Supplying Israel while it starves Gaza

The trade corridor amounts to active Arab collusion in the genocidal war

While Yemen gets pummelled by US and British airstrikes for trying to close the Red Sea to Israeli shipping, other Arab countries have been conspiring to sabotage its valiant effort to support the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have been complicit in creating a Dubai-Haifa corridor to provide the occupation state with an alternative route for its commerce that bypasses the Bab al-Mandeb strait and Suez Canal or Gulf of Aqaba.

The countries involved have maintained a deafening silence about, or muttered feeble excuses for, this shameful and ominous normalisation move amid Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip. But the Israeli media haven’t been shy about publicising and hailing it. They’ve shown footage of convoys of freight trucks passing through this route, thereby exposing what the Arab governments are trying to hide from their people.

Last week, Israel’s Channel 13 reported that hundreds of lorries loaded with goods and fresh food have been making their way from the UAE through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to the occupation state and its consumers. This amounts to active collusion, even if indirect, in Israel’s murderous war of extermination in the Gaza Strip.

The Jordanian authorities already committed the outrage of enabling the export of fruits and vegetables from the Jordan Valley to the occupation state despite its assault. Now, some officials are arguing that Jordan does not have the right to prevent the transit of commercial freight through its territory due to the agreements it has signed in this regard and out of fear of being treated in kind by the countries that would suffer from such a decision, namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

But since when has Israel ever complied with the provisions of signed agreements or respected other laws and treaties, not least the Wadi Araba and Oslo accords?

It is disgraceful that an Emirati company, Puretrans, is partnering the Israeli firm Trucknet in jointly overseeing the management of this corridor. Supplying Israel and its settlers with goods and food while it deliberately starves more than two million Palestinians in its attempt to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable amounts to direct participation in that crime.

The Egyptian authorities are doing the same by refusing to open the Rafah crossing by force to allow humanitarian aid to enter, and by charging levies of up to $5,000 on each truck. According to news reports, there are over 2,500 trucks stalled in a 40-km long queue stretching from Arish to the Rafah crossing waiting to deliver aid.

One would have expected the Arab governments complicit in this crime to apply reciprocal treatment by shutting down all crossings to Israel completely, not to mention severing relations with it and closing its embassies on their territory in solidarity with the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They could at least condition the transit of freight through the Dubai-Haifa corridor on Israel lifting the blockade and allowing aid into Gaza.

But that seems too much to hope for. If the killing of more than 30,000 fellow Arabs (thousands of them still buried under the rubble), the injury of some 70,000 others, and the destruction of 86% of Gazan homes does not stir the feelings or consciences of these governments, what can?
We’re not asking Jordan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia to take the same valiant stance as the Yemenis and confront the US and UK warships trying to break the maritime blockade on Israel. We know they would turn a deaf ear to any such demand. But we do ask them to listen to their people who are seething over this feigned impotence, and follow the lead of non-Arab and non-Muslim countries like South Africa, Bolivia, Chile, and Colombia in severing ties with the occupation state instead of throwing it a lifeline.

The Jordanian people are in an unprecedented and mounting state of agitation these days, first over the massacre of their brethren in Gaza and the West Bank, and second over reports of Jordanian planes joining US aircraft in bombing targets in Iraq in retaliation for the Iraqi Islamic resistance’s attack on a US base in northern Jordan.

The survival and sustainability of the Zionist enterprise were dealt a knockout blow by the al-Aqsa Flood operation. It shattered Israel’s security and stability, cost it over $75 billion so far, and displaced over 500,000 of its settlers. Arab governments and leaders should wake up to this reality and bank on the resistance rather than an occupation state facing genocide charges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has condemned for genocide.

If only they could be as bold and courageous as UN Secretary-General António Guterres, leaders from Latin America, Africa, and Asia who have spoken out and severed relations or expelled ambassadors, and the hundreds of millions of people in the West, East, North, and South who have boycotted Israel and taken to the streets to demonstrate against its actions.
Or is that, also, too much to ask?

Supplying Israel while it starves Gaza