Martin Chulov reports:

For much of the last 70 years the cause of Palestine stirred the Arab street. From Yemen to Morocco and all points in between, laments were sung in song and enshrined in poetry as the decades mounted without a Palestinian state. Regional statesmen built careers by standing by a people without a land. Wars were fought and lost in their name.

After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, that slowly began to change and by the time Iran became the preoccupation of the US and its allies in the region, the Palestinians were cast into the unfamiliar role of playing second fiddle. Then came Donald Trump, and ever since the once-overarching cause of the region has barely been given a seat in the orchestra pit.

The unveiling of the US president’s much-delayed Middle East “peace plan” has generated neither enthusiasm nor anger – only apathy – in a region that no longer views the fate of the Palestinians as a lynchpin, or – in some cases – even a cause worth championing loudly.

So far has the pendulum swung that ambassadors from Oman, Bahrain and the UAE were present when Trump unveiled the plan in the White House. This was no longer whispered support from the shadows – instead it marked a very public endorsement.

Even in Jordan and Lebanon, which are more tied than other countries to what may come next, the lead-up brought little outrage. As Trump spoke, south Beirut, long a bastion of resistance to Israel, was adorned with posters of the slain Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said the US plan would not have happened without the “complicity and betrayal” of several Arab states. The rest of the city felt weighed down by its more pressing concerns – how to outride an economic meltdown. [Continue reading…]