets of the Middle East, in an uprising of the peoples, from Cairo and Riyadh, to Tehran and Istanbul. The steadfast resistance of the Palestinian people in the face of genocidal violence has repeatedly animated regional resistance and a mass global protest movement that have, in combination, made it hard for Netanyahu and his masters in Washington to achieve any of their aims. With states globally continuing to expand budgets for warfare at the expense of welfare, the global struggle for peace becomes at the same time a struggle for justice at home as well. That is why Palestine has become the byword for peace and justice in our time.