As Anger Grows Over Gaza, Arab Leaders Crack Down on Protests

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Like different governments crossed the Middle East, Egypt has not been shy astir its presumption connected the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its denunciations of Israel implicit the warfare successful Gaza are large and constant. State media outlets broadcast images of agelong lines of assistance trucks waiting to transverse from Egypt into Gaza, spotlighting Egypt’s relation arsenic the sole conduit for astir of the constricted assistance entering the besieged territory.

Earlier this month, however, erstwhile hundreds of radical gathered successful downtown Cairo to show successful solidarity with Gaza, Egyptian information officers swooped in, arresting 14 protesters, according to their lawyer. Back successful October, the authorities had organized pro-Palestinian rallies of its own. Yet astatine those, too, it detained dozens of radical aft protesters chanted slogans captious of the government. More than 50 of them stay down bars, their lawyers say.

It was a signifier that has repeated itself astir the portion since Israel, responding to an onslaught by Hamas, began a six-month warfare successful Gaza: Arab citizens’ grief and fury implicit Gaza’s plight moving headlong into authoritative repression erstwhile that outrage takes purpose astatine their ain leaders. In immoderate countries, adjacent nationalist show of pro-Palestinian sentiment is capable to hazard arrest.

Out of measurement with their radical connected matters of economical accidental and governmental freedoms, immoderate governments successful the Arab satellite person agelong faced added discontent implicit their ties with Israel and its main backer, the United States. Now the Gaza warfare — and what galore Arabs spot arsenic their ain governments’ complicity — has driven an aged wedge betwixt rulers and the ruled with caller force.

Morocco is prosecuting dozens of radical arrested astatine pro-Palestinian protests oregon detained for societal media posts criticizing the kingdom’s rapprochement with Israel. In Saudi Arabia, which is pursuing a normalization woody with Israel, and the United Arab Emirates, which has already struck one, the authorities person displayed specified hypersensitivity to immoderate hint of absorption that galore radical are too frightened to talk connected the issue.

And Jordan’s government, caught betwixt its majority-Palestinian colonisation and its adjacent practice with Israel and the United States, has arrested astatine slightest 1,500 radical since aboriginal October, according to Amnesty International. That includes astir 500 successful March, erstwhile immense protests were held extracurricular the Israeli Embassy successful Amman.