Increasingly Independent Gulf States Seek to Navigate Gaza Conflict

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“The Gulf is playing a far more important role in this conflict than in previous iterations of the Gaza war,” Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, said in an interview with VOA.

“The Gulf states individually have assumed more agency and autonomy in regional affairs” than during previous Israel-Hamas conflicts, he said. “This also means that they are pursuing strategies that are less aligned with the United States than in previous years.”

Krieg said the increased foreign policy autonomy of the region will pose a challenge for Washington as it seeks to contain the fallout from the war, as it will have to rely on Saudi Arabia and Qatar to manage dialogue with Iran, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

Qatar has already demonstrated its potential importance by reportedly having helped to negotiate the release of hostages seized by Hamas in its October 7 rampage through several Israeli communities.

“First, Qatar has kept lines of communication open with Hamas over the release of hostages, where Qatar speaks directly to Israel, the U.S. and Hamas,” Krieg said.

“Secondly, Qatar has used its relationship with Tehran to relay messages from the White House in an attempt to avert a wider regional escalation — something Saudi Arabia has supported.

“At a time when the U.S. openly endorses Israel's all-out escalation, it is the Gulf states working on de-escalation in the region,” he said. “In particular, amid the risk of a wider mobilization of Iran's 'axis of resistance,' the Gulf states' networks and diplomatic channels have become essential for U.S. crisis management.”

While the region is publicly united in calling for an end to the violence, Krieg said he believes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates quietly would like to see Hamas eliminated.

“Saudi Arabia and Qatar would like to see a revival of the Arab Peace Initiative in the aftermath of the conflict, which might not be completely unrealistic if Israel is fought to a stalemate in a potential two-front war” involving Hezbollah in the north, he said.

He added that U.S. efforts to broker a rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia within the framework of the Abraham Accords “are clearly dead.”

Period	25 Oct 2023
Held at	Voice of America, United States